Substantial Post – Theories of Multimedia Learning

To start, this diagram stood out to me because it is a clear visual that depicts how overloading the working memory leads to inefficient learning. I want to ensure that my educational comic has visuals similar so that is has high understandability. It was really interesting to learn that there are two channels where we process information; one is for language/verbal information, and the other is for images. The topic that resonated with me most out of the article was Mayer’s principle of Dual Coding Theory, because I have always been drawn to images over words. I find it significantly easier to retain and understand information when it is alongside visuals. Learning about the detachment between the channels in the brain helped me understand why it works well for me. This made me reflect on how, in class, when I am trying to process information, I often do sketches in addition to the written notes I am taking to help me fully grasp the concepts at hand. In addition to to the Dual Coding Theory, I was pleasantly surprised to hear that redundancy hinders learning. In previous classes, I have really struggled when teachers have a large number of slides with no visuals, which makes the concepts hard to grasp. I  always felt as though I was just bad at the class, but it made me feel seen and showed me why it is so important. Now I know that thoughtfully curated slides makes a bigger impact than just putting lots of information up on the screen. With this knowledge, I now want to cut down on the amount of information I have on my comic to make it easier to understand. I already was particular about the amount of words I had on it, but after learning about this I believe I need to cut down on it even more.