Impact of alternative designs of multimedia elaboration on learning outcomes: Towards personalized learning of Software Engineering.

This study takes place in the context in which learning analytics is starting to gain more ground in seeking to understand some of the critical issues on how multimedia learning can support personalized learning design. This paper investigates the critical issues of individual learner differences regarding the impact of alternative designs of multimedia enhanced e-Learning communities. In this study, an online course in the domain of Software Engineering was used. The study involved Bachelor of Science students from an institution of higher education in Zimbabwe taking a course of Software Engineering. The study centers on the impact of student learning styles, cognitive styles, study approaches and prior knowledge on the efficacy, satisfaction, learning experience and outcomes related to software engineering learning in an eLearning community enhanced with alternative designs of multimedia elaborations. The study will go a long way in informing design issues to support personalized learning for Southern African learners in their context. The text based online eLearning community enriched with static graphics; animations, audio, and video were used. The results point to clear differential impact based on the cognitive styles on the effect of multimedia enhanced community. In field independent learners, the multimedia design based on text, animation and audio resulted in higher learning outcomes and satisfaction but decreased cognitive load. In field dependent learners, the learning outcomes and satisfaction levels seemed to be lower, however an increase in cognitive load was noticed. This effect was obvious with the addition of audio to the environment. Only prior knowledge and cognitive style were the significant predictors for learning outcome. This was only realized in the learning environment enhanced with text and static graphics.