Needless to say, as does happen in many organizations, nobody cared. The multimedia fiesta went on as planned, while my minimally developed (read: no narration) prototype went quietly into the pit of archives (I'm happy to say a few people did end up using it out in the field, so that's a quiet success).
That incident started to make me wonder whether or not there is some concrete published information on what's appropriate in terms of multimedia use. Of course there is. I found one nice summary (Schüler, A.et al, 2013) that spends time reviewing something called "The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning" (CTML), that Mayer (2005, 2009) introduced. CTML's central premise is that "that in order to benefit from multimedia instruction learners need to engage in active processing of [multimedia] materials.
What exactly does that mean?
Mayer framed two processing channels - auditory/verbal and visual/pictorial. The learner has to process these in some way. Mayer suggests that the order is auditory followed by verbal for the first and visual information, then pictorial for the second. And so on. The gist is that Mayer basically said, "don't overuse media in a way that results in cognitive overload."
But back to my question about narration and text. Is this cognitive overload? At DevLearn 2015 (previous post), one speaker in a session titled, "Going from ILT to eLearning" (Sean Putman) spent some time talking about narration and text. His opinion was that using text that matched narration was annoying and not very effective. A lot of professional training in the eLearning does this. They put the text and narration together. Some (Lynda for example) even highlight the text as it's being read. It's a script, essentially. The argument is that it is reference material
Mast (2015) asks the question (paraphrased), "How much multimedia is too much?". The question pertains largely to MOOC's and other more academic learning resources, rather than corporate training, but the Mast article also gives us a definition of eLearning as, "...any typeof learning that uses electronic instructional material delivered via the World Wide Web and an Internet connection." (with the proper citations, which honestly, I haven't looked up, so thank you Kimberly Mast for doing that research, and if anyone wants those primary sources, see the link to her article).
Again in Mast, a section discussing multimedia and learning theory provides a great deal of support from the Constructivist side of things (Constructivist learning is considered "the theory of the digital age" according to Mast). Constructivists define meaning in learning when new information fits into the student’s existing knowledge, as well as the student’s perception of the world around them.
As for cognitive overload and multimedia, Mayer & Moreno's article (2003) summarizes nicely 1) what demands multimedia learning puts on the learner and 2) what can be done to reduce excessive cognitive load. I think that Point #1 is interesting from an academic standpoint, but not practical enough for me to put in this blog entry. However, Point #2 is important because that's what I set out to discover through this wild goose chase. Mayer's main suggestions are:
1. Present text as narration along with visual material and not as text on the screen. This offloads visual information that may be extraneous and causing overload (text pertaining to narration - the exact thing Lynda does offer).
2. Sometimes, both visual and auditory channels are overloaded. In that case, the idea of segmentation may offer more time to learners to process information. Segmentation is essentially the chopping up of information into smaller pieces that are coherent and tightly organized. The time in between those segments could be managed by the learner.
3. Another way to reduce overload is to flip learning (flipped classroom) where students add knowledge prior to entering the learning environment. That is, they gain background knowledge through reading or some other modality, then enter a classroom for practical exercise or application.
4. Finally, weeding is the process of eliminating interesting but irrelevant information that is central to the learning goal. If weeding is not an option, then signaling is a way to give learners clues about what material is important and what material is not important. This might be using bold text, arrows, or different colors to help learners see what parts of a multimedia presentation really matter.
These are Mayer's findings, and they are pretty good ones.
Calandra et al (2008) also did an even more interesting, and arguably relevant study whereby they examined various instructional materials from corporate entities and surveyed the instructional designers about audio. Not surprisingly (to me, at least), they found that "In fact, intuitive rationale was reported as significantly more important than theoretical guidelines when making choices about audio use." The respondents reported using partial text in combination with full audio commonly (in line with offloading material to mitigate overload issues). Another interesting finding was that more than half the respondents kept their audio segments to one minute or less. That is very short, but in agreement with a previous study they had done.
The conclusion I draw here, which concurs with practice, is that excessive text and narration for the purposes of instruction is overkill. The text may be an added dimension but not something that should be simultaneous with visuals in copious amounts. Narration via auditory channel along with a rich visual channel is the best approach for complex topics and more effective at building mental images. The short text bursts may speak more to resources (speaking practically) than anything else, but too much "talking" certainly runs the risk of zoning out. I am guilty of this with my college lecture development and I should probably change my approach when it comes to recording lectures alongside slides. Too much narration without dynamic visuals is static and relies too heavily on the auditory channel with no real supplement. As for corporate style training, nobody likes shortness more than a stressed out manager or programmer, and so one minute or less probably helps them get to the point faster, especially if the topic is tightly presented.
Practical link here: When is Audio Narration Helpful?
Articulate Storyline Tips on Audio and Narration
References
Calandra, B., Barron, A. E., & Thompson-Sellers, I. (2008). Audio use in e-learning: What, why, when, and how? International Journal on E-Learning, 7(4), 589-601.
Mayer, R. E. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning. Cambridge University
Press.
Mast, K. (2015). Multimedia in E-Learning.
Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge: University Press.
Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning.Educational Psychologist, 38(1), 43-52.
Schüler, A., Scheiter, K., & Gerjets, P. (2013). Is spoken text always better? Investigating the modality and redundancy effect with longer text presentation.Computers in Human Behavior, 29(4), 1590-1601.
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