Effects of segmenting, signalling, and weeding on learning from educational video

Abstract

Informed by the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, this study examined the effects of three multimedia design principles on undergraduate students' learning outcomes and perceived learning difficulty in the context of learning entomology from an educational video. These principles included segmenting the video into smaller units, signalling to direct students' attention to relevant information, and weeding to remove any non-essential content (SSW). It was hypothesized that the SSW treatment would decrease perceived learning difficulty and facilitate the transfer of knowledge and the structural knowledge acquisition. Results of the study demonstrate that participants in the SSW group outperformed the non-SSW group on the tests of knowledge transfer and structural knowledge acquisition and reported lower levels of learning difficulty. These findings support the use of SSW to help novice learners organize and integrate knowledge from complex, dynamic audio-visual media like video.

Effective Educational Videos: Principles and Guidelines for Maximizing Student Learning from Video Content

“…Specifically, instructors should seek to minimize extraneous cognitive load and should consider the intrinsic cognitive load of the subject when constructing learning experiences, carefully structuring them when the material has high intrinsic load. Because working memory has a limited capacity, and information must be processed by working memory to be encoded in long-term memory, it is important to prompt working memory to accept, process, and send to long-term memory only the most crucial information (Ibrahim et al ., 2012). …”

“…For example, signaling may be provided by the appearance of two or three key words (Mayer and Johnson, 2008; Ibrahim et al ., 2012), a change in color or contrast (deKoning et al ., 2009), or a symbol that draws attention to a region of a screen (e.g., an arrow; deKoning et al ., 2009). By highlighting the key information, signaling helps direct learner attention, thus targeting particular elements of the video for processing in the working memory.…”

“…Mayer and Moreno (2003) and deKoning et al . (2009) have shown that this approach improves students’ ability to retain and transfer new knowledge from animations, and Ibrahim et al . (2012) have shown that these effects extend to video.…”

“…Segmenting can be accomplished both by making shorter videos and by including “click forward” pauses within a video, such as using YouTube Annotate or HapYak to provide students with a question and prompting them to click forward after completion. Both types of segmenting have been shown to be important for student engagement with videos (Zhang et al ., 2006; Guo et al ., 2014) and learning from video (Zhang et al ., 2006; Ibrahim et al ., 2012). …”

The effectiveness of signaling principle in virtual reality courseware towards achievement of transfer learning among students with different spatial ability

“…Signaling principle is Mayer's principles in multimedia learning. The principle can reduce the cognitive load of students and reduce the difficulty of students to master the information presented in the learning process [12]. Also, Chen [13] found in his study that students who were using the virtual reality with signaling principle are significantly outperformed than students who used to virtual reality without signaling principle.…”