Multi-media as a cognitive tool: towards a multi-media ITS

Cognitive tools are instruments integrated into a learning environment to provide representational support to learners and allow them to focus on the subject matter (W. R. van Jooligan, 1999). Two of these, namely, animation and verbal representation are in a constant contest of effectiveness, without any noticeable differences, except in particular questions concerning conceptual versus procedural knowledge. Therefore, the effects of individual media may change according to both subject matter as well as individual preferences. The authors offer students a multimedia representational module, which has been designed with the aim of incorporating it into a full scale multimedia intelligent tutoring system. Results show that allowing animation and verbal descriptions to interact within the same system may result in improvement of student levels up to 40% from their post classical-classroom session. This is indicative that perhaps the two media may have ambiguous internal factors that affect learning in a way that disappears when each is analyzed in isolation of the other.