Multimedia and Time Notes

DUAL PROCESSING
"According to dual-processing theory, students should remember more of the verbal material when it is presented as narration than when presented as text."

I wonder also what the impact is on having two senses being involved, hearing and seeing. Is there a synergy there and what would happen if you could add a third sense. I would guess this would help even more in retaining what is being seen heard and felt or tasted?

"The design of multimedia presentations should be guided by the goal of presenting relevant information using words and pictures and by the goal of presenting words and pictures in a way that fosters active cognitive processing in the learner."

So I interpret this as saying you can't overload the student with just the information but rather need to help them engage with the material so that there is some cognitive processing.

What's All the Fuss About Instructional Time?

"...instructional time allows for understanding, prediction, and control, thus making it a concept worthy of a great deal more attention than it is usually given in education and in educational research."

"To generalize, any proposal to change instructional materials or teaching practices in the classroom that does not affect allocated time, engaged time, the rate of success, or the alignment of tile curriculum with the outcome measure that is used to assess learning is likely not to affect student achievement."

Nine Facets
Allocated time: time for instruction (e.g. scheduled time, 300 hours a year in math)
Engaged time: time students pay attention to something w/instructional goal (attention)
Time-on-task: engaged time on particular learning tasks
Academic learning time: part of allocated time in a subject-matter area in which a student is engaged successfully in the activities or with the materials to which he or she is exposed, and in which those activities and materials are related to educational outcomes (allocated time, time-on-task, success rate)
Waiting time: waiting for instructional help time
Transition time: noninstructional time before and after an actviity
Aptitude: amount of time a student needs, under optimal conditions, to reach some criterion of learning
Perseverance: amount of time a student is willing to spend on learning a task or unit of instruction
Pace: amount of content covered during some time period

Figure 1.1
Carroll defined learning through time variables: Degree of learning = f Time spent learning / Time needed to learn

Figure 1.2 Visual representation of ALT model
Learning is a direct result of minutes accrued during ALT (part of allocated time during which a student is engaged with materials and activities in which a high level of success is attained, and in which the materials and activities are related to outcomes that are valued.)

ALT can help us understand instruction and what will impact it. STRUCTURING is an example of this.

"there may not be a more sensible example of "quality instruction" than the one derived from the ALT conception of learning. For example, on entering a classroom, an observer discovers that the students are attending to academic work related to the outcomes for that subject matter, and that the work is being successfully completed, and that enough time was allocated to that subject matter to be of some value to students of that particular age. These components of ALT are what every citizen and school board member wants to see when they enter the classroom." 2nd to last paragraph

The point here is that research, evaluation, audit, consultation, and policy analysis for school improvement each require the use of different instructional time variables for their different purposes.

STRUCTURING
For example, structuring by a teacher (announcing where students should be, what they should be doing, and what they are responsible for; giving directions; providing advance organizers; and so forth) helps students understand their responsibility in a learning task, increasing their perseverance and thus their academic engaged time (the measure of perseverance). Structuring also is a safeguard against students working on the wrong task, thus increasing the likelihood that what they work on is related to the outcomes that are likely to be assessed. And structuring is likely to increase success rate by reducing confusion about the learning task. Because three of the ALT factors could be affected by appropriate structuring behavior on the part of teachers, such teachers are likely to have higher levels of ALT.