TEXTBOOK REVIEW: MULTIMEDIA LEARNING 2nd ED., RICHARD E. MAYER

This textbook offers foundational knowledge on multimedia learning theories.  Never assuming, a priori, the validity of a multimedia approach over a single medium approach, the textbook explains the theories surrounding multimedia learning and their grounding in research.  The author, Richard E. Mayer is Professor of Psychology at University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1975 to present.  He has previously contributed on two textbooks about multimedia learning, and in his introduction he brings his long-term perspective, referencing the educational histories of 20th-century technologies.  Cautioning us, Mayer suggests we 

"consider the sad history of educational television – a technology that combined the visual power of the motion picture with the worldwide coverage of radio. By the 1950s, educational television was being touted as a way to create a 'continental classroom' that would provide access to 'richer education at less cost."

A girl tunes into the School of the Air, from her Outback home, in 1950's Australia
Source: http://lt.umn.edu/earthducation/expedition3/education/

 The idea of expanding learning like this has been fulfilled to a far greater extent than the early adapters of radio could have imagined.  The Internet is democratizing in many ways, but it is far less restrictive than radio because it blends mediums and removes certain time constraints inherent in radio communication.  Few had the foresight to imagine the restrictions of radio on learners how needed the extra, visual medium, or could they account fully for the failure of television (predicted to replace human teachers) to mediate classrooms and provide individualized attention. 

"Although different technologies underlie film, radio, television, and computer-assisted instruction, they all produced the same cycle. First, they began with grand promises about how the technology would revolutionize education. Second, there was an initial rush to implement the cutting-edge technology in schools. Third, from the perspective of a few decades later it became clear that the hopes and expectations were largely unmet."

Generally speaking, Mayer explains the failed expectations of technologies like radio (the advent of which, he suggests, birthed a certain futurist idealism toward education), television, and computers (both before and since the use of the Internet in classrooms) are not so much to the medium than as to the theory behind their use.

This is the technology-based approach, which is, theorizes Mayer, the "automation phase, [where] computers are used to replace humans on certain tasks", which is giving way for the 

"second phase of computer application – augmentation – involves the use of computers to enhance human performance on various cognitively complex tasks. Augmentation involves designing computer systems 'to act as assistants, aids, and power tools”

This shift in technology reflects the shift in multimedia learning toward towards learner-centered (rather than technology-based) approach and is finally making some good on the promise of improving both distance and classroom learning environments.  Academic writing can be heavy on predictions, but Mayer dissects the theories and methods that do and do not work in envisioning the future of education.

This textbook reads in two ways, a discussion of the history and theory of multimedia learning, and a manual for creating multimedia for learning.  To its' second end, the reader will find precise prescriptions for drafting multimedia, starting with the right the goal, the right theory.  Mayer argues that what he calls the information-acquisition view of learning is not a useful goal; it fosters recall, but not transfers of knowledge to new situations.  Multimedia should have the knowledge-construction view in mind, where the

"learner’s job is to make sense of the presented material; thus, the learner is an active sense-maker who experiences a multimedia presentation and tries to organize and integrate the presented material into a coherent mental representation."

The textbook takes a measured approach toward methods for creating effective multimedia presentations, arguing that situational considerations are a large factor (including the learners working memory capacity), but that certain methods are proven broadly more effective by studies of transfer testing.

Mayer finds that research supports a version of multimedia formats that adhere to the coherence principle, which calls for keeping multimedia presentations brief and concise.  Part of multimedia's effectiveness is that strips away extraneous information from a text by replacing it with visuals, but that to be most effective, visuals need to be simple, adding only essential information.  Length of presentation plays a large role in effectiveness also, therefor; lesson topics should be broken into segments of manageable ideas.  Streamlining extraneous information does not apply to redundant information, the representation of which signals importance and improves recall, in most situations.  The use of media should support the learner in constructing knowledge, or creating meaning, from multimedia.  Spatial continuity between text and visuals (as opposed to presenting one, then the next, in succession), allows learners to actively "build mental connections between them."  Further, multimedia with verbal narrations was shown more effective than that with text, when used in conjunction with visuals, perhaps because narration allows readers to process visuals and words simultaneously. 

As prescriptions for creating effective multimedia for learning, those are my major take-aways from the textbook.  The textbook is highly concerned with cognition and economy of implementation in multimedia learning, all of which is useful, and presented well.  On a last note, before rating the book, the author is writing in the first-person, presenting his views (and some of his research), which I find a relief from the endless barrage of passive sentence structures that accompanies most academic writing.  I give the textbook a two-thumbs-up.