Does modality principle occur in the learning of C++ computer programming using screencasting?

Abstract

This study examined whether the modality principle occurs or not in the learning of C++ computer programming using screencasting. According to Mayer and Clark (2011), the modality principle is defined as presenting words as speech rather than on-screen text is more effective in learning. In other words, the learning process will be more effective when information is explained by audio narrations rather than on-screen text. A true experimental pre-test and post-test research design was conducted to determine the modality effects. The experiment consisted of 65 first-year undergraduate students (aged 19-22) who have never attended any formal computer programming course prior to the study. The sample were randomly assigned to two groups: the first group received the screencasting and narration (SN) mode whereas the second group received the screencasting, text, and narration (STN) mode. After that, pre-test was conducted to ascertain their score before being exposed to the treatments. The pre-test results were used as covariate in the two-way ANCOVA analysis. Results showed that the SN mode students outperformed the STN mode students in the post-test. The significant outcome of the result might be due to the effectiveness of the SN mode that supported the Modality Principle.