The Role Of The Hypertext And The Background Music Play To The Multimedia Learning

The development of information technology has been rapidly applied in multimedia teaching, which has brought huge changes to the traditional teaching. Nonlinear multimedia is interactive and informative that makes people expecting the use of multi-media will greatly promote students'learning. Psychologists have done a lot of research, the results show that multi-media does not necessarily promote learning. To really make the multimedia promote learning, it must play the"software"and"hardware"functions at the same time. The"hardware"refers to the multimedia itself. The multimedia must be designed according to the features of the human brain. The"software"refers to the learners. Only the learners master appropriate learning strategies, they can use the multimedia materials better. In recent years, the researchers have got many ways for meaningful learning on the multimedia learning environment. To promote meaningful learning two of the most important ways are lowering the cognitive load and increasing the interest of learners.Hypertext is a common form of the text in the multimedia instructional design, which refers to adding hyperlinks in the multimedia learning materials, and making the users jump between the various pages at any time. The researchers on the Cognitive flexibility theory believe that the random accessibility of the multi-media fits the non-linear characteristics of human cognition. So they claim that hypertext conducive to learning. But the researchers on cognitive load believe that the structure of hypertext will cause problems such as"lost", which will not only bad to learning, but will add more cognitive load. Whether Hypertext conducive to learning, that is still inconclusive. In the multi-media learning environment by adding background music can enhance learning or not is of interest to many psychologists. Many studies at home and abroad show that, whether to join the background music during the multi-media learning, to add which kind of background music, and what kind of multi-media materials the students will learn, all of these factors will produce different results. We discovered that almost no research has been for the insertion of adding background music in a multi-media learning on physics. Learning physics is very different from memory and reading. Whether there is a catalytic role for the background music to such complex cognitive task of learning, we have made a preliminary study in this study.This study consists of two parts. The first part is an experiment and a simple interview which were designed to discover the roles of the hypertext and background music to the self-learning multimedia physics materials of senior school, as well as the learning strategies students have used during the experiment. The second one is another experiment and another simple interview, which were designed to discover the roles of the hypertext and background music to the learning in the classroom guided by the teacher using the multimedia physics materials in the senior school, as well as the learning strategies students have used during the experiment. The two experiments are of the 2×2 between-subjects design with two factors. One factor is text which consists of hypertext and linear text. Another is the presentation of background music. There are two levels: with background music and without background music. The subjects are 240 students from a senior school in Henan. The subjects in the first experiment learn the materials by themselves. The subjects in the second experiment listen to the teacher explaining the materials in the classroom. Tests are conducted immediately after the experiments which include recalling and migration, and also difficulties and interests. After the end of each test six subjects were interviewed to know the application of learning strategies.The study reached the following conclusions:1. When the students learn the physical multimedia materials by themselves, the background music generally has a positive effect to their study. And we discovered that the background music has major impact on the mentaining of the knowledge and has no apparent role on the migration of knowledge.2. When the students listen the physical multimedia materials to the teacher in the classroom, the background music generally has no effect to their study. The background music plays different role on the mentaining and migration in different texts. The background music can promote mentaining in the linear text, but it does not in the hypertext. The background music has not significantly affect migration of knowledge.3. When the students learn the physical multimedia materials by themselves, hypertext significantly improves the students'learning. And it has a certain positive role to the maintaining and migration of knowledge.4. When the students learn the physical multimedia materials by themselves, the five kind of elaboration strategies the students use are:"Turn the pages","Legend","Imagine","Reading by repeating","Legend""Reading by speaking out".5. When the students listen the physical multimedia materials to the teacher in their classroom, the five first kind of strategies the students usually use are:"Legend","Imagine","Underline","Make notes"and"Answer questions".