Meta-Analysis to Support an Integrated Theory of Multimedia Learning

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The project is supported by the Education and Human Resources Core Research (ECR) program, which supports fundamental research in STEM learning and learning environments. Learners are increasingly presented with scientific and math information in multiple media, such as narrated educational animations or illustrated hyperlinked websites. Some popular design principles used by developers of educational media are being eclipsed by new research, and new principles are needed to improve design, learning, and future research on multimedia learning. This large synthesis project will pull together trends across findings from more than 500 studies conducted with students in middle school through undergraduate years, learning science or math from multimedia. A major contribution is in moving from "what works" to "what works for whom" when learning with multimedia. The project will result in a book, articles, workshops at conferences, and a searchable website.This project will involve conducting a meta-analysis of learning from multimedia that is organized under a new meta-theory of multimedia learning, which merges several existing theories and includes moderation of effects of stimulus design, task design, and content design by individual differences (background knowledge, working memory, and spatial skills). Using best practices for literature search, effects from approximately 500 studies across education, psychology, and other disciplines will be coded for effects on declarative knowledge, inference, procedural skills, and transfer to uninstructed content. A meta-regression approach will be used to examine main effects, interactions with individual difference variables, and both theory-driven and demographic moderators. Findings should result in more nuanced design principles for designers of educational multimedia- especially adaptive multimedia - and should open up important new avenues for researchers by explaining contradictory findings across this burgeoning literature.