Week Eight

What have you learned in the course about designing instruction from a multimedia perspective?

I have learned that designing instruction with multimedia may help learners learning more effectively than just a single media. It also make instruction harder and sometimes may cause less motivating for learner. I would prefer to use more than one media to make instruction that will help the learning be more effective. But one should be careful in designing multimedia instruction so it does not cause cognitive overload for learner

A meta-analysis of 63 studies on interactive video found that 50 out of 100 effects were significantly positive and only 5 were negative (McNeil & Nelson, 1991). There are are growing number of studies evident that multimedia have both positive and negative effect on learning.

I agree with Clark is that media should not cause cognitive overload for learner rather support the cognitive process. But overall, I would be more aligned with Kozma’s (1994) argument, “learners will benefit most from the use of a particular medium when its capabilities are employed by the instructional method to provide representations and cognitive operations that are salient to the task and the situation” (p. 18).

The important aspect of designing instruction is to link it to solid design principles that support effective learning. I have learned that designing instruction from a multimedia perspective can be motivating and interesting to students. However instruction must be carefully designed using the proper learning theory.

From a Constructivist perspective, the role of the teacher is a manager or coach. Learning is construct through one’s own experiences. Dewey (1938) explained about learning experience in his model of experiential learning as learning is a dialectic process that integrates experience and concepts, observations, and actions. The experience gives ideas and ideas gives direction to impulse. Postponement of action is necessary for observation and judgment to intervene. Also, action is essential for achievement of purpose. Dewey (1938) believed that “ all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated to each other.” Dewey explained two aspects of equality of experience-agreeableness and effects on later experience. “He specified two principles of experience being educative- principles of continuity and the principles of interaction. Experiences build on previous ones and they need to be directed to the end of growth and development. Interaction is the lateral dimension of experience where the internal and objective aspects of experience interact to form a situation. These two principles interact and unite to form longitudinal and lateral aspects of experience (Dewey, 1938)”.             The purpose of interaction is to derive learning from experience through reflective thinking. Dewey called this process a scientific method.

References

Clark, R.E. (1994). Media and method. Educational  Technology Research & Development, 42(3), 7-10.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, Collier Books.

Kozma, R.B. (1991). Learning with media. Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 179-211.