September 22, 2022 – Below Average

This week we covered a few more of mayors principles of multimedia learning, and I found sketchnoting particularly interesting. I’ve used sketchnoting a lot in the past, my high school teachers used to call them super awesome study sheets (SASS), and I never knew they were an actual tool for communicating complex ideas.

This is an example of a sketchnote I made for my introduction to psychology courses.

Sketchnotes are visual, with few words. They include drawings, handwriting, shapes, and many visual elements, such as arrows, squiggles and boxes. Essentially, sketchnotes are a great way of summarizing a lot of information on one sheet of paper. “Sketchnoting For College Students,” by Doug Neil (2016), explained that sketchnoting can be a very useful tool for university students. Sketchnoting allows us to summarize key information and ideas from each course we are in. If we make a sketchnote for each unit for each class, we will have great summaries for studying for midterms and final exams!

Here is a super cute sketchnote about why we should sketchnote (Schwartz, 2019)!

When I use sketch notes in my courses, I find it easy to go back and find all the important information I need when studying for midterms and finals. I would recommend this to anyone, and I highly suggest buying yourself a big whiteboard for your apartment or dorm so that you can lay it on the ground and write down all the key information on one board for each unit or midterm topic. This is how I study for all my university courses; it has been like saving. If I was a teacher planning learning activities for my students, I would have them create sketch notes to summarize the unit once it has been completed. My high school teachers used to do this with me, and I still haven’t gone and looked back at them to this day.

This is a video of me relating sketchnoting to Mayer’s Multimedia Learning Principles.

I hope you enjoyed it!

Amelia

References

Neil, D., (2016, March 1). Sketchnoting for College Students. YouTube. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8qT7zAPcKk

Schwartz, K. (2019, November 3). Why teachers are so excited about the power of sketchnoting. KQED. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/54655/why-teachers-are-so-excited-about-the-power-of-sketchnoting

This week, we learned much about furious learning theories and multimedia learning. A couple of points resonated and stood out to me, such as the coherency principle, which can be used in screencasting.

Here is a screencast I created to sum up my blog post! Here is the link for the resource I discussed: https://waterbearlearning.com/mayers-principles-multimedia-learning/

Mayer’s coherence principle says we should use concise narration, contextual graphics and animation, and appropriate narration to help understand and retain memory when online learning (Wisc-Online, 2018). I could not agree with this principle more, and it surprised me that this is considered in the principles of multimedia learning. I have experienced issues with coherency myself throughout online education. Often teachers and professors throw so much information at you that it’s difficult to keep it organized and even more difficult to understand all the important information. I learn best when lectures and educational materials provided to us by professors are coherent first and then go more in-depth. Just as it’s difficult to learn calculus before you learn how to add and subtract, it’s difficult to learn more advanced topics before understanding the basics.

Here is more about the Coherence Principle!

Further, screencasting is a tool used and multimedia learning. Screen casting sounds like a foreign concept; however, it’s something we’ve probably all seen before. For example, Khan Academy videos are screencasts. It’s very important that screencasts are coherent with concise narration, contextual graphics and animation, and appropriate narration to help viewers understand the information and retain memory about what they learned while watching the video.

Here is an example of a Khan Academy screencast.

Thanks for the read, and I hope you enjoyed 🙂

Amelia

References

WiscOnlineOrg. (2018, October 30). The Coherence Principle. YouTube. Retrieved September 22, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTyr9P15JhI

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Day: 22 September 2022

Blog Post #2: Sketchnoting

Blog Post #1: Coherency Principle and Screencasting