Module 1 Reflection

Introduction

In Module 1 of EDCI 337, titled “How Do We Learn? Theories of Multimedia Learning”, we discussed the different theories behind how our brains learn and how we, as educators, could utilize the brain’s fundamental principles to engage our students and promote active learning.

Topics

The main topic we discussed was Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, or CTML for short. CTML was founded on the principles of Cognitive Load Theory, Dual Coding Theory, and Active Processing.

CTML uses those principles to create new principles that guide educators towards creating better multimedia content that manage Intrinsic Load (how innately difficult a topic is), promote Germane Load (the load on the brain when it is processing information and relating it to previously known ideas), and remove/limit Extraneous Load (outside load on the brain that occurs due to bad content design and unnecessary information, and limits the brain’s learning abilities).

Discussion

Now, while reading through Mayer’s principles, many of them seemed quite intuitive to me, like Pretraining and Segmenting, but a few surprised me. I was mainly surprised by the Image principle because in my first year of University, I benefitted from having my Computer Science professors’ faces on the screen because it allowed me to build a mental image of them as they spoke, so I was surprised to see that research had shown that it doesn’t positively affect learning. My experience could have also been affected by the fact that it was during the lockdown due to Covid-19, so having the professors’ faces helped with the social connection that was missing during that time.

Screencast

As part of this module, we were tasked with creating a screencast of us explaining a particular topic utilizing Mayer’s CTML principles. I chose a topic I am very familiar with: Coding! Specifically, What is Code?

When creating this screencast, I wanted to focus on the principles that managed Intrinsic Load, as coding can be a challenging topic. Pretraining was my main focus, and I tried to define things simply and explain them clearly throughout the video. Signaling was also a principle I tried to follow by only having important text on the screen and emphasizing important words and their definitions, but I struggled to do that AND follow the Redundancy principle as some of the concepts I narrated had to be included as text to highlight important areas and topics.

I created this screencast while imagining my audience to be newcomers to the field of programming. I tried to explain the topics as simply and clearly as possible so that anybody that sees the video can understand the idea and maybe become interested in the subject and try to learn more. I imagined this would be post on a platform like Youtube, so I tried to keep the video short, colourful, and interesting so that it may stand out in the platform.

Conclusion

I learned a lot from this module and quite a bit of it was surprising to me, but it was all incredibly interesting! I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at a screencast and my blog for this module. See you in the next one!