Assignment 5 Redesign of instructional materials

Reflection:

         When participating in this assignment, I knew I wanted to redesign some of the materials I used as a football coach.  For the most part, my instructional PowerPoints and visual aids do a really good job of following multimedia principles and dual coding.  However, when I enter coach mode, I lean on textual information and play diagrams.  I use these as guide points for lecture, and teaching while on a white board in front of a small group.  Most of these PowerPoints are designed for meetings before we go to practice.  Therefore, it made so much sense to redesign these large textual presentations in a more appealing way that met the guidelines of visual and media literacy.  As I reflected back on some of the presentations I used for teaching our offensive linemen about plays or concepts, I realized that I had designed poor materials for their consumption. 

         As football coaches, we have a tendency to want to explain everything in vast detail.  As a teacher, I want to do this as well, but when it comes time to instruct football I now feel backward as a teacher.  Perhaps it is the requirement of verbalizing, illustrating, teaching, and then physically performing a task that makes coaches so urgent in explaining too much.  The fear of underexplaining a physical movement or assignment that then leads to no success from a player which then foster low confidence is a real burden carried by many coaches.  As we have gone on and learned in class, I feel that I have done a great disservice to many of my players by not embracing the same instructional strategy as I do when teaching a full class of 30 or so learners English or History.  My football visual aids are not even close to the visual aids I use as a classroom teacher, and I wanted to change that.

         The first slide is the written overview of our Blue/Red run game.  There is a title, and then there is a massive amount of text.  This would be put up on a projector board, as I would then speak, and illustrate on a whiteboard.  After going through this slide, we would then watch some video clips to further instruct the concept.  As you can see, this is not a very effective slide at all.  There are no images, flat colors, it isn’t very personal, or visually appealing.  I would not read from this slide as I presented, I would speak and coach and have this slide present, but how could kids both listen to me and gather the information from the slide?  There is too much text to read while also processing whatever I might be saying verbally.  The players would have to choose to read the slide, or to listen to me.  This is not a good tool for instruction and learning.

         In redesigning this slide, I applied many of Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning.  The first is the Multimedia Principle, which requires a mix of words and pictures.  Images must illustrate key points, and be relevant to the information presented.  In order to achieve this, I inserted a visual of the offensive line, and color coded it to match the name of the play.  I also purposefully color coded words and images to match the concept, and added an image of a key above the play word to build a connection between the word and the defender.  I color coded anything that would relate to the word blue or red as an instructional function, and added a star image to get the attention of the players so that they would know immediately what they are looking at before I even spoke.  This mixture of words and images makes the slide functional, visually appealing, and allows me to use the spoken word while my players engage with the slide.  Secondly, I applied the coherence principle to the redesign.  I feel that the information and visuals are aligned and streamlined in a much clearer way than the original slide.  You can see that I cut some information, and reworded some information to make the slide more functional.  I also utilized the Spatial Contiguity Principle in trying to maintain a close relationship between the visuals and the text on the slide.  Another principle that I worked to achieve is the Segmenting Principle.  This states that information should be segmented or chunked in a way that makes the information accessible.  The first slide had a lot of information over many elements of the play, in the redesigned slide I cut some information out to lessen the information contained in the slide to only that which was absolutely necessary.  My players would also receive the Pre-training Principle in regards to this presentation, because they would have a lot of background knowledge on football verbiage, acronyms, and so on before viewing this presentation.  So, some of the information that might seem advanced or unclear to a non-football person, would be readily known by my players.  I designed the vocabulary and writing in a way I know my players would understand.  Lastly, I tried to incorporate the Personalization Principle.  In the redesign, I added our school logo, and used words like “we” and “our” to make the presentation more personal to the offensive linemen.

         The redesign of the first slide is successful because I can project this slide, go over it, and have my players be able to make connections through visuals and through my instruction.  I can narrate through this slide, use the images as examples, and actively instruct from the redesigned slides.  I feel that this redesign will improve the information retention of my players, and my ability to teach them concepts.  I did use a little more text in the first slides, because they are introductory and I would have my players have access to these outside of the meeting room, so I would want to provide some text for them to be able to review on their own.  However, I was able to eliminate a lot of text in the second slide redesign and apply the Multimedia Principles in a greater way to the second slide I redesigned. 

         You can see that the second slide is a large amount of text, and an image of the play being executed.  The second slide is bland, and would in no way keep the interest of players in a presentation format.  It looks more like a textbook than a multimedia presentation.  What I did with the second slide is to make sure to utilize the Multimedia Principle and Redundancy Principle.  I mixed words and pictures in a way that eliminated a lot of reliance on words, and allow the visuals to be enhanced by my verbal instruction.  I think the slide looks much better this way and can function in a presentation much better this way.  I also think this slide embraces the Modality Principle in which students learn better from visuals and spoken word than from visuals and text.  With this redesigned slide, I can use visuals to properly explain the play and instruct players on the intent, purpose, and rules.  The visual element of this redesign really helps this slide function so much better than the original.  I again personalized the slide with the Tift logo, and language use.  I also utilized the Signaling Principle by integrating the image of a key over phrases.  This provides a visual link, and a link to previous slides and information and makes the presentation flow in a more cohesive way.  Overall, I feel this redesign is much cleaner and vastly improves on the original slide for the purpose of a visual aid.  I can actually instruct off of this slide, and my players have strong visuals to guide their learning.  This ties directly in to dual coding because now my players can build connections between what they see and what they hear. 

         Both slide redesigns incorporated many elements of Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning.  These slides support dual coding theory because I am able to verbally instruct through these slides in a meaningful way.  Before, they read like boring text books and had no visual appeal.  Now, students can interact with them while I provide additional verbal support that enhances and expands on the slides.  Students can build connections between what I am saying, and what they are seeing in a much more powerful way that will increase retention and build connections.  The purposeful color coding, images, and limited text make these redesigned slides a much better tool to instruct High School football players a concept that they can learn about in a meeting and then go apply on the field.