Quantifying the Effects of Post-Narration of Both Relevant and Irrelevant Information on Learning Outcomes

The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (Moreno & Mayer, 1999) was developed to provide guidance for the creation and presentation of multimedia presentations. Previous studies had specifically focused on the coherence principle which has been limited to brief presentations on single-topic stimulus presentations. The current study examined the impact of both tangentially relevant and irrelevant post-narration on the learning outcomes of students. Participants viewed a recorded multimedia presentation consisting of four different topics within cognitive psychology. Following each slide there was post-narration that corresponded to the previous slide that depending on the condition was either tangentially relevant, irrelevant, or none. Within the presentation there were individual facts and definitions as well as information to be synthesized across slides that students were tested upon after a retention interval. During the retention interval participants completed measures such as a cognitive load measure, social presence measure, and a lecture engagement measure for exploratory analyses and to act as a filler task for the retention interval. Learning outcomes were measured by an open response quiz containing questions on the individual facts and definitions as well as the synthesis based information from the presentation. I hypothesized that elaboration will not impact the individual facts and definitions questions, but will impact the synthesis based questions. The ANOVA revealed a significant effect for basic knowledge in contrast to the hypothesis. No significant effects of post-narration were found for comprehension.<p></p>