This is my takeaway insight for EDTECH 513, taught by Patrick Lowenthal, this summer of 2022.

First and foremost, this was another creative, innovative, interesting and eye opening Boise State EdTech course. It's fascinating to see that, even after so many years of teaching online, I still have so much to learn and explore. This course delivered a great insight into the use of multimedia in an online course: it provided research-based principles as to the why and how, it challenged me to learn new technical skills, and explore new applications, as well as learn about possible pitfalls. In this presentation I want to focus on three of the five promises of e-learning and two pitfalls, as can be found in the first chapter of our textbook which address many if not all multimedia principles we discussed this summer.

Promise 1: Customized Training

The one concept that stuck with me after reading the first chapter of our textbook was the importance of the effectiveness of the courseware. Ultimately, whether material is presented online or face-to-face, whether it's synchronous, hybrid, or asynchronous, on a tablet, on slides, in a web browser, or chalked on an old-fashioned blackboard: as instructors and educators, it is imperative that we determine that the method we choose to deliver our content is compatible with the various learning processes of the learner, and that it's built on research-based standards of course design. We are to consider what best meets the needs of our learners.

Research has shown that adopting a more conversational, personal style of communication in our delivery helps students learn better. Applying the Personalization and Embodiment principles from Chapter 9 to our online content will quickly convert a standard instructor-led online course to one that involves the student in the process of learning, becoming an integral part of the experience.

Promise 2 - Engagement in Learning

So then, how do we assure optimal learning? For one, we should look at the human cognitive processes that are involved in learning, and adopt a learner-centered approach to the development and delivery of the course.

In this promise, it is also important that I analyze my own personal view of how learning works, as this will/may heavily influence my development strategy. In this case, I strongly adhere to the "knowledge construction" view. This view consists of three principles: people have separate channels for processing visual and verbal material, they can only process a limited amount in each channel at one time, and people learn best when they actively engage with the content, processing it, and connecting it with previous experiences and knowledge.
This then forms a format around which to initially build a course: provide various channels, with a moderate number of impressions, and provide opportunities to process, organize, connect and internalize the newly gained knowledge before proceeding to the next component in the course. By applying the Segmenting and Pretraining principles as stated in chapter 10, we can break down complex information into bite-size pieces, ensuring that we don't lose them in the process.

It may be tempting to simply surmise from the chapter that adding graphics and animations to course content is sufficient to increase active learning in the course. The sentence "Simply presenting information is not all there is to instruction, because the instructor's job is also to help guide the learner's cognitive processing during learning" (p. 86) highlighted the importance of ensuring that the multimedia components added provide text support. It is important that they support the text, and help understand the material, and not just perform a decorative role. People learn better from words and pictures, than from words alone. This is the Multimedia principle.

And that takes us right into the pitfalls. Pitfall 1 states that too much of a good thing can be detrimental to the learning of our students. The human cognitive system is limited, and the way we process new information can be negatively influenced if we don't adhere to several principles. The first one, the Coherence Principle, states pretty much that "less is more", and that adding extra material can actually hurt learning. In order to determine what content to include, we should look at the instructional goal of the lesson. What is it that we're trying to achieve, and how can we do that as cleanly and unclutteredly as possible? In other words, how can I make sure that my students don't get overload on the brain and check out, either mentally or physically?

The second principle that can prevent this pitfall is the Redundancy principle: explain visuals with words in audio, or in text, but not both. Adding this kind of redundancy to the materials will overload the visual channel, thereby wasting limited processing capacity of the information that is presented.

Pitfall 2 is about not having enough of a good thing. Whereas in Pitfall 1, the amount of material and information could easily be overwhelming, Pitfall 2 highlights the failure to provide our students with enough information to make an easy connection. For example, the Applying the Contiguity Principle, where you align words to corresponding graphics, and help the learner immediately associate the two. The contiguity principle emphasizes the need to allocate printed or spoken words close to the images they describe, so that the learner can connect both at the same time. This avoids extra processing, as well as cause split attention, by the learner to associate the visuals with the spoken or written word.

Lastly, losing sight of the goal is another big pitfall. It behooves us to let the expectations, limitations, and capabilities of the recipient, the needs of the learner be the guiding factor in determining what tools and technology we use, and ultimately the instructional goal we have set out to achieve, and not the technology itself. Learners with a higher knowledge of the topic will benefit better from content-related animations, for example, without the need for explanatory verbiage, whereas lower knowledge learners will benefit greatly from the added explanations. Sensitivity towards the level of knowledge is therefore recommended.