Substantive Post #1: Theories of Multimedia Learning

“People learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone” (Mayer, 2014). 

From an Early Childhood Education (ECE) perspective, many principles of the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning feel relatively familiar because they closely align with how young children naturally learn. For example, principles such as multimedia resonates with me. In my practice I constantly rely on pairing images with spoken or written language to support comprehension, especially for emergent readers and multilingual learners (Loveless, 2023). Children often demonstrate deeper understanding when concepts are presented through pictures, gestures, and stories rather than text alone. What surprised me more were principles such as coherence and redundancy, which challenge the assumption that “more is better.” In ECE settings, it is common to add songs, visuals, animations, and text simultaneously. Consequently it was quite surprising to know that research shows that unnecessary elements can overload working memory and distract from core learning goals

Current/past perspective on personal practice

This shifted my perspective to analyze my current and past practice. I realize that I have consistently followed the multimedia and dual coding principles by using visual schedules, storyboards, and picture-supported instructions to support children’s understanding. I have also noticed that when attending lectures or professional development sessions, I tend to make connections between ideas, which helps me process and remember information. This practice of mine is kind of similar to how dual coding supports learning by engaging both visual and verbal channels (Mayer, 2025). However, I have not necessarily applied the redundancy principle, resulting in representation of the same information through text, speech, and visuals simultaneously. Moving forward, I plan to be more intentional by simplifying content and choosing representations that support each other rather than duplicate each other. An interesting point to note is that this awareness changed how I view social media platforms like Instagram, which effectively combine minimal text with strong visuals to sustain attention and convey meaning quickly.

Moving Forward

As I begin to think about creating my own multimedia project, and young students as my audience at large, I would be particularly mindful of signalling, segmenting and spacial contiguity principles. segmenting, and spatial contiguity principles. These feel both achievable and essential when creating multimedia resources for young learners, as children benefit from clear visual cues, small bits of information, and closely aligned text and images (Loveless, 2023). Of all the principles,I also believe that the coherence principle may be more challenging, as playful and aesthetically rich materials are often valued in early learning contexts. Imagining my audience as young children, as well as my instructor and colleagues in this class, shapes my design choices significantly. Content must be developmentally appropriate, visually engaging without being overwhelming, and supportive of adult-child interaction rather than passive consumption. This aligns with Mayer’s emphasis on designing multimedia that supports meaningful cognitive processing rather than surface-level engagement (Mayer, 2025).