MultiMedia Exploration: Visual Media and Its Effects on Learning

Introduction
The advent of new media technologies has changed teaching and learning in the classroom. This has allowed instructors to integrate all sorts of technology in their instruction for both the classroom, mobile and online environments. For example, instructors can use audio and visual materials to engage their students in learning. Although many studies have been conducted to explore the effects of audio and visual materials on learning, a consensus has not been reached on whether media use enhances student cognitive abilities. In this paper, we will review some of the literature on multimedia learning and discuss how illustrations (pictures, diagrams, line drawings, or graphics) and educational games (a computer constructed instruction technique to teach people about a certain subject or skill as they play) used in different instructional contexts impact learning. We will also discuss the issue of cognitive overload that may occur as a result of such media use and its implications on learning.

Issues/Problems Addressed
Following are two studies that explore the impact of illustrations on learning. The first one discusses the use of illustrations in texts and the other discusses the use of illustrations in the delivery of instructional material on a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). In the first study, the researchers conducted three different experiments to explore the issue of annotated illustrations on learning (Mayer, Steinhoff, Bower, & Mars, 1995).The test groups consisted of college students who lacked experience in meteorology. They were asked to read a text explaining how lightening works and were then required to take a problem-solving transfer test. Each of the four groups consisted of 18 students. The groups were as followed:
1. Annotated-proximate (AP) – Illustrations containing labels for objects in the illustrations and short captions summarizing the actions in the illustrations, presented on same page as the text.
2. Annotated-distant (AD) – Illustrations containing labels for objects in the illustrations and short captions summarizing the actions in the illustrations, presented on a different page from the text.
3. Nonannoted-proximate (NP) – Illustrations presented on same page as the text.
4. Nonannotated-distant (ND) - Illustrations presented on a different page from the text.
The researchers found “students generated approximately 50% more creative problem solutions when illustrations were annotated and placed on the same page as corresponding text…than when illustrations were not annotated and were presented on a separate page from the text…” (Mayer et al., 1995)

Lee, Park, Kim, Son & Lee (2005), took a slightly different approach to the use of illustrations by focusing on its use in instructional content for PDAs Forty-five graduate students were randomly assigned to three different treatment groups: the cognitive interest illustration group, the emotional interest illustration group and the text-only group. Participants filled out a prior-knowledge and pre-interest survey, prior to studying the information on the life cycle of a hurricane. This was followed by a series of questions on what they had read, then a post-interest survey and an achievement test. Over the next three weeks participants were studied individually. The research findings found that “students in the cognitive interest group earned significantly higher achievement scores than did students in both emotional interest group and text-only group” (Lee, Park, Kim, Son, & Lee, 2005). In addition, the findings also revealed that “learners who were given emotional interest illustrations felt more interest than did learners who were given cognitive interest illustrations and text-only material” (Lee et al., 2005).

About a year ago, The National Summit on Educational Games was held in Washington, D.C. Sponsored by the Federation of American Scientists, the Entertainment Software Association, and the National Science Foundation. This summit of nearly 100 experts, sought to find ways to accelerate the development commercialization, and deployment of a new generation of games for learning. Some of the participants included experts on technology and pedagogy, teachers, education software publishers and game developers. Participant shared research and white papers and exchanged ideas through a series of presentations and discussions. Among their major findings, they found that there are several attributes of games that would be useful for application in learning-contextual bridging, scaffolding, motivation and goal orientation. In addition, unlike entertainment games, developers of educational games needed to target the desired learning outcome, and then design a game to achieve that target (Federation of American Scientists, 2006).

Not only has there been an advent of new technologies for learning, but we have also seen an emergence of new instructional contexts such as web-based learning digital educational games. Like traditional classroom instruction that uses audio and visual materials to engage learners in learning, caution must be taken to not over-emphasize or overuse these materials in the web-based environment as well, in an effort to compensate for the lack of face-to-face instructor-student interaction. A result of using too many media materials in instruction is media overload on the part of learners. In the studies discussed above, the researchers did not explore the effects of media overload, which may have helped them to account for some of the conflicting results. Other researchers however, have felt the need to investigate the effects of media overload and cognitive load theory on learning. Instructional materials of any kind require certain cognitive demands that must be met and can either be directly related to the difficulty of the material, or other elements such as the design of the instruction or distractions. These are factors which serve as a cognitive load (Hartley, 1999).Thus, instructional designers should identify and reduce extraneous cognitive load in order for learning to be maximized and be more efficient (Hartley, 1999). Hartley expressed that relevant graphics, such as animation, can be very helpful in communicating complicated and spatial information, however, they also serve as a distraction since the most common use of animation is used far too often to entertain.

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