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A comparative study of teachers’ and students’ evaluation of ELT multimedia courseware in China : a cognitive theory of multimedia learning perspective
Author
Jiang, Dayu
Supervisor
Renandya, Willy A.
Abstract
The main objectives of this explorative research reported in this dissertation are to evaluate the design of the New Horizon College English multimedia courseware from a Cognitive Theory of Multimedia learning perspective and to compare the attitudinal differences in the teachers’ and students’ evaluation of the courseware. This research, which involved 150 Chinese university students and 30 Chinese English teachers, adopted a triangulated approach which employed questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews.
Results indicate that the design of the courseware generally complied with the coherence principle, the signaling principle, the spatial contiguity principle, and the temporal contiguity principle but slightly violate the redundancy principle. The students’ interviews demonstrate that the captions in videos, which were viewed as redundant according to the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, actually facilitate their English acquisition. This finding of the inapplicability of the redundancy principle to the design of the multimedia courseware of teaching and learning English as a foreign language is consistent with the results of previous research on foreign language teaching and learning.
Both the results of the independent sample t tests on the questionnaires and the further analyses of the interviews reveal that there are statistically significant differences in the teachers’ and students’ evaluation concerning the coherence principle, the redundancy principle, and the spatial contiguity principle. The mismatches between the two groups’ evaluation reflect the boundary conditions of these three principles.
The findings of this study have significant theoretical implications as it investigates the generalizability of Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning in evaluating the multimedia courseware of Teaching and learning English as a foreign language. The findings are helpful for policymakers, courseware developers, English teachers, and students when they develop, implement, evaluate, select, adopt, and revise the multimedia courseware in China.
Results indicate that the design of the courseware generally complied with the coherence principle, the signaling principle, the spatial contiguity principle, and the temporal contiguity principle but slightly violate the redundancy principle. The students’ interviews demonstrate that the captions in videos, which were viewed as redundant according to the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, actually facilitate their English acquisition. This finding of the inapplicability of the redundancy principle to the design of the multimedia courseware of teaching and learning English as a foreign language is consistent with the results of previous research on foreign language teaching and learning.
Both the results of the independent sample t tests on the questionnaires and the further analyses of the interviews reveal that there are statistically significant differences in the teachers’ and students’ evaluation concerning the coherence principle, the redundancy principle, and the spatial contiguity principle. The mismatches between the two groups’ evaluation reflect the boundary conditions of these three principles.
The findings of this study have significant theoretical implications as it investigates the generalizability of Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning in evaluating the multimedia courseware of Teaching and learning English as a foreign language. The findings are helpful for policymakers, courseware developers, English teachers, and students when they develop, implement, evaluate, select, adopt, and revise the multimedia courseware in China.
Date Issued
2012
Call Number
PE1128 Jia
Date Submitted
2012