Author: shoneliu

I believe everyone has used PowerPoint for a presentation, this week I decided to make an infographic using Canva instead. In the infographic I created, I tried to update both the design and the content while also incorporating more multimedia ideas.

Which design principles did you use to create your infographic in Canva?

I choose a basic timeline template because it is clear to read and very simplistic. This infographic sticks to a colour scheme of three colours which are blue, light blue, and beige (background colour) throughout. By doing this, cognitive overload is prevented.

I start by using the Pre-Training Principle when I speak about the content. To give students a basic overview of Victoria University, I included a title description. In order to reduce the workload on working memory, I then employ the redundancy principle by eliminating all redundant information. Instead of the lengthy sentences in Wikipedia, I have transferred the words to brief segments after the subheading, which also complies with the segmenting and coherence principles (point of time).

Which elements of a ‘good infographic’ were you able to incorporate?

1. Focus on alignment
2. Use hierarchy
3. Leverage contrast to accentuate important design elements
4. Use repetition
5. Have balance
6. Optimize colour
7. Leave lots of negative space

The video provides visual examples of 14 infographic dos and don’ts to help designers create better infographics.

What other principles did you consider?

Because the UVic infographic is a timeline of the university’s history, I did not include any graphics other than the university logo. If I chose to include images in the infographic, I will use the temporal contiguity principle to display corresponding words and images at the same time.

References

The Canadian Encyclopedia. (n.d.). University of Victoria. Retrieved October 7, 2022, from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/university-of-victoria

Wikimedia Foundation. (2022, September 27). University of Victoria. Wikipedia. Retrieved October 7, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Victoria

What did you find when you ran the WAVE accessibility report on your blog post(s)? What did you expect and what was surprising? Is there anything you will do differently going forward?

Surprisingly, there were 6 contrast errors and 17 alerts when I ran the WAVE accessibility report on my blog post from last week. On the web, the layout may appear to be acceptable in some cases, but the WAVE Accessibility report will highlight any issues. I will always run a blog post through WAVE in the future.

Have you used Text to Speech tools before? Did you find it useful? Did you try out some of the different voices? What impact did the different voices have on your ability to absorb information?

As a non-native English speaker, the pronunciation function in the dictionary app is my first impression of Text to Speech tools. I have not tried the specific Text to Speech tools, but I have listened to the audio while reading some online research papers. For instance, GALE OneFile uses a female voice and speaks at a moderate pace, which I think makes it easier for me to understand what is being said.

What role do you think media and multimedia can play in a learning environment designed with UDL guidelines in mind? Which of the promising practices for text, images and video are in alignment with these guidelines?

In the video, Shelley Moore describes the four evolution processes of inclusion:

1. Exclusion
2. Segregation
3. Integration
4. Inclusion

The practice of teaching students from various backgrounds and abilities in the same classroom is known as inclusion. Every person has a different capacity for learning, so it is crucial to choose multimedia resources that will best meet the needs of each individual student. Giving students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge through text, images, or video can result in imaginative and motivating results.

What does inclusive design mean to you?

Inclusive design means diversity to me, taking into account various nationalities, races, languages, cultures, gender identities, and even mental health conditions. UVic is trying to provide an accessible, inclusive environment. Centre for Accessible Learning (CAL) supports students with disabilities and health issues, learning strategists, tutors, and full service notetakers. After joining, instructors and others will create learning environments that are inclusive and usable, which could help students with disabilities to have the same access to education as everyone else.

This video explains the three types of loads in Cognitive Load Theory – Intrinsic, Extraneous, and Germane. This week, we will focus on the intrinsic cognitive load.

Intrinsic Cognitive Load

Some tasks are more challenging to master than others, which may result in an intrinsic cognitive load. Working memory ability in students is put under stress by intrinsic cognitive load (Mayer, 2009). There are a lot of examples in our day-to-day studies. For instance, as a student majoring in economics, Econ 313 (Intermediate Microeconomics II) is much more difficult than Econ 103 (Principles of Microeconomics). This kind of cognitive load cannot be reduced without also reducing learning because it depends on the material to be learned. According to John Sweller (Sweller et al., 2011), the intrinsic cognitive load “can only be altered by changing the nature of what is learned or by the act of learning itself”.

There are three principles related to the Intrinsic Cognitive Load. By understanding and applying these principles of multimedia teaching and learning, new knowledge can be absorbed more effectively and less easily forgotten over time.

Segmenting Principle

When a multimedia message is delivered in user-paced segments as opposed to one continuous piece, people learn more effectively. The example that comes to my mind the clearest is how to write a research paper. Students usually find it challenging to meet the word requirements while maintaining a high standard of writing when writing an academic paper. The process can be divided into different steps, each of which makes the process easier.

1. Choosing the subject
2. Collecting information
3. Evaluating materials
4. Organizing ideas
5. Writing the paper

Pretraining Principle

When the foundational ideas for a multimedia message have been established, people learn more deeply from it. In the Econ 313 course I mentioned before, it is much simpler for students to put concepts together and learn more complex topics, once they have a foundational understanding of microeconomics from an earlier course.

Modality Principle

Compared to pictures and printed words, people learn more deeply from images and spoken words. I use the photo below to explain.

References

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Sweller, J., Ayres, P., & Kalyuga, S. (2011). Cognitive Load Theory. Springer New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8126-4

Why am I taking this course?

This is my first EDCI class, as well as my first time using WordPress. I am taking this course to learn more about multimedia learning and interactivity. I expect to learn through multimedia and to use multimedia to demonstrate my understanding. Furthermore, we are more accustomed to using social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter to post a few sentences or photos. I believe WordPress is a good platform for us to post blogs and hear other people’s perspectives, which reflects the variety of multimedia and interactive learning.

What is Multimedia Learning?

Building mental representations from words and images is a goal of multimedia learning (Ayres, 2015). Richard Mayer presents a “cognitive theory of multimedia learning” in his extensive study on how to organize multimedia content to improve learning. There are three assumptions made by Richard Mayer based on cognitive load theory:

1. The Dual-Channel Assumption
2. The Limited-Capacity Assumption
3. The Active-Processing Assumption

Mayer distilled his findings into 12 principles based on a huge number of experiments. Moreover, he believes learning knowledge should be an active process, not a passive form like knowledge transmission (Mayer, 2009).

Reference

Ayres, Paul. (2015). State-of-the-Art Research into Multimedia Learning: A Commentary on Mayer’s Handbook of Multimedia Learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 29(4), 631–636. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3142 COPY CITATION TO CLIPBOARD

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.