The empirical evidence concerning the question whether an instructor should be presented on online lecture slides is equivocal and two lines of theoretical reasoning exist. On the one hand, the instructor may distract from the content, thereby hampering learning; on the other hand, the instructor may function as a social cue that triggers a more…

This exploratory study introduces the systemic approach and the explicit teaching of a meta-language to provide conceptual tools for students for the analysis and interpretation of multimodal texts. Equipping students with a set of specialised vocabulary with conventionalised meanings associated with specific choices in multimodal texts empowers…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of diagrams and time-compressed instruction on learning and learners' perceptions of cognitive load. The following design factors, visuals (visuals and non-visuals) and time-compressed instruction (0%-normal paced, 25, and 50%) were presented to 216 university students to analyze learning in a…

This study investigated the effectiveness of three different levels of enhancement strategies utilized to facilitate students' learning from static and animated visualization when taking the time-on-task into consideration. Participants were randomly assigned to six treatment groups, and then took four criterion measures. The time-on-task was…

A study of 38 fifth-grade students investigated the effectiveness of two interactive multimedia instructional spelling programs, one offering behaviorist-visual learning options and the other offering cognitivist-phonological learning options. Both groups showed increased spelling ability, though neither program outperformed the other, suggesting…