Multimedia Effects in Initial Instruction and Feedback on Problem Solving

Multimedia learning materials incorporate both textual information and pictorial information,and previous research has largely focused on how multimedia materials influence theeffectiveness of initial instruction. However, feedback is a critical component of learning, and thecurrent experiment tests whether multimedia materials within the feedback message can benefitstudent learning. We randomly assigned undergraduate students (N = 129) to one of fourconditions using a 2 (Initial Instruction: text-only vs multimedia) x 2 (Feedback: text-only vsmultimedia) design and tested their learning of conditional probability problems. Results from animmediate posttest suggested that multimedia feedback was more beneficial than text-onlyfeedback, but there was no evidence that the modality of the initial instruction influencedlearning in this context. By contrast, exploratory analyses revealed that students perceived theproblems to be less difficult and they spontaneously generated more diagrams during theirproblem solutions when they were assigned to multimedia instruction relative to text-onlyinstruction. We discuss the implications of these results for theory and practice.Key words: multimedia learning, feedback, problem solving, meta-cognition,instructional diagrams