EDU 642 Week 1: Principles of Design

My learning this week solidified my understanding of digital multimedia and my new learning for this week consisted of the principles for multimedia design from Mayer and Gestalt. This was the first time that I have heard of these design principles and I think that they are relevant now more than ever. After reflecting on these principles, I think that there are many implications for how these principles can be applied to support learner-centered approaches for our students. When reading through Mayer’s Using Multimedia for E-Learning, I liked his explanation of the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia learning. This just made sense to me after reading that this is best for learners and what we, as teachers and designers, should strive for by engaging the sensory memory, working memory, and a learner’s prior knowledge all at once. When we as educators are able to engage all of these at once is when meaningful learning will happen. It is critical to give students context to their learning in our design so that students can attach this new learning to their prior knowledge, which will ultimately make learning more meaningful. Throughout this course I would like to look through the lens of an educator because I am designing so many online materials for my students. However, I have also learned in our previous course in EDU 643 how important it is to look through the lens of a learner. This can help us better empathize with our students and ultimately create designs that are better for our students as well.

I can apply these principles to my instruction right now in my online teaching material. Since teaching online, we as a grade level, have been turning our paper pencil curriculum into online materials. Therefore, I have truly been designing all different kinds of multimedia materials for our students. Also, as we have been moving through the school year, it has become apparent that many of my students and families that are online are not as “tech-savvy” as I had initially thought. So, I think that applying these design principles more purposefully in my content will not only help my learners, but will also help families who are trying to assist their students at home as well. I have been mostly creating material for our ELA curriculum, which has included creating slide deck presentations with video narration and many digital worksheets and activities. I feel like we have been doing our best, but I know there is room for improvement. After reading about these principles of design, I think that I have been following a few of them, but I know there are a few specific principles that I could be better about when designing material for my students.

After learning about each of the principles I think that my fourth graders could benefit from utilizing all of the principles from both Mayer and Gestalt, however, there are few that I would like to focus on in my designs from now on. The first principle that I would like to focus more on is the coherence principle. Students do not need more distractions, so really focusing on what needs to be included for the students to learn the material and deciding what is not necessary for learning or is just “extra” is important for our students. This means that I need to be cognizant of all of the materials I am presenting to my students to make sure that it will benefit their learning. Sometimes I have added videos that went along with the content my students were learning about, but did not really help solidify their learning about that content it was added to help make it a little more engaging for students. This is something I can work on in my future designs. Segmenting multimedia is also beneficial for students because then it becomes easier to see what students need to do and they can also focus on one thing at a time if it is grouped correctly. I know that my students already have a hard time finding/reading the directions, so putting it in chunks so students can clearly see what are the directions and what is the content will be helpful for learners. Lastly, the lines and shapes principle from Gestalt would accommodate students in knowing what to do next or where to go in an online document or resource. I could do a better job of incorporating these into my designs, especially in the directions or if there are multiple parts to complete.

I think about what I am currently creating for my learners and have realized that there are some components that I can change for my online content. For example, I have been creating my mini lesson videos with slide decks that include text as well as my narration. Which according to the redundancy principle, I should only have graphics and narration and not text, narration and graphics. I struggle with this a little though because I do think it is important for my students to be able to see the words I am reading, especially if it is something related to reading material. However, I do think that I could cut some of the text down and focus on putting up the text only that the students will need to read or work with for the lesson. Another principle that has made me think about my current designs for my online students include the image principle. I have been creating videos of me presenting slide decks of information with the video of myself in the corner. My original thinking to this was to help my students see me while I was teaching to hopefully help my students make a connection with me and help them feel like they were in a classroom setting, but now after reading about this, I can see how this would be distracting my learners as they could just be focusing on me and my movements and not the content presenting in the slides. Ultimately, I have learned so much through both Mayer and Gestalt’s principles of design that I will be thinking about many of these now as I develop and create more content for my online learners.

Works Cited

Mayer, R. (2017). Using multimedia for E-lEarning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 33(5), 403-423. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12197