Coherence Principle

Exclude irrelevant material

Example 1: A lesson on Newton's Laws includes an animated rocket ship flying across the screen, upbeat background music, a sidebar with a 'Fun Fact: Newton also invented calculus!', and decorative borders around every slide.

Why it fails: Each decorative addition draws attention and processing resources away from the core content. The fun fact and music are unrelated to the learning objective and create extraneous cognitive load.

Example 2: The next slides still look engaging without adding extra decorations. Every element on screen directly serves the learning objective. Working memory is fully available for processing the essential material.

Signaling Principle

Highlight the organization and key ideas

Signals guide attention toward essential elements and make the structure of content visible, reducing the effort needed to identify what to learn.

Example: A slide about the steps of cell division shows eight paragraphs of equal size, same font weight, same color, no numbering, no headings — just a wall of text describing each phase of mitosis in sequence.

Why it fails: Without visual hierarchy, learners must read everything with equal attention to identify what is important. There is no guide to the organization, increasing cognitive effort and reducing retention.

On the second slide: Signals (numbers, bold, color, headers) tell learners where to focus and reveal the structure. Attention is allocated efficiently to the most important elements.

Redundancy Principle

Don't add on-screen text to narrated animation

When narration already delivers the verbal message, adding identical printed text forces learners to reconcile two streams of identical information, wasting cognitive resources.

When the verbal message is delivered once via audio, the visual channel is devoted entirely to the animation. Note: subtitles are still appropriate for accessibility — the issue is redundant text for proficient learners in standard contexts.

Spatial Contiguity Principle

Place related text and images near each other

Example 1: 

Modified version:

Example 2:

Example 3: Move the orange slider to reveal the modified version.

Temporal Contiguity Principle

Present narration and animation simultaneously.

People learn better when corresponding narration and animation are presented at the same time rather than successively.

When audio and visuals are separated in time, learners must hold one in working memory while waiting for the other. Simultaneous presentation allows immediate integration.

Watch the video.

Segmenting Principle

Let learners control the pace

People learn better from a multimedia lesson presented in learner-paced segments than as a continuous unit.

Complex processes can overwhelm working memory when presented all at once. Segmenting allows learners to consolidate each chunk before moving on, reducing cognitive overload.

In this example we will see how to address this situation:

Original Video (Violates the Segmenting Principle)

Topic: New Employee Onboarding

Video Length: 20 minutes

The video covers:

1. Company Overview
2. Organizational Structure
3. Employee Benefits
4. HR Policies
5. Time Reporting
6. Vacation Requests
7. IT Security
8. Workplace Safety

The entire presentation plays continuously with no pauses, no navigation controls, and no opportunity for learners to review sections before moving on.

Learners must process a large amount of information without breaks. As topics accumulate, working memory becomes overloaded and retention decreases.

Modified Option 1: Chapter-Based Video

How It Works

The 20-minute video is divided into eight short chapters.

Menu Example:

• Chapter 1: Company Overview (2 min)
• Chapter 2: Organizational Structure (2 min)
• Chapter 3: Benefits (3 min)
• Chapter 4: HR Policies (2 min)
• Chapter 5: Time Reporting (3 min)
• Chapter 6: Vacation Requests (2 min)
• Chapter 7: IT Security (3 min)
• Chapter 8: Workplace Safety (3 min)

Learners choose when to start the next chapter. Information is divided into meaningful chunks, allowing learners to process one topic before moving to the next.

This option can be created using interactive videos with points marked for pauses.

Modified option 2: Microlearning Series

How It Works

Instead of one long video, the content becomes a series of standalone microlearning modules.

Module 1: Welcome to the Company (3 min)

Module 2: Understanding Your Benefits (4 min)

Module 3: Managing Time Off (3 min)

Module 4: Staying Secure Online (4 min)

Module 5: Workplace Safety Essentials (4 min)

Each module can be completed independently. The learner focuses on one objective at a time. This is often the strongest implementation of segmenting because each lesson becomes a self-contained learning experience.

These modified versions can be combined with knowledge checks or exercises.

Pre-training Principle

Teach component names and behaviors first

People learn better from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts beforehand.

Without prior knowledge of component names and behaviors, learners must simultaneously learn vocabulary AND understand the process, overloading working memory.

Watch this video of a complex animation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M-2jV2kLpTQhPfYnpHlz-ePsNN4PcpAu/view?usp=sharing

Before watching the animation, learner would benefit by studying this glossary first:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fPf1Lk403XsghTNlPbFutWmVyzMRYteS/view?usp=sharing

Modality Principle

Speak words rather than printing them with graphics

People learn better from graphics with spoken words than from graphics with written (on-screen) text.

When graphics are paired with on-screen text, both compete for the limited visual channel. Audio uses the separate auditory channel, leaving the visual channel free to process the graphic.

Watch this video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V4zpP0ccJ9dyCqknYdhhMIztJNE5zuGC/view?usp=sharing

Multimedia Principle

Words + pictures beat words alone

People learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone.

Presenting information in both verbal and visual formats activates both the auditory and visual channels, leading to richer mental model construction.

Personalization Principle

Use conversational, not formal, language

People learn better when words in a multimedia lesson are in conversational style rather than formal style.

Conversational language signals that the material is a personal communication, prompting deeper engagement and greater generative processing from the learner.

Voice Principle

Use a friendly human voice for narration

People learn better when the words in a multimedia lesson are spoken in a human voice rather than a machine-generated voice.

A natural, expressive human voice activates social cues that promote deeper cognitive engagement, while machine voices can be harder to parse and carry no social warmth.

Image Principle

Instructor's image doesn't improve learning

People do not necessarily learn better when the instructor's image is added to the screen during a narrated multimedia presentation.

A 'talking head' occupies screen space and visual attention without adding instructional information. The social cue it provides does not outweigh the cost of reduced space for instructional visuals.