The effects of various multimedia instructional materials on students’ learning responses and outcomes: A comparative experimental study

•We examine the effect of multimedia instructional materials on student learning outcomes.•We integrate social response theory, flow theory, and learning theory into an innovative model.•We apply an experimental design to compare three types of presentation methods.•Three types have various effects on students’ socialness perceptions, arousal, and pleasure.•Three types have various effects on students’ flow experience, learning motivation and outcome.

We examine whether an e-learning curriculum involving various multimedia instructional materials (MIMs) can stimulate learners’ socialness perceptions, and whether the difference in style has a specific effect on the students’ emotional states (arousal, pleasure, and flow experience) that consequently affect the students’ learning motivations and learning outcomes. We apply an experimental design to three groups of students and compared three types of presentation methods: (a) a PowerPoint presentation (b) a PowerPoint presentation guided by a human-like animated character; (c) a PowerPoint presentation guided by a monster-like animated character. The analysis results show that various types of MIMs result in various social cues that have a significant effect on the students’ socialness perceptions, arousal, pleasure, flow experience, learning motivation, and learning outcome. We contribute to the field of e-learning by integrating MIM, social response theory, flow theory, and learning theory into an innovative model, which sheds light on the perspective that the three groups of various MIMs stimulate an emotional state of students and maximize their learning outcomes. Therefore, when designing the e-learning curricula with animated characters, we recommend that teachers consider how these designs affect students’ emotional responses to ensure the best learning outcomes.