Learning from text and animations: A study into the need for cross-representational signaling

Current theories on multimedia learning posit that the presence of static or animated visualizations improve text comprehension but only if learners accurately integrate the multiple sources of information. This study investigated the effect of labels and colour coding to link the co-referring verbal and pictorial information in a document, i.e. cross-representational signaling (CRS). Sixteen-year-old students of secondary pre-vocational school (n =148) with low prior knowledge and reading abilities studied a document about the black kite migration on tablets, in one of three formats: multimedia (text and animations) with CRS, multimedia without CRS and text only. Learning outcome was measured with a questionnaire and a drawing task. The results show that format had a significant effect on learning, with the multimedia format outperforming the text format only when CRS was included. Animated visualizations effectively support text comprehension and learning when the necessary guidance for text-picture integration is provided.