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Learning from Video: Factors Influencing Learners" Preconceptions and Invested Mental Effort

[ ] Katherine S, Cennamo

Explored in this article are factors that influence learners" preconceptions of television, the mental effort they invest in processing a video-based lesson, and their achievement. It is proposed that learners" preconceptions of the effort required by a medium directly influence the amount of effort they invest in processing a lesson presented through that medium, and that the amount of mental effort learners invest in a mediated lesson influences the quantity and quality of the information they gain from the lesson. Fac- tors that influence learners" preconceptions and mental effort include the characteristics of the media, the characteristics of the task, and the characteristics of the learners. Re- search findings regarding learners" preconceptions of television and the mental effort expended in processing a video-based lesson are reviewed. Practical implications and issues for future research that arise from the literature are identified.

[] The fact that people who frequently watch television are referred to as "couch potatoes" indicates that American society accepts, and even expects, that viewers will adopt a passive stance toward television viewing. Al- though a passive response may be beneficial when an individual watches television for re- laxation, viewers' preconceptions of television as an easy, passive medium may interfere with their learning from the medium, and thus be detrimental to the use of television and vid- eotapes for instruction.

In a series of studies (Salomon, 1983b; Salomon, 1984; Salomon & Leigh, 1984), Salomon concluded that learners perceive television as easier than print, report investing less mental effort in learning from television than from print, and learn less from television than from a print-based lesson. He further concluded that learners' preconceptions of television as an easy medium influence the mental effort they expended in processing a television lesson, and that the amount of mental effort learners invest in a lesson influences learning achievement (Salomon, 1984).

Salomon (1983a) defines the construct of "mental effort ' as "the number of nonauto- matic elaborations applied to a unit of material" (p. 42). The conscious, purposeful processing that results from increased mental effort is assumed to create greater activation of the learner's mental schemata. According to information processing theory, a schema is an

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organized network of knowledge that includes concepts, facts, skills, and action sequences organized in such a way that the individual elements can be stored and retrieved in terms of a more inclusive concept (Gagnd & Glaser, 1987). As new information is received, it cues the retrieval of related prior knowledge stored in the learner's schemata. Through the process of elaboration, the learner makes con- nections between the new information and information retrieved from prior knowledge (E. Gagnd, 1985). The increased contact with the learner's mental schemata that results from the conscious, non-automatic generation of elaborations, or mental effort, is presumed to facilitate the retention and retrieval of the new material. In contrast to automatic processing, which is fast and effortless, non-automatic processing is deliberate, conscious, and very much under the control of the individual. Salomon's (1983b, 1984; Salomon & Leigh, 1984) findings of a significantly positive correlation between the amount of mental effort learners reported investing in a lesson and their preconceptions of the medium of presentation suggest that preconceptions of the processing requirements of video may influence the amount of mental effort expended in learning from a video-based lesson.

Reviewing the literature on learning with media, Kozma (1991) points to gaps in the research on learning from television and implies the need for the development of a theoretical model of television learning. As an initial step in the process, a model of the influence of learners' preconceptions on the amount of mental effort invested in learning from television is presented here (see Figure 1). The

model illustrates that learners assess a learning situation in terms of the characteristics of the task and the characteristics of the medium. They make a decision as to the ease or difficulty of the lesson based on their past experience with similar events. They decide to exert a certain amount of effort in processing the lesson. If characteristics of the lesson differ from those expected based on past experience, the learners reanalyze the situation and make "on-line" modifications to their expenditure of effort. The amount of actual effort invested in the lesson includes cognitive activities such as perceptual processing, searching memory for appropriate schemata, and elaborating on the content. Increases in effort that result from the elaboration process may result in increased contact with the learners' ment~ schemata and facilitate retention and retrieval of the new material. The theoretical and research bases of these proposed relationships are reviewed in the following sections. The practical implications of the current evidence and a suggested agenda for further research follow.

PRECONCEPTIONS OF MEDIA

Researchers who have investigated the nature of learners' preconceptions of video-based materials have questioned them on the perceived ease or difficulty of learning from several forms of media, the amount of effort they usually invest in processing mediated materials, their media preferences, and their perceptions of the potential of various media for facilitating learning. Factors that influence learners' pre-

FIGURE 1 [ ] Factors that Influence Learners' Preconceptions of Media and the Amount of Mental Effort They Invest

CHARACTERISTICS OF M E D I A ~ ~

CHARACTERiSTiCS OF TASK

CHARACTERISTICS OF LEARN

PRECONCEPTIONS AND MENTAL EFFORT 35

conceptions of video-based materials seem to fall into three categories: characteristics of the media, characteristics of the task, and characteristics of the learners.

Characteristics of the Media

Several researchers have found that students in grades 3-10 perceive television to be significantly "easier" than print (Krendl, 1986; Salomon, 1983b; Salomon, 1984; Salomon & Leigh, 1984) and than computers and writing (Krendl, 1986). One of the primary differences between television and other media lies in the symbol systems employed. Whereas books, computers, and writing primarily use text and still pictures to convey information, television primarily uses real images and oral language to present the content. It appears that students in grades 3-10 perceive it to be easier to process the symbol systems presented through television than those employed by text-based media.

Characteristics of the Learner

Learners' preconceptions of media may vary with the experiences of the learners. Bordeaux and Lange (1991) asked children in grades 2, 4, and 6 about the effort they usually invest in several types of television programs. The amount of effort children reported investing in children's programs was found to decrease as the age of the viewer increased. It would appear that as children become older and more experienced in viewing children's television programs, they need to invest less effort in processing such programs. Cambre's (1991) research suggests that as learners become more proficient in using a medium, their media preferences also may change. Using methodology similar to Krendl's (1986), Cambre (1991) found that teachers preferred reading and watching television to using a computer and writing (Cambre, 1986). However, the younger students who participated in Krendl's (1986) study preferred watching television and using a computer to reading and writing.

Learners' preconceptions of the ease of learning from television also may vary based on cultural differences in prior experiences with television. Beentjes (1989) administered a questionnaire to Dutch children which required them to rate the ease of learning 10 topics from television and books. Although the questionnaire was identical in content to Salomon's (1984), Beentjes failed to replicate Salomon's findings. Whereas Salomon found that American children consistently rated television as easier than books, Beentjes found that Dutch children's perceptions of the ease of learning from television was dependent on the topic of the program. He proposed that cultural differences in children's prior experience with television may account for the differences in perceived ease of learning from the medium. The television programs viewed by most American children are in their native language; however, Beentjes indicated that Dutch children view many foreign television programs from which they understand little until they are able to read the subtitles. Thus, the act of "watching television" may be more difficult for Dutch children than for their American peers.

Characteristics of the Task

Characteristics of the task also seem to influence learners' preconceptions of the ease of learning from video-based materials. Kunkel and Kovaric (1983) found that learners have different preconceptions of educational materials than they have of entertainment materials. College students reported that they usually invested significantly more mental effort in processing a television program that was designed for the Public Broadcasting Ser- vice (PBS) than in processing a program that was designed for a commercial television sta- tion. Kunkel and Kovaric (1983) reported that the majority of PBS programs are more seri- ous and educational than commercial television programs, and the results of this study suggest that students' perceptions of the effort required by the two types of programs may have been influenced by an awareness of this difference.

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The content of the television program also may Influence learners' perceptions of the effort required to process the program. Salomon (1983b) questioned college students on the amount of mental effort they generally expend on televised and printed adventure, sports, news, science, and crime stories. He found that, with the exception of the news, the amount of mental effort estimated by students was lower with television than with print. Us- ing Salomon's questionnaire, Beentjes (1989) found that students' ratings of the ease or difficulty of learning from a particular medium was strongly dependent on the topic In question. For example, the Dutch children perceived that it was easier to learn soccer rules from television than from a book, but felt that it was easier to learn to solve math problems from a book than from television.

Cennamo (1992) investigated learners' preconceptions of the ease of achieving various learning outcomes (psychomotor, affective, verbal, intellectual) through the media of interactive video, computers, television, and books. Television was not consistently perceived as the easiest medium; Instead, there was an in- teraction effect between the domain of the learning outcome and the medium of presentation. College students perceived it to be easier to learn psychomotor skills and attitudes from television and interactive video than from books and computers; however, they perceived it to be more difficult to learn verbal information and intellectual skills from television than from interactive video, computers, and books. These findings suggest that learners believe that television facilitates learning certain types of skills, but that it is diffi~lt to learn other skills from the medium.

Summary

In general research on learners' preconceptions of television and video indicates that ! . . . . e.~ rerceJ~.e te le~ion as an easy medium that requires little mental effort, and that they believe they would learn little from a video- based lesson. However, several characteristics of the task have been shown to influence the

amount of effort that learners perceive is needed in processing a video-based lesson. Learners report investing more mental effort in attending to educational television programs than in attending to commercial television programs. The domain of the desired learning outcome and the topic of the lesson also seem to Influence learners' preconceptions of the ease of learning from video-based Instruction. In addition, the learners' prior experiences may affect their media preferences, the perceived ease of learning from television, and the amount of effort they report investing in viewing a television program.

MENTAL EFFORT

Researchers have noted that the terms "mental e f f o r t , . . . . attention, .... concentration," "use of cognitive capacity," and "mental workload" all refer to similar concepts and relate to an increase in the cognitive resources devoted to processing the stimulus (Britton, Muth, & Glynn, 1986). Methods of assessing mental effort and similar constructs fall into three main categories: opinion measures, dual-task techniques, and physiological measures.

Opinion measures encompass the variety of self-report measures used to assess mental effort. Opinion measures assume that the investment of effort is a voluntary process that is under the control of the individual and as such is available for introspection. Examples of rating scales that have been used to assess the amount of effort that learners feel they are investing in a task are the Inventory of Learn- ing Processes (ILP) scale (Schmeck, Ribich, & Ramanaiah, 1977) and the Amount of Invested Mental Effort (AIME) questionnaire (Salomon, 1983b; Salomon, 1984; Salomon & Leigh, 1984).

Dual-task techniques encompass a range of methods whereby the learner is assigned a primary task such as reading a passage, work- ing a problem, or viewing a videotape, as well as a secondary task such as responding to a tone (Britton et al., 1986; Meadowcroft & Reeves, 1989); responding to a light flash (Grimes, 1990; Reeves, Thorson, & Schleuder, 1985); finger tapping (Kee & Davis, 1990;


WierwiUe, Rahimi, & Casali, 1985); or estimat- ing a time interval (Casali & Wierwille, 1983a, 1983b; Wierwille & Connor, 1983; WierwiUe et al., 1985). Dual-task techniques assume that there is a limit to the learner's cognitive capacity, and that when a great deal of cognitive capacity is consumed by the primary task, less capacity is available to devote to the secondary task. Consequently, differences between learners' performance on a baseline measurement of the secondary task and performance under experimental conditions are assumed to be an indication of the amount of effort they expended on the primary task.

Physiological measures are based on the assumption that there is a physiological response to increases in expenditure of effort. The difference between a learner's baseline measurement of the physiological process and a measurement taken while the learner is performing some task is assumed to be reflective of the amount of effort the learner is investing in the task. Physiological measures that have been used to investigate learners' expenditures of mental effort include heart rate (Thorson & Lang, 1992); electroencephal- ogram (EEG) measures (Reeves, Thorson, & Schleuder, 1986); and eye fix fions (Reeves et al., 1985).

Using a variety of assessment techniques, researchers have found that the amount of mental effort invested in a video-based lesson may be influenced by characteristics of the media, characteristics of the task, and characteristics of the learners. However, there may not always be a linear relationship between the amount of mental effort learners invest and their achievement scores. When learners need to devote additional effort to making sense of the information, their increased effort does not always result in increased achievement. Un- der other conditions, increased effort has been shown to correspond to increased achievement. According to Salomon (1981), increases in effort which parallel increases in achievement may result from the conscious, non- automatic generation of elaborations. The effects of characteristics of media, characteristics of the task, and characteristics of the learners on mental effort and achievement are discussed in the following sections.

Characteristics of the Media

A decade ago, Clark proposed that % . . media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our grocer- ies causes change in our nutrition" (Clark, 1983, p. 445). Recently, Kozma (1991) chal- lenged and expanded upon this commonly held view. He proposed that the "capabilities of a particular medium, in conjunction with methods that take advantage of these capabilities, interact with and influence the ways learners represent and process information and may result in more or different learning when one medium is compared to another for certain learners and tasks" (Kozma, 1991, p. 179). For the purposes of this discussion, characteristics of the media include the capabilities of the medium and the methods used in conjunction with those capabilities.

In a series of studies, Salomon (1983b, 1984; Salomon & Leigh, 1984) consistently found that students reported investing more effort in processing a text-based lesson than in processing a lesson presented through the oral and representational symbol systems employed by television. Using a self-report questionnaire to assess effort, he found a significant positive correlation between the amount of mental effort students reported and their achievement scores. Although Salomon's studies indicate that learners expend less effort in learning from television than from text, an examination of the effort learners invest in processing television revealed that more effort was invested in processing videotaped materials that presented information through both the auditory and visual channels than through either channel alone (Reeves et al., 1985). However, receiv- ing information through both the audio and visual channels did not increase learners' ability to recall the visual or auditory information presented in the videotape. Although learners may have been able to gain the information required by the achievement tests through either the auditory channel or visual channel alone, simultaneously attending to these dual symbol systems required additional effort.

The amount of mental effort invested in a video-based lesson also may be influenced by

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the complexity of the materials. Using a secondary-task technique to assess mental effort, Thorson, Reeves, and Schleuder (1985) found that videotaped messages containing a large number of complex elements required less effort than messages that were not as complex. Complexity involved both auditory elements, such as the sentence syntax, and visual elements, such as pans, zooms, and movement within the scene. Learners who viewed the simple version not only expended greater effort in attending to the program, they also re- called significantly more information on a test of auditory and visual recognition than those who viewed the complex version of the program. Although these results are counterin- tuitive, they are consistent with the findings of similar investigations using text-based materials. Britton and his colleagues (Britton, Westbrook, & Holdredge, 1978) found that learners expended more effort in processing simple text materials than they did in processing text materials with complex syntax and difficult vocabulary. They offered the following explanation for their results:

A cognitive interpretation is that in reading easy passages the cognitive processors are full. But in difficult passages fzequent breakdowns in comprehension processes temporarily empty the short-term memory and other processor spaces: This leaves cognitive capacity available for responding to the secondary task. (p. 582)

Reeves and Thorson (1986) offer an additional analysis of the results found by Thorson et al. (1985). Although simple messages required more effort than complex messages when the entire message was used as the unit of analysis, cues occurring during a complex moment in a videotaped message elicited longer reaction times than cues occurring during less complex moments. These results indicate that learners expended additional effort in processing complex narration and visual elements at the moment of complexity. Reeves and Thorson (1986) suggest that " . . . com- p!e~---derr~_ndLn.g on the size of the s~mulv~o unit---can affect processing at two different stages" (p. 348). Whereas individual complex elements may increase the effort required for sensory processing or to search memory for

related schemata, the overall complexity of the message may affect the effort devoted to creating meaning from the message.

Although in Thorson et al.'s (1985) study viewers may have expended additional effort in processing the complex narration and visual elements of videotaped messages, the additional effort did not result in parallel increases in achievement scores. This may be because the increased effort the viewers expended to make sense of the complex auditory and visual elements resulted in breakdowns in comprehension. Frequent breakdowns in comprehension may have left more cognitive capacity available to respond to the secondary task at other moments in the program, resulting in a decreased overall expenditure of effort for viewers who received the complex version of the program. At the same time, the frequent comprehension breakdowns may have resulted in lower achievement.

Likewise, Lang, Strickwerda, and Sumner (1991) found that learners exerted more effort in processing video segments that included unrelated cuts---video cuts unrelated to the prior scene--than they did in processing segments that included related cuts--those related to the previous scene through visual elements or narration. However, learners re- called more of the information surrounding related cuts than surrounding unrelated cuts. It is possible that when the learners were presented with an unrelated cut, they devoted additional cognitive resources to sensory processing and searching their memories for related knowledge; thus, they may have missed the content necessary to perform well on a test of information surrounding the unrelated cuts. If the learners were expending more effort simply trying to make sense of the new information, rather than constructing meaningful elaborations of the content, this may account for the increased effort and decreased achievement exhibited when learners viewed the video segments containing unrelated cuts.

In addition, the amount of mental effort invested in p1~cessing a ~ideoobased lesson may be influenced by the structure of the lesson. Using reaction times to a visual probe as a secondary-task technique to measure effort, Grimes (1990) found that learners exerted more


effort in learning from materials that contained a high degree of correspondence between the information presented through the audio and video channels than in learning from materials in which there was no such correspondence or only a thematic match between the two channels of information. For example, a videotape that showed a surgical procedure while the narrator discussed the procedure (high correspondence) required significantly more effort to process than a videotape which showed a hospital patient being wheeled into the operating room while the narrator discussed the surgical procedure (medium correspondence).

Scores on achievement tests followed the same pattern: learners who viewed the program with high correspondence between the audio and video elements received higher scores on both a visual recognition test and a test of facts presented in the narration. View- ers who received the video program that presented visuals with medium correspondence or no correspondence to the narration may have been forced to process two competing thoughts simultaneously. For example, the program that presented the narrator discuss- ing a surgical procedure while a patient was wheeled into the operating room may have generated ideas related to both the surgical procedure and entering surgery. The resulting competition between ideas may have caused a breakdown in comprehension, leav- ing more cognitive capacity available to respond to a secondary task. The presence of auditory and visual information with a high degree of correspondence may have provided the best conditions for learners to allocate their effort to elaborating on the content, thus ex- plaining why those who received this program expended more effort in processing the lesson and achieved higher test scores.

Salomon (1983b) suggests that when the structure of a lesson requires additional effort to make sense of the program, increased mental effort is not sufficient for increased achievement. He found that students who viewed a scrambled version of a videotaped program reported investing more mental effort yet performed less well than students who viewed a normal version. Salomon's study (1983b) indicates that simply expending more effort does

not guarantee increased achievement when learners are unable to create a coherent mental model of the content. However, when Krendl and Watkins (1983) presented learners with a videotape that included irrelevant segments but retained the original narrative, on a posttest of free recall learners attempted to assign meaning to extraneous scenes and to incorporate irrelevant information into the story line. Apparently the availability of a main narrative provided the structure necessary to create meaning from the content.

Meadowcroft and Reeves (1989) suggest that learners are able to strategically allocate additional effort to the most meaningful segments of a videotaped program. Using a secondary- task technique to determine the amount of mental effort invested in the task, they presented children with cartoon episodes se- quenced in a story or "non-story" format. The non-story version consisted of episodes taken from several related cartoons, yet it had the illusion of a continuous story. The effect of story structure on effort was nonsignificant; all students allocated more effort in attending to information that was central to the content of the program than in processing incidental information. Even in the non-story version, the illusion of a continuous story may have provided the structure necessary for the identification of meaningful segments within the program.

Characteristics of the Task

Characteristics of video-based tasks that have been investigated relative to invested mental effort involve learners' expectations of the purpose of the task. Several researchers found that students who were instructed to learn from a video-based story reported investing more effort in processing the story than those who were instructed to view the story for fun (Field & Anderson, 1985; Krendl & Watkins, 1983; Salomon & Leigh, 1984). In addition, the learners who were told to learn from the story had higher achievement scores. Researchers concluded that the perceived purpose of the task influenced the effort the learners invested in learning from the video-based lesson, and that

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the effort learners expended in processing the lesson was used to create meaningful connec- tions with other knowledge, resulting in increased retention and retrieval of the material.

Characteristics of the Learner

Characteristics of the individual learner also seem to influence the effort invested in processing a video-based lesson. Salomon and Leigh (1984) presented sixth-grade students with a television and print version of a story. Consistent with earlier findings, the amount of mental effort reported by the TV group was significantly lower than that reported by the print group. In addition, high-ability students reported investing significantly less effort than low-ability students in processing the televised story. Correspondingly, the high-ability students who viewed the televised version re- called significantly less than the low-ability students who viewed the same TV story, and significantly less than the high-ability students who read the print version.

The intuitive assumption that learners expend maximum effort on a task that is challenging to them is supported by Reed, Burton, and Kelly (1985). They found that writing ability differentially affected the amount of effort learners invested in writing descriptive, persuasive, or narrative essays. In general, they found that a learner's mental effort increased as the difficulty of the writing task for the learner moved from easy to intermediate difficulty, but that effort began to decrease as the difficulty level moved from intermediate to extremely difficult. The perceived difficulty of a task for a particular learner, and consequently the effort he or she expends, is partially dependent on the learner's ability relative to the assigned task. It is likely that in Salomon and Leigh's (1984) study, the high-ability students perceived the act of learning from television as much easier than their low-ability peers, and thus expended less effort in learning from the television lesson.

Meadowcroft and Reeves (1989) supported Salomon and I~igh's (1984) findings that high- ability students expended less effort than low-

ability students in processing a television lesson. Children were classified into "high schema development" and "low schema development" groups. Using a secondary-task measure of effort expenditure, the researchers found that children with high schema development exerted less effort in processing the content of the programs than did children with low schema development. Contrary to Salomon's findings with students who were grouped by general ability, children with high schema development also received higher scores on a recognition test. Although recognition scores for incidental information were relatively consistent between groups, children with high schema development achieved higher scores on the questions of central story content. Meadowcroft and Reeves concluded that children in the high schema development group may have allocated their cognitive resources strategically, investing more effort in attending to scenes that were central to the story content than to scenes that were incidental to the story content. Thus, children with high schema development may have processed the lesson more efficiently.

Summary

In summary, the amount of effort invested in processing a video-based lesson seems to be influenced by the symbol systems employed by the medium, the complexity of the materials, the structure of the program, the perceived purpose of the task, and individual characteristics of the learners. Children report investing relatively little mental effort in processing television; however, more effort may be required to process audio and visual information simultaneously than to process either the audio or visual information alone. While simple materials may require more effort to process overall, complex materials may require more effort to process at the moment of complexity. Unrelated scene changes may require greater effort to process than related scene changes. Learners allocate additional effort to segments that are central to the story line and segments that have a high degree of correspondence between the video and audio elements.


In addition, learners seem to exert more mental effort in a lesson from which they are told to learn than from a lesson they are told to view for fun. Finally, individual characteristics of the learners, such as their intellectual ability and level of schema development, may affect the extent to which learners process certain types of video-based programs.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MENTAL EFFORT AND ACHIEVEMENT

The studies cited herein suggest that the positive relationship found between invested mental effort and achievement in some studies and the apparent lack of such a relationship in oth- ers may be due to differences in the cognitive activities that occur during increases in effort (Reeves & Thorson, 1986). Effort devoted to perceptual processing or to searching memory for related knowledge may result in increases in the effort expended to make sense of the new information. Expending effort for these purposes may result in a breakdown in comprehension, and thus achievement gains may not parallel expenditures of effort. How- ever, when additional effort is devoted to the process of elaboration and creating meaning from the content, parallel increases in achievement scores may result.

Differences in the pattern of relationships between mental effort and achievement scores also may be due to differences among the types of tests used to measure mental effort and achievement in these studies, l~_~searchers who used inferential questions to assess achievement consistently found that posttest scores were correlated positively with scores on a self- report measure of mental effort (Cennamo, Savenye, & Smith, 1991; Krendl & Watkins, 1983; Salomon, 1983b; Salomon, 1984; Salomon & Leigh, 1984). Some researchers who used a secondary-task measure of effort and multiple- choice questions to assess achievement found that learners' posttest scores followed the same pattern as their mental effort scores (Grimes, 1990; Thorson et al., 1985), yet other researchers who assessed mental effort and achievement in a similar manner found no parallel pattern of mental effort and posttest scores

(Lang et al., 1991; Meadcrwcroft & Reeves, 1989; Reeves & Thorson, 1986).

Several researchers (Krendl & Watkins, 1983; Salomon, 1983b; Salomon, 1984; Salomon & Leigh, 1984) suggest that the benefits of increased mental effort may not be evident on a recognition test of factual recall, but instead may facilitate inferential learning. Recognition tests simply require the learners to recognize responses they have seen before, while inferential questions require the learner to connect ideas in a logical manner and to express these ideas in an alternative form (Johnston, 1981). When researchers are interested in assessing the effects of the mental effort learners use to elaborate on the content and create meaning from the materials, questions that require con- structed responses may be a more sensitive measure than recognition tasks.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

An awareness of factors that affect learners' preconceptions of video and the amount of mental effort invested in video-based materials can assist instructional designers in creating more effective video-based lessons. The previous sections described factors that influence learners' preconceptions of the ease or difficulty of a medium, the amount of mental effort they invest in processing a lesson using that medium, and their resulting achievement scores. Following are several practical implications of the research findings, as well as suggestions for further research.

Practical Implications

The challenge for instructional designers of video-based materials is to maximize the effort that learners expend on elaborating the content while minimizing the effort they must exert to make sense of the content. The research suggests that the complexity of the message should be reduced through the use of simple syntax (Reeves & Thorson, 1986) and related cuts (Lang et al., 1991). Programs should be designed so there is a high degree of correspondence between the video and au-

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dio messages (Grimes, 1990). In addition, the intended message should be central to the story content (Meadowcroft & Reeves, 1989). Programs that provide pauses following complex elements, such as unrelated scene changes and difficult sentences, may provide time for perceptual processing and for viewers to make sense of the message relative to their existing schemata before additional critical information is presented. Music, explanatory examples, and other mentally undemanding content may be used to allow the learners time to prepare to elaborate on new content information.

Techniques as simple as informing the us- ers that the materials are designed to be educational (Kunkel & Kovaric, 1983) and they are to learn as much as possibte from the lesson (Field & Anderson, 1985; Krendl & Watkins, 1983; Salomon & Leigh, 1984) should increase the effort invested in learning from a video- based lesson. In addition, designers should attempt to use the medium of presentation which is most appropriate for teaching skills in the domain of the target learning outcome (Cennamo, 1992).

Although the instructional designer cannot affect the age, experience, or ability of the learners, an awareness of such learner chap- acteristics may assist the designer in creating a better match between characteristics of the video-based materials and the learners. Older students may not need to expend as much effort to process children's television programs as younger students; thus, video-based materials should be targeted to the age of the learner (Bordeaux & Lange, 1991). High-al~ty learners may need to perceive a video-based lesson as challenging in order to view it as worthy of the investment of sufficient mental effort for adequate achievement (Salomon & Leigh, 1984).

Topics for Further Research

Given these re~earch findLngs, some questions remain: Why do learners perceive one medium as easier or more difficult than another for learning a particular lesson? What can be done to overcome learners' perceptions that televi-

sion is an easy medium that requires very little investment of mental effort? What factors can influence learners to invest the optimum amount of mental effort in a learning task? Finally, how can we design more effective video-based materials? These questions suggest several areas as worthy of additional investigation.

The conclusions that learners' perceptions of the effort required by a learning task are influenced by characteristics of the media, of the task, and of the learner are based on learners' self-reports of their preconceptions of media. Future research needs to examine the reasons why learners perceive one medium as easier or more difficult than another for learning a particular task. In-depth interviews with learners regarding the reasons why they may rate one medium as easier or more difficult than another should provide insights into which factors influence learners' preconceptions of the effort required by a particular media-based lesson.

In addition, investigations of the amount of effort invested in a video-based lesson have been limited by the methodology available to assess the construct of mental effort. Beentjes (1989) states that "although self-reports about an intentional process like investing mental effort are possible in theory, validation studies in which mental effort is assessed by multiple methods are called for" (p. 56). Validation studies to investigate mental effort using a variety of methods may yield the research tools necessary to continue to explore techniques that increase the effort learners expended in processing video-based lessons.

Studies in human factors engineering (Casali & Wierwille, 1983a, 1983b; Wierwille & Con- nor, 1983; Wierwille et al., 1985) have attempted to determine the sensitivity of 15 different assessment measures for detecting variations in the workload placed upon an operator of a flight simulator. The methodology may serve as a model for educational researchers investigating methods for assessing mental effort. The assessment measures that were most sensitive to manipulations in the operator workload varied depending on the type of task performed by the operator. For example, eyeblinks and eye fixation measures were


sensitive to increases in the difficulty of a cognitive task, but were not sensitive to increases in the difficulty of a communication task. Al- though one of the opinion scales (Modified Cooper-Harper) and the time estimation task were sensitive to increases in operator de- mands across perceptual, psychomotor, communication, and cognitive problem solving tasks, the time estimation task resulted in an increase in the error rate of subjects who were performing the cognitive task. Therefore, educational researchers assessing the mental effort invested in learning tasks may need to consider the type of task required of the learner in selecting appropriate assessment measures.

Future research should investigate techniques for increasing the effort learners invest in processing video-based materials, so as to provide instructional designers with information that can lead to more effective video-based lessons. Due to the transient nature of the symbol systems present in video-based instruction and the linear, fixed pace of the presentation, learners may be forced to choose between perceptual processing, searching memory for related schemata, or elaborating on the content of the program. Although there are many possible techniques that may enhance learners' opportunities to elaborate on the content of video-based lessons, promising strategies may derive from similar research conducted using text-based materials.

Britton and his colleagues have varied the structure of text-based materials to determine the effects of various techniques on learners' invested mental effort. Using a secondary-task method of assessing mental effort, they found that the amount of effort expended in reading text passages was influenced by the mean- ingfulness of the passage (Britton, Holdredge, Curry, & Westbrook, 1979); the learners' prior knowledge of the content (Britton & Tesser, 1983); the importance of the information (Britton, Muth, & Glynn, 1986); the style of writing (Britton, Graesser, Glynn, Hamilton, & Penland, 1983); embedded questions (Britton, Piha, Davis, & Wehausen, 1978); text syntax (Britton, Glynn, Meyer, & Peuland, 1982); and the presence of objectives (Britton, Glynn, Muth, & Penland, 1985). It may be useful to incorporate s'unilar techniques into video-based

materials to determine whether such factors influence the processing of text-based and video-based materials in a similar manner. The results of this research may provide insight as to the extent to which the medium of presentation interacts with the method of instruction to "influence the ways learners represent and process information and . . . result in more or different learning when one medium is compared to another for certain learners and tasks" (Kozma, 1991, p. 179). In addition to providing a greater understanding of how learners process video-based material, this research also may provide instructional designers with practical techniques to enhance the effectiveness of video-based instruction.

Future research should investigate the re- ciprocal relationship between learners' experiences of success or failure in learning from a video-based lesson and their subsequent perceptions of the ease or difficulty of learning from the medium. Salomon (1981) re- minds us that mental effort has motivational as well as cognitive components; therefore, future research on video-based instruction should examine techniques designed to increase learners' motivation to determine which techniques positively influence mental effort and achievement.

Further investigation of the link between learners' preconceptions of the effort required by a medium, the actual effort expended, and achievement scores may provide additional insights as to which factors influence learners' cognitive processing of video-based instruction and contribute to the development of a theoretical model of television learning. In addition, the results of such research should provide instructional designers, video producers, and teachers with practical means of increasing the effort that learners spend in elaborating on the content of video-based materials. The practical implications of such research are to assist the designer, the producer, the teacher, and the learner to achieve desired learning outcomes as efficiently and effectively as possible. []

Katherine S. Cennamo is at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana.

44 ~ , vow. 41, No. 3

The author wishes to thank Tammy Lesing for her assistance in collecting the information on which this article was based, and Robert Reiser, Steven Ross, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft.

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