Design Rationale

Educational technology is a field that has many different components, that of which are best explained in an audio and visual format. Compared to the usual two dimensional college manual or brochure, a multimedia video will be the most relatable way to display information regarding a technology based program to prospective students.

ELTECHS are committed to integrating the Five Steps in Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning as presented by Mayer in his book, Multimedia Learning. According to Mayer (2009), “Successful multimedia learning requires that the learner coordinate and monitor these five processes” (p.71). These steps include, “(1) selecting relevant words for processing verbal working memory, (2) selecting relevant images for processing in visual working memory, (3) organizing selected words into a verbal mental model, (4) organizing selected images into a visual mental model, and (5) integrating verbal and visual representations” (Mayer, 2009, p.71).

What we can do as instructional designers to help learners coordinate and monitor these five processes is to create multimedia presentations that reduce extraneous cognitive load and promote essential and generative processing. In order to reduce extraneous processing and avoid flooding learners’ audio/visual channels, the Redundancy Principle will be applied to our multimedia video. This principle indicates that adding on-screen narration that duplicates the audio already in narration will take away from the audio and visual channels working together to achieve active learning. For example, the use of closed captions in videos is redundant. Learners will focus on either reading the narration or watching the animation, which could lead to flooding the dual channels (audio and visual), and resulting in the failure of essential and generative processing occurring.

To avoid poor instructional design decisions, ELTECHS will focus on implementing the Modality Principle and the Multimedia Principle as proposed by Mayer. The Modality Principle focuses on the balance of audio and visual material, while the Multimedia Principle spotlights the idea of a presentation being enhanced by graphic representation as opposed to just words. Both of these principles promote active learning, or “meaningful learning that occurs when a learner selects, organizes and integrates knowledge in each (audio and visual) channel” (Reiser & Dempsey, 2018, p. 261). According to Mayer (2009), meaningful learning occurs, “when learners build systematic connections between word-based representations and picture-based representations” (p. 239).

We will incorporate all of these principles into a short 3 to 5 minute video with the intention that prospective students will understand the role of an educational technologist within the graduate program and in various professional settings. Our goal is to certify that our multimedia presentation gives concise information with a voice-over narration and appropriate word-based representation for prospective students of the UTRGV educational technology program.

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (Second). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2018). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (Fourth). Pearson Education.

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