Week 4 Activity 1

   
Instructional designers need to take into consideration the cognitive load of their learners and make sure that they do not experience cognitive overload.  Cognitive overload occurs in which the learner's intended cognitive processing exceeds their available cognitive capacity.  The Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning assumes three things about how the mind works.  
1)  There are two separate channels for processing information (auditory/words, visual/pictures)
2)  Each channel has limited capacity
3)  Meaningful learning requires a substantial amount of cognitive processing to take place.
The capacity for physically presenting words and pictures is unlimited and the long-term memory is virtually unlimited, but holding it all in the working memory is limited.  


To research this principle, I am most interested in whether the zooming aspect of Prezis contributes to cognitive overload for learners.  The participants would be the students who will eventually take the course I'm redesigning.   
Model:  A Prezi was designed to explain how conception and pregnancy works.  There were twelve slides in the Prezi, each with a few lines of text and an image.  A voiceover was included that read the text and elaborated on each slide.  A zooming feature was used to transition from slide to slide.
Research Question 1:  What are the positive aspects of the "zoom" in Prezi?
Research Question 2:  Does this affect add to the cognitive load?
Research Question 3:  Can a different transition be used?
Hypothesis:  I believe the zooming aspect of Prezi contributes to cognitive overload in that brain has to interpret and follow the zoom, adding to the amount in the working memory.    

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