The Redundancy Principle in Multimedia Learning

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According to this principle: "Students learn better from animation and narration rather than from animation, narration, and on-screen text." This principle refers to the introduction of novel information. It is thought that presenting the same information in multiple forms could be a better way of teaching, but according to this principle, the working memory can not handle the different forms of information and makes it harder to put the information into your long term memory. When presenting multiple forms, learner is required to coordinate and relate thedifferent forms of the same information and still try to process the main idea. If the main idea is strong enough on it's own, it should be good enough to present with out the extra bells and whistles (and yes that is a technical term.)

In a study by Reder & Anderson, texts were summarised with summaries about 20% of the length of the original texts. The people who read the summaries performed consistantly superior over a variety of test questions including direct questionson text, questions requiring inferences, and transfer questions and it was maintained for periods up to 12 months. In reaction to their findings Reder and Anderson said,“To our surprise, all . . . Experiments indicated that subjects learn information better when they read an abridged or a summarized version of the original text than when they read the original chapter."

The tough part about the Redundancy Principle in Multimedia Learning:

-The principle does not indicate what material may or may not be redundant.

-Information that is redundant for one set of circumstances may be essential to another, information that is redundant for one person may not be for another.

-The redundancy principle does not lead to a simple, universally applicable rule

Works Cited

Mayer E., Richard. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009.