Walden University Professor Timothy Powell Robert L Hopkins Jr. Group C July 16, 2010

Students learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included. Extraneous material competes for cognitive resources in working memory and can divert attention from the important material, can disrupt the process of organising the material, and can prime the learner to organise the material around an inappropriate theme. (Mayer, 2001, p.113)

Triarchic instruction is based on the assumption that in all subject areas, low achievement is sometimes caused by students not understanding what they are reading. Triarchic instruction targets the three main thinking skills identified : analytical skills creative skills practical skills

Learning using PowerPoint can increase or decrease learning because if there is to much visual processing will interfere with learning. Visual overload Audible interference Lost of information

On way to loose you students is visual overload. Theory involves understanding how many discrete units of information can be retained in ones short term memory.

Coherence Principle! Definition! Eliminate extraneous material to reduce the processing of extraneous processing. The multimedia lesson contains extraneous words that do not support the goal. Research Support! Mayer et al., 1996; Harp & Mayer, 1997, 1998; Moreno & Mayer, 2000, Mayer et al., 2001 (Review: Mayer, 2005)!

The overload scenario can occur when a multimedia instructional message contains to much detail.

This is a example of visual overload. In this picture you couldn’t See the person didn’t have socks on because the picture was moving around to much.

The cognitive theory of multimedia learning helps explain this by stating that learners are actively trying to make sense of the presented material by building a coherent mental representation, so adding extraneous information gets in the way of this structure-building process..

When you think you’re impressing people by putting everything you know on your PowerPoint slide, you’re actually doing the opposite by shutting down their cognitive processing. And when people are sitting there bored, they’re likely not thinking positive thoughts. When it comes to PowerPoint, less is more

Generative thinking enables students to apply what they learn in school to their lives. Practical skills include, but are not limited to, applying knowledge to an everyday problem, thinking of practical facets of new knowledge, or implementing a newly acquired piece of information.

Coherence Principle: This principle means that you should avoid using unnecessary texts, graphics or sound only for decoration or to make things more interesting. "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" (Dewey, 1913).

I personally connect with the coherence principle because I see myself as a student and as an instructor informally assessing the learner's processing of novel learning events. When I am a student engaged in a novel learning event, I try to regulate my own working memory by consciously off-loading incoming memory elements. If I see myself becoming confused, I begin reviewing the current memory elements to better process the learning event.

Dewey, J. (1913): Interest and effort in education. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin Clark, Ruth Colvin and Mayer, Richard E. (2003). e- Learning and the Science of Instruction. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer. Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. Cambridge, UK: New York: Cambridge University Press. Mayer, Robert. (2009) Multimedia learning (2 nd ) Cambridge University press