Aligning Interactive Multimedia Development Practices With Mayer's Split-Attention Effect Principle

Background

Multimedia learning provides an informative set of principles to design instructional materials. These materials can include both visual and verbal modes of learning in the form of static pictures and illustrations, animations, on-screen text, etc. It can also involve the use of narration, whereby using audio to highlight essential information all throughout a presentation. The use of sound in multimedia learning helps to enhance learning by providing an extra channel of information to learners. The audio provides additional information that support different learning styles of learners. For instance, a learner might learn and acquire more knowledge while listening to the audio at the same time watching the visual information, than simply reading lines of text on the screen or watching the animated images. Although we say that pictures are worth a thousand words, audio will also add interest to the video. In this way, the instructional message will foster meaningful learning to take place and help learners to build constructive knowledge from the multimedia presentations.