The Effects of Multimedia Elements on Learning Achievements in Digital Content

Because of e-learning environments characteristics of learners include isolation from the instructor or peer learners, therefore providing social cues or emotional feedback has been seriously considered by inserting pedagogical agents into digital contents. However, there exists controversies for introducing pedagogical agents into digital contents, pros are fostering learner motivation and learning outcomes, and cons include the potential to distract learners from the learning content. Measuring the differences of cognitive load needed for e-learning, we have applied learners' eye movement data taken from eye-tracker, and identify the impact of applying a pedagogical agent. The 45 high school students have been divided into three groups, each group focuses on one of the three types of e-learning contents; image and text based multimedia with a pedagogical agent (G1), multimedia as a figure and text with narration (G2), and multimedia only (G3). While learners use the contents, their eye-movement data was recorded and analyzed with EyeWorks software. Also, self-reported cognitive loads and learning achievements were used to analyze learners' performance. From these experiments, we found that the group of individuals using pedagogical agents and narration (G1 and G2), outperformed the multimedia only group (G3), these results show the positive impact of narration and pedagogical agents' in e-learning environments. Key-Words: Pedagogical agent, Narration, Multimedia learning,