Teaching Well Using Technology - Multimedia Learning

Chris Clark, Kaneb Center
October 17, 2017

https://twut.nd.edu/badges/multLearn.html

Dual channels - we have separate channels for processing verbal and visual material

Limited capacity - we can only hold in our active conscious and process in only a few small amounts of material in any channel at one time

Active processing - meaningful learning occurs when learners engage in appropriate cognitive processing during learning - selecting, organizing, integrating

Picture superiority effect - "pictures are worth a thousand words"
-Richard Mayer proposes that people learn even better with words and pictures than either one alone
-when using images, these guides can help to name purpose:

Kinds of Graphics

Decorative	Add aesthetic appeal or humor
Representational	Depict an object in a realistic fashion
Mnemonic	Provide retrieval cues for factual information
Organizational	Show qualitative relationships among content
Relational	Show quantitative relationships among two or more variables
Transformational	Show changes in objects over time or space
Interpretive	Illustrate a theory or principle

-Ruth Clark

Principles of Multimedia Learning

-Richard Mayer

1. Coherence Principle – People learn better when extraneous words, pictures and sounds are excluded rather than included.
2. Signaling Principle – People learn better when cues that highlight the organization of the essential material are added.
3. Redundancy Principle – People learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration and on-screen text.
4. Spatial Contiguity Principle – People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen.
5. Temporal Contiguity Principle – People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.
6. Segmenting Principle – People learn better from a multimedia lesson is presented in user-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit.
7. Pre-training Principle – People learn better from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts.
8. Modality Principle – People learn better from graphics and narrations than from animation and on-screen text.
9. Multimedia Principle – People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
10. Personalization Principle – People learn better from multimedia lessons when words are in conversational style rather than formal style.
11. Voice Principle – People learn better when the narration in multimedia lessons is spoken in a friendly human voice rather than a machine voice.
12. Image Principle – People do not necessarily learn better from a multimedia lesson when the speaker’s image is added to the screen.

And, yes, all of this would have been more effectively communicated with a purposeful picture!