Investigating multimedia effects on concept map building: Impact on map quality, information processing and learning outcome

Two experimental studies were carried out to investigate whether adding multimedia features in a concept mapping task would improve the quality of the map built by students and promote more effective learning with expository hypertexts. Ninety-Nine undergraduates built a concept map to learn about a topic (water cycle or nitrogen cycle) either with a text-based or with a multimedia presentation of concepts (i.e. concepts were presented as textual labels illustrated with relevant pictures). Multimedia presentation of concepts was expected to foster the construction of a more elaborate concept map, to increase information processing and to improve learning outcome. Results of the two experiments were consistent by showing that multimedia presentation led learners to spend more time building the concept map and to build more coherent maps (i.e. text-based inter-connected concepts). In addition, experiment 2 showed that the multimedia presentation of concepts in concept mapping could also foster deeper exploration of the hypertext. However, learning outcomes were not affected by the learning conditions.