The impact of educational media on learning effectiveness

Abstract

Modern education is significantly enriched by various media resources, yet the impact of these educational media on students’ learning processes and material assimilation remains underexplored. This study aimed to investigate the effect of educational media on school students’ understanding of STEM concepts. Using a repeated measures experimental design with counterbalancing to control for extraneous factors, the study involved two learning conditions: watching an educational video on one topic and conducting experiments on another. The video topics, which were selected from mathematics (Mobius Strip) and physics (Non-Newtonian Fluids), were presented to 79 schoolchildren aged 12 to 17 years (mean age 15, 75.95% female), who were equally distributed across two experimental groups based on gender and age. Participants’ learning outcomes were assessed by examining their emotional and praxic states during the learning process, as well as their performance on tests measuring mastery of the topics. The results revealed no significant differences between the groups in learning effectiveness across different conditions. However, the findings suggest that students’ interest in the content and their emotional and praxic engagement during the learning process were more influential than the mode of instruction itself. Notably, participants expressed greater interest in learning about non-Newtonian fluids, and emotional and praxic shifts were more strongly associated with the content being studied rather than the learning mode. Furthermore, experiential learning led to more significant gains in mastery of the less engaging topic (Mobius Strip). Correlations were observed between students’ emotional states while watching the educational videos and their previous experience with media resources in learning. These findings may inform the development of distance education courses and facilitate the integration of media education into pedagogical practices.