During 502 we used the Williams and Tollett’s, The Non-Designer’s Web Book. It has been my “bible” for design and I try to remember the main principles: contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity. I’ve let this guide my creation of multimedia in classes. But after reading the chapters in our text, I have a much better idea of the “why”.
Chapter four states graphics and text used correctly can be powerful for enhancing learning and assisting with moving the information from the short term to long term memory. The ideas of text and image placement seems simple but can be very powerful. I also liked the study where the illustrations and text group performed better than the animation and narration group. This negates some of my thinking that students need animation to be actively engaged in learning. I can now see how this would overload processing and retention would decline. Being active in controlling the pace with just text and static images, provides physical and psychological engagement. Considering this in light of the dual channels principle, I liked the author's comment about our job being "to leverage both channels in ways that enable the learn to make sense out of the material" (Clark & Mayer, 2011).
Reading about the Contiguity Principle solidified many of my own thoughts about how to create effective lesson materials. Every day I create a new flipchart or PowerPoint for my lessons and I often include multimedia to promote books. Being careful to include white space and consider the proximity of text and graphics is essential. Beyond this, I learned keeping extraneous processing to a minimum prevents cognitive overload which enhances the potential of moving the information to long term memory. This means decorative elements to jazz up a presentation only impede processing.
Reflecting back, I know I’ve broken some of the principles with too much text or unrelated graphics. Also, I haven’t used static images with audio or text consistently to explain a process. Definitely something I want to experiment doing soon. It’s timely I read the research about the multimedia and contiguity principles last week, because tomorrow I am teaching 6th graders how to create presentations using either Google Slides, Prezi or VoiceThread. I know they will be intrigued with the tools, but I hope to distill this information down to help them understand “less is more”.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). E-learning and the science of instruction:
Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning, third
edition (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Williams, R., & Tollett, J. (2006). The non-designer's web book: An easy guide
to creating, designing, and posting your own web site (3rd ed.). Berkeley,
Calif.: Peachpit Press.
Chapter four states graphics and text used correctly can be powerful for enhancing learning and assisting with moving the information from the short term to long term memory. The ideas of text and image placement seems simple but can be very powerful. I also liked the study where the illustrations and text group performed better than the animation and narration group. This negates some of my thinking that students need animation to be actively engaged in learning. I can now see how this would overload processing and retention would decline. Being active in controlling the pace with just text and static images, provides physical and psychological engagement. Considering this in light of the dual channels principle, I liked the author's comment about our job being "to leverage both channels in ways that enable the learn to make sense out of the material" (Clark & Mayer, 2011).
Reading about the Contiguity Principle solidified many of my own thoughts about how to create effective lesson materials. Every day I create a new flipchart or PowerPoint for my lessons and I often include multimedia to promote books. Being careful to include white space and consider the proximity of text and graphics is essential. Beyond this, I learned keeping extraneous processing to a minimum prevents cognitive overload which enhances the potential of moving the information to long term memory. This means decorative elements to jazz up a presentation only impede processing.
Reflecting back, I know I’ve broken some of the principles with too much text or unrelated graphics. Also, I haven’t used static images with audio or text consistently to explain a process. Definitely something I want to experiment doing soon. It’s timely I read the research about the multimedia and contiguity principles last week, because tomorrow I am teaching 6th graders how to create presentations using either Google Slides, Prezi or VoiceThread. I know they will be intrigued with the tools, but I hope to distill this information down to help them understand “less is more”.
References
Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). E-learning and the science of instruction:
Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning, third
edition (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Williams, R., & Tollett, J. (2006). The non-designer's web book: An easy guide
to creating, designing, and posting your own web site (3rd ed.). Berkeley,
Calif.: Peachpit Press.