The Intention Was Good: How Promoting Strategy Use Does Not Improve Multimedia Learning for Secondary Students

Background: It is well established that successful learning with multimedia is challenging, especially for younger learners. Aims: It was investigated whether students would profit from instructional support regarding the use of multimedia learning strategies. Sample: Participants were high school students in 8th, 9th, and 10th grade (N = 168). Methods: Participants were assigned to a no-support control group or one of four experimental groups. In the experimental groups, students received either only a multimedia strategy training before learning (training group) or the training was enriched by prompts (prompts before or during learning) or if-then plans (implementation intentions). In the training, multimedia learning strategies were introduced (e.g., linking information from text and picture). The prompts and implementation intentions were aimed at enhancing the application of the multimedia strategies conveyed through the training. Students learned about the process of mitosis by studying multimedia instructions and were tested regarding the acquired knowledge. It was expected that solely training students to use adequate multimedia learning strategies would not promote learning compared with the control group, rather, that additional support like prompts or implementation intentions would be necessary to enhance learning. Results: Although in the experimental groups, multimedia learning strategies were used more frequently especially in the beginning of the instructional unit, there were no effects on learning outcome. Conclusions: Promoting multimedia strategy use did not improve learning. The quality of the different instructional support measures and their suitability for the target groups are discussed as possible explanations for these findings.