Principles for Educational Assessment with Multimedia

This chapter gives an overview of the main findings regarding the multimedia principle in testing, which states that testing material that combines text and adequate pictures is more comprehensible and more efficient to process for test takers than text alone. Even though learning and testing with multimedia have much in common, substantial differences exist that are discussed in this chapter. Overall, the findings indicate that adding pictures to verbal test material is mainly associated with facilitative effects. However, the findings differ with respect to different outcome measures and depending on the investigated picture type (i.e., decorative, representational, organizational, and informational). Furthermore, effects also appear to be moderated by item and test-taker characteristics that need to be subjected to future research.