Ollerenshaw, A., Aidman, E., & Kidd, G. (1997). Is an illustration always worth ten thousand words? Effects of prior knowledge, learning style and multimedia illustrations on text comprehension. International Journal of Instructional Media, 23(3), 227-238.

Ollerenshaw, A.; Aidman, E.; Kidd, G.

1997

Ollerenshaw, A., Aidman, E., & Kidd, G. (1997). Is an illustration always worth ten thousand words? Effects of prior knowledge, learning style and multimedia illustrations on text comprehension. International Journal of Instructional Media, 23(3), 227-238.

Comprehension of relatively novel technical material was examined in four groups of undergraduates (N=81) under "text only", "multimedia" and two "diagram" conditions of text supplementation. Multimedia supplementation resulted in superior text comprehension, while standard diagrams did not improve comprehension over "text only" condition. Students with low prior knowledge showed significantly higher comprehension when using multimedia illustration than when studying text alone, whereas for students with high prior knowledge multimedia made no significant difference. Surface learners under-performed overall, but showed remarkably higher comprehension with multimedia than with text alone and nearly equalled comprehension of students with deep, achieving or mixed approaches to learning in the multimedia condition. The results indicate that effects of text supplementation are mediated by prior knowledge and learning style: multimedia appears more beneficial to surface learners with little prior knowledge and makes little or no difference for knowledgable achievers or deep learners.

The overall results support the notion that textual learning is generally enhanced by computer simulated multimedia diagrams. Importantly, however, this outcome is influenced by the students' learning styles. As was hypothesized, supplementing text with a multimedia computer simulation was more beneficial to learning, irrespective of prior knowledge, than text alone, or text supplemented by standard diagrams (labeling either parts or operating stages of a pump). This is clearly indicated by the differences in comprehension scores between multimedia and the other three text supplementation conditions. Noticeably however, comprehension of students with low prior knowledge in either of the two diagram conditions was no better than in the text alone condition.

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