Effects of Different Types of Annotations on College Students' Foreign Language Learning in the Synchronous Multimodal Computer-Mediated Communication Environment

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of different types of annotations on college students’ foreign language learning in the synchronous computer-mediated communication environment. One hundred and forty-seven second year students were randomly assigned to three conditions: text-only annotations, text + picture annotations, and no annotation. Results indicated that students who received the text-only annotations and the text + picture annotations significantly outperform students who had no access to any annotations on information comprehension and vocabulary learning. However, no significant differences between the two annotations groups were found. The findings, when examined in light of the previous research about computer-based multimedia learning, call into questions of instructional materials design and instructional support that should be provided to students during instruction. The study extended research on applying multimedia principles to different teaching and learning situations, specifically, the synchronous multimodal computer-mediated communication environment.