“When Graphics Improve Liking but Not Learning from Online Lessons”, 2012-09-01 (; similar):
Added instructive, decorative, seductive photos or none to an online lesson.
Higher satisfaction ratings for all 3 kinds of photos.
Higher recall test scores for instructive photos only.
Adding relevant photos helps learning, but adding irrelevant photos does not.
The multimedia principle states that adding graphics to text can improve student learning (2009), but all graphics are not equally effective.
In the present study, students studied a short online lesson on distance education that contained instructive graphics (ie. directly relevant to the instructional goal), seductive graphics (ie. highly interesting but not directly relevant to the instructional goal), decorative graphics (ie. neutral but not directly relevant to the instructional goal), or no graphics.
After instruction, students who received any kind of graphic produced statistically-significantly higher satisfaction ratings than the no graphics group, indicating that adding any kind of graphic greatly improves positive feelings. However, on a recall posttest, students who received instructive graphics performed statistically-significantly better than the other 3 groups, indicating that the relevance of graphics affects learning outcomes. The 3 kinds of graphics had similar effects on affective measures but different effects on cognitive measures.
Thus, the multimedia effect is qualified by a version of the coherence principle: Adding relevant graphics to words helps learning but adding irrelevant graphics does not.
[Keywords: graphics, seductive details, e-Learning, web-based learning, multimedia effect, multimedia learning]