Engaging students through multimodal learning environments: The journey continues

Michael Sankey, Dawn Birch, Michael Gardiner

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference Paper published in Proceedingspeer-review

    Abstract

    The innovative use of educational technologies provides higher education institutions valuable opportunities for their staff to design media enhanced, interactive, more inclusive and engaging learning environments. The key motivation for incorporating educational technologies into the curricula is unquestionably the desire to improve the engagement and learning of students. To assist with this the increasing use of multimedia in teaching has provided many opportunities to present multiple representations of content (text, video, audio, images, interactive elements) to cater more effectively to the different learning styles of an increasingly diverse student body. This paper presents the findings of an experiment to measure the impact of multiple representations of content on learning outcomes, including learning performance and engagement. While, in this study, multiple representations of content did not lead to discernable improvements in learning performance, students reported very favourably on multimodal learning elements and perceived that they had assisted their comprehension and retention of the learning material. The implication of this study for educators is to consider carefully the incorporation of selected multiple representations of key concepts, particularly those that use a combination of audio and visual content. The limitations of the experimental methodology and directions for future research are also presented for consideration.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, ASCILITE 2010
    EditorsCaroline Steel, Mike Keppell, Phillippa Gerbic, Simon Housego
    PublisherUniversity of Queensland
    Pages852-863
    Number of pages12
    ISBN (Print)9781742720166
    Publication statusPublished - 2010
    Event27th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, ASCILITE 2010 - Sydney, NSW, Australia
    Duration: 5 Dec 20108 Dec 2010

    Publication series

    NameASCILITE 2010 - The Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education

    Conference

    Conference27th Annual Conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, ASCILITE 2010
    Country/TerritoryAustralia
    CitySydney, NSW
    Period5/12/108/12/10

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