Description and Goal of Tutorial:

Mayer’s multimedia learning principles highlight the importance of reducing a student’s extraneous load to ensure individuals learn most optimally by not exceeding their cognitive capacity (Mayer & Fiorella, 2014).

The goal of my five minute tutorial is to utilize Mayer’s principles to illustrate how to use Microsoft Powerpoint and to highlight some interesting features of this extremely effective tool, which can be used in professional and educational settings. After watching the tutorial, viewers should understand the features of the homepage, how to upload pictures onto their presentation, how to add new slides onto their slide deck, how to change the font, colour, and size of text, how to share their presentation with peers, and understand the purpose of the record and audio feature.

Original Screencast Tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81BLOFxryEI

Note: I accidentally said “select” instead of “insert” when explaining how to attach a picture to a presentation slide.

Components of my Original Screencast that I Believe were Successful :

  • Dual-Coding Theory
    • This theory depicts that the brain contains two channels associated with verbal and visual stimuli. Despite these two channels functioning separately, they are connected to one another to allow for easy recovery of memory. My tutorial follows this theory by presenting visual and verbal information simultaneously, which will improve the viewer’s memory.
  • Mayer’s Segmenting Principle
    • I addressed the segmenting principle in my tutorial by enabling viewers to control the pace of the video through pausing, rewinding, or fast-forwarding. This ensures the viewer can watch the video at whichever pace works best for them to help maintain their cognitive load and improve their learning.

Updated Screencast Tutorial:

What I Changed and Why:

This was my first time using Youtube studio to edit my tutorial by incorporating subtitles and video descriptions into my video. I found this tool very useful and will definitely use it again to edit any future Screencast videos!

  • Subtitles/Captioning
    • Using the auto generated subtitles feature on Youtube studio, I included captioning into my video. I was extremely impressed at how well this tool functioned, but did need to correct a few grammatical and sentence structure errors as this tool converted my audio into very long run-on sentences. By editing the captioning into complete sentences and using quotation marks to highlight key words, I believe this will help guide the viewer through my video. Additionally, I incorporated subtitles into my video to ensure individuals that are hard of hearing could follow along with the tutorial. The subtitles and images presented simultaneously within the video also follows the temporal contiguity principle. Furthermore, the auto generated subtitles feature allowed me to recognize that I say the words “um,” “so,” and “perhaps” very often! Overall, this feature on Youtube studio was very efficient and easy to use and I will continue to add captioning into future Screencast videos to ensure greater accessibility for viewers.
  • Video Chapters and Descriptions
    • I included video chapters and descriptions into my tutorial as shown on the video progress bar and in the description section under my video. Following the signaling and pre-training principles, the description and video chapters act as a cue to emphasize and organize important topics of my video into categories to decrease extraneous load . This allows the viewers to easily click on a timestamp correlating to a specific topic such as how to upload images onto the presentation slide. By separating my five minute video into smaller sections through video chapters, this also aligns with the segmenting principle. Furthermore, because my tutorial does not need to be watched in order, the time descriptions and video chapters allow the viewer to easily control which aspect of the video they would like to watch. In addition, I asked viewers to list any questions in the comments section and I included a link to my WordPress blog for individuals interested in understanding the various multimedia principles I incorporated into my video.
  • Removed a Few Seconds at the End of my Video
    • In comparison to my original tutorial, I removed a few seconds at the end of my video which showcased myself attempting to stop the recording via Screencastify. I believe these last couple of seconds were unnecessary and is why I removed them, which aligns with the coherence principle.

What I did NOT change and Why:

  • Voice-Over Narration
    • I contemplated re-recording the voice-over narration of my video to eliminate some of the words I say very often such as “um,” “so,” and “perhaps.” However, after much thought I realized I did not want my video to sound overly scripted. I also really enjoy how the conversational language used and tone of my voice added a sense of personalization to my tutorial. As a result, I decided not to change the voice-over narration.
  • Title Pages or Headers for each Topic Discussed
    • I considered adding title pages or headers for each topic (i.e., uploading a picture, sharing the presentation with peers, and so on) I discussed. However, the redundancy principle depicts that individuals learn best with visuals/graphics and narration instead of visuals/graphics, narration, and text. Therefore, I decided not to incorporate title pages or headers to ensure viewers do not get overwhelmed.
  • Music
    • Following the coherence principle, which emphasizes the importance of excluding any unneeded or unnecessary content, I decided not to incorporate music into my tutorial as I believe this would have been irrelevant and distracting for viewers.

References

Clark, J. & Paivio, A., Dual Coding Theory and Education, Educational Psychology Review, VoL 3, No. 3, 1991

Mayer, R. E. (2009). Multimedia learning (2nd ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. https://ctl.wiley.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/MultimediaPrinciples_Summary.pdf

Mayer, R. E., & Fiorella, L. (2014). Principles for reducing extraneous processing in multimedia learning: Coherence, signaling, redundancy, spatial contiguity, and temporal contiguity. In R.E. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (pp. 279-315). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press