STLHE 2016 SAPES

The use of slideware in the classroom is virtually ubiquitous in higher education, but many instructors use slideware as a method to project digital cues cards for their audience to read-along with, rather than as a valuable and innovative tool that can facilitate teaching and learning. In the last decade, theories of cognition (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), instructional design (Sweller, 1994) and multimedia learning (Mayer & Moreno, 2003) have come together to stimulate a rich body of research on how to exploit slideware’s most valuable asset: to help students develop mental models of the concepts instructors are trying to convey. In this presentation we will introduce some of the theoretical foundations of multimedia learning, and review some of the principles of effective slide design. We will also report on two original studies investigating the effective use of slides in teaching, reviewing our research design and methods. In the first study, we investigated the wisdom of using agrammatical bullet points. In a second study, we investigated the use of organizational graphics to help facilitate the creation of mental models in learners. In both experiments, we found reason to deviate from the traditional text-dense, bullet-point based slides. We will also review current research on effective slide design that provides further support for our hypotheses (c.f. Danielson, Schwartz & Lippmann, 2015). The learning outcomes for this session include practical ideas for how to exploit cognitive learning theories and how to implement slide design principles in order to maximize the teaching and learning potential of their lecture slides.