Individualizing Instruction in a Web-Based Hypermedia Learning Environment: Nonlinearity, Advance Organizers, and Self-Regulated Learners

This study attempted to determine what combination of nonlinearity and advance organizers worked best for learners with given levels of self-regulation. While the results of the study showed no significant main effects or interactions, there were two near significant interactions: between nonlinearity and selfregulated learning (p = 0.054), and between nonlinearity and advance organizers (p = 0.052). These results strongly suggest that highly self-regulating learners learn poorly in mostly linear webbased hypermedia learning environments, where they have very few choices, while medium self-regulating learners learn poorly in highly nonlinear environments where they are given too many choices. The results also strongly suggest that advance organizers are more effective in highly nonlinear web-based hypermedia learning environments than in mostly linear environments. While not conclusive, the results of this study support further research.