Book Summary: Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer

Scientific research has revealed that combining text and images in ebooks helps readers to process information faster.

And, one challenge with information processing is that we each have a limited capacity.

You will walk away from this summary with the tools to make an impression on any audience.

What is Learning?

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If we are going to understand how people learn better using multimedia principles, then we first need to understand the methods of learning that you and I utilize.

Mayer defines learning as "a change in knowledge due to experience," and it is a uniquely individualized experience. For example, what you get from this summary and what your colleague gets from it will be different in certain ways.

What we learn is broken down into five different buckets:

Facts — are information about a location or an event. On April 29th, 2011, for example, Prince William and Kate Middleton married on a gloomy London day.

Concepts — Knowledge of categories, principles, or models, such as how an automobile engine works, are examples of concepts.

Procedures — understanding of how to do things step by step, such as open-heart surgery or putting on your clothes in the morning (one leg, then the other).

Strategies — are general techniques for arranging your knowledge in order to attain your objectives. For example, understanding which strokes to hit on the golf course on a highly windy day.

Beliefs — are your ideas about yourself or how you learn. For example, you may believe that "I'm not very good at English."

Learning often involves changing your beliefs and/or knowledge. It doesn’t always involve acquiring new information, though.

Knowledge is difficult to measure since there are few instruments that can provide accurate measures.

Recall is a test of how well we remember things. This sort of learning isn't particularly effective in the actual world since the profits don't go to the people who retain the most information.

Understanding is the golden ticket, and it occurs when we are able to construct a mental model from the data provided.

What the smartest and brightest in business do is create mental models and then use them to their advantage. These multimedia design concepts are intended to facilitate this sort of learning.

How we process information

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We can investigate how we process information now that we understand what learning is. These are the assumptions that form the foundation of learning, and they could surprise you.

To begin, we must recognize that humans process visual and auditory information individually. The difference between visual and auditory information is in how we absorb it.

We engage our visual information pathways when we start processing information with our eyes, which we do with pictures, on-screen text, and video.

We activate our auditory information pathways once we begin processing information with our ears, as we do with narration, background music, and other sounds.

Although some scientists would put text on a page in the auditory information pathways, the main point is that humans process visual and auditory information differently.

Second, our ability to comprehend information is restricted. This should come as no surprise to anyone who has trouble remembering names and phone numbers.

We are limited to a specific quantity of data in each channel, in particular. When we read a book, for example, we can only hold a few words in our working memory at a time.

The same is true with pictures. The digit span test, in which we are given with randomly picked digits and asked to repeat them back in sequence, is the most frequent test for how much we can store in our minds. Images may be used to do a similar test.

At any given time, the average person can recall between 5-7 pieces of knowledge. We are continuously deciding what to concentrate our attention on and what not to because of our limited ability to digest information.

Finally, we actively process data in an attempt to make sense of it. In essence, we're aiming to create mental models of the data in order for it to be helpful to us.

Incoming data is processed in a number of different ways.

In the future, we may strive to organize the knowledge into a procedure so that we can follow step-by-step directions (the hip bone is connected to the thigh bone).

We may try to generalize the knowledge so that we can apply it to a broader range of situations.

We might also create a contrast between what we're learning and what we already know.

These three assumptions about how humans process information - dual-channel, limited capacity, and active processing – have a significant impact on how we create presentations that help people learn.

How to Reduce Extraneous Processing

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The first stage in creating a multimedia presentation that has been scientifically shown to help people learn more effectively is to eliminate unnecessary processing – or, to put it another way, getting rid of what isn't essential.

There are five principles at work here.

Coherence

We need to get rid of unnecessary text, graphics, pictures, and noises in order to enable people to learn.

There is evidence that individuals learn more from a summary than from a complete text — and that they not only recall more, but also comprehend the contents better.

After the learner has formed a mental model of the content, any elaboration should be done. There are various justifications for including fascinating material since it encourages individuals to learn more and hence to desire to study again.

These factors, however, do not enhance the learning process when there is an equal willingness to learn.

Signaling

When indicators that highlight the material's structure are provided, people learn better. Chapter outlines, headers to divide various portions of content, and vocal emphasis on crucial terms are all beneficial in this situation.

Redundancy

Visuals and narration help people learn more effectively than graphics, narration,, and written text. Essentially, you wouldn't have the text you're speaking on the slides if you were giving a presentation with a voice over and slides. This confuses the visual channel by overloading it with images and words that it must read.

Tell someone about the redundancy principle the next time you see someone presenting a PowerPoint and reading verbatim off the slide.

Spatial Contiguity

When text and visuals are placed near together rather than far apart, people learn better.

Temporal Contiguity

People learn more effectively when text and visuals are given simultaneously rather than sequentially.

How to Manage Essential Processing

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Now that we've gotten rid of the superfluous, we can concentrate on how to improve how individuals absorb the knowledge they need.

Essential processing is the process of encoding what you're learning in your working memory, where you try to make sense of it based on what you already know.

There are three concepts that will assist us in making excellent presentations in this situation.

Segmenting

It should be a multimedia presentation that may be divided into user-paced portions.

For example, a five-part segment should be divided into five pieces that the user may manage before the presentation moves on to the next topic. This is easier with video since the consumer can just pause the movie and re-watch whatever they don't understand.

Other types of presentations, such as a live webinar or seminar, do not, however, provide this level of flexibility. As a result, it's a good idea to have recordings of these occurrences available afterward.

When the subject is complicated or the student has limited prior knowledge, there are limits to where this concept really helps individuals learn better.

Pretraining

When people know the names and qualities of the major topics in a multimedia presentation, they learn more effectively. When you need to take an algebra class before taking an advanced statistics class, for example.

This is because your statistics class will not take the time to teach you all of the algebra you'll need beforehand.

In some cases, you're constructing a model on top of another. You will have brain overload if you do not grasp mathematics, and you will not be able to learn anything.

This is less of an issue in a multimedia presentation because someone has the opportunity to pause and then seek up the gaps in their knowledge (in Google, for example).

Modality

Photos and narrative have a greater impact on people than images and text. This results in three distinct learning levels. Text alone, text with images, narration with images, and the last one is the most successful.

How to Foster Generative Processing

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The act of taking the information you're processing and making meaning of it is known as generative processing. You take the knowledge and use it to create mental models, which you then compare to what you already know.

One of the major difficulties is the underutilization of generative processing, which is the final and most important stage in really comprehending fresh material.

You will generally tune out and not attempt to employ your creative processing skills if you are bored, get lost in the information, or don't enjoy the presentation in general. And this is a horrible thing, my friends.

There are two principles that will help us practice this important last step.

Multimedia

People learn more effectively from both words and visuals than with just words.

Because we have two methods of processing information (auditory and visual), combining words and pictures allows us to develop two working models of the content at the same time and make connections between them.

There will never be an equal amount of spoken and visual information.

For example, if I describe a gorgeous sunset to you vocally, no matter how much detail I go into, both you and I will generate different mental images. These, in turn, would be different from the vision I'm talking about.

So, while a picture may not be worth a thousand words, it is unquestionably more than the words themselves. Keep in mind that we didn't always have words to process as humans, but we did always have pictures to comprehend.

Personalization

When words are written in a conversational way rather than a formal style, people learn more from multimedia.

If you want to accomplish this in your own presentations, simply use the words "I" and "you" repeatedly throughout the presentation to make it appear as if you are speaking directly to the audience.

Why does this work so well on us? We have a built-in social reaction that makes us pay attention when someone speaks directly to us. Have you ever turned around in a busy area because someone called your name but was plainly talking to someone else?

That is an example of a social response in action. We not only pay greater attention, but we also make a conscious effort to understand what is being spoken to us. Overall, you simply learn a lot more effectively.

NOTE: Using a computerized voice instead of a human voice will not achieve the desired effect.

Conclusion

So there you have it: the guidelines for producing a multimedia presentation that will help you convey information in a way that is easy to remember and comprehend. What will you do with this information?

This approach may be used to improve anything related to staff training. This may be incredibly useful if you are a presenter who does presentations.

And, this would be useful in more complicated sales presentations when your prospect has to comprehend your product before purchasing it.

Just remember to use your newfound abilities for good rather than evil.

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