To audio or not to audio?

Multimedia Learning Principles

This week’s ELH challenge is about teaching one or more of the multimedia learning principles. Immediately I remembered something somewhat related that I read a while ago…

To audio or not to audio?

A long time ago I read a great post by Cathy Moore on whether audio narration should be used in corporate e-learning. She was of the general opinion that audio narration was not necessary in asynchronous corporate e-learning. Several studies even backed up the notion that text and learner control were best. Now, for full details go and read her article and the excellent discussion that follows.

For this post though, the thing that stuck with me (remember, I read this a while ago!) was that reading is (generally) quicker than listening to someone read (especially if you have no control over audio speed). I did not know that.

Additionally, you can easily skim through text if it’s a familiar topic and focus only on the parts that are less familiar. However, you cannot easily skim through audio, or you just might miss the one thing you didn’t know and actually needed to listen to.

My (sort of) chosen principle

So even though this is not specifically one of the principles, it’s related slightly to the redundancy principle but might also break the modality principle… c’est la vie. The main point of my interaction is… well… just check it out for yourself by clicking Play below: