Last month’s column introduced Richard Mayer’s “SOI” Model, which suggeststhat we help learners select important information, organize it into meaningful wholes, andintegrate into the biggerpicture of application or generalization. As we saw last month, the “select” component directs designers to paredown and focus on key ideas and make information clearer through thoughtful useof fonts, highlighting, white space, etc. We also looked at the problem ofoverdesign and recognizing that design is done when there’s nothing left totake out.
The next phase in the SOI model is “organize.” Mostslide-based authoring tools, and old habits, have forced us into bulleted listson screens and linear navigation. How can we help the learner make sense ofwhat she’s seeing? How can we help him organize new information in a meaningfulway, what Mayer calls a “coherent representation”?
Try to show relationships. Offer content as comparison,classification, generalization, or cause-effect. Use outlines, headings, andadvance organizers, like the one shown in Figure 1.
Figure1: Exampleof a course advance organizer
Recognize that while bullets do a lot for highlightingitems, they don’t really do much to help the learner structure information. Wedon’t want learners to just see that there is a list of elements, but to help himbuild structural relationships among those elements.
Figure 2 shows some easy alternatives to bullets:
Figure2: Some types oforganizing formats
Beware of accidentally setting up false organization, or doingsomething that suggests to the learner an organization that is not there. Aslide like the one in Figure 3 crossed my path recently: It’s meant torepresent eight steps in a process, but it took me awhile to figure that out.On first seeing it I thought it showed two parallel processes.
Figure 3: False organization looks like twoparallel processes, not eight steps
An introductory slide showing the headings for the eightsteps in a sequence would have helped. There are any number of ways to show “eightsteps”; see Figure 4.
Figure4: Ways of representing“eight steps”
Just numbering the original (Figure 5) would have madethe organization of content clearer:
Figure5: Numbering itemsconveys idea of sequence
Remember, when designing in ways that most help thelearner, look for ideas that help you convey relationships, interrelationships,sequence, and importance. The goal is not to create a representation of thematerial that is pretty, but to create material that helps the learner makesense of it.
Resources
For more on organizing information see Connie Malamed, https://theelearningcoach.com/elearning_design/how-to-organize-content/
Mayer, R. E. “Designing Instructionfor Constructivist Learning.” Instructional-designTheories and Models: A New Paradigm of Instructional Theory. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates, 1999.
Mayer,R. E., William Bove, Alexandra Bryman, Rebecca Mars, and Lene Tapangco. “WhenLess Is More: Meaningful Learning from Visual and Verbal Summaries of ScienceTextbook Lessons.” Journal ofEducational Psychology 88.1996.
Somematerial originally appeared in Bozarth, J., BetterThan Bullet Points: Creating Engaging eLearning with PowerPoint. San Francisco: Wiley, 2013.
