INTERFACE LAYOUT VERSUS EFFICIENCY OF INFORMATION ASSIMILATION IN THE LEARNING PROCESS

The purpose of this article is to study the impact of different ways of presenting educational content found on websites on the ability to assimilate information among elementary school students. To conduct the study, three websites with interface layouts different in terms of levels of complexity were prepared: a simple, a moderate and a complex one. Each site contained the same educational materials. Seventy-two students from elementary school grades IV-VI participated in the study. All the students were divided into 3 groups, each of which worked with one version of the website. At the first stage, students were tasked with familiarizing themselves with the content of the web pages within a given website. This was followed by a knowledge quiz, checking how much information the subjects had memorized. At the last stage, participants of the experiment completed a questionnaire collecting their opinions on their preferences regarding the form of presentation of educational content made available online. The obtained results and the conducted analysis show the interface with the moderate level of complexity, i.e. with a relatively simple layout and without an excessive number of elements, allows for the assimilation of the most information. The interface was also rated the highest by the participants of the study.