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Articles:Prior Knowledge Principle in Multimedia Learning

From unthinkMedia

This article reviews the effects on a learners prior knowledge on multimedia learning principles.

Contents 1 Article Questions 2 Experiment 1 2.1 Chart 1 2.2 Chart 2 2.3 Result 3 Limitations 4 Implication

Article Questions

• Could the same multimedia design recommendations be applied to more experienced learners?

Experiment 1

Students of varying levels of prior knowledge where allowed to use 2 versions of a chart:

Chart 1

This chart was stacked with various design principles including multimedia principle, modality principle, contiguity principle, signaling principle, interactivity principle, and worked-out examples principle. The collection of these design principles would make for an effective multimedia learning application.

Chart 2

This chart got rid of most of most of the design principle that where used in chart 1, and allowed for a more unstructured interaction.

Result

Learners experienced expertise reversal effect as their knowledge of the domain increased, the effectiveness of the various design principles reversed.

• Low prior knowledge, novices in the domain that had never used nomograms before proved to be more successful with Chart 1.
• This result changed once students where familiarized with nomograms

Note: experts still perform better then novices, however their performance would have probably increased if they would have learned the new material using an alternative format.

Many other experiments through out history have suffered the same fate.

Limitations

"although the need for instructional designers to consider levels of learners’ knowledge in a domain has been well recognised as part of that approach and notwithstanding thirty years ofATI research, few instructional design research studies and their recommendations show explicitly how to use the ATI approach in practice. It is important not just to demonstrate an expertise reversal effect (or other examples of an ATI), but to investigate new instructional procedures and techniques that will deal with it."

Implication

• The need to tailor instructional formats and procedures to changing levels of expertise.
• design principles that help low-knowledge learners may not help or even hinder high-knowledge learners