New research evaluates nearly three decades of work on multimedia learning, and explores the boundary conditions of when it enhances or hinders learning.
For a better exploration of education technology, to include its scandals, I recommend Audrey Watters' Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning.
My own take, in part based on what Frank Smith said long ago, is that technology can help insomuch as it helps children join a club of literate people. They learn "by participating in literate activities with people who know how and why to do those things." So for instance, students will readily pick up the lingo of their gaming communities or online social groups because they want to belong. If you doubt this, ask a teen or preteen right now what "6-7" means. If you give them a club to belong to, something meaningful to get done, they will learn. If whatever you're teaching appears not to have a use to them, they will readily forget or ignore it.
"Integrate new information with existing knowledge—linking what they're learning now with what they already know to apply it in novel situations. This enables transfer learning: using principles from one context to solve problems in another."
I'm always thinking of the chicken and egg problem as it relates to reading comprehension. At some point, we learn something NEW. What do teachers do during this introductory phase? From: Pathways to Information: Accessing Knowledge by Leveraging Language (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/pathways-to-information-accessing-15e?r=5spuf):
"Foreground, Background—Middle Ground: If, as Daniel Willingham asserts, reading comprehension requires relating the sentences to one another and then relating these sentences to things we already know, what is the role for learning new information through reading? How many of those sentences whose relationships we’ve analyzed need to be related to things we already know in order to understand new information and lay the foundation for tackling the next text that contains information that we don’t already know?"
I agree with Estelle Burton's comment: "Thanks for taking the heavy lifting out of reading the research."
Thank you, an excellent summation of multimedia and learning. I'm a cognitive psychologist who spent the first few decades of my career evaluating educational television and computer software--usually the one on one observation of learners. The intent was to guide educational producers in making production design decisions. I know Mayer's work well, and it certainly coincides with my 'boots on the ground' observations. I think there is yet another important principle relating to the integration of conceptual material across time and space in an educational program. I often see courses broken into micro-learning modules, but the integration of the micro-content is missing in the course. The onus is on the learners to 'piece' the bits together to formulate a wholistic view--often a mentally challenging task, made all the more difficult by distracting content.
I think that the philosophical biases that resulted in the supposition that “entertainment = engagement = education” could use some interrogation. I suspect that in the midst of rapid technological change, educators tend to drift toward the instrumentalization of education for economic preparedness, naively assuming that the adoption of such tools aids in said preparedness.
I guess that’s why so many well-resourced high school classrooms have come to look like my neighbourhood Starbucks - young people sitting at tables, AirPods in ears, staring at a tablet or laptop, while sipping on oversized Stanley cups.
So kudos to you, Carl, for helping to disrupt that trend in favour of what real learning looks like.
Thanks for taking the heavy lifting out of reading the research. Excellent piece of research.
For a better exploration of education technology, to include its scandals, I recommend Audrey Watters' Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning.
https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/5138/Teaching-MachinesThe-History-of-Personalized
My own take, in part based on what Frank Smith said long ago, is that technology can help insomuch as it helps children join a club of literate people. They learn "by participating in literate activities with people who know how and why to do those things." So for instance, students will readily pick up the lingo of their gaming communities or online social groups because they want to belong. If you doubt this, ask a teen or preteen right now what "6-7" means. If you give them a club to belong to, something meaningful to get done, they will learn. If whatever you're teaching appears not to have a use to them, they will readily forget or ignore it.
https://archive.org/details/joiningliteracyc0000smit
What a truly eye-opening and charming blog. I was genuinely impressed.
Readers might find this of interest: https://youtu.be/PEI9RFJFicg?si=o0nCG7Kl08W3ajAs
Have you thought about the irony of promoting a Youtube video about the harms of technology?
"Integrate new information with existing knowledge—linking what they're learning now with what they already know to apply it in novel situations. This enables transfer learning: using principles from one context to solve problems in another."
I'm always thinking of the chicken and egg problem as it relates to reading comprehension. At some point, we learn something NEW. What do teachers do during this introductory phase? From: Pathways to Information: Accessing Knowledge by Leveraging Language (https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/pathways-to-information-accessing-15e?r=5spuf):
"Foreground, Background—Middle Ground: If, as Daniel Willingham asserts, reading comprehension requires relating the sentences to one another and then relating these sentences to things we already know, what is the role for learning new information through reading? How many of those sentences whose relationships we’ve analyzed need to be related to things we already know in order to understand new information and lay the foundation for tackling the next text that contains information that we don’t already know?"
I agree with Estelle Burton's comment: "Thanks for taking the heavy lifting out of reading the research."
Thank you, an excellent summation of multimedia and learning. I'm a cognitive psychologist who spent the first few decades of my career evaluating educational television and computer software--usually the one on one observation of learners. The intent was to guide educational producers in making production design decisions. I know Mayer's work well, and it certainly coincides with my 'boots on the ground' observations. I think there is yet another important principle relating to the integration of conceptual material across time and space in an educational program. I often see courses broken into micro-learning modules, but the integration of the micro-content is missing in the course. The onus is on the learners to 'piece' the bits together to formulate a wholistic view--often a mentally challenging task, made all the more difficult by distracting content.
I will be sharing your article with our district teachers through my next newsletter! Thank you for this insightful information.
Very helpful breakdown, Carl. Thank you!
I think that the philosophical biases that resulted in the supposition that “entertainment = engagement = education” could use some interrogation. I suspect that in the midst of rapid technological change, educators tend to drift toward the instrumentalization of education for economic preparedness, naively assuming that the adoption of such tools aids in said preparedness.
I guess that’s why so many well-resourced high school classrooms have come to look like my neighbourhood Starbucks - young people sitting at tables, AirPods in ears, staring at a tablet or laptop, while sipping on oversized Stanley cups.
So kudos to you, Carl, for helping to disrupt that trend in favour of what real learning looks like.
https://open.substack.com/pub/walledgardenedu