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Following up on this first study and its somewhat unanticipated findings, Cortese employs the venerable Solomon Four-Group Design to better isolate the effects of use of the basic site design on knowledge structure density. In a finding consistent with her first study, Cortese demonstrates that in the posttest component of the Solomon Four-Group Design, simple exposure to the basic site design does not appear to enhance knowledge structure density compared to individuals who are not exposed to the site. However, in what might be downplayed as merely a demonstration of a threat to the external validity of a pretest and posttest experimental design for this type of research, Cortese finds that among those who were given the knowledge structure density measure in both pretest and posttest, density increases among those exposed to the basic site. That is, the basic site increases knowledge structure density only among those who have been exposed to the pretest, or what Campbell and Stanley refer to as “sensitization.” Rather than simply chalking this finding up to an anomaly of experimental design, Cortese offers an interesting theoretical account of this effect and its implications for site design. She theorizes that the pretest primed participants to focus attention on the information implicitly being conveyed by basic hyperlinks in the Web site. When encouraged to think about how concepts are related via this sort of priming, everyday hyperlinks can in fact encourage individuals to increase their knowledge structure density. This second study, then, sheds light on another mechanism—beyond the relational site design of Study One—that might be used to encourage one aspect of learning from online health information.
This book falls at the fruitful intersection of technology design, cognitive psychology, education, and communication. Cortese moves deftly through the literatures in each of these fields to design and execute two clean studies that help to advance our understanding of the complex interplay between human motivation, information processing, educational technology design, and learning.