After studying Mayer’s theory of multimedia learning, I found the PowerPoint of the mini course I had done in another EDCI course before and modified it. I identified some shortcomings in this courseware and modified it according to Mayer’s theories to make it more effective for learning, and to help students understand the course content better.
First of all, I reduced some of the theme templates of the whole courseware. According to Mayer’s ‘The Coherence Principle’ and ‘Cognitive load theory’, irrelevant material simply adds interest to the presentation, but this kind of useless information will distract students’ attention (Davis and Norman, 2016 ). In the process of creating the courseware, I chose a theme with many pictures for the overall presentation and tried to make the presentation look richer and more aesthetically attractive. However, these decorations were totally irrelevant to the course content and the whole page looked too redundant. So this time I removed all the unnecessary decorative patterns and showed some pages in the form of tables to emphasize and organize the content. Finally, the whole courseware looks more neat and organized.
Secondly, although many of the pages’ are already summarized and cannot be cut down, there are still many texts. According to ‘The Signaling Principle’ proposed by Mayer, adding some signals and clues can direct students’ attention to useful materials (Davis and Norman, 2016 ). Therefore, I bolded the important content in the text-heavy pages and used it to emphasize the key sections that need to be studied and paid attention to.
In addition, I removed one of the videos. Based on Mayer’s ‘Segmenting Principle’, videos that are longer than five minutes may be difficult for students to remember the content of the video (Watt, 2022). Watching the video I quoted again, the content is too complex and may interfere with students’ understanding of the range of knowledge and is unnecessary. After removing it, the remaining content I believe is sufficient for students to comprehend the main content of the course.
Reference：
Davis, G., & Norman, M. (2016, July 19). Principles of Multimedia Learning – Center for teaching and learning: Wiley education services. Center for Teaching and Learning | Wiley Education Services. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://ctl.wiley.com/principles-of-multimedia-learning/
Watt, M. (n.d.). W7: Storytelling with video. EDCI 337. Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://edtechuvic.ca/edci337/2022/10/15/w7-storytelling-with-video/
Leave a Reply