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Multimedia instructions and cognitive load theory: effects of modality and cueing
Huib K Tabbers1, Rob L Martens, Jeroen J G van Merriënboer
1Educational Technology Expertise Centre, Open University of The Netherlands. tabbers@uvt.nl
Background:
Recent research on the influence of presentation format on the effectiveness of multimedia instructions has yielded some interesting results. According to cognitive load theory (Sweller, Van Merriënboer, & Paas, 1998) and Mayer's theory of multimedia learning (Mayer, 2001), replacing visual text with spoken text (the modality effect) and adding visual cues relating elements of a picture to the text (the cueing effect) both increase the effectiveness of multimedia instructions in terms of better learning results or less mental effort spent.
Aims:
The aim of this study was to test the generalisability of the modality and cueing effect in a classroom setting.
Sample:
The participants were 111 second-year students from the Department of Education at the University of Gent in Belgium (age between 19 and 25 years).
Method:
The participants studied a web-based multimedia lesson on instructional design for about one hour. Afterwards they completed a retention and a transfer test. During both the instruction and the tests, self-report measures of mental effort were administered.
Results:
Adding visual cues to the pictures resulted in higher retention scores, while replacing visual text with spoken text resulted in lower retention and transfer scores.
Conclusions:
Only a weak cueing effect and even a reverse modality effect have been found, indicating that both effects do not easily generalise to non-laboratory settings. A possible explanation for the reversed modality effect is that the multimedia instructions in this study were learner-paced, as opposed to the system-paced instructions used in earlier research.