Revising Online Textbooks with Multimedia Design Principles Improves Retention Learning

• In Event: From Digital Textbooks to YouTube: Innovations in Digital Learning Design

Abstract

Across two between-subjects experiments, we examined the effects of redesigning an introductory online chemistry textbook lesson on retention and transfer learning measured by a post-lesson test. The lesson was redesigned with evidence-based principles of multimedia learning such as segmenting, coherence, pretraining, and generative activities. In Experiment 1, the revised version group scored significantly higher than the original version group on retention but not transfer test scores. In Experiment 2, we parceled out generative activity effects by comparing the original, original-with-only-summarizing, and revised-without-summarizing versions. The revised-without-summarizing group scored significantly higher than the original group on retention but not transfer test scores. Interestingly, the original-with-only-summarizing group did not outperform the original group on either score. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Authors

• Dharma Lewis, University of California - Santa Barbara

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