LESS IS MORE

Applying the Coherence Principle Adding Extra Material Can Hurt Learning

I have decided to record notes from the chapters because it helps me with creating eLearning courses. It is also a great way for me to review important materials. 

Here are my journal notes from chapter 8

Overview:

• Keep the lesson uncluttered
• Avoid adding any material that does not support the instructional goal
• Weeding refers to the need to uproot any words, graphics, or sounds that are not central to the instructional goal of the lesson
• Adding interesting but unnecessary material to e-learning can harm the learning process.

Diving Deeper:

Principle 1: Avoid e-Lessons with Extraneous Words

• The coherence principle recommends that you should avoid adding extraneous words to lessons.
• Subject-matter experts often like to incorporate considerable amounts of technical information that expands on the basics. We recommend against extraneous words added for interest, for elaboration, or for technical depth.
• Example study: “Students who received the lightning presentation without additional narration segments performed better on transfer tests than students who received the lightning presentation with added narration segments.”
• Example study: “College students performed better on retention and transfer tests concerning hydraulic brakes if they received a multimedia lesson only about hydraulic brakes, rather than the same hydraulic brake lesson along with lessons on two other kinds of braking systems.”
• Final thought for principle 1: “Some potential boundary conditions identified by Park, Moreno, Seufert, and Brunken (2011) and Mayer, Griffith, Jurkowitz, and Rothman (2008), respectively, are that adding irrelevant text to a multimedia lesson may be more harmful when students are under high cognitive load (such as when words are printed on the screen) than low cognitive load (such as when words are spoken), or when the added text is particularly interesting or attention grabbing.”

Principle 2: Avoid e-Lessons with Extraneous Graphics

• A second version of the coherence principle: Avoid adding extraneous pictures.
• When pictures are used only to decorate the page or screen, they are not likely to improve learning. 
• Interesting point: Dewey argued that adding interesting adjuncts to an otherwise boring lesson will not promote deep learning: “When things have to be made interesting, it is because interest itself is wanting. Moreover, the phrase is a misnomer. The thing, the object, is no more interesting than it was before” (pp. 11–12).
• Thus, adding interesting but unnecessary material—including sounds, pictures, or words—to elearning can harm the learning process by preventing the learner from processing the essential material. The cognitive theory of multimedia learning, therefore, predicts that students will learn more deeply from multimedia presentations that do not contain interesting but extraneous photos, illustrations, or video.
• Just keep it simple - learning can be improved by using modest levels of emotional design focused on the relevant visuals in the lesson.

Principle 3: Avoid e-Lessons with Extraneous Audio

• What about sounds? - “We recommend that you avoid e-learning courseware that includes extraneous sounds in the form of background music or environmental sounds. Like all recommendations in this book, this one is limited. Recommendations should be applied based on an understanding of how people learn from words and pictures, rather than a blind application of rules in all situations.”
• For the same reasons that extraneous words and graphics can be distracting, extra sounds can overload and disrupt the cognitive system, so the narration and the extraneous sounds must compete for limited cognitive resources in the auditory channel. When learners pay attention to sounds and music, they are less able to pay attention to the narration describing the relevant steps in the explanation.
• The cognitive theory of multimedia learning predicts that students will learn more deeply from multimedia presentations that do not contain interesting but extraneous sounds and music than from multimedia presentations that do.
• Example: For both lightning and brakes presentations, when students received both background music and environmental sounds, their retention and transfer performance was much worse than when students received neither
• Could there be occasional sounds? - When it comes to educational games and simulations, sound effects and music may play a useful role under some circumstances, but currently there is insufficient evidence to guide instructional game designers (Mayer, 2014a).

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.