Multimedia Design Journal: Segmenting and Pretraining

Segmenting is breaking a lesson in to more digestible chunks as to not over-burden to learning. Retraining is to reference and reteach ideas in previous lessons when when progressing to re-enforce the knowledge gained. Some material is just difficult to apply the follow coherence principle. In some cases that can take away from the purpose of the lesson.

There are many different ways to segment a lesson. Clark and Mayer suggest that adding a continue button on each segment allows people to work at there own pace. I would suggest a more economical way to achieve this would be to make the project a power point and have each slide

GPC Technology Training Tools

The GPC icollege instruction starts each section of by segmenting the whole tool into separate lessons. These segments are called the lesson objectives.

The pretraining principle is giving users basic information to work with before the actually start of the lesson. For example it could be a quick overview of the whole lesson before the breakdown into smaller segments. When explaining complex process it often helpful to have foresight on the outcome.

In the GPC iCollege documents, Each lesson also come with and overview, this will introduce any new language and terms that the user needs to understand to become familiar with the section.

ref:

e-Learning and the  Science of Instruction; Ruth Colvin Clark • Richard E. Mayer

Multimedia Design Journal: Personalization Principle

The Personalization Principle is the use of a normal conversational writing voice to convey information rather than a formal writing style. As an instructional designer we almost always used a formal when writing our content.

The common argument against conversational writing as oppose to the formal is that since we know that a computer or video isn’t a person, it shouldn’t be presenting us information in a casual manner. When i worked at university it was policy that all documents issued by the school had to have a certain writing style. This included our e-learning properties. (To clarify I worked for the school, the documents I created were instructions to train faculty and staff in using technology resources) The information delivery view states that is the instructors job to deliver information the best way students absorb it. Student learn better with a conversational voice.

Personalization Principle Checklist

Applying the Personalization Principle EDTECH 513 Mitchell Wendorff

In Mitchell Wolf’s Presentation on applying the principle she includes a quiz on determining the best which is the best usage. The correct writen form of the intro is number 2 as it applies to three of the rules on the checklist as the number 1 applies to none.

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ref: e-Learning and the  Science of Instruction; Ruth Colvin Clark • Richard E. Mayer

Multimedia Design Journal: Coherence Principle #2

The third principle is to avoid e-learning with extraneous words. Limited screen space would require concise wording. To much narration can add to the file size which could result in technical problems.

The same reasons extra graphics or audio can be a hindrance, also apply to text. It it recommended to avoid extra text for interest, elaboration and technical explanation.

Image from Ben Longs: Complete Digital Photography

In the Photography text book by Ben Long, Text and images that would be considered extraneous and contained in these grey boxes with black headers. They provide more detail about the subject matter of the section, but can be avoided without causing a disruption. Obviously the information is relevant enough to still be worth the printing.

 

ref: e-Learning and the  Science of Instruction; Ruth Colvin Clark • Richard E. Mayer

Multimedia Design Journal: Coherence Principle #2

The second coherence principle, is to avoid extraneous images and graphics. Learning is encumbered when there is too much unrelated content included. When selecting images for a project, try finding images that can be interesting and still add to the subject matter. Mayer quotes another book in saying that “In review for science and mathematics book, most of the illustrations were irrelevant.”

Pictures, videos, etc, can make teh experience more interesting according to the arousal theory. The idea that students will become more engaged if you can arouse an emotional connection with the content. There are 3 different types of interference. Distraction(lost of focus), disruption(no conection to the topic) and seduction(makes you start making connections to the wrong ideas).

Simple graphics with fewer details work best.

In this slide, the image in the presentation is unrelated to the content it’s suppose to be teaching. Not only that it has a very destinctive and obnoxious art style and uses bright colors that take you out of the presentation. This would be an example of seduction and disruption.

Sources:

Nick Yates: Creating Digital Resources using Instructional Design Principles at TESOL Arabia 2015

e-Learning and the  Science of Instruction; Ruth Colvin Clark • Richard E. Mayer

Instructions: Project 2: Screencast Video

Title: QuickTime Compression

Audience: Anyone that needs to learn a quick and simple way to compress and convert video files using reliable software. Students, Independent learners, some one that just needs help with a simple problem

Purpose: For some one who may be having problems with a file being the wrong size or format without using complicated file converters

 

My Uses: Compressing videos for mobile uses. It’s great for shrinking large HD files to smaller size better for text messages.

 

My Learners’ Uses: My learners will be able to create video files that are easier to share, via device or email.

My Story Board: SCREENCAST STORY BOARD

Multimedia Design Journal: Coherence Principle #1

The C0herence Principle

From my understanding, the Coherence principle is knowing when and when not to add extraneous information to a project. They argument made in the book brings the notion that because students are used to having video games and youtube, they need lots of bells and whistles. This can lead to the addition of elements that are completely unecessary in order to make the project feel more interesting. For example when looking back at the HTML Editor video I created, I link out to a youtube video of a cat playing piano.

The Idea was that this video is long, and the voice in pretty monotone. Having something fun may peak interest. It got the okay from my colleagues but in retrospect maybe that bit was unnecessary.

We could never decide of a royalty free form of music to use in the background, Clark & Mayer recommends no background music be used as it is no stong evidence to support that it helps.

Source:

Peng Liu: Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, Coherence Priciple

e-Learning and the  Science of Instruction; Ruth Colvin Clark • Richard E. Mayer

 

 

Multimedia Design Journal: Redundancy Principle

The Reduncy Principle ask that you avoid the the use of onscreen text if graphics are associated with narration. It is grounded in the reasoning that one may distract from the other causing the learner to lose some of the information. You can miss important facts if you try read during narration.

The use of the term “redundancy” come from there being multiple chanels displaying delivering the same information at once

A: Graphic

B: Text

C: Narration

it is redundant to have multiple channels feed you the same information at once, and you actually lose information by trying to split focus. Interestingly in is cited in the book, that there is no solid evidence about learning styles. It states that in a study by Plasher, McDaniel Rorher & Bjork (2008), they were under unable to find solid proof that visual learners learn best through visuals and so on. So it is best to use multiple methods when crafting a learning module, following the cognitive theory, that believes that people have separate channels to process information and they should all be acknowledged, but to much can cause an overload.

Example: HTML EDITOR: Marcus Thompson

In the image below is a frame from the HTML editor tutorial i created. As you can see this it uses the graphical interface and an accompanied audio track to explain the tools.

There is a subtitle track included but it is not need. It would be break the redundancy rule because it is the same verbatim information as the audio track. In this situation were from required to have a subtitle track for compliance reasons. I believe that would be a common reason to break the rule. We did not have to software to make the subtitle track optional.

Here is the PDF document which contained the same information as the video:

 

Ref: : e-Learning and the  Science of Instruction; Ruth Colvin Clark • Richard E. Mayer