Effects of an Online Interactive Multimedia System on Cognitive and Affective Learning

Abstract

This study examines the effects of an online interactive multimedia system on the cognitive and affective learning of some issues related to road safety. It employed a quasi-experimental design with two experimental modes: multimedia learning and text-based learning. This study design enables both multimedia and text-based to be compared in order to determine the differences on the learning effects of these two learning modes. The pretest and posttest scores were analyzed using Mann-Whitney U Test to compare the variances between the multimedia and text-based groups and K-means cluster analysis was used to find out whether two distinct clusters exist to represent the two learning modes. Results show that for cognitive learning, positive gain scores are obtained for both the multimedia and text-based groups but there is no significant difference on the gain scores between these two groups. On the other hand, results of affective learning show significantly higher gain scores for students using multimedia learning than students using text-based learning. Thus, it can be concluded that the online interactive multimedia system can produce desirable effects, particularly for affective learning.