Note: This is cross posted at Smart Blog on Education.
Educational transfer is the point of education, right? If
students can’t use what we’ve taught them in new, real-life situations, then we
end up with students who are good at
school and bad at life.
Recent
research from National Academies Press reminds us that one of the best ways to promote transfer is
to balance students’ cognitive load while they consume or create multimedia.
Every time students are presented with a new idea or situation, the following
three processes happen simultaneously:
· Extraneous processing – This type of processing handles all of the “extra stuff”
that occurs within a situation. Extraneous processing is not related to the
task at hand, but it drains brainpower for kids. Consider what it would be like
to write a drum beat in a bowling alley. Filtering out all those crashing pins
would certainly take some work!
· Essential processing – This is the processing that is directly related to the
task at hand. It is the basic comprehension of the problem. Think of this as
the “main idea” of the learning situation. This is brainpower well spent.
· Generative processing – This is the most important type of processing. This is
where students make sense of a situation for themselves. In doing this,
students commit concepts to long-term memory where they can be retrieved for
future situations. (This type of processing directly promotes educational
transfer.)
In today’s digitally enhanced world, we often ask students to
create or consume something rooted in multimedia. This allows our students to
experience many different versions of the same idea. However, how often do we
consider which specific multimedia designs actually balance cognitive load and
promote long lasting learning and transfer?
Check out this awesome chart from National Academies Press
that summarizes twelve simple, research-based strategies for multimedia design:
Given
this, here are my three goals for 2013 regarding the creation and consumption
of digital media with educators and students.
1.
Use words in a conversational style.
Although tradition has made me think that formal language is required when I
interact with educators and students, this may actually inhibit their ability
to personalize and transfer what I say. In short, I’m going to use kid-friendly
language as much as possible with all audiences I serve.
2.
Pairing graphics and narration without on screen text. I love
words. I really do. However, I’m going to try to use less text when creating
and consuming multimedia. Even labels and citations will be off limits this
year. (I’ll put citations at the end, of course!)
3. Adding more and more pictures. I want to increase the number of pictures I
share (in my writing, my online courses, my workshops, my model lessons, etc.)
by a factor of 3. Providing pictures with narration assists generative
processing, so it will be well worth the effort!
Given
that we want to develop students who will be able to solve problems that don’t
exist yet, educational transfer is a very worthy goal. Promoting it via
multimedia design is an important step for connected educators.
If
you’re interested in reading the entire research report recently released from
the National Academies Press, it can be downloaded here for free. (It’s a great read!)
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