Richard Mayer’s Multimedia Learning Theory

My comments:
While I don’t know if I totally am convinced by the “dual channel assumption”, I agree with the attention paid to sensory modalities in cognition, processing information. But one point about the division between the presentation modes into words and images, I think rather of images as having a heavily visual component, that reading requires visual processing, not just auditory and while Mayer acknowledges this, I think it should receive more attention. Multimedia that takes place on two dimensional surfaces (screens, monitors) is already based on a visual interface. Text that is read on a screen may be accompanied by some external audio and the internal sounding out in one’s mind, but the sensory modality that gets taxed the most, I think, is the visual…This leads to my general argument for incorporating other sensory modalities into the presentation.

Summary of Mayer’s Multimedia Learning:
Mayer delineates three views of “multimedia” for learning. 1) in terms of the medium of delivery, 2) in terms of its presentation modes, its re-presentational formats, and 3) in terms of the sensory modalities used to process the material.

The focus on the first view, the delivery media, is obviously “technology-centered” rather than human-centered (Mayer also brings in reference to Donald Norman’s concern for human-centered design of technology aids to ‘make us smarter’).

The focus of the latter two views is human- or “learner-centered”. Concern for the presentation modes and sensory modalities is based in cognitive theory on how people learn and this is what drives the design. Also, these two views take a constructivist learning ideology, i.e. that knowledge is actively constructed rather than transmitted and passively acquired. Optimal learning is not just knowledge acquisition then, or just a matter of retention, but it is retention with knowledge transfer- the ability to apply the knowledge.

Mayer’s cognitive theory specifically ascribes to a “Dual Channel Assumption” which basically assumes that humans have separate information processing channels for verbal and pictorial information, or (to put it in terms of the sensory modalities) for auditory and visual stimulus.

Mayer also brings up theory of cognitive load- that understanding how humans learn also includes understanding our cognitive limitations or the optimal load for processing information, whether images or text or combinations of both.

With Multimedia Learning theory, Mayer is proposing that multimedia can be used to design material that optimizes learning, and that an optimal condition for learning (information processing) is a combination of auditory and visual, words and images, presented to minimize extraneous cognitive load and maximize learning in terms of retention and transfer of knowledge.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Wittrock- Generative Learning Processes of the Brain
• Rieber- Discovery learning, Referential processing, Multimedia explanations…
• The Effect of Positive Emotions on Multimedia Learning.
• Making Sense of Mayer – Chapter 1