Problem. This study was designed to determine the effects of Traditional Presentation, PC-based Multimedia Presentation and PC-bases Multimedia Distant Presentation on assessment skills and instructional preference and state anxiety of undergraduate nursing students.

Procedure. This study involved ninety five (N = 95) undergraduate nursing students enrolled in a university clinical laboratory nursing course.

The three treatments employed in the study included: (A) A traditional lecture presentation using static 35mm slides; (B) a multimedia presentation and; (C) a multimedia distant presentation using realtime annotation and coding techniques. The content and visuals for each of the presentation was taken from an interactive information mapped nursing text.

Three measure instruments were used. They were: (A) Competency Based Assessment Test, (B) the Assessment Presentation Preference Rating Scale and (C) the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. A demographic survey was also undertaken.

The hypothesis concerning achievement was tested by ANOVA. The Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA by ranks was used to analyze the ordinal data collected from the preference and anxiety scales. Significance for all statistical procedures was measured at the p =.05 level.

Results. The finding indicated that no significant differences were found at the p =.05 level between the three treatment groups in the area of mastery learning and presentation preference as well as state anxiety.

Conclusions. The major conclusions derived from the study were: (1) PC-based multimedia presentation technology used for distance education can be as effective as traditional lecture presentation when comparing nursing students' mastery learning, preference and anxiety; (2) that PC-based multimedia technology may be an appropriate and viable approach to provide effective and cost efficient continuing distance education for nurses; (3) that students can learn as effectively from visuals designed for specific instruction irrelevant of the media; (4) that the benefit of newer technologies may not be realized only through improved achievement levels but in the enthusiasm they create, the motivation and inspiration they provide and the insight they deliver to the instructional process.