| This study describes strategies instructional designers can use to foster essential processing when designing multimedia instruction with different combinations of the use and non-use of the pretraining, segmenting, and modality principles described by Clark and Mayer (2016). This study investigated the effects of different combinations of the use and nonuse of the pretraining and segmenting principles, in concert with modality, on recall and transfer test scores within the discipline of consumer decision making. The results from this study provide insight into how the use of one or more Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML) principles impacted overall, recall, and transfer learning outcomes.
Results indicated a combination of two principles (pretraining and modality and segmenting and modality) scored better than the one principle group (modality), the three principle group
(pretraining, segmenting, and modality), and the combination of the one and three principle groups for overall and transfer scores. Results also indicated a combination of segmenting and modality was better than modality alone for transfer scores. There was no significant difference among posttest scores for recall when one, two, or three principles were used.
Future research studies could conduct replication or similar studies to further study the complex relationship among these three principles. A replication study to test if the power of the effects can be increased with a larger sample size is needed. Additionally, future research could consider excluding modality, consider a more complex topic or a different instructional design model, restructure the use of pretraining, or consider affective effects and motivation.
If instructional designers want learners to only recall information, modality may be enough. It is recommended that using a combination of either pretraining and modality or segmenting and modality may be sufficient to improve overall, and transfer learning compared to using one or three principles. It may be harmful for learning when instructional designers include the
combination of the three principles (pretraining, segmenting, and modality) in their instruction. |