e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning

5.4. Evidence for Using Spoken Rather Than Printed Text

Do students learn more deeply from graphics with speech (for example, narrated animation) than from graphics with on-screen text (for example, animation with on-screen text blocks), as suggested by cognitive theory? Researchers have examined this question in several different ways, and the results consistently support our recommendation. Let's consider several recent studies that compare multimedia lessons containing animation with concurrent narration versus animation with concurrent on-screen text, in which the words in the narration and on-screen text are identical. Some of the multimedia lessons present an explanation of how lightning forms, how a car's braking system works, or how ...