Examining learning from text and pictures for different task types: Does the multimedia effect differ for conceptual, causal, and procedural tasks?

The Impact of Instructional Design on College Students’ Cognitive Load and Learning Outcomes in a Large Food Science and Human Nutrition Course

“…The results from the correlation analysis are similar to results from existing literature. In the case when materials are designed appropriately, students will experience low amounts of mental effort or ECL and consequently will learn information (Chien and Chang ; van Genuchten and others ; Morrison and others ). Morrison and others () conducted a study in an introductory computer science course.…”

“…Procedural learning is achieved when students can grasp the steps involved and apply that knowledge to different situations (Smith and Ragan ; van Genuchten and others ). For this particular learning strategy, there are 4 steps an instructional designer needs to take when creating material.…”

How may multimedia and hypertext documents support deep processing for learning?

“…For instance, maintaining pictorial information in working memory would be less costly (e.g. Eitel, Scheiter, Schüler, Nyström, & Holmqvist, 2013) and drawing inferences from pictures would be easier than from text (Van Genuchten et al, 2012) because it would rely on perception rather than on semantic interpretation (Larkin & Simon, 1987). This led Eitel et al (2013) to the scaffolding hypothesis: pictures provide relatively direct access to mental model construction, so that presenting a picture before a text facilitates its processing.…”

Specifying the boundary conditions of the multimedia effect: The influence of content and its distribution between text and pictures

“…For each item correctly recalled, participants received one point. As graphic and verbal recall correlated significantly with each other (visual aspects: r = .60, p < .001; spatial aspects: r = .40, p < .001) and as Cronbach's alpha was higher for the combined scores of graphic and verbal recall (visual aspects: graphic Cronbach's alpha = .89, verbal Cronbach's alpha = .95, combined Cronbach's alphas = .95; spatial aspects: graphic Cronbach's alpha = .96, verbal Cronbach's alpha = .95, combined Cronbach's alphas = .97), we built common scores combining graphic and verbal recall performance (cf., de Koning, Tabbers, Rikers, & Paas, ; Schwonke, Berthold, & Renkl, ; van Genuchten, Scheiter, & Schüler, ). Four separate scores were calculated for (1) spatial and (2) visual information mentioned in both texts and pictures within the ST + P or VT + P conditions (e.g., information about the lake); (3) spatial and (4) visual information depicted only in the pictures (e.g., information about the slide).…”