Introduction
Hi everyone! My name is Thomas Nguyen and I am in my third year of Health Information and Computer Science Combined at the University of Victoria. I was born and raised on Vancouver Island in Nanaimo and moved up to Victoria two years ago. My goal is to gain a better understanding of interactive and multimedia learning so that I can apply what I learn in this course to my personal and professional lives.
Of the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, we looked at this week, which ones surprised you the most?
The principle that surprised me the most from Mayer’s theory was the redundancy principle. The redundancy principle can be applied heavily when creating slide decks, based on my academic and professional experience. I have seen a lot of slide decks that contained a lot of unnecessary text that was already being narrated. Rather than having short text and having the narrator expand on it, I noticed these slide decks contain sentences or even paragraphs that were read word for word by the narrator. Applying the redundancy principle will enable me to develop more effective presentations in the future.
Screencast
Thomas, your screencast was so enjoyable! I noticed your presentation slides were visually appealing and easy to understand. Your narrative complemented the text on screen very well and the entire process was very educational! I really liked how you used the Signaling Principle throughout your screencast (e.g., use of header slides), as it helped your audience anticipate what each section was about. Your use of the redundancy principle was also relieving to see (e.g., not using too much text on top of graphics and narration), as we both seem to agree from our personal experiences that the field of academics is constantly struggling with this. This was such an insightful and enjoyable experience. Looking forward to reading more of your work!
Hi Thomas, great presentation introducing custom mechanical keyboards! I can see how you used your slides effectively, they are a great example of the redundancy principle. I actually also got into the custom keyboard hobby myself over the pandemic with 3 builds and 2 more on the way. Would love to hear your thoughts on ortho-linear keyboards and other ergonomic styles, since you mentioned things like design and feel being differentiating factors.
Thank you for the reply! I’m personally not a fan of ortho-linear keyboards as I find it uncomfortable for me to type on. As for ergonomic styles, I am a big fan of the Alice layout!