The Cambridge Handbook Of Multimedia Learning

Digital and online learning is more prevalent than ever, making multimedia learning a primary objective for many instructors. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning examines cutting-edge research to guide creative teaching methods in online classrooms and training. Recognized as the field's major reference work, this research-based handbook helps define and shape this area of study. This third edition provides the latest progress report from the world's leading multimedia researchers, with forty-six chapters on how to help people learn from words and pictures, particularly in computer-based environments. The chapters demonstrate what works best and establishes optimized practices. It systematically examines well-researched principles of effective multimedia instruction and pinpoints exactly why certain practices succeed by isolating the boundary conditions. The volume is founded upon research findings in learning theory, giving it an informed perspective in explaining precisely how effective teaching practices achieve their goals or fail to engage.

The updated second edition of the only handbook to offer a comprehensive analysis of research and theory in the field of multimedia learning, or learning from words and images. It examines research-based principles to determine the most effective methods of multimedia instruction and uses cognitive theory to explain how these methods work.

This 2005 book constitutes comprehensive coverage of research and theory in the field of multimedia learning.

An evidence based, rigorous text reviewing 12 principles of experimental studies grounded in cognitive theory of multi-media learning.

The multiple, related fields encompassed by this Major Reference Work represent a convergence of issues and topics germane to the rapidly changing segments of knowledge and practice in educational communications and technology at all levels and around the globe. There is no other comparable work that is designed not only to gather vital, current, and evolving information and understandings in these knowledge segments but also to be updated on a continuing basis in order to keep pace with the rapid changes taking place in the relevant fields. The Handbook is composed of substantive (5,000 to 15,000 words), peer-reviewed entries that examine and explicate seminal facets of learning theory, research, and practice. It provides a broad range of relevant topics, including significant developments as well as innovative uses of technology that promote learning, performance, and instruction. This work is aimed at researchers, designers, developers, instructors, and other professional practitioners.

This book presents eight evidence-based strategies that promote generative learning, which enables learners to apply their knowledge to new problems.

The book explores a cognitive load perspective on instructional guidance. Cognitive load theory is focused on instructional design implications and prescriptions that flow from human cognitive architecture, and it has become one of the leading theories of instructional design. According to this theoretical perspective, the purpose of instructional guidance is to reduce learner potential cognitive overload by providing appropriate information in the right time and in a suitable format. As the learner’s level of prior knowledge is considered as the main factor influencing this decision, the effect of learner prior knowledge on effectiveness of instructional methods (the expertise reversal effect in cognitive load theory) provides the basic framework for the book. The fully-guided direct instruction and minimally-guided inquiry (discovery or exploratory) learning are often discussed in instructional psychology literature as examples of approaches with opposed degrees of guidance provided to the learners. This book considers the whole range of the levels of guidance (including intermediate levels) and approaches the problem of balancing learner guidance from a cognitive load perspective. The significance of this approach is in applying our current knowledge of human cognitive architecture to develop an integrated instructional approach bringing together the best features and advantages of direct instruction and inquiry learning. Both direct instruction and inquiry learning approaches have been around for long time, and their proponents can produce evidence of their effectiveness. This evidence needs to be treated within the context of appropriate learning goals in specific instructional settings for specific types of learners. This book provides an unbiased theoretical framework for managing learner instructional guidance and working principles for selecting appropriate levels and methods of instructional guidance (e.g., sequences of exploratory problems and explicit instruction; forms and levels of embedded guidance; and adapting methodologies) optimal for learners at different levels of prior knowledge.