Does learner expertise matter when designing emotional multimedia for learners of primary school mathematics?

Abstract

Recent research on multimedia learning has considered the integration of cognitive and affective aspects of media processing. The literature suggests that learners’ emotions influence the effectiveness of multimedia learning, which is explained by the cognitive-affective theory of learning with media (CATLM). A multimedia design that changes learners’ emotional status can facilitate or suppress learning. Individual difference, which suggests that learners with different expertise levels respond differently to an emotional design, is an assumption of CATLM. However, how learner expertise influences the effectiveness of emotional designs remains unclear. This study investigated the effects of learner expertise (novice vs advanced) and an emotional design incorporating a face-like shape and warm colours (with vs without) on developing skills in remembering and understanding in mathematics learning. The novice group comprised younger learners who had no prior knowledge of the topic; the advanced group comprised older learners who had studied the topic previously. We randomly allocated 122 primary school students to four experimental groups to see how they learned geometrical patterns from videos with different designs. These results showed that (1) the emotional design group performed better in remembering, and (2) the emotional design benefited the advanced group, but not the novice group, in understanding. A plausible explanation is that the benefits of the emotional design do not outweigh its drawback in the novice group when developing understanding. Further analysis revealed that learner expertise and learning outcomes influence the designs’ effects. Our findings suggested that using emotional design can effectively facilitate lower-order thinking skills such as remembering, identifying and procedural skills, and drawing students interests and motivation may not lead to better learning outcomes.