1. Anne Negus EDTECH 513 Spring 2009

6. Multimedia supports a knowledge construction theory in which learning is seen as a process of active sense-making and teaching is seen as an attempt to foster appropriate cognitive processing in the learner. An important part of active processing is to mentally construct pictorial and verbal representations of the material and to mentally connect them.

7. Instructors must guide learner’s cognitive processing during learning enabling and encouraging learners to actively process the information. People learn more deeply from words and graphics, than from words alone. This is known as the “Multimedia Effect.”

8. People are more likely to understand material when they can engage in active learning – when they engage in relevant cognitive processing such as mentally integrating the material with their existing knowledge.

11. Unique and isolated information such as specific application screens, forms, or product data Groups of objects, events, or symbols designated by a single name A description of how something works A series of steps resulting in completion of a task Guidelines that result in completion of a task; cause-and-effect relationships Information Description Information Type Recommended Graphic Type

15. When a lesson separates corresponding words and graphics, learners experience a heavier load on working memory – leaving less capacity for deep learning. Based on an accurate understanding of how people learn – when words and pictures are separated, people must use cognitive resources just to match them up which creates extraneous processing.

16. When words and pictures are integrated, people can hold them together in their working memories and therefore make meaning connections between them. When a learner has to do the added work of coordinating corresponding words and visual components that are separated on the screen or in time, the limited capacity of the working memory is taxed – leading to cognitive overload.

17. The act of mentally connecting corresponding words and pictures is an important part of the sense-making process that leads to meaning learning. Putting corresponding words and pictures far apart from each other (or presenting them at different times) creates split attention which forces the learner to use limited working memory capacity to coordinate the multiple sources of information. Ayres & Chandler (2005)