Handout 5 - The Principles

THE PRINCIPLES OF MULTIMEDIA INSTRUCTION

I. EXTRANEOUS COGNITIVE PROCESSING

A. TEMPORAL CONTIGUITY = People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.

B. REDUNDANCY = People learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics, narration, and printed text.

C. COHERENCE = People learn better when irrelevant words, pictures, sounds and music are excluded from multimedia presentations.

D. SPATIAL CONTIGUITY = People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen.

E. SIGNALING = People learn better when cues that highlight the organization of the essential material are added.

II. ESSENTIAL COGNITIVE PROCESSING

A. SEGMENTING = People learn better when a multimedia message is presented in user-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit.

B. PRE-TRAINING = People learn more deeply from a multimedia message when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts.

C. MODALITY = People learn more deeply from pictures and spoken words than from pictures and printed words.

III. GENERATIVE COGNITIVE PROCESSING

A. MULTIMEDIA = People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.

B. IMAGE = People do not necessarily learn more deeply from a multimedia presentation when the speaker's image is on the screen rather than not on the screen.

C. PERSONALIZATION = People learn better from multimedia presentations when words are in conversational style rather than formal style.

D. VOICE = People learn more deeply when the words in a multimedia message are spoken by a friendly human voice rather than by a machine voice.