Abstracts - Earli

een used to analyse the structure of interaction in inter organizational context. The second part ofdata consists of 20 interviews which have been collected among Study 2 participants. Results: Substudies indicate that the information flow in which the workers were embedded varied enormouslyinside the organisation, regarding volume, quality, topics, and the richness of the information theywere receiving. According to our interpretations it is not so important how voluminous a set ofrelationships is but rather from whom the information is received. Contribution: In addition, thanonly report the results from these empirical cases, our aim was to approach the target bycombining several methodological tools in order to obtain an analysing unit by which it is possibleto integrate individual level data into community level data.Using dynamic visualization with written explanation to by-pass information processing deficits ofchildren with reading difficultiesTatjana Taraszow, Knowledge Media Research Center, GermanyJulia Wahl, Knowledge Media Research Center, GermanyYiannis Laouris, Cyprus Neuroscience & Technology Institute, CyprusKatharina Scheiter, University of Tübingen, GermanyPeter Gerjets, Knowledge Media Research Center, GermanyThe study investigated how multimedia messages (i.e., dynamic visualizations accompanied bywritten or spoken verbal explanations) can be used to support children with special educationalneeds in knowledge acquisition. Particularly, we were interested in whether multimedia messagesmay help to compensate for knowledge deficits of students with reading disabilities by providingthem with alternative ways of accessing the to-be learned information thereby bypassing theirreading difficulties (e.g., by presenting dynamic visualizations and / or spoken text). Against thebackground of current theories of multimedia learning (e.g., Mayer, 2001), it was tested whethermultimedia design principles that have been established for learners with regular abilities (i.e., themultimedia principle, the modality principle, and the redundancy principle) would hold forstudents with reading disabilities. For experimentation, a multimedia learning environment wasdeveloped that taught elementary school children principles of animals’ hibernation. As a firstindependent variable, it was varied whether the environment contained dynamic visualizations ornot. The visualizations depicted the behavior of eight vertebrates during the seasons and theirdifferent adaptation strategies. As the second independent variable, we compared two presentationmodes for verbal explanations as well as their combination: The verbal explanations werepresented either as visual or auditory text, or as a combination of both. One hundred-fiftyelementary students with little prior knowledge in the domain were randomly assigned to the sixconditions in order to study the process of hibernation during their regular school hours. Theirreading abilities assessed prior to the experiment served as a variable to distinguish groups oflearners with either poor or good abilities. Learning outcomes were measured by comparinglearners’ scores in a multiple-choice questionnaire before and after the educational session. Thestudy is currently being conducted in fifteen schools in Cyprus and the final results will bepresented at the EARLI conference.Profile of associate teachers: their use of ICT to develop learningVincent Grenon, University of Sherbrooke, CanadaFrancois Larose, University of Sherbrooke, CanadaThis paper presents the results of a study with a twofold purpose: (1) to gather data to draw up ageneral profile of the real practices of teachers concerning their use of information andcommunication technologies (ICT); (2) to circumscribe their level of preparation to foster learning– 243 –