How to design and present clear computing lessons

Learning something new requires effort. Learners take in new information by listening and observing. When a lot of information is presented at once in a lesson, that can create too much cognitive load for learners — a barrier to understanding and engagement.

To help you design and deliver great computing lessons, we’ve written two new Pedagogy Quick Reads focused on Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning. These research-backed principles give you practical strategies to lower your students’ unnecessary cognitive load during lessons, leading to better learning outcomes.

In this blog, we introduce the two new Quick Reads (Designing multimedia for clarity and Designing multimedia for understanding), which you can download for free to:

• Find practical tips for how you can apply Mayer’s Principles to your lessons
• Read a summary of the research behind them

The blog also includes some examples for how to apply the principles in your computing lessons.

If you’d like an introduction to the idea of cognitive load, you can find the Quick Read about cognitive load theory here.

What are Mayer’s Principles?

Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning are practical principles that will help you create clearer resources and present information in a way that avoids unnecessary cognitive load for your learners.

Mayer’s Principles are based on three related facts:

1. You can present information to learners in auditory form (e.g. spoken explanations) and visual form (e.g. written text, diagrams)
2. There are limits on how much new information people can take in at the same time
3. Teaching materials that are not well-structured can cause too much cognitive load, which negatively affects learning

Designing lessons for clarity

Our first new Quick Read focuses on the following Mayer’s Principles for making your lessons as clear as possible, so that learners can connect the information they see and hear in real time.

• Make all the information you include coherent, meaning that it is directly relevant to the learning objectives and does not distract learners’ attention
• Guide your learners’ attention by using signals such as arrows, bold text, colour, or auditory cues
• Avoid redundant information, such as a slide with a diagram and a paragraph explaining the diagram, or a slide that you speak about without adding new, complementing information
• Present related words and visuals in the same space, e.g. place your text labels, or explanations directly adjacent to diagrams, images or code segments they describe
• Present related words and visuals at the same time, e.g. by pairing narration with imagery

Designing lessons for understanding

Our second new Quick Read shares three Mayer’s Principles for how you can structure your lesson delivery to support your learners’ understanding:

• Structure lessons or demonstrations into clear, manageable stages or segments, rather than presenting the information all at once
• When you start a new topic, begin with some pre-training by introducing key terms, components, or goals and how they relate
• When you present diagrams, flowcharts, or code examples, explain this visual information using the other modality, meaning spoken narration, instead of using paragraphs of text

Applying Mayer’s Principles to your computing lessons

We suggest you consider implementing Mayer’s Principles when you next design new lessons or want to adapt materials that you reuse regularly.

Here are some ideas on how you use both sets of principles in common computing teaching scenarios.

Live coding and code walkthroughs

When displaying a new Python script or Scratch project, avoid adding long, written paragraphs of commentary to explain the code. Instead, place short text annotations or sub-goal labels directly next to the relevant lines or blocks. As you run through the code, use your pointer or live typing to guide your learners’ focus (signalling) and explain in words how the program works at the same time.

Starting a new topic such as networking

Before students move to a new topic, for example networking, consider what words or concepts your class needs to be familiar with. Allocate a few minutes at the start of your lesson for pre-training to introduce terms like LAN or bandwidth and how they relate to the lesson.

Consider how your lesson can be divided into stages to allow for better understanding (segmenting). Each stage should build on the previous one and feed into the next one. For example, when you explain how data moves across a network, you can introduce each step separately before combining them all into a complete model of a network.

Consider how you display visual information to your class. Ensuring related diagrams and labels appear close together, only include relevant materials and no decoration on your slides (coherence), and avoid simply reading out words on the slide identical forms of information (redundancy).

Supporting multilingual learners with Mayer’s Principles

Mayer’s Principles are even more important for educators teaching multilingual learners or non-native speakers. When learners need to work harder to understand the language, poor lesson design can slow down their learning significantly.

Mayer’s Principles can help you with this challenge:

• Applying the coherence and redundancy principles will allow you to make your explanations and slides as clear and concise as possible
• Using signaling will mean you help learners to follow along and know what is most important
• Presenting diagrams that illustrate computing concepts clearly will help your multilingual learners understand your spoken explanation much more easily (modality)

Intentional design for lasting understanding

By intentionally designing and presenting lessons to give the right amount of information in the clearest way, you make it easier for your students to focus and build a lasting understanding of computing concepts. When your lesson materials align with how our brains process information, learners can build stronger mental models and approach independent learning activities with greater confidence.

Read our new Quick Reads to find out more and discover the research behind Mayer’s Principles:

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