In the article Multimodal Learning Through Media: What Research Says, Charles Fadel (Global Lead, Education) states, “There is a lot of misinformation circulating about the effectiveness of multimodal learning, some of it seemingly fabricated for convenience. As curriculum designers embrace multimedia and technology wholeheartedly, we considered it important to set the record straight, in the interest of the most effective teaching and learning.”
Remember this? <---cute pun.
We remember...
10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we see and hear
70% of what we say
90% of what we say or do
According to this article, the "Cone of Learning" idea created by Edgar Dale,is often misused. The Meriti Group disapproves of this idea because the shape of the cone "is not related to retention, but rather to the degree of abstraction." The only beneficial truth in the cone is that towards the bottom of the shape when more senses are engaged.
So how to people learn?
Educational Psychology Refresher
3 types of memory:
-sensory memory
-working memory
-long term memory
Answer to...how people learn:
- students preconceptions of curriculum must be engaged in the learning process (trigger a priori knowledge).
- expertise is developed through deep understanding (engage in a deep thought process)
- learning is optimized when students develop "metacognitive" strategies (think about thinking/ predict outcomes/ make sense of something)
So... teaching styles that include a variety of media are most effective because more senses are triggered. Major increases in achievement levels are possible when teaching styles "adapt to include a variety of media, a combination of modalities, levels of interactivity, learner characteristics, and pedagogy based on a complex set of circumstances." However, sometimes it's best to for students to work individually to build automaticity.
I agree, Molly--there was a lot of meat to this article. However, I felt the most important part was the little quandrant model with the numbers. That was what really drove the article home for me. I felt that we read a lot about the working memory et al in educational psychology. However, there were a few new (and very interesting) pieces of information. For instance, I thought it was interesting that the article said that redundancy actually decreases learning in mult-modal learning. Personally, I also found it interesting that multi-tasking significantly decreases efficiency and efficacy. I've found myself attempting to do about 39 things at once lately, and I know I'm not being as efficient as I could be!
ReplyDeleteI'm trying, through this class, to familiarize myself to technologies that I can use in the classroom. I feel a little bit like a grandma in terms of educational technologies! I loved the idea of making movies, like we did last week. I think this would be a great interactive learning kind of strategy. Perhaps something that might help with grammar might be a wiki or blog page where students can edit sentences and papers, thereby allowing students to actually engage proper grammar instead of being talked at. I wish I had better ideas...I'm listening though!
Despite the wrong-headed cone ideas, it seems clear that multimodal learning is an important thing to incorporate into the classroom in order to engage different learning styles.
I, too, found the quadrant model very interesting because of what it suggested about the effect of interactivity versus non-interactivity on learning basic skills and higher order skills. This certainly seems like another important idea to keep in mind when incorporating technology in the classroom. In selecting multimedia tools and resources and in characterizing the effectiveness of instruction supplemented with multimedia, one would need to be aware of this dynamic and many others pointed out in the article (and summarized by Molly).
ReplyDeleteThe only limitation to visual/verbal multimodal instruction which concerns me is that no matter how well the visual tools supplement learning, there are still many more learning experiences which are more concrete (e.g. on Edgar Dale's original cone: exhibits, field trips, demonstrations,...,direct purposeful experiences). While these experiences are much less frequently available in a school setting, I would hate to think that the easy accessibility of the "virtual world" would lessen educators' motivation to provide those other real world experiences for their students when possible.
I should have said "The only limitation to MULTIMEDIA instruction IN THE CLASSROOM which concerns me is....."
ReplyDeleteI agree that this article was a lot to take in. One thing I found interesting was how non-interactive multi-modal learning increased students’ basic skills more than interactive multimodal learning. In addition, the author noted that the 9% increase in basic skills from interactive multi-modal learning over single-mode learning was not statistically significant. The author provided no explanation as to why this may be the case; he stated only that research was still evolving. I could not come up with an explanation myself, so I would be interested in hearing others’ thoughts on the issue.
ReplyDeleteI also appreciated the author’s emphasis on combing the visual and the text for the learner (the “Multimedia Principle”). This made me think of how instructors should show students PowerPoint presentations like the one that Dr. Hofer made for us. This allows students to have a visualization of the concept while maintaining focus on the teacher’s narration (the “Modality Principle”). If a teacher wants to increase student higher-order thinking, she could have students create PowerPoint presentations like this (because interactivity increases higher-order thinking). I, like Emily, am a techno-grandma so I am not aware of other technologies that students could increase the interactivity of student learning.
There are a lot of overlaps with this and the course I am in about how the brain functions in memory and learning, so I am enjoying some cross-curricular connections.
ReplyDeleteI'm especially interested in the discussion on the brain being more or less unable to multi-task. Seemingly unlike the general public, I know that it is talking on the cell phone (not holding it or pushing buttons) that robs drivers of the focus they need to be giving to the road. There are interesting parallels to talking and driving and students dealing with all the outside sensory information that life sometimes delivers. I've heard people say that they can watch TV, talk on the phone, and do homework at the same time, but I don't believe they can actually focus on more than one at a time. As the article said,
"Our propensity to pay
continuous partial attention to multiple surroundings enables us to scan and rescan our
environment. But to encode any of the observations into memory requires us to pay
particular attention and to think specifically about that input."
This is relevant to teaching, because technology and multimedia must be carefully selected to augment, and not distract (or provide relief!) from the pedagogy. Unfortunately the line between distraction and supplement is surely different for every student. Teaching is nothing if not challenging.
Despite the fact that many of you refer to yourself as "technology grandmas," :) I think you've really zeroed in on the salient points of the article. When the authors describe the difference in learning between unimodal and multimodal interactive for basic skills as "insignificant," they just mean that the differences are so small that they might be explained by other variables (student differences, the content topic, etc.). Basically, they're suggesting that there may be no difference at all in using interactive tools to teach basic skills than what might be accomplished in a unimodal way.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate how you've been able to make connections with what you're learning in other courses. I hope this drives home the point that the effectiveness of teaching and learning with technology is really no different than other kinds of learning. It all comes back to careful planning, attention to learning styles and preferences, and pedagogical connections with content. Hopefully you'll find ways that technology tools may help support or augment instrucational approaches you're learning about in methods or observing in your placement schools.