Many elementary school students do not have a chance at a decent education outside the classroom due to a huge financial burden of private education and lack of after-school parental guide resulting from the increase of double-income families. Under t...
Many elementary school students do not have a chance at a decent education outside the classroom due to a huge financial burden of private education and lack of after-school parental guide resulting from the increase of double-income families. Under these circumstances, e-Learning, which is less-costly and relatively free from the constraints of time and space, has emerged as an effective educational resource. Following the rise of e-learning is a growing need for bringing user interface of educational web sites suited in line with the level of elementary school students. Consequently, graphic metaphor, which improves user convenience helping students to learn and have fun at the same time, has become all the more important.
This study intended to examine the use of graphic metaphor in e-Learning web sites, and preferences for the web pages by elementary school students. In particular, research was carried out to survey disparity in preferences for different types of graphic metaphor between low graders and high graders, two groups of varying personal development levels and disparate factors affecting learners' satisfaction on e-Learning sites. Moreover, it went on to identify what influence the preferences might exert on name-recognition of the web sites.
To this end, the researcher selected five sample web sites, either newly open or reconfigured over the last three years, classified components e-Learning sites, namely learning system and community system, and conducted a frequency analysis by types of metaphor. In addition, a survey was conducted based on factor-specific cases extracted from sample sites to figure out any disparity in preferences among students of different grades and relation between name-recognition and preferences among low graders and high graders. The results of the survey was confirmed by frequency analysis and cross-tabulation analysis.
Case studies found that the most frequent type of graphic metaphor was a combination of ordinary metaphor and recept metaphor followed by a blend of comparative metaphor and poetic metaphor. Even dead metaphor was rarely utilized when functionality was required.
Meanwhile, the fact that 70% of primary school students were positive towards graphic metaphor used in e-Learning sites for elementary school students could be translated into their preference for a mixed use of ordinary graphic metaphor and recept graphic metaphor as exhibited in case studies.
Statistical analysis on disparity in preferences among different graders showed that students of all grades commonly preferred a mixed use of recept graphic metaphor and poetic graphic metaphor. However, when it comes to on-line education and evaluation skin, which stress functionality and concentration, low graders preferred a mix-used of ordinary and recept graphic metaphor, whereas high graders preferred a combination of recept and poetic graphic metaphor.
Furthermore, surveys on preferences by web sites and preferences by factors of web sites demonstrated that web sites with greater preferences recorded higher scores in name-recognition, In other words, greater preference for graphic metaphor led to greater name-recognition.
It is worth noting that primary school students, who showed positive response to existing e-Learning sites based on the combination of ordinary and recept metaphor, preferred the use of poetic and recept metaphor in surveys on preferences by web sites and preferences by factors of web sites. The result suggests that the students do not dislike the ordinary and recept metaphor, but prefer poetic and recept metaphor.
This study verified that there is a need for e-Learning sites producers to appropriately use poetic and recept graphic metaphor, while taking into consideration different preferences over graphic metaphor in on-line learning and evaluation skin among different graders by taking advantage of ordinary and recept graphic metaphor for low graders and recept and poetic graphic metaphor for high graders.