Multimedia Presentations

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Main Tips/Methods to Incorporate in the Economics Classroom:

1. Students show better comprehension of concepts presented as diagrams/animations when they are presented with narration rather than text, known as the Modality Effect. This means when presenting graphs, like a demand curve, it is more effective to present the graph and give an explanation of it rather than present the graph with a written explanation. Presenting both a graph and written text overloads the visual learning system while failing to employ the auditory one. A graph presented with a verbal explanations employs both the visual and auditory systems, resulting in more effective transmission of information.

2. Students show better comprehension of multimedia explanations when it is presented in paced, student-controlled segments rather than a continuous presentation, known as the Segmentation Effect. This way, the student can make sure they understand one concept before being presented with another, presumably more complex one. Since the comprehension of abstract concepts builds on basic ones, students must have a strong base in order to properly comprehend higher ones. Asking students if they are ready to continue lecture once a unit is complete would be an example of this. Another example would be having a 'question session' after each main concept presented in lecture--this would provide student feedback and clarify any doubts they have.

3. Students show better understanding of a multimedia explanation when they are presented with background information (i.e. relevant jargon) prior to the lesson, known as the Pre-training Effect. By pre-training students, they waste less time attempting to understand logistical aspects of lecture and rather focus on the abstract concepts and ideas. Providing all students with a vocabulary sheet via email the night before lecture would be a great example of incorporating this. This way students enter lecture and are not distracted by attempts to understand economic jargon.

4. Students show better understanding of multimedia explanations when they lack extraneous information, sounds and images, known as the Coherence Effect. It is believed that unnecessary factors 'take up' cognitive processing away from necessary ones. The idea here is that students will be confused by the abundance of information and the need to sift through it to understand which concepts are relevant. Incorporating this idea in the economics classroom means prudence when creating powerpoint slides. One must must be careful to only include relevant information and not be swayed by the novelty of including elaborate explanations or unnecessary tangents.

5. In multimedia presentations that one cannot exclude extraneous information from, students show better understanding when educators signal which information is important (i.e. bolding important terms or underlining them), known as the Signaling Effect. An easy way to incorporate this concept would be providing students with a small outline which listed the main objectives of lecture. The use of bolding, underlining and the use of colors to indicate importance is another possible technique.

6. Whenever image-relevant text is used, student understanding is better when it is placed near the image it corresponds to, known as the Spatial Contiguity Effect. The assumption here is that students spend less time attempting to attach the image and the text and therefore have more cognitive capacity left over to understand more abstract concepts.

7. Comprehension is negatively affected when on-screen text mirrors lecture, known as the Redundancy Effect. For example, an explanation of diminishing marginal utility is given by a professor, but also concurrently presented in text on a powerpoint slide. It is believed that presenting the exact same information via the auditory and visual system results in cognitive overload. In order to avoid this, powerpoint presentations should be relevant to lecture but not be a word-by-word repetition.

8. Temporal Contiguity Effect - when presented with mixtures of narration and multimedia (i.e. a verbal explanation and an animation) students show better understanding if both forms are presented simultaneously rather than successively. For example, instead of explaining the income effect and then showing an animation that explains it again, the explanation and the animation should be presented in a sequential, simultaneous manner.

9. Spatial Ability Effect - this effect has to do personalizing multimedia presentations for each student. It holds that high spatial learners benefit more from simultaneous presentation of narration, sound and images and therefore should be presented with it.

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Bartsch, R. "Effectiveness of PowerPoint Presentations in Lectures." Computers & Education 41.1 (2003): 77-86. Print.

Jamet, E., and O. Lebohec. "The Effect of Redundant Text in Multimedia Instruction." Contemporary Educational Psychology 32.4 (2007): 588-98. Print.

Mayer, Richard, and Roxana Moreno. "Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning." Educational Psychologist 38.1 (2003): 43-52. Print.

Stern, E. "Improving Cross-content Transfer in Text Processing by Means of Active Graphical Representation." Learning and Instruction 13.2 (2003): 191-203. Print.