Clip art or no clip art: A lesson from cognitive science for social work educators

The pressure placed on social work educators to incorporate electronic teaching technologies into their college classrooms is growing. One such technology is the video projector used in combination with a personal computer and slide creation software. Interestingly, the use of electronic slides in the college classroom is supported, even encouraged, despite a lack of empirical research on the ability of slides to promote student learning.; The purpose of this study was to use predictions from cognitive science to evaluate the effect of using electronic slides in the classroom and to evaluate the impact of adding clip art to these slides. A secondary purpose of the study was to evaluate the effect of using electronic slides on student evaluations of their professor, the lecture topic, and their personal learning.; One hundred forty-two General Psychology students attending a 4-year liberal arts college in northern California were randomly assigned one of these instructional lecture groups: (a) a standard lecture that did not incorporate electronic slides (control), (b) a lecture that incorporated the use of slides that contained only text, or (c) a lecture that contained both text and clip-art pictures that were cosmetic in relation to the text in the slides. Student learning was measured using five questions on a scheduled 2-day postinstruction quiz and five new questions included on a final examination.; Participants in the three groups had statistically equal scores on 2-day postinstruction questions, but they had statistically different scores on 4-week postinstruction questions. Standard-lecture group participants scored higher on 4-week questions than participants in the lecture with text slides group, and they scored higher than participants in the lecture with text and clip-art slides group. The 4-week postinstruction scores for the two groups that received slide-based lectures were statistically equal.; Participants were also asked to evaluate their professor, their personal interest in the lecture topic, and how helpful the lecture was in helping them understand the lecture topic. Participants in the three groups were statistically equal in their ratings on these items.