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HOW MUCH MULTIMEDIA IS ENOUGH? - AN EXPERIMENT
[LISTEN TO A SUMMARY]
Robert LaRose in his paper Audiographic Telecourses for the Web: An Experiment, asks "...just how much of the multimedia 'coolness' of the World Wide Web is really necessary to produce a college course that students can learn from?
"An introductory telecommunication course was converted to an Audiographic Web telecourse in which students listened to pre-recorded audio classroom interactions while viewing a detailed course outline and illustrative sites over the World Wide Web. Forty-nine subjects were recruited from a live lecture class and randomly assigned to either the experimental group or a control group that took the class in a traditional lecture section.
"... research shows that computer multimedia formats combining text with either audio or video were more effective than still graphics and text alone which the researchers attributed to dual coding of text with audio or video in short term memory. (however) the extra costs of recording, editing, distributing and receiving video over the Web -- and modifying it later --would seem to make it inherently less cost effective compared to the Audiographic approach (used) here."
And the results after comparing grades and comments?
"So, if the question becomes, 'how much multimedia technology is enough?' the answer would seem to be 'not very much'.... the talking head will probably prove to be the most cost effective... there does need to be some talking going on, or at least some form of multimedia presentation that will invoke the dual coding process. Text and graphics alone would seem to yield inferior results.
"...we believe that the audiographic telecourse represents an optimal balance of educational effectiveness and cost effectiveness for Web courses."
Robert LaRose, Jennifer Gregg & Matt Eastin "Audiographic Telecourses for the Web: An Experiment," - Telecommunication Department, Michigan State University. 1998.
http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue2/larose.html
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