Substantive Post #1: Theories of Multimedia Learning

Before learning about theories of multimedia learning, I assumed that adding visuals to learning materials automatically made them better. It felt obvious that pictures, videos, and graphics would help people learn. After reading about Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML), I realized that this isn’t always true. Multimedia only works well when it’s designed around how people actually process information. CTML is based on three main ideas, which is people learn through both visual and auditory channels, each channel has limited capacity and learning requires active mental effort. These ideas helped explain why I sometimes find multimedia more distracting than helpful.

Image from Connie Malamed (The eLearning Coach)

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The principles that made the most sense to me were coherence and signaling. I’ve often struggled with slides or videos that have too many images, animations, or big blocks of text that don’t really connect to the main idea. The coherence principle helped me understand that taking out unnecessary content can actually make learning easier by reducing overload. Signaling also kind of stood out to me because it shows how simple design choices, like highlighting important terms or pointing out key ideas, can help guide attention and make information easier to understand.

The principle that surprised me the most was redundancy. I used to think that listening to information while reading it on a slide would help me learn it better. Instead, I’ve noticed that when instructors read straight from text heavy slides, I usually lose focus. CTML explains this by showing that reading and listening at the same time can overload the brain. This made me rethink how I design my own presentations and even how I take notes during lectures.

Unsplash Image from Nick Morrison

When I think about designing my own project, I picture people like me. I learn best with visuals, but I get overwhelmed really quickly when there’s too much going on at once. Because of that, I’d focus on clean visuals, very little text, and clear narration. I’d also break the content into smaller sections so learners can take their time and not feel overloaded.

Adding onto that, I realize I’ve been doing some of this without even knowing the theory behind it. When I make diagrams or study notes, I usually put labels right next to the images because it just feels easier to understand that way. At the same time, I know I’ve ignored ideas like coherence and redundancy by adding too much information “just in case” someone might need it. In the future, I’d trust visuals and narration more and stop relying so much on dense text to get ideas across.

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