The design of instructional multimedia in e-Learning: A Media Richness Theory-based approach

The rapid development of computer and Internet technologies has made e-Learning become an important learning method. There has been a considerable increase in the needs for multimedia instructional material in e-Learning recently as such content has been shown to attract a learner s attention and interests. The multimedia content alone, however, does not necessarily result in significant positive learning performance and satisfaction. Moreover, it is expensive to design and develop multimedia instructional material. There is a lack of extant research to address the critical issue of how to develop effective multimedia instructional content that leads to desirable learning performance and satisfaction. The objective of our paper is to propose and empirically test a model that examines the impact of the fitness of instructional content and media on a learner s performance and satisfaction. Our research finds that whether it is learning score as an objective measure or learning satisfaction as a subjective measure, the course unit with high uncertainty and equivocality in content needs high richness media representation. On the other hand, it is ineffective to use high richness media to promote learning performance. 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.