The Self-Explanation Principle in Multimedia Learning
From Eduwiki
1. What is the Self Explanation Principle?
An effective, deep learning strategy that engages students in actively constructing and monitoring their knowledge to help them understand complex phenomena better by providing explanations during learning.
2. Key Cognitive Mechanisms of Self Explaining
Generating inferences to fill in missing information Integrating information within the study materials Integrating new information with prior knowledge Monitoring and repairing faulty knowledge
3. Studies show that self-explaining…
Is trainable Can be beneficial even when explicitly elicited/prompted Can vary greatly among people in terms of quality & quantity Can require scaffolding that goes beyond prompting or training Takes place more frequently with students having greater prior knowledge Is more necessary for effectively learning in multimedia than single media context
4. Medium Matters for Self-Explanation
Frequency – lowest in text-only situations, more frequent in multimedia situations and most frequent is diagram-only situations (36%, 68% & 92% respectively) Learning Gains – Roughly equal for text-only and multimedia learning context. Substantially higher in a diagrams-only context (22%, 20% & 43% respectively)
5. Instructional Design Implications
AVOID... Placing undue cognitive load on the learner by presenting related text and diagrams closely The use of unrelated information The duplication of messages across 2 different modalities that use the same information processing channel (such as text and narration)
ENCOURAGE... An environment that assists learners to think inwardly and reflectively Students to monitor and test their evolving understanding The generation of new inferences in which the learner relates information within and between media and relates this to prior knowledge Verbal self explanations versus written/typed explanations Students to generate as well as explain their own diagramsE...
