From Diversifying Economic Quality: A Wiki for Instructors and Departments
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Revision as of 07:28, 3 November 2011
Many instructors use multimedia, including presentation tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint, in the classroom to hold students' attention and to streamline class preparation. Here is what the latest research tells us about the effective use of multimedia presentations:
- Be wary of redundancy. Research by Jamet and Le Bohec in 2006 showed a negative effect on several forms of information recall for students presented with PowerPoint presentations that directly mirrored the instructor's lecture.
- Concise is better. Research in 2003 by Bartsch and Cohern showed that elaborate PowerPoint features such as unrelated images, sounds and extraneous information impaired student learning.
- Draw your own graphs. Research in 2003 by Stern, Aprea and Ebner showed that groups presented with a graph that was ‘actively illustrated’ performed better in recall tasks than groups passively presented with the same graph.
The following website: Starting Point: Teaching and Learning Economics, which was created by Kim Marie McGoldrick (University of Richmond), Scott Simkins (North Carolina A&T University), Mark Maier (Glendale Community College), and Cathy Manduca (Carleton College), contains more information concerning technology in the economics classroom.
"9 Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning" (Mayer & Moreno, 2003)
Mayer and Moreno propose a theory of multimedia learning and Cognitive Overload based on 3 assumptions: the dual-channel assumption (humans process verbal and visual in separate systems), the limited-capacity assumption (a limit exists as to the amount of information each system can process at any given time), and the active-processing assumption (meaningful learning represents necessitates higher cognitive processes such as building connections between verbal and visual representations of information). The authors propose several ways of alleviating Cognitive Overload here.
Evidence
Bartsch & Cobern, 2003.
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Jamet & Le Bohec, 2006.
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"The purpose of this study was to examine the redundancy effects obtained when spoken information was duplicated in writing during the learning of a multimedia document. Documents consisting of diagrams and spoken information on the development of memory models were presented to three groups of students. In the first group, no written text was presented. In the second, written sentences redundant with the spoken information were progressively presented on the screen while in the third group, these written sentences were presented together. The results show that whatever the type of text presentation (sequential or static), the duplication of information in the written mode led to a substantial impairment in subsequent retention and transfer tests as well as in a task in which the memorization of diagrams was evaluated. This last result supports the hypothesis that the visual channel is overloaded as the cognitive theory of multimedia learning suggests." Click here to see the study. |
Conclusion
Multimedia should serve as a guide to lecture, not compete with the teacher. This means teachers have to be careful to not only keep student attention, but also make smart multimedia decisions to ensure every minute of lecture is transmitting information to the student in an efficient, engaging way.
Sources
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Bartsch, R. "Effectiveness of PowerPoint Presentations in Lectures." Computers & Education 41.1 (2003): 77-86. Print. Jamet, E., and O. Lebohec. "The Effect of Redundant Text in Multimedia Instruction." Contemporary Educational Psychology 32.4 (2007): 588-98. Print. Mayer, Richard, and Roxana Moreno. "Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning." Educational Psychologist 38.1 (2003): 43-52. Print. Stern, E. "Improving Cross-content Transfer in Text Processing by Means of Active Graphical Representation." Learning and Instruction 13.2 (2003): 191-203. Print. |