Adopting educational technology to enhance the marketing curriculum: is it worth the effort?

Abstract

A key driver for adopting educational technologies is the desire to enhance the curriculum and improve learning outcomes. Providing multiple representations of key content areas using multimedia (text, visual, aural, interactive) is purported to cater more effectively for different learning styles. However, the learning styles 'meshing' hypothesis, which proposes that delivering content in modes that match students' learning styles will lead to improved learning outcomes, has recently been challenged. This paper presents the findings of an experiment which measured the impact of multiple representations of content on learning outcomes. While multiple representations of content did not lead to actual improvements in learning performance, students reported favourably on multimodal learning elements, in terms of improved engagement, comprehension and retention of content.