Module 1 Assignment 2

1. MAYER’S THEORY OF
MULTIMEDIA LEARNING
Kareisa Rock

2. EXTRANEOUS COGNITIVE
PROCESSINGCognitive processing that does not serve the instructional goal; caused by confusion by
instructional design.
Principle for Reducing Extraneous Cognitive Processing:
➤ Coherence Principle - remove irrelevant words, sounds or graphics.
➤ Signaling Principle - highlight essential words or graphics.
➤ Redundancy Principle - remove redundant caption from narrated animation.
➤ Spatial Contiguity Principle - place essential words next to corresponding graphics
on the screen or page.
➤ Temporal Contiguity Principle - present corresponding words and pictures
simultaneously.

3. COHERENCE PRINCIPLE
People learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included. The
coherence principle an be broken down into three complimentary versions:
1. Learning is improved when interesting but irrelevant words and pictures are excluded from
a multimedia presentation
2. Learning is improved when interesting but irrelevant sounds and music are excluded from a
multimedia presentation
3. Learning is improved when unneeded words and symbols are eliminated from a multimedia
presentation.

4. COHERENCE PRINCIPLE
CONT.➤ Extraneous Rationale: the rational competes for cognitive resources in working
memory and can divert the attention from the important material and disrupts the
process of organising material.
➤ Empirical Rationale: This rational proves that the use of extraneous multimedia can
affect the performance of learners.
➤ Boundary Conditions: The coherence principle may work better for learners with a
low working-memory capacity or low domain knowledge.

6. SIGNALING PRINCIPLE
➤ People learn better when cues that highlight the organisation of the essential material
are added.
➤ Theoretical Rationale: Signaling reduces extraneous processing by guiding the
learners attention to the key elements in a lesson and guiding the learner’s building of
connections between them.
➤ Empirical Rationale: This rationale test proves that learners who received a signaled
multimedia lesson, performed better on transfer tests than those who received a
nonsignaled multimedia lesson
➤ Boundary conditions: Signaling can be helpful when signals are used sparingly,
when the learner has low reading skill and when the multimedia lesson is
disorganised or contains extraneous material.

7. SIGNALING CONT.
Signaling the verbal material includes adding cues such as:
1. An outline or outline sentence at the start of the lesson
2. Headings that are keyed to the outline
3. Vocal emphasis on key words
4. Pointer word such as “first … second …. third”
Signal words do not add any new information but rather they highlight or repeat the important
material in the lesson.
Signaling is not only used for verbal material but also for pictorial material, that is we may
want to draw the reader’s attention to specific areas of the graphic. Visual signaling includes
adding visual cues such as arrows, distinctive colours, flashing or pointing gestures etc.

8. The difference is that the text at the left globs together into one giant mass of words. There are
no breaks so we instinctively feel as though we are supposed read it all in one go, no breaths or
pauses in between, which is intimidating.
The second block of text, meanwhile, looks much more manageable. By separating the text into
smaller chunks through the use of headings and images, the page looks more like three easy
chunks instead of a full page of prose. Nearly anything can be used to break up the text.
Example of Signaling Principle

9. REDUNDANCY PRINCIPLE
People learn better from graphics and narration rather than graphics, narration and
printed text.
➤ Theoretical Rationale: Redundancy creates extraneous processing
A. The visual channel can become overloaded by having to visually scan between
pictures and on-screen text
B. Learners expend mental effort in trying to compare the incoming streams of printed
and spoken text.
➤ Empirical Rationale: This rationale test proves that learners who received graphics
and narration performed better than those who received graphics, narration and
printed text.
➤ Boundary Conditions: The redundancy principle may not apply when
1. The captions are short and placed next to the part of the graphic they describe.
2. The spoke text is presented before the printed text rather than concurrently.
3. There are no graphics and verbal segments are short.
In these conditions, extraneous processing is diminished.

10. Example of Redundancy Principle

11. SPACIAL CONTIGUITY
PRINCIPLEStudents learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather
than far from each other on the screen.
Theoretical Rationale: When corresponding words and pictures are near each other
on the screen or page, learners are most likely to hold them both in working memory at
the same time.
Empirical Rationale: In this rationale test, learners performed better on transfer tests
when corresponding text and illustrations were placed near each other on the page.
Boundary Conditions: The spatial contiguity principle is most applicable when:
1. The learner is not familiar with the material
2. The diagram is not fully responsible without words
3. The material is complex

12. Example of Spacial Contiguity

13. TEMPORAL CONTIGUITY
PRINCIPLEStudents learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather
than successively.
Theoretical Rationale: When corresponding portions of narration and animation are presented
at the same time, the learner is more likely to be able to hold mental representations of both in
working memory at the same time. Therefore, the learner is more likely to be able to build
mental connections between verbal and visual representations.
Empirical Rationale: In this rationale test, learners performed better on transfer tests when
corresponding portions of animation and narration were presented simultaneously rather than
successively.
Boundary Conditons: The temporal contiguity principle may be less applicable when the
successive lesson involves alternations between short segments rather than a long continuous
presentation or when the lesson is under learner control rather than under system control.

14. Example of Temporal Contiguity

15. PRINCIPLES FOR MANAGING
ESSENTIAL PROCESSING➤ Segmenting Principle - Present lesson in a user paced format instead as on
continuous unit.
➤ Pre-training Principle - This technique precedes the lesson and gives learners
an idea of key components.
➤ Modality Principle - Present lesson using pictures and spoken words rather than
pictures and printed text

16. SEGMENTING PRINCIPLE
People learn better when a multimedia message is presented in user-paced segments
rather than as a continuous unit.
Theoretical Rationale: In viewing a fast-paced narrated animation that explains the
steps in a process, some learners may not fully comprehend one step in the process
before the next one is presented, and thus, they may not have time to see the causal
relation between one step and the next.
Empirical Rationale: In this rationale test, people performed better on problem-solving
transfer tests when a narrated animation was presented in bite-sized segments.
Boundary Conditions: The segmenting principle is most likely to apply when the
material is complex, the presentation is fast-paced, and the learner is inexperienced
with the material.

17. https://youtu.be/-WheIBQTuYQ
Example of the Segmenting Principle

18. PRE-TRAINING PRINCIPLE
People learn more deeply from a multimedia message when they know the names and
characteristics of the main concepts.
Theoretical Rationale: In viewing a fast-paced narrated animation that explains the steps in a
process, learners have to mentally construct a causal model of the system as well as component
models for each key part in the system. Pre-training can help manage these two demands for
essential processing by distributing some processing to a pre-training episode that occurs before the
main lesson.
Empirical Rationale: In this rationale test people performed better on problem-solving transfer
tests when a multimedia lesson was preceded by pre-training in the names and characteristics of
each key component.
Boundary Conditions: The pre-training principle is most likely to be effective when the material
is complex, the multimedia lesson is fast-paced, and the learner is unfamiliar with the material.
The most important practical implication of the pre-training principle is as follows: When students
would be overwhelmed by a multimedia lesson that uses many new terms to explain complex

19. Pretraining. the parts of the Microscope and How to use the microscope--------key concepts
are Identified, that could be presented prior to teaching the main lesson. Pretraining, Can help
users to manage their processing of complex materials . Pretraining, makes it easier for
begeinners to understand concepts and skills.
Example of Pre-training Principle

20. MODALITY PRINCIPLE
People learn more deeply from pictures and spoken words than from pictures and printed words.
Theoretical Rationale: In the animation-with-on-screen-text version, both the pictures and the
words enter the cognitive system through the eyes, causing an overload in the visual system. In the
animation-with-narration version, the words are off-loaded onto the verbal channel, thereby
allowing the learner to more fully process the pictures in the visual channel.
Empirical Rationale: In this rationale test, people performed better on problem-solving tests rather
when an animation or set of graphics was accompanied by narration rather than on-screen text.
Boundary Conditions: The modality principle may be particularly applicable when the material is
complex, the presentation is fast-paced, and the learners are familiar with the words. By contrast,
printed words may be appropriate when the lesson includes technical words and symbols and when
the learner is a non-native speaker or is hearing-impaired.
Modality off-loading occurs when the words in a multimedia lesson are presented as spoken text
rather than as printed text.

21. Example of Modality Principle

22. GENERATIVE PROCESSESING
Generative processing is cognitive processing aimed at making sense of the material and includes
organizing the incoming material into coherent structures and integrating these structures with each other
and with prior knowledge.
What is generative processing underutilization?
This is a situation in which you have cognitive capacity available but you do not choose to use it for
making sense of the material - a situation that can be called generative processing underutilization.
Fostering Generative Processing
➤ Multimedia - Present words and media rather than words alone.
➤ Personalization - Present speech in conversational style rather than formal style.
➤ Voice - Present speech with a human voice rather than a machine voice.

23. MULTIMEDIA PRINCIPLE
People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
Theoretical Rationale: When words and pictures are both presented, learners have an opportunity to
construct verbal and visual mental models and to build connections between them. When words
alone are presented, learners have an opportunity to build a verbal mental model but are less likely to
build a visual mental model and make connections between the verbal and visual mental models.
Empirical Rationale: In this rationale test, learners who received text and illustrations or narration
and animation performed better on transfer tests than did learners who received text alone or
narration alone.
Boundary Conditions: The multimedia principle may apply more strongly to low-knowledge
learners than to high-knowledge learners, presumably because low-knowledge learners need
guidance in building connections between pictorial and verbal representations.

24. Example of Multimedia Principle

25. PERSONALISATION PRINCIPLE
People learn better from multimedia presentations when words are in conversational style
rather than formal style.
Theoretical Rationale: When learners feel that the author is talking to them, they are
more likely to see the author as a conversational partner and therefore will try harder to
make sense of what the author is saying.
Empirical Rationale: In this rationale test, learners who received the words of a
multimedia lesson in conversational style performed better on transfer tests than learners
who received the words in formal style
Boundary Conditions: The personalization principle may be most effective when it is not
overdone and when the learners are beginners.

26. Example of Personalisation Principle

27. REFERENCES
Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed). New York:
Cambridge University Press.