This case was tested effectively during a seminar by the participants.

The presenter wanted to show that students can learn better from words and graphical elements than from words only. In order to do so, he mentioned the fact that he had just received an order for a lot of paper kites of the type ‘BEODL001’, which must meet clear quality standards. To increase the production quickly, he divides the participants into three groups.

  • The first group receives a written manual.
  • The second group receives the same instructions and additional guidance of a trainer.
  • The third group gets to see a homemade video in which the teacher demonstrates and explains how the kite particles are produced.

Each group gets 20 minutes before continuing with a production phase of 20 minutes.

After this, the kites of the different groups are tested for quality.

So what do we see?

  • Group 1, which only had a written manual, produced only one good quality kite.
  • Group 2, which had the guidance of a teacher in addition to the manual, produced five qualitative kites.
  • Group three, which had both aural and visual support by the video, could submit 11 qualitative kites.

A good example of the multimedia principle is that students learn better from words and graphical elements than from words only.

Nice side effect is that the presenter needed half an hour for making the video, while the development of the manual took about three hours.