Keep Graphics and Text Close Together

Below I have listed the important points that were discussed in this week's reading. 

In designing or selecting e-learning courseware, consider how on-screen text is integrated with on-screen graphics. In particular, when printed words refer to parts of on-screen graphics, make sure the printed words are placed next to the corresponding part of a graphic to which they refer.

When there is too much text to fit on the screen, the text describing each action or state can appear as a small pop-up message that appears when the mouse touches the corresponding portion of the graphic. This technique is called a mouse-over or rollover.

One problem with rollovers is that they are transient. The text box disappears when the cursor moves to a different location on the screen. Thus, rollovers may not be appropriate for situations in which it’s important for the learner to view more than one block of rollover text at a time or to take an action that relies on rollover text.

Alternatively, fixed screen displays can be used when it is important to see the text and graphic together. On a fixed screen, the graphic can fill the screen and text can be embedded within the graphic near the element being described.

In this screen the learner’s answers (checks in boxes) have been carried over from the question screen and placed next to the correct answer allowing a quick and easy comparison without paging back.

Having access to reference material is a good idea for memory support. However, if the resulting window covers the graphic example that it describes, the contiguity principle is violated. A better solution is to link to a window that is small, can be moved around on the main screen, and/or can be printed.

A better alternative is to put the step-by-step directions in a box that can be minimized or moved on the application screen.

The problem with this layout is that the learner must scan between the number and the legend, which creates wasted cognitive processing. A more efficient design would place the name and part description near the corresponding part on the visual. The text could be placed in a rollover box or in a fixed display on the screen. If the learner will benefit from seeing several parts simultaneously, leaving them on the screen in a fixed display would be better than a rollover box that disappears when the cursor is moved.

A better solution is to present the printed text in a separate box to be viewed independently of the animation.

When words and pictures are separated from one another on the screen, people must use their scarce cognitive resources just to match them up. This creates what can be called extraneous processing— cognitive processing that is unrelated to the instructional goal. When learners use their limited cognitive capacity for extraneous processing, they have less capacity to use to mentally organize and integrate the material.

When words and pictures are integrated, people can hold them together in their working memories and therefore make meaningful connections between them. This act of mentally connecting corresponding words and pictures is an important part of the sense-making process that leads to meaningful learning

Putting corresponding words and pictures far apart from each other creates what they call split attention, which forces the learner to use limited working memory capacity to coordinate the multiple sources of information. Split attention occurs when the learner continually has to look back and forth between two or more locations on the screen. You should avoid instructional designs that cause split attention because they force the learner to waste precious cognitive processing on trying to coordinate two disparate sources of information.

People learned better from an online lesson on the human heart when pop-up windows containing text appeared next to the part of the graphic they described, rather than having the text at the bottom of the screen.

In a more recent meta-analysis of published research on spatial contiguity, in twenty-two out of twenty-two experiments students performed better on learning tests if they received integrated rather than separated presentations, yielding a median effect size greater than 1.

It seems reasonable that we can simplify this process for all learners by breaking text into chunks, and by placing each chunk of text near the part of the graphic that it describes.

An eye-tracking analysis showed that students in the integrated group made more eye movements between corresponding words and graphics than students in the separated group, suggesting they were more engaged in building connections between corresponding words and graphics. Making connections between corresponding words and graphics is a major step in meaningful learning according to the cognitive theory of multimedia learning.

Spoken words (that is, narration) that describe an event or element should play at the same time as the graphic (animation or video) is depicting the event or element.

Reference

Clark, R. C., Mayer, R. E., (2016). e-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning, third edition (4th ed.). San Francisco, Calif: Pfeiffer.