Media-based cognitive strategies as treatments in remediation instruction: applications at the defense information school

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of introducing a media-based, embedded cognitive strategy into the classroom instruction of military journalism students who historically have had problems effectively processing the information they study into long-term memory for later retrieval and use in completing their classroom assignments. Attention to these student problems was brought about in part by the high attrition rate in the Basic Journalist Course at the Defense Information School (DINFOS). A graphic format aid, which represents visual media in this study was designed to help learners supplant mental processing of information on a particularly troublesome news-writing assignment, the "Accident Follow-Up." Basic journalism classes at DINFGS were used as control and treatment groups. Scores from the two groups were analyzed with a test to determine if treatment group learners benefited from the embedded strateg). Random assignment of subjects to groups was not possible, so homogeneity of critical demographics was assessed in order to control threats to internal validity. Consistency of instructional methods between classes was an important variable which was assessed by one-way analysis of variance on scores of the two test groups. (See more in text.)