WHEN LESS IS MORE - MEANINGFUL LEARNING FROM VISUAL AND VERBAL SUMMARIES OF SCIENCE TEXTBOOK LESSONS

In a series of 3 experiments, college students who read a summary that contained a sequence of short captions with simple illustrations depi cting the main steps in the process of lightning recalled these steps and solved transfer problems as well as or better than students who re ceived the full text along with the summary or the full text alone. In Experiment 2, taking away the illustrations or the captions eliminate d the effectiveness of the summary. In Experiment 3, adding text to th e summary reduced its effectiveness. Implications for a cognitive theo ry of multimedia learning are discussed; implications for instructiona l design pertain to the need for conciseness, coherence, and coordinat ion in presenting scientific explanations.