Revisiting Multimedia Learning Theory: Managing Essential Processing in eLearning
Welcome to Part Three of our Illuminating Insights blog series, Revisiting Multimedia Learning Theory. We’ve been exploring educational psychologist Richard Mayer’s cognitive theory of multimedia learning and its application to eLearning design.
According to Mayer, good multimedia learning design reduces extraneous processing, manages essential processing, and fosters generative processing. In this blog post, we’re going to discuss some instructional design approaches that will help learners be better able to manage essential processing during a learning experience.
What is essential processing?
Essential processing is the cognitive effort needed to hold essential information in working memory. Learners must first hold information in their minds before they can connect the pieces and truly understand the material.
Essential processing is sometimes called “rote learning,” where learners can recall material as presented, such as definitions, images, and concepts. This kind of learning is typically tested with quizzes that focus on recalling information. Rote learning is often a critical step toward deeper learning (generative processing).
The difficulty of essential processing varies depending on how complex the material is and how familiar the learner is with the topic. For beginners, essential processing can be more challenging compared to learners with more background knowledge.
As instructional designers, our job is to create learning experiences that help learners manage essential processing so they can hold key terms and concepts in their working memory. Let’s explore Mayer’s three research-backed strategies for managing essential processing in multimedia learning.
Strategies for Managing Essential Processing
Mayer recommends:
- Breaking material into smaller, meaningful parts and letting learners control the pace.
- Providing pre-training to learners on key concepts before the main learning experience.
- Using pictures and spoken words instead of pictures and onscreen text, when appropriate.
Breaking material into smaller, meaningful parts and letting learners control the pace
Imagine you’re designing an eLearning course for healthcare employees, teaching them how to register new patients. The process involves talking to a patient on the phone and completing forms in medical record software.
Which course design would be more effective?
- Design 1: The learner watches a 10-minute narrated video explaining and showing the new patient registration process. At the end, the video automatically advances to a quiz question.
- Design 2: The learner sees an infographic of a 10-step process. They click on each step, and a short video (1-minute) plays for each one. Learners can replay each video at their own pace before moving on to the next step. After viewing all 10 steps, they select a Continue button to take the quiz.
According to Mayer, Design 2 is more effective. It breaks the material into smaller, meaningful parts (the 10 steps), and learners can control the pace. This way, they can focus on one step at a time and fully process it before moving on. On the other hand, Design 1 presents all the information in one go, which could lead to cognitive overload because learners may not have enough time to process each part before the next is introduced.
Segmenting and letting learners control the pace is especially important when the material is complex, the presentation would otherwise be fast-paced, and when learners are unfamiliar with the topic.
Providing pre-training to learners on key concepts before the main learning experience
According to Mayer, people learn more deeply from a lesson when they already know key terms and concepts before diving in. Without this background knowledge, learners struggle to hold essential information in their working memory, making it harder for them to form meaningful connections.
Let’s revisit the example of registering new patients. Part of the process involves entering health insurance information into the system. If the learner doesn’t understand terms like “policy number,” “group number,” or “HMO” vs. “PPO,” they may become confused, causing cognitive overload and making it difficult for them to absorb the full, 10-step registration process.
In this case, providing pre-training on health insurance terminology would help. Pre-training should be integrated effectively and considered in the overall course design. Also, not all learners will need pre-training, so offering the option to skip or test out of it can be useful.
Using pictures and spoken words instead of pictures and onscreen text, when appropriate
In a previous post, we discussed that people possess separate cognitive channels for processing visual and auditory information. The visual channel handles what we see (like images and onscreen text) and the auditory channel handles what we hear (like spoken words and music). Each channel has a limited capacity, so presenting one channel with too much information can lead to cognitive overload.
To avoid this, Mayer suggests using spoken words along with visuals. This frees up the visual channel to focus on images and keeps the auditory channel engaged with spoken explanations.
For example, in our patient registration course, using narration to explain how the medical record software works allows learners to focus on the software interface, rather than reading text while watching the screen.
However, there are many cases when text on the screen is helpful, such as when the pace of the lesson is slow or in the learners’ control, or if the lesson is not in the learner’s first language.
Conclusion
By applying these strategies to your instructional design, you can help learners manage essential processing and keep important information in their working memory. This will set them up for deeper, more meaningful learning.
In the next post, we’ll explore Mayer’s recommendations for fostering generative processing to create rich, meaningful learning experiences.
Reference
Mayer, R.E. (2020). Multimedia Learning (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316941355
