Meyer’s Multimedia Learning theory suggests we can design multimedia materials to best effect by adhering to 12 principles:
- Coherence Principle – exclude extraneous words, pictures and sounds.
- Signalling Principle – include cues that highlight the organisation of the essential material
- Redundancy Principle – exclude redundant material which interferes with rather than facilitates learning.
- Spatial Contiguity Principle – corresponding words and pictures should be presented near together rather than far apart.
- Temporal Contiguity Principle – Corresponding words and pictures should be presented simultaneously (not separately).
- Segmenting Principle – short, user-paced segments are better than as a continuous long presentation.
- Pre-training Principle – People learn better from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and characteristics of the key concepts.
- Modality Principle – graphics and narrations are more effective than animation and on-screen text.
- Multimedia Principle – People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
- Personalisation Principle – words should be in conversational style rather than formal style.
- Voice Principle – Narration in multimedia lessons is spoken in a friendly human voice rather than a machine voice.
- Image Principle – People do not always learn better from a multimedia lesson when the speaker’s image is added to the screen.
Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Video explanation
Video – Tara Kacz (no date) Mayer’s Theory of Multimedia Learning. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aq2P0DZqEI (Accessed: 5 August 2021).