Cultivating Understanding: Teaching Monocots and Dicots with Purposeful Design
An opportunity for me to upskill my opening Google Slides, those that introduce concepts and lessons for my students, is by using Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning to redesign my older lessons into a richer learning experience.
One concept we explore before our edible plant lesson later in the year is how to identify a monocot versus a dicot. The ability for a student to look at a plant and recognize specific features is essential to the identification process.
In the past, I would use a Google Doc that simply showed an image of the basic characteristics of monocots and dicots. I also made copies of this for students to carry while identifying plants in the woods. But much like relying on a multiplication table or a calculator, I began to question whether students were truly learning the concepts or just leaning on the tool. Below is my first version.
So, I applied Mayer’s 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning to redesign my slide.
Mayer’s 12 Principles are (Digital Learning Institute, n.d.):
Coherence Principle – Remove unnecessary words, pictures, and sounds that don’t support learning.
Signaling Principle – Highlight essential information (e.g., headings, arrows, bolding) to guide attention.
Redundancy Principle – Avoid presenting identical information in multiple forms.
Spatial Contiguity Principle – Place related text and images close together.
Temporal Contiguity Principle – Present corresponding words and pictures at the same time.
Segmenting Principle – Break content into small, user-paced chunks.
Pre-training Principle – Teach key concepts or terms before the full lesson.
Modality Principle – Use spoken words rather than written text with visuals when possible.
Multimedia Principle – People learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
Personalization Principle – Use conversational language rather than a formal tone.
Voice Principle – Use a friendly human voice instead of a machine-generated one.
Image Principle – Showing the speaker’s image does not necessarily improve learning.
These principles do to multimedia design what a sculptor does to a block of marble: they remove the excess and reveal a clear, focused structure. As you can see when comparing my old design to my new one, although the updated version is longer, it is much more digestible. The information is presented in a way that is clear, intentional, and consistent. Here is my updated Google Slides using these concepts. I will teach the lesson alongside the slides.
To support the lesson alongside the new slide, I will provide physical plant examples at each table. Students will compare, contrast, and handle these specimens while connecting them to what they see on the slide. This approach incorporates physical, visual, and auditory learning to reinforce the concepts. Afterward, we will go into the woods and test their understanding in a real-world setting.
It will take time to update all of my slides using Mayer’s 12 Principles, but I can already see the long-term benefits this will have on my instructional design and student learning.
Works Cited
Digital Learning Institute. (n.d.). Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning. https://www.digitallearninginstitute.com/blog/mayers-principles-multimedia-learning
