The effectiveness of multimedia programmes in children's vocabulary learning

The present experiment investigated the effect of three different presentation modes in children’s vocabulary learning with a self-guided multimedia programmes. Participants were 135 third and fourth grade children who read a short English language story presented by a computer programme. For 12 key (previously unknown) words in the story, children received verbal annotations (written translation), visual annotations (picture representing the word), or both. Recall of word translations was better for children who only received verbal annotations than for children who received simultaneously visual and verbal annotations or visual annotations only. Results support previous research about cognitive load in e-learning environments, and show that children’s learning processes are hindered by limited working memory. This finding implies a challenge for multimedia programmes designed for children and based on self-regulated learning. Which presentation mode of a multimedia programme will help in learning more vocabulary in an unknown language: one with pictures, one with words or one combining both representations? The growing use of multimedia programmes in schools (eg, via the Internet or via ad hoc programmes) has conveyed a great support to individual learning in the sense that it allows the student to access different kinds of information at the same time (words, pictures, audio) and at their own pace. Thus, the designers of multimedia programmes face the challenge of not only adapting programmes to the learner’s certain characteristics but also of fitting the requirements for these programmes to be effective (Ávila & Sadoski, 1996). Previous research about presentation modes in different learning environments has shown that, in some cases, adding a picture to the word may enhance the comprehension of school texts and the information storage process (see Tindall-Ford, Chandler & Sweller, 1997). This result may be attributed to the fact that the picture makes recall British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 40 No 1 2009 23–31 doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00800.x © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Becta. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. easier by identification of previous experience stored in long-term memory, or alternatively, the word next to the picture reduces the interpretation range (ie, it makes it more reliable). The facilitative effect obtained when the picture is presented next to the word (Mayer, 1997) is a result of dual coding processes involved in associative learning. Hence, when a word and a picture are presented simultaneously, the verbal representation and the corresponding pictorial representation are processed at the same time in working memory, facilitating the organisation and integration of both picture and word through the corresponding connections (see Paivio, 1971), for a theoretical description of dual coding processes). If one assumes that any design for a multimedia programme should be based on solid educational theory and evidence, it is important to examine the potential limits to this facilitative effect in an e-learning environment (Wild & Quinn, 1998). Indeed, simultaneous presentation of verbal and pictorial stimuli has not always proved to be useful in self-paced learning, probably because of limited working-memory capacity (see Baddeley, 1986, 1997), for a detailed description of working memory). The learning difficulties resulting when information in multimedia programmes overloads working memory can imply cognitive load (see Brünken, Plass & Leutner, 2003). Cognitive load may occur when two types of stimuli that supply the same information (eg, a written word and a picture related to the same concept) are perceived through the same information processing channel, which is a visual channel in this case. Reducing cognitive load involves cutting the unneeded duplication of the essential information. Thus, to create effective multimedia programmes, the combined verbal and pictorial presentation mode should be used only in case when its effectiveness has been clearly demonstrated (Mayer, Heiser & Lonn, 2001; Mayer & Moreno, 2002). The issue is more complex, though. The study of the effectiveness of presentation modes in multimedia programmes has also focused on factors related to the learner’s characteristics that may involve greater degree of difficulty in learning, such as the individual’s visual or verbal ability. Prior studies have shown that, in certain learning situations, some learners can benefit more than others from the simultaneous presentation of word and picture (ie, dual coding implying a facilitative effect) (Riding & Grimley, 1999). In this light, using a comprehension task with self-paced multimedia programmes, learners with high ability (verbal and visual) benefit more than learners with low ability from the simultaneous presentation (word and picture) (Mayer & Sims, 1994). Therefore, it seems necessary to examine the conditions in which the learner’s cognitive resources may not allow him to maintain the presented information in working memory, in order to reduce (or even eliminate) cognitive load when implementing any learning multimedia programme (eg, see Mayer & Moreno, 2003; Moreno & Mayer, 2002). Moreover, most research in this area has been conducted with adults. This hinders the generalisation of these findings to other populations, such as primary school children, where the use of self-paced multimedia programmes is more frequent in the classroom environment. On the positive side, the combined use of a word and a picture may reinforce the memory trace in children, but (on the negative side) it may 24 British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 40 No 1 2009 © 2007 The Author. Journal compilation © 2007 Becta. well force the child to handle an additional element, thus increasing the experienced cognitive load. The main aim of this study was to examine which presentation mode is more effective for primary school children who are learning new vocabulary in a second language with a self-paced multimedia programme: either presenting only one stimulus (which involves only one connection, either verbal or pictorial) or presenting two stimuli simultaneously, both a word and a picture (which allows the integration of the two connections, verbal and pictorial). Previous research on vocabulary learning (using adult participants) has underlined the importance of the learning context in a multimedia environment (Duquette, Renié & Laurier, 1998) and has primarily focused on factors like learner’s preference and his spatial and verbal ability. In the first case, when learners were able to choose the presentation mode according to their own preference, presenting words and pictures simultaneously was more effective than presenting only words or only pictures (Mayer, Plass, Chun & Leutner, 1998). However, a recent study by Plass, Chun, Mayer and Leutner (2003), in the context of English-speaking college students learning German, showed that for the students with low cognitive ability (either visual or verbal), recall and comprehension were worse in the condition with simultaneous presentation of verbal and pictorial information than in the condition that presented verbal or pictorial information separately. Given that the children’s cognitive ability is lower than the adults’ (eg, Pressley, 1982; see also Cain, Oakhill & Lemmon, 2004), the simultaneous presentation of word and picture may produce in the children the same effect as in the previously mentioned low-ability adults (ie, higher cognitive load and thus, lower recall rate and poorer comprehension). If this is so, one session of self-paced reading with a single mode presentation (either visual or verbal) should be more effective for vocabulary recall in short and medium term than a complex presentation mode (visual and verbal). Thus, the obtained data will have direct implications on the use of words and pictures to create valuable multimedia tools with educational aims.