The Influence of Pictures, Animations and Videos in Teaching Courseware on Students’ Listening Comprehension

Abstract

The use of multimedia courseware is very common in modern classroom teaching. In response to the problem that many teachers are not aware of the role of the main elements of multimedia courseware, such as pictures, animations and videos, and their effect on students’ listening effectiveness, a study on the effect of these elements of courseware on listening effectiveness needs to be conducted with Chinese science and engineering students. This was done by showing pictures, animations, and videos in the courseware to three groups of students of similar level. These students’ perceptions, including memory, were then tested after the lesson, and the results were compared and analyzed. The paper concludes with comparative findings on the degree of difficulty of students’ perception of physical motion, the degree of hindrance to the process of transforming and encoding information, and the magnitude of the impact of attention allocation, and from the results, several useful pedagogical insights on the production and use of multimedia courseware are presented. This provides ideas as well as suggestions for teachers in the process of creating courseware that will help them to use the above elements of courseware appropriately and effectively in their classroom teaching.