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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

 

Limited Capacity Presentation (audio not yet included)

 

 

 

 

Reducing Extraneous 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

 

Reduce Extraneous Processing

 

 

 

 

Managing Essential Processing

  • 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

 

Fostering Generative Processing

  • 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

 

 

 

Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning

For Whom is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words…

Five Ways to Reduce PowerPoint Overload