Hall of Fame

Media & design

As e-learning emerged from computer based training, some lessons were successfully carried over, others were forgotten or ignored. We are still woefully short of good research on what works and what doesn’t work in screen-based learning. So many programmes feel either dull, or as if they had been created from a media scrapyard. It is not clear to many designers how, in terms of learning, text works with audio, what size and quality of video is required, whether accompanying animation aids or distracts from learning and so on.

Fortunately a few academics have got to work on these basic questions, although their work is still relatively unknown, even among professional e-learning designers. Clark and Mayer, along with Nass and Reeves, stand out as pioneers in the empirical testing of issues that face most e-learning designers around the use of text, graphics, audio, animation, video and their combinations (see White Paper on Media Mix and e-learning by Donald Clark). These lessons have become even more important as increased bandwidth has led to an explosion in the use of audio, animation and video.

Mayer & Clark

Richard Mayer’s and Ruth are among the foremost researchers in the empirical testing of media and media mix hypotheses.

Their e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (2003) covers seven design principles; multimedia, contiguity, modality, redundancy, coherence, personalisation, and practice opportunities. Clear explanations are given about the risks of ignoring these principles - with support from worked examples and case study challenges.

Their precise studies have confirmed that our media mix in learning is often flawed, resulting in cognitive overload and dissonance. The poor use of text layout and dislocated pop-up text has also been identified as a serious weakness.

Petrhaps their greatest contribution has been in identifying redundancy as a serious problem in screen-based learning. Overwritten text and audio have been shown to reduce learning as have extraneous or distracting graphics and animation. Less is often more.

Multimedia and modality
Clark and Mayer (2003) argue that words and simple graphics can improve learning as they use separate cognitive channels, as opposed to text and graphics/animation which both use the visual channel. This is an argument for using audio and graphics without screen text. According to studies in Clark and Mayer (2003) audio or text on their own are better than text and audio together. This is confirmed by another study by Kalyuga, Chandler and Sweller (1999) where the group with audio scored 64% better than the group with both text and audio. They claim that one or other is redundant and will overload the visual and aural channels.
Contiguity
Mayer (1989), Mayer Steinhoff Bower (1995) and Moreno and Mayer (1999) in five separate studies compared graphics with text close to the graphics, and graphics with text below the graphics, at the foot of the screen. In all five studies, learners the co-located text and graphics resulted in improved problem solving of between 43-89%. Similar results have been found by Chandler and Sweller (1991), Pass and Van Merrienboer, (1994). Making the learner’s eye jump from one part of the screen to another is disruptive and reduces the effectiveness of the learning. E-learning has also introduced heavy doses of rollover text which is displaced away from the item over which the cursor rolls so that the pop-up text appears elsewhere on the screen at a distance from the item in question. The research confirms that this is to be avoided in learning programmes.
Redundancy
They claim that words in both text and accompanying audio narration can hurt learning. This is interesting as it is often assumed that one needs both to cover accessibility issues.
Coherence
One study by Mayer, et al (1996) presented 600 pieces of scientific learning and found that briefer versions, which were concise, coherent and co-ordinated, resulted in more effective learning. They are precise in their recommendations, ‘There is a clear pattern in which the more words added to the core verbal explanation, the more poorly the student does in producing the core explanative idea units. These results are consistent with the idea that the additional words overload verbal working memory, drawing limited attentional and comprehension resources away from the core verbal explanation.’ A review of studies around this concept, known as the redundancy effect, by Sweller et al (1998) cites a list of research studies that all point to the damage done to learning when redundant material interferes with the efficacy of the learning. For example; they illustrate a point about leaving out extraneous or distracting graphics in media with an experiment conducted by Harp and Mayer (1997) in which students were given a text to read on lightning strikes. Students who read the passage accompanied by elaborate colour photos with additional captions - as opposed to the text with simple graphics - showed 73% less retention of knowledge and 52% fewer solutions on a transfer test.
Conclusion
Clark and Mayer were among the first to seriously research the use of media in e-learning and have come up with empirically tested conclusions, often repeated by others, which suggest that many common practices in e-learning design are, in fact, wrong. They actually result in harming rather than helping the learning process. They call for simpler, less gimmicky use of media.

Bibliography
Mayer R E and Clark R, E-learning and the Science of Instruction (see p61 for multiple references), Pfeiffer, 2003

Mayer R E, Systematic Thinking Fostered by Illustrations in Scientific Text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 240-246. 1989

Mayer R E, and Gallini J K. When Is An Illustration Worth a Thousand Words? Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 64-73. 1990

Mayer R E and Anderson RB. Animations Need Narrations. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 312-320. 1991

Mayer R E and Anderson RB. The Instructive Animation: Helping Students Build Connections Between Words and Pictures. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 312-320. 1992

Reeves & Nass

Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass are two Stanford academics whose book ‘The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places’ is a key text on how we cognitively react to media.

People confuse media with real life, 'People can't always overcome the powerful assumption that mediated presentations are actual people and objects.' We react to media in the same way that we react to real people and real places. They provide a compelling case to show that that people confuse media with real life. It’s what makes movies, television, radio, the web and e-learning work.

Much design of computer software and e-learning ignores this fundamental principle and their real contribution comes in the many detailed empirical studies on basic design such as the use of manners, personality and social roles in the design of media. They also did groundbreaking research into the use of image size in video, fidelity of video and audio, synchrony and motion in media.
Media equals real life
The 35 psychological studies into the human reaction to media all point towards the simple proposition that media equals real life. By this they mean that people react towards media socially and naturally, even though they believe it is not reasonable to do so. 'People can't always overcome the powerful assumption that mediated presentations are actual people and objects.'

However, this is only true 'as long as a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules'. If the media technology fails to conform to these human expectations - we will NOT accept it. The spell is easily broken. We must learn to design our courseware as if it were being delivered by real people in a human fashion.
Politeness, flattery, personality, arousal
Take one example, arousal; arouse people at the start and they will remember more. The first experience many learners have in an e-learning programme is a dull list of learning objectives. There is a strong argument for emotional engagement at the start of an e-learning programme and not a list of objectives. On the other hand, persistent arousal can be counterproductive.

Another is our dislike of unnatural timing. Slight pauses, waits and unexpected events cause disturbance and audio-video asynchrony such as poor lip-synch or jerky low frame rate video result in negative evaluations of the speaker. Reeves and Nass (1996) have also shown that politeness, flattery, personality and many other features can help people adapt to computer mediated communication and learning.
Feedback
One study found that computers should praise people frequently, even when there is no reason to. Praise and blame are asymmetrical - we love to be praise and hate to be criticised, so give out criticism carefully and sparingly.
Specialists
With experts, respected and authoritative views can not only bring credibility to the programme, they can also increase learning and retention. People like identifiable personalities.
Audio and video
Audio fidelity is much more important than video fidelity. Learners expect consistently high quality at a consistent volume. They conclude that ‘For designers of multimedia, audio is a good place to invest. It appears to deliver more psychological bang for the buck’. Because peripheral vision is largely ill-defined and we are used to low visual fidelity in twilight, fog and so on, we are likely to cope well with low fidelity visual images. They tested their hypothesis by measuring attention, memory and evaluation of the experience when viewing video. Interestingly they could detect no difference between those who viewed low, as opposed to high, fidelity images. Taking their experiments further they also discovered that the size and shape of the screen and therefore image mattered more than quality. Large screens and images were preferable to higher quality. In other words larger wide screen format monitors have more impact than quality of image.
Conclusion
'If the designers of media would only follow their (Reeves and Nass) guidance, we would all gain through enhanced social graces in our interactions with media and technology' says Donald A Norman. Reeves and Nass have provided a single unifying theory about human-media interaction along with many detailed studies on specific facets of that relationship.

Bibliography
Nass B and Reeves B, The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places, Cambridge, 1996