Hello! I am Danielle Petitmermet and today I am going to talk to you about my key takeaway from EDTECH 513: Multimedia at Boise State University.

In this course I learned about the three major goals of Multimedia Learning. These goals are to minimize extraneous processing, manage essential processing, and foster generative processing. Each of these three things is essential in learning as learners have a limited amount of processing capacity in their visual and auditory channels.

Although all three of these goals are important to learning, minimizing extraneous processing stood out as the most important for myself as an educator to remember in the classroom in order to support student learning.

This course has truly shown how important it is to minimize, or reduce extraneous processing. This processing is such that is unnecessary to learning and takes away from the limited mental capacity of a learner. In order to support learning it is important to reduce the extraneous processing that is taking place, so that a learner can focus on what is important. In other words, we want the learner's two channels, visual and auditory, to be able to take in the information that is truly important for success, not the information that is unnecessary or distracting. To support learning by reducing extraneous processing, there are four principles of multimedia learning that can be applied to teaching to support students.

The first of these principles is the Coherence Principle. The coherence principle states to not add extraneous words, graphics, or audio. In other words, it is important that we do not add any material that is not directly supporting the instructional goal. If you look at this slide itself, there is no background graphic so that the focus is not taken away from the information being presented. There are also a limited amount of words to ensure that only the key information is included. By utilizing tactics like this, extraneous processing can be reduced.

The Contiguity Principle also serves to reduce extraneous processing. This principle calls for aligning words to their corresponding graphics. You can see that here in the image of the coal power plant. The words are next to the parts of the image that they represent, or in the case that they cannot directly be next to the image, they are shown with an arrow. In this case, the learner does not have to search to put the words with the picture that they represent. Another way to do this is to synchronize spoken words with the corresponding graphic. Each of these two ways of corresponding words and graphics takes a load off of the learner and in turn minimizes processing that would otherwise be taking place.

Like the coherence and contiguity principles, the redundancy principle also minimizes extraneous processing. This principle asks us to present words as spoken narration or as written words, but not in both. This is because when we use both words and narration, both the visual and auditory channels for processing are being used, which creates extraneous processing. As an example, we can look at the image on the slide. If I were to explain to you how to find the volume of each cube, I would want to do it either in written words on the slide, or by telling you through my spoken words. In this case, I would choose to do it through speaking and I would work you through multiplying length times width times height. This way, I have minimized processing by not have written and spoken words.

Finally, the worked example principle also supports reducing extraneous processing. This principle aims to provide a step-by-step demonstration for performing a task or solving a problem. This is particularly useful when the content is challenging for the learner. Using worked examples aids in minimizing extraneous processing because the learner can see what to do rather than having to process information into their own use. The image on the slide shows a worked example of the task of formatting a document. This kind of skill can be challenging for learners, so having a worked example allows them to see what it is they are asked to do rather than to synthesize information for their own use.

In conclusion, reducing extraneous cognitive processing is my major takeaway from EDTECH 513: Multimedia. I personally feel that this is incredibly important in supporting the learning of my students. I can see in my own classroom when I am not mindful of the four principles that minimize extraneous processing that my students have a more challenging time being successful because they have a harder time processing the important information. I will strive to utilize these four principles: coherence, contiguity, redundancy, and worked examples to support the learning of my students. This is important because as a teacher my goal is for my students to learn and grow and it is my job to help them do that. Minimizing extraneous processing plays a major role in ensuring the success of students by supporting their limited processing capacity.

Thank you for joining me today.