What's your opinion?

Interesting and thought provoking reading

 

Stansbury, M. (2008, March 6). Analysis: how multimedia can improve learning. Retrieved from http://www.eschoolnews.com/2008/03/26/analysis-how-multimedia-can-improve-learning

 

This article was very interesting and gave me food for thought.  The point Stansbury (2008) makes is that research has shown that the use of multimedia certainly improves learning for many students.  Although it would appear that the most learning occurs when students work individually if working with simulations or equivalent.  Also she refers to sensory input  "...Therefore, the more sensory input there is, the greater the risk of overload–and the greater the risk of leaving information out of long-term memory."  What does this mean for group work, where the sensory input could be extremely high, overhearing over groups chatting etc?  So many ideas being discussed at once, more facial expressions, body language etc to absorb???

I couldn’t help but think about the contradiction of this article with my knowledge of the research regarding groupwork. So now I feel there (I wish I had more time) is a need to do further research regarding (face-to-face) groupwork and on-line collaborative tasks.

"When students shift from non-interactive multimodal to interactive multimodal learning (such as engagement in simulations, modeling, and real-world experiences–most often in collaborative teams or groups), results are not quite as high, with average gains at 9 percentiles." [compared to non-interactive multimodal learning].

She notes that pictures and text need to be presented simultaneously. (Temporal Contiguity Principle)

Students learn best when all 'extraneous' words, pictures and sounds are removed.  (Coherence Principle)

On the whole I found myself a little confused by some of the information in this article, I feel she is saying let the 'media', be it books, online etc teach for itself, by keeping pedagogy separate and that ultimately multimedia is good when students work individually.

Would love to hear someone else's opinion on this article. 

Does it says that multimedia doesn’t mix well with Vgotsky's social constructivist approach?