Instructional design/Reducing cognitive load in multimedia instruction/Coming to Terms: Defining What Is

Before we continue with our lesson, it is important to define what we mean by "Multimedia Learning" and "Meaningful Learning". Multimedia Learning

It may be more apt to think of multimedia learning as multimodal. When learners learn through more than one sense, in the case of multimedia, sight and hearing, that learner is learning multimodaley. Multimedia instruction is a presentation that uses both words and pictures and intends to produce the outcome of learning. As Richard E. Mayer succinctly puts it “Visual and verbal processing refer to two different sense modalities (seeing;hearing); animation and narration refer to two different presentation media. For example: Using a Powerpoint while verbally explaining the concept of gravity.

Meaningful Learning

Meaningful Learning is a deep understanding of the material and the ability to transfer what was learned to new situations. It requires taking presented material, organizing it, and matching or integrating it with what the learner already knows. Learning outcomes are assessed with problem-solving transfer tests. For example: The learner is learning how to create a formula to average a column of numbers using Excel. The learner already knows what an average means and knows how to enter numbers into Excel. A problem solving test could be to enter the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,and 6 into an Excel spreadsheet and find the average using the formula function.

Now that these terms have been explained,let's look at how the learners' mind works when using multimedia instruction.

Click Next to continue.