2016 Annual Conference

The Multimedia Cone of Abstraction was developed to help teachers and instructional designers select appropriate multimedia based on learners' prior knowledge. Multimedia categories include verbal, static graphics, non-interactive dynamic graphics, and interactive dynamic graphics. Novice learners need more concrete multimedia compared to expert learners who may prefer more abstract multimedia.

Teachers and instructional designers who develop and deliver content using computers.

This session will discuss some of the important theories related to multimedia selection including Dale's Cone of Experience, Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, and Baukal and Ausburn's Multimedia Cone of Abstraction. Properly selecting multimedia depends on learners' prior knowledge where more novice learners need more concrete materials and more expert learners may prefer more abstract materials. Properly selecting multimedia is critical to enhancing learning while minimizing instructional design time and cost. With increasingly more visual learners, this session will give teachers and instructional designers research-based guidelines for selecting appropriate multimedia depending on the learners' prior knowledge which typically changes as a course progresses. Learners normally move from novices at the beginning of a course to more expert at the end of a course. Therefore, multimedia for a given topic should change from the beginning to the end of the course by going from more concrete to more abstract. There may be many sublevels for a given level of multimedia which provides the designer with many options. This variety can be useful in enhancing learning for students by visualizing content in multiple ways.