Applying the Segmenting Principle to Online Geography Lessons

• In Event: 34.080 - Poster Session 7
  In Poster Session: 34.080-2 - Principles of Cognition and Multimedia Design

Abstract

Students studied an online multimedia slideshow on geographic information systems (GIS), either by pressing a key to go to the next slide (non-segmented version) or pressing a key to add the next portion of the slide (segmented version), and either with a narrator reading the printed text (redundant version) or no narration (non-redundant version). On a subsequent transfer test, the results showed a segmenting effect in which students performed significantly better with a segmented than non-segmented version of the lesson (d = 0.34), and this pattern was the same whether narration was added or not, yielding no interaction between segmenting and redundancy and no significant effect for redundancy. This work extends the segmenting principle to a new domain and medium.

Authors

• Richard E. Mayer, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Jeff Howarth, Middlebury College

• Michelle Kaplan, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Sara Hanna, University of California - Santa Barbara