Capturing Lectures: Using multimedia lecture captures to promote learning

The purpose of the study is to investigate does multimedia lecture captures promote learning or lead to cognitive overload? In a classroom-based experiment, students received a lesson consisting of a multimedia lecture capture with audio, video and presentation or a paper lesson with text and graphics. The lessons used the same words and graphics in the paper based and multimedia based versions to give description of the anatomical structure of the vertebral column. On subsequent retention assessments, the paper group performed significantly better than the multimedia group. The results do not support the hypothesis, which states learning using multimedia lecture captures has no significant effect on learning outcomes versus traditional learning material. The conclusion is care should be taken before replacing traditional paper base learning material with multimedia lecture capture material.