Welcome

This blog will provide posts that discuss the findings of Professor Richard Mayer and his principles of multimedia learning.  Professor Mayer has made great contributions and advances in multimedia learning.  This blog will share his thoughts, principles, and research behind the validity of his work.  Learning to provide educational material that is clear and focused can be like putting the pieces of a puzzle together.  I hope this blog helps to show you how to put them together to create a complete picture.

How Effective is Multimedia Learning?

Multimedia instruction focuses on using technology with both words and pictures to promote and enhance learning.  "An instructional message is a communication that is intended to foster learning.  In presenting an instructional message to learners, instructional designers have two main formats available- words and pictures" (Mayer, 2009, p.6).  Words have been the traditional format in the form of lectures and books.  With the new technology, learning has shifted to the utilization of words and pictures, or multimedia.  So, does multimedia enhance learning?  Below is the link to a research article.  

Towards a New Generation of Multimedia Learning Research
After reading the article, what areas do you see multimedia being utilized in to make learning more effective?

Mayer, R. (2009). Multimedia Learning 2nd ed. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Principles that make eLearning effective.

Six Principles of Effective eLearning

In this article, Clark discusses what eLearning is and how it is utilized in education.  Clark describes how the work of Professor Mayer and his colleagues developed principles that followed cognitive theory of learning.  Cognitive theory of learning is based on learning following how the human mind works.  Mayer came up with a group of principles that would help to reduce cognitive overload to learners.

After reading this article do you think these are essential principles?  How important do you feel following these principles can be to learners?

The Multimedia Principle
The Contiguity Principle
The Modality Principle
The Redundancy Principle
The Coherence Principle
The Personalization Principle

Modality Principle

The modality principle is used to help manage essential processing.  The modality principle states that lessons should present pictures and spoken words rather than pictures and printed words.  Let's watch a brief video on using the modality principle.



According to Mayer, "the cognitive theory of multimedia learning predicts that the positive effects of using spoken text should be strongest when the material is complex, the presentation is fast-paced, and the learners are familiar with the words" (2009, p.215).

Mayer, R. (2009). Multimedia Learning 2nd ed. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Redundancy Principle

Redundancy Principle Presentation

So, now that we know the basic idea behind the principle, lets discuss some evidence that supports this principle.  

Mayer conducted experimental tests to determine if this redundancy did in fact cause cognitive overload.  The learners were divided into groups.  Some of the learners received narrated animation explaining how lightning storms develop or the same narrated animation along with on-screen text presented as a caption at the bottom.

Mayer's research used essay questions to determine transfer of learning.  The acceptable answers were tallied and the scores were determined.  The results showed large effects size favoring the group that had narration and animation over the group that had narration, animation, and on-screen text.

Other researchers have followed up Mayer's work.  Mousavi, Low, and Sweller conducted research on geometry students.  The redundant group was given worked examples in the form of a sheet with diagrams and words with an audio message that used the same narration as the printed text.  The nonredundant group was given worked examples with only a printed diagram and the same audio narration.  The students were all given a transfer of learning test.  Those that didn't receive the printed words performed better then those that had the redundant example.   

Mayer does make note that when the on screen text is short, this principle does not apply. Also, when the text passages are long and complex, presenting it as printed text can allow learners to read the text the promote transfer of learning.  

Mayer, R. (2009). Multimedia Learning 2nd ed. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Mayer's Coherence Principle

The coherence principle states that people learn better when extraneous material is excluded.  Mayer stated that learning "is improved when interesting but irrelevant words and pictures are excluded from multimedia presentation" (2009, p.89).  This idea behind this is that this extraneous material competes for the learners cognitive processing and diverts attention from the intended material.  Lets listen to this brief video on the coherence principle.

Does the coherence principle always need to be followed?

So, is the coherence principle a hard and fast rule?  Does following this principle always create improved learning?  This research article by Mueller, Lee, and Sharma conducted a study on students providing extraneous information about different occurrences in space.  Let's read about if extraneous material decreased learner retention.

Coherence or Interest: Which is most important in online multimedia learning?


After reading this paper, we can find that with many of these multimedia principles, there can be exceptions.  When designing multimedia presentations, we must always keep in mind the content and knowledge of our intended learners.