Editing Multimedia Principle (section)

=='''Evidence'''==
[[File:Figure 4.7.png|thumb|260x260px|'''Figure 4.7''']]
[[File:Figure 4.8.png|thumb|260x260px|'''Figure 4.8''']]
'''The multimedia principle does not apply equally to all learners. It works best for novices.''' (Mayer, n.d.) Here we define ‘novices’ as learners with low knowledge of the domain and ‘experts’ as learners with high knowledge of the domain. The supportive evidence is a series of three experiments involving lessons on brakes, pumps, and generators, Mayer andGallini (1990) reported that novices learned better from text and graphics (such as shown in Figure 4.8) than from words alone (such as shown in Figure 4.7). However, experts learned equally well from both conditions. 

In the study, Ollerenshaw, Aidman, and Kidd (1997) presented text lessons on how pumps work to learners who had low or high knowledge of the domain. Low-knowledge learners benefited greatly when the animation was added to the text, whereas high-knowledge learners did not. These findings prompted Kalyuga and colleagues to propose the ‘expertise reversal effect’, which holds that instructional support that benefits low-knowledge learners may not benefit (or may even harm) high-knowledge learners. Overall, instructional designers should be aware of the level of prior knowledge of their target audiences in order to provide the necessary support, such as multimedia instruction, to low-knowledge learners.