Friday, November 3, 2017

Multimedia Design Principles

Offering multiple modes of content delivery (UDL: Representation) is a critical component of personalized learning. Creating or using existing video as a content delivery method or to supplement learning gives students that extra resource to be successful in reaching your learning outcomes. If you are thinking of creating your own video, or plan to use existing video, there are ten design principles you should adhere to, or look for, to ensure the videos are having the greatest educational impact. 

Analyze or create your videos using these 10 multimedia design principles:

This principle states that learners learn better when extraneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded rather than included. In other words, less is more. Carefully choose what elements are necessary and leave out elements that are not.

2. Signaling Principle.

When lying out your video story be sure that simpler concepts precede complex ones. This ensures that learners are not cognitively overloaded. Important parts of the learning content should be highlighted, underlined, or bolded etc. This helps students process and remember essential parts of the learning content.

3. Redundancy Principle.

When creating multimedia in a course, it is important to remember that learners prefer only 2-3 multimedia elements at once. It is better to include graphics and narration or animation and narration rather than more than an abundance of elements (ie. on-screen text, graphics, animation, as well as narration).

4. Multimedia Principle.

Learners prefer to learn better from words and pictures rather than from words alone. The inclusion of graphics is very important.

5. Spatial Contiguity Principle.

Studies show that learners need corresponding words and pictures to be presented near each other rather than far from each other on the screen. This simple alignment effectively increases the impact of learning and lessens confusion.
This principle states that learners prefer it when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.

7. Segmenting Principle.

Personalized learning should offer flexibility in pace. Learners learn better from a multimedia-infused lesson when it is presented in user-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit. Suitable breaks in between the flow of information is necessary to make sure that the learner takes some time to process what he or she is reading.

8. Pre-Training Principle.

The benefits of creating pre-training opportunities benefit all types of learners. This principle states that learners benefit from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts. Introduce new concepts, names, and titles of essential topics on the first few screens to make sure that learner feels comfortable with the idea of moving forward.

9. Personalization Principle.

This principle states it is better to include audio in conversational style rather than formal style. Not only does this put the learner at ease, it increases their attention as well. Simply stated, videos should be created as informal and not forced.

10. Voice Principle.

Learners prefer narration in a friendly human voice rather than a machine voice. So even if machine generated narration is available it is better to create a voice-over narration to make sure that learners remain engaged and are suitably inspired to listen and learn.
Each principle is linked to a video illustrating the design principle in action.
Submitted by Suzanne Riesen, Math Teacher at Brookfield Central High School
Resources:


YouTube Videos by Bucky Dodd






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