Multimedia learning with multiple modalities beyond hearing and sight

Education and educational research fundamentally rely on advancing learning via multiple representations and comprehensive technological developments that address various sensory modalities. For a more profound understanding of learning processes associated with multimodal learning, psychological theories and models are essential. For the last two decades, most of these processes have been traced to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning and the integrated model of text and picture comprehension, both of which focus on bimodal learning with words and static or animated pictures. However, the field lacks a more comprehensive theoretical approach and more empirical evidence for principles of multimedia learning that address multimedia learning beyond common representations and modalities. Therefore, we propose implications for expanding existing theories by describing learning that involves multiple external representations and addresses various sensory modalities beyond just hearing and sight. In addition, for this theoretical extension, we derive implications for expanded and adapted principles of multimedia learning that include further sensory modalities. Overall, the extension and implications presented here represent drivers for future research on multimodal learning with multiple representations.