At its core, the theory asserts that people learn more effectively from words and graphics than from words alone. While numerous investigators have contributed to this work, we have found Mayer’s (2009) empirically derived principles of multimedia design, to be the most relevant and useful for instructional designers and educators.
What is multimedia instruction?
It is not a video! Multimedia instruction (also referred to as “educational multimedia”) refers to teaching and learning material that contain words (e.g., spoken or printed text) and images (e.g., illustrations, charts, photos, animation, video) (Mayer 2009). Multimedia instruction therefore has relevance well beyond a video-based lesson – it can inform our teaching over a broad range of visual and audio modalities, from what we sketch on a chalkboard while lecturing to how we construct a diagram we create for a handout in class, or the design of a power-point slide to use in class.
What is cognitive load?
Cognitive load is a central concept critical to cognitive load theory and highly relevant to learning and instructional design (Sweller 1994, 1999). Cognitive load refers to the “cognitive processing demands” placed on a learner in the context of the limitations of working memory.
Just as Mayer adapted the cognitive load theory to multimedia learning, he contextualized the goals above using principles that were established based on empirical data. We expand on these three strategies below:
- Reduce Extraneous Processing
- Coherence: Delete any material considered extra
- Signaling: Highlight essential material
- Redundancy: Do not add onscreen captions to narrated graphics
- Spatial contiguity: Place printed words near corresponding part of graphic.
- Temporal contiguity: Present spoken words at same time as corresponding graphics.
- Image Principle: People don’t necessarily learn better when the speaker’s image is visible
- Manage Essential Processing
- Segmenting: Break lesson into learner-paced parts
- Pre-training: Present characteristics of key concepts before the lesson
- Modality: Use spoken words rather than printed words
- Foster Generative Processing
- Personalization: Put words in conversational style rather than formal style
- Voice: Put words in human voice rather than machine voice
- Embodiment: Have onscreen agent use human-like gestures and movements