BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
When More Isn't Better: Evidence for an Instructional Equivalence Hypothesis in Multimedia Design
Provisionally accepted
- Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey, Canada
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Pedagogical theories suggest that effective multimedia can reduce extraneous cognitive load and help students create mental models of new learning. Theoretically derived and empirically supported design principles are widely assumed to improve learning outcomes, but most of the principles have been studied in relative isolation. This study was conducted as a strong test of multimedia design for learning controlling for content and pedagogy. We presented participants with short educational videos using three different multimedia formats: Rich multimedia, sparse multimedia, and no multimedia. Despite the strong theoretical and empirical foundations for this experiment, there was no significant effect of multimedia design on learning outcomes, F(2, 126) = 0.52, p = .60, ηp² = .008. Need for Cognition scores were measured and included as a covariate; however, they did not significantly predict performance across conditions, F(1, 63) = 0.25, p = .62, ηp² = .004. Contrary to expectation, multimedia design had no measurable impact on student learning. To account for this pattern, we introduce the Instructional Equivalence Hypothesis—the proposal that when content and pedagogy are effective and internally aligned, the format of multimedia presentation may be functionally interchangeable. This framework challenges a central assumption of the multimedia learning literature and invites a reevaluation of how design principles are theorized, tested, and applied in educational settings.
Keywords: pedagogy, Multimedia, Educational materials, Computer learning, Cognition
Received: 03 Oct 2025; Accepted: 05 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schmidt, Dukewich, Symonds and Thrasher. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Katie J Schmidt, katie.schmidt@kpu.ca
Kristie R Dukewich, kristie.dukewich@kpu.ca
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.