As educators, understanding and incorporating the Modality and Redundancy principles will increase the effectiveness of our presentations. We can give our students a psychological advantage in learning by presenting information in a way that provides the opportunity for dual processing. Evidence has shown that presenting information that allows for visual and auditory processing can result in significant learning gains when done properly.
As we know from the Multimedia principle, when integrating appropriate images or graphics into our presentations, deeper meaning can be made from the pictorial representations provided. We can then further deepen this cognitive processing by adding speech to our presentations. If text is used rather than the spoken word, this can possibly create overload to one's working memory because the student is having to simultaneously process both the text and the image through the visual pathway. Likewise, when our presentations consist of on-screen text and audio that narrates the text (the Redundancy principle), the extraneous information can possibly create distractions during learning.
When utilizing spoken words in our presentations, this sends the information via the auditory pathway that is then processed in the temporal lobe. When providing images in our presentations, this send the information via the visual pathway to the occipital lobe. Combined together, this multimodal approach to teaching creates a multi sensory experience that more effectively engages the learning mind through dual processing.
As we know from the Multimedia principle, when integrating appropriate images or graphics into our presentations, deeper meaning can be made from the pictorial representations provided. We can then further deepen this cognitive processing by adding speech to our presentations. If text is used rather than the spoken word, this can possibly create overload to one's working memory because the student is having to simultaneously process both the text and the image through the visual pathway. Likewise, when our presentations consist of on-screen text and audio that narrates the text (the Redundancy principle), the extraneous information can possibly create distractions during learning.
When utilizing spoken words in our presentations, this sends the information via the auditory pathway that is then processed in the temporal lobe. When providing images in our presentations, this send the information via the visual pathway to the occipital lobe. Combined together, this multimodal approach to teaching creates a multi sensory experience that more effectively engages the learning mind through dual processing.