Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Multimedia effects refer to the phenomenon that combining text with diagrams is generally more effective than text-only representations. The current study tests whether doing practice problems with multimedia feedback is more effective than multimedia worked examples. In the current preregistered study, 213 undergraduate students learned to solve conditional probability problems in one of three conditions: multimedia worked examples, practice with multimedia feedback, or combining both types of learning activities. Results showed that posttest performance did not differ significantly between the three conditions, but worked examples took less time than the practice-based conditions. Further, participants perceived the worked examples as more helpful and less difficult than practice with feedback activities, and receiving only worked examples led to overconfidence of how well they learned.