Blog 2: Modality Principle

One of Mayer’s Multimedia Learning Principles that caught my attention was the Modality Principle. This principle is really just splitting your cognitive learning process into two separate modes – seeing visuals and hearing someone speak. A learner will utilize their cognitive learning process of combining visual images/graphics and narration to support how they learn best. This principle states that learning by seeing visuals and hearing someone narrate the subject is much more effective to learning that seeing the visuals and seeing on screen text/dialogues. However, having very minimal but crucial keywords may aid the learning process.

I myself would agree to this because generally speaking, I hate reading big chunks of text. By including that kind of text will lead my to become uninterested to continue learning more. By listening, I can focus more on understanding the subject rather than focusing on reading the text itself. Although I do mention that text is less effective, if used properly, it can be effective in supporting the learning process. Oftentimes there are difficult terminology or phrases that learners might need a little extra support in order to understand. By including the text, learnings can see the text and use that as a reference.