“The multimedia effect—people learn more deeply from words and graphics than from words alone.”
—Clark & Meyer, 2016, p. 81
Though multimedia seems familiar to many in social media and EdTech circles, there is more to it than meets the eyes. Over the past seven weeks I had the pleasure of enrolling in EdTech 513: Multimedia, which is predicated upon the various principles from Richard E. Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (see YouTube clip below). This course, offered by Boise State University, unpacks multimedia through the lens of e-learning and approaches it from the perspective of evidence, both experiential and research-based, that supports learning. Learning has long been said to be both an art and a science. However, as this course, through the seminal text of Clark and Meyer (2016), has made clear, learning is becoming far more of a science. It is best approached this way if we are to teach in ways that students actually learn rather than how we commonsensically think they learn or should learn, which is often a reflection of how we learn—our preferred mode of learning, which implies the use of learning styles that turned out to be without research merit and thereby an educational myth. Hence, rather than base our instruction on common sense, it is best to have research that supports and augment the effectiveness of our instructional design.