supervisors: loes hogenkamp & Alieke van dijk
Motivation and affect are important prerequisites for learning to occur. Instructional designers have been occupied with the question how to shape their learning materials in a way that motivation and positive emotions will be elicited. A way to do this is by adding Emotional Design Features, adding seductive details, or emotion induction priming. These elements could be (additional) illustrations or pictures, background music, virtual characters, warm colors and round shapes, and many more.
Although sounding promising, research has found inconclusive answers about whether learning with these features indeed lead to better learning. For seductive details, for example, researchers found that these might put an extra burden on the learner and therefore hinder learning. On the other hand, there might be conditions and learner characteristics under which students experience the affective benefits from seductive details which may enhance learning. Further research is needed to investigate the mechanics of the underlying seductive detail effect, and the effectivity of emotional design features.
METHOD
Your study will most likely involve an experiment. You will design a task or learning environment yourself where you incorporate your design feature(s). You may also use (already existing) questionnaire to measure variables like emotions or cognitive load. The target group and context can be discussed with your supervisor. Possible research questions could be:
- How does the difficulty level of the task affect the effectivity of learning with background music?
- How does experience cognitive load affect the effectivity of learning with seductive details?
- To what extend do emotions induced during a reading comprehension task relate to retention and transfer?
REFERENCES
Plass, J.L., & Horvey, C. (2021). The emotional design principle in multimedia learning. In R.E. Mayer & L. Fiorella (Reds.), The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (pp.324-336). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108894333.034
Schneider, S., Nebel, S., & Rey, G.D. (2016). Decorative pictures and emotional design in multimedia learning
Schrader, C., Kalyuga, S., & Plass, J.L. (2021). Motivation and affect in multimedia learning. In R.E. Mayer & L. Fiorella (Reds.), The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (pp. 121-131). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108894333.012