Lesson 7 - Choosing Media

Therefore, it is not enough to focus just on the design of multimedia materials, as important as design is, even considering just the pedagogical context. The choice and use of media need to be related to other factors (what Mayer calls ‘boundary conditions’), such as individual differences between learners, the complexity of the content, and the desired learning outcomes. Thus when considering media from a strictly teaching perspective, the following questions need to be considered:

1. Who are my students?
2. What content needs to be covered?
3. What are the desired learning outcomes from teaching in terms of skills development?
4. What instructional strategies or approaches to learning do I plan using?
5. What are the unique pedagogical characteristics of different media? How might different media help with the presentation of content and development of student skills in this course?
6. What is the best way to present the content to be covered in this course? How can media help with the presentation of content? Which media for what content?
7. What skills am I trying to develop this course? How can media help students with the development of the requisite skills for this course? Which media for which skills?
8. What principles do I need to use when designing multimedia materials for their most effective use?

Working through these questions are likely to be an iterative rather than a sequential process. Depending on the way you prefer to think about and make decisions, it may help to write down the answers to each of the questions, but going through the process of thinking about these questions is probably more important, leaving you with the freedom to make choices on a more intuitive basis, having first taken all these – and other – factors into consideration.