Review by: Dreier, Matthias (2004-07-02)

The research interests of Richard E. Mayer, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, are educational and cognitive psychology with a special focus on multimedia learning. In this publication he addresses the question whether there are media-independent instructional design methods.

The publication compiles the findings of several empirical studies, many of which conducted by Mayer and his team in Santa Barbara. Mayer describes four design methods according to the effects observed by the studies: (1) multimedia – students learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone, (2) coherence – students learn more deeply when extraneous material is excluded, (3) spatial contiguity – students learn more deeply when words are near the corresponding picture, (4) personalisation – students learn more deeply when words are in conversational rather than formal style. The author illustrates each design method in detail using examples of both book-based and computer-based learning materials. He also outlines a theoretical framework for a cognitive theory of multimedia learning that reinforces the empirical results. The framework is derived from results of research in cognitive psychology. Mayer concludes that the principles of instruction design do not change when the learning environment changes. The human information processing system possesses two channels – visual and verbal. Both have limited capacity. Multimedia learning overcomes this limitation by addressing both channels simultaneously. Mayer argues that the cognitive process of selecting, organising and integrating information from both channels is the key to meaningful learning and that this process does not depend on whether book-based or computer-based instructional material is used.

Mayer shows great expertise in the fields of cognitive psychology, instructional design and multimedia learning. His findings are based on significant empirical results and on a vast body of research literature. The publication contains a well balanced mixture of theoretical background and practical relevance. Mayer presents a sound theoretical framework and relates the empirical data to it. It is, however, rather difficult to verify Mayer’s empirical findings. One has to go over a dozen of other publications to get the full picture. Furthermore one might argue that Mayer’s conclusions are neither surprising nor completely new. The major benefit of this publication is the link between design principles of book-based and computer-based instructional material. Designers of multimedia learning environments can profit from the findings of decades of research in the field of educational psychology. And likewise traditional book-based instruction can benefit from techniques of multimedia learning.