Educational Multimedia and Learning Style Preferences (Published)
Multimedia learning offers a significant opportunity to reach the greatest number of students and most effectively supports students with different learning styles. The basis for the use of multimedia is the assumption that when the user interacts within these media he/she learns more meaningfully. The fundamental principle behind multimedia learning is best described by Mayer (2005) “People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone”. This study seeks to provide a framework for multimedia-enhanced education. The multimedia in this study were PowerPoint and Multiple Mouse Mischief. The framework for the study was built on what high-end multimedia presentation currently facilitates: presenting course materials in; text, graphics, photographs and animation (visual), audio and discussion (aural), with follow-up point-and-click or drag-and-drop exercises (Kinaesthetic). The study set out to examine how learning styles interact with the presentation media to influence the learning outcomes of the students. The findings revealed no significant main effect of learning style on the students’ achievement scores. However, the kinaesthetic learners recorded the highest adjusted post-test mean achievement score. It was concluded that interactive multimedia presentation can facilitate diverse learning styles and although there are claims about the benefits of multimedia presentations but the reality is that the instructional technologies are only tools and should be applied with careful regard to the complex nature of human information processing.
Keywords: Learning Style, Multimedia, Multiple Mouse, Powerpoint