Effects of prior knowledge and multimodal presentation on various levels of educational objectives
Authors: Bradley Deon Ausman
Venue:  (2008)

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of prior knowledge and varied modality presentation (animation, audio, animation and audio) strategies on achievement. A sample was recruited from a large northeastern undergraduate population in the fall of 2007. After completing a basic human physiology pretest to establish their level prior knowledge (Low, High) a stratified random assignment with the 318 participants was employed where the participants were assigned to one of four treatment groups (control, textual fade animation, non-redundant audio, and textual fade animation with non-redundant audio). The study was conducted as a 2 X 4 factorial post-test design and had two independent variables of prior knowledge (2 levels &ndash; High and Low) and modality of treatments (4 levels &ndash; control, non-redundant audio, textual fade animation, and non-redundant audio with textual fade animation). The dependent measures assessed achievement on 5 different tests and 4 subscales dealing with specific targeted items found to be particularly difficult via item analysis for participants over the course of four pilot studies. There was a significant main effect with respect to modality for targeted conceptual items and overall targeted items for the non-redundant audio treatment group. In these cases the use of audio yielded statistically significant increases, at the .05 level, in performance over the control group. Additionally the use of animation and audio was found to yield yielded statistically significant increases, at the .05 level, in achievement over the control. Finally, the use of textual animation alone was found to be statistically significant for targeted conceptual items when compared to the control. The findings are generally consistent with the existing literature. There was no significant main effect with respect to the levels of prior knowledge on any of the dependent measures in this study. This seems to run counter to much of existing literature but should be considered in the context of the strategies employed in this study. There was no significant interaction between the levels of prior knowledge and the modality of presentation on any of the dependent measures in this study. Overall the results obtained suggest that, when participants have the entry level skills required; information supplied via textual animation, non-redundant audio, or the combination thereof are effective in increasing achievement at the conceptual level. Additionally supplying information via non-redundant audio, textual animation, or the combination thereof should yield statistically similar increases in achievement at the conceptual level. The guidance would be to then choose the most effective solution to implement within appropriate time and monetary constraints. Given the increased costs often associated with developing rich hypermedia environments&rsquo; following a systematic process for placement of those elements to ensure maximum educational value. Once basic factual and conceptual information has been successfully scaffolded, textual animation and non-redundant audio failed to produce an increase in higher levels educational objectives such as comprehension and rule/procedural knowledge. The ACM Portal is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Copyright © 2010 ACM, Inc. Terms of Usage Privacy Policy Code of Ethics Contact Us Useful downloads: Adobe Acrobat QuickTime Windows Media Player Real Player