e-Learning Principles
Richard E. Mayer is an American educational psychologist best known for his contribution to the field of educational psychology and multimedia learning theory. His research is at the heart of cognition, instruction, and technology, with a focus on how to help people learn in ways so they can transfer what they have learned to new situations.
Memory retention improves when we use concise narration and graphics. It also suffers when we include irrelevant stories, details, graphics and sounds. As a learner, you brain tries to make sense of what we see on the screen.
Developing eLearning can be just as tricky as looking at a map of a town you don’t know. It can be overwhelming if you don’t tell learners where to look and miss the important details. This signaling principle advocates the use of voice and visual images to help the learner focus, organize, and process content.
This principle states that people learn better from graphics and narration than from Graphics Narration and ONSCREEN text. By adding graphics and narration, you are repeating the message but in different format.
Learners will skip something that is too hard to understand. This principle reminds us how important is to make sure that on screen text and narration align with the graphics.
Long term knowledge retention can be improved by breaking content into bite sized segments. Good eLearning gives the learners breaks.
If you know that the concept you will be teaching is complex, give your learners an introduction of key components, key terms and underlying ideas in advance.
This principle states: use graphics and narration instead of graphics and printed text.
Use a conversational rather than a formal style. When learners feel that you are talking to them they are more likely to try to make sense of what you are saying.
This principle states: speak in a friendly human voice rather than a machine. This principle increases the learner’s motivation and commitment to learn.
People learn more deeply when onscreen agents display human-loke gesturing, movement, eye contact, and facial expressions.