Week 2: Explore Research on Multimedia [Oct. 11, 2011, 5 p.m.]

Implications of Limited Capacity

Capacity to take in information is limited
Extraneous, essential, and generative processing combine to create a cognite load
Too much extraneous information unrelated to learning goals interferes with essential and generative processing.
Too much essential information (too much or too complex to easily process) can interfere with generative or deep processing
Learners sometimes do not process the information more deeply with generative processing
Learning can be improved by:
- Reducing extraneous processing
- Managing essential processing
- Fostering generative processing

Coherence: Learners perform better when extranous material is excluded
- Excluding interesting but irrelevant images and words
- Excluding interesting but irrelevant sounds and music
- Excluding unneeded symbols and words
Signaling: Learners perform better when cues show the structure of the lesson and highlight what is important
Redundancy: Learners perform better with graphics and narration than graphics, narration, and printed text
Spatial contiguity: Learners perform better when relevant text is near the corresponding image
Temporal contiguity: Learners perform better when words are presented with the image simultaneously

Segmenting: Learners perform better when information is broken up into parts
- Complex information is best broken up into parts
- Learners perform better when they control the pace
Pretraining: People learn more deeply when they know key definitions and concepts before hand
Modality: Learners perform better when images are presented along with the spoken word rather than printed text

Multimedia: Learners perform better when presented with words and pictures than when presented with words alone
Personalization: Learners perform better when when words are conversational rather than formal
Voice: Learners perform better when information is presented by a friendly human voice than a computer generated voice