e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning

by Ruth Colvin Clark

The essential e-learning design manual, updated with the latest research, design principles, and examples

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction is the ultimate handbook for evidence-based e-learning design. Since the first edition of this book, e-learning has grown to account for at least 40% of all training delivery media. However, digital courses often fail to reach their potential for learning effectiveness and efficiency. This guide provides research-based guidelines on how best to present content with text, graphics, and audio as well as the conditions under which those guidelines are most effective. This updated fourth edition describes the guidelines, psychology, and applications for ways to improve learning through personalization techniques, coherence, animations, and a new chapter on evidence-based game design. The chapter on the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning introduces three forms of cognitive load which are revisited throughout each chapter as the psychological basis for chapter principles. A new chapter on engagement in learning lays the groundwork for in-depth reviews of how to leverage worked examples, practice, online collaboration, and learner control to optimize learning. The updated instructor's materials include a syllabus, assignments, storyboard projects, and test items that you can adapt to your own course schedule and students.

Co-authored by the most productive instructional research scientist in the world, Dr. Richard E. Mayer, this book distills copious e-learning research into a practical manual for improving learning through optimal design and delivery.

Get up to date on the latest e-learning research Adopt best practices for communicating information effectively Use evidence-based techniques to engage your learners Replace popular instructional ideas, such as learning styles with evidence-based guidelines Apply evidence-based design techniques to optimize learning games

e-Learning continues to grow as an alternative or adjunct to the classroom, and correspondingly, has become a focus among researchers in learning-related fields. New findings from research laboratories can inform the design and development of e-learning. However, much of this research published in technical journals is inaccessible to those who actually design e-learning material. By collecting the latest evidence into a single volume and translating the theoretical into the practical, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction has become an essential resource for consumers and designers of multimedia learning.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Teaching, Business, M M Romance, Technology, Textbooks

451 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

A recognized specialist in instructional design and technical training, Dr. Clark holds a doctorate in Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology from the University of Southern California. Prior to founding CLARK Training & Consulting, Dr. Clark served as training manager for Southern California Edison. She is past president of the International Society for Performance Improvement and author of five books and numerous articles. Dr. Clark is the 2006 recipient of the Thomas F. Gilbert Distinguished Professional Achievement Award from ISPI.

(Bio taken from the Clark Training website)

Reviews

[Jeffery Moulton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't believe I made it through! This is a textbook, plain and simple. And, unfortunately, it reads like a textbook. I will never understand why academics who research and write about instructional design can't use good instructional design practices.

I had a hard time rating this book. The research results were fascinating and sometimes surprising. On that basis alone, I almost gave it 4 stars. But I just couldn't agree with all of the conclusions -- especially the "don't do anything without research" conclusion. Too many of the conclusions are simply academic (meaning, in this case, that is what an academic would think). I'm not saying to ignore research or anything like that, but I believe more in human creativity and the ability to understand others than to be simply bound by research. Breakthroughs in teaching methodology don't often come because of research -- or at least they don't start that way. Additionally, the writing style was poor. It was particularly hilarious to me when they were writing about how instruction should be delivered in a lively, personal manner, while writing it in a tedious, academic manner.

I realize that this book isn't exactly meant for normal consumption. Like I said, it is a textbook. But why do we think that textbooks should be different from other kinds of instruction? It is kind of maddening. On top of that, they often make it sound like this is written to a professional audience rather than a captive, student one. If that is the case, they really missed the mark. The style is great for putting yourself to sleep, but doesn't mesh with the professional world -- at least not the professional world I have experienced. It also violates a lot of their own principles on industrial training. Again, why can't academics take their own advice?

That being said, this book is filled with a lot of really good information. And I do realize that it probably wasn't meant to be read cover-to-cover like I read it.

In the end, I enjoyed the research results and even the thought-exercises as I evaluated my personal opinion of some of their conclusions. I did not agree with them all the time, I found their style hilariously counter to their own points, but I still feel like I got out of the book what I wanted. So it was a success.

I can't really recommend this book. Maybe parts of it would make for good discussion in classrooms, some of the research definitely provides food for thought, but it isn't the kind of book you recommend, and I pity the college student that has to slog through it, though it would make a good "bad" example.

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presents and justifies over 60 guidelines for designing and evaluating multimedia learning materials -the checklist in the final chapter includes 67 entries but some of the guidelines appear more than once. Just to give an idea of what the guidelines look like, here is a small selection of them:

1. Use relevant graphics to accompany text for novices.

8. Place text near the corresponding graphic on the scene.

13. Write in a conversational style using first and second person.

17, 28 Teach important concepts and facts prior to procedure or process.

23. Avoid irrelevant irrelevant videos, animations, music, sounds, stories, and lengthy narrations.

42. Provide explanatory feedback in text for correct and incorrect answers.

46. Avoid praise or negative comments in feedback that direct attention to the self rather than to the task.

53. Use facilitation techniques that optimize social presencein online collaborative environments.

57. Always give learners options to progress at their own pace, replay audio or animation, review prior topics/lessons, and quit the program.

61. Provide worked examples of experts’ problem-solving actions and thoughts.

65. Align the goals, rules, activities, feedback, and consequences of [an educational] game to desired learning outcomes.

These guidelines are introduced in chapters 4 through 17 and summarized in chapter 18. Each chapter 4 through 17 is structured in exactly the same way:

- A chapter summary.

- The presentation of a “design dilemma” scenario in which the reader is invited to decide on one of three to four options on how to design a particular multimedia lesson. Typically the options represent different positions on the dilemma taken by different development team members. These design dilemmas are well written and provide motivation for reading the chapter in more detail.

- The presentation of one or more “principles”. Each principle is explained, the psychological reasons for the principle are described, the guidelines teased out and research evidence for the guidelines are marshalled. These sections provide the key core of each one of these chapters.

- A section setting out what has yet to yield research evidence (What We Don’t Know About...) -which I particularly liked.

- The (explained) solution to the decision dilemma.

- A brief summary, followed by questions for reflection.

- Suggested readings for the chapter.

This structure is very useful, especially when you use the book as a handbook or reference. It does tend to become a little boring if you are reading through the book in order to get a feel for the area, but then all you need to do when you start feeling bored is finish the chapter, stop for a couple of hours or a day at most and then resume reading at the next chapter.

One of the key strengths of the book is its use of research evidence to justify the guidelines. Chapter 2 (Evidence-Based Practice) provides some very useful rules of thumb to assess the usefulness and relevance of research work in this area. Research may address such aspects as whether an instructional method actually works, under what conditions it works (certain kinds of learners, materials or environments) and how it works; the interested reader would do well to keep these aspects in mind when reading a research paper. A key section in the chapter is on how to interpret research statistics, in which the authors recommend a very simplistic but down to earth approach: look for research that shows a probability less than 0.05 that there is is no difference between a test group and its control group, and an effect size (difference between the two groups measured in standard deviations) greater than 0.5. This is simplistic because one would need to know more about, for example, the size of the groups, the sampling technique used -to be honest, the authors do provide brief warning sections titled “How Can You Identify Relevant Research” and “Boundary Conditions in Experimental Comparisons”. They also provide a short explanation on the use of meta-analysis.

The final chapter not only provides a guidelines checklist, but shows how they apply to three of the multimedia material they most frequently draw on for examples. Definitely worth reading are the two final sections of the book: Reflections on Past Predictions and Beyond 2016 in Multimedia Research..

Some of the illustrations in the print edition are too small (particularly the examples on Excel lessons) and too low resolution and are printed out in black and white, so the reader misses out on the effective use of color in multimedia resources -a topics not covered in the book. This may be a publishing decision to keep costs down or it may actually be a misuse of guideline 4 (Use visuals that are as simple as possible to promote understanding of novices). I also found the writing style occasionally irritating. It appears to have been written for novices so as to maximize the size of the book’s possible audience, but it occasionally appears a little condescending or repetitive. Unfortunately, from time to time it also slips into jargony edu-talk. All in all, these are minor caveats in an otherwise excellent book.

In short, this is key reference book written by two outstanding researchers on the effectiveness of e-learning, which applies many its guidelines to the book itself. Most e-learning designers, developers, evaluators, researchers, and development managers would do well to skim through this book and have it at hand to consult whenever the need arises.

[Aditi Sharma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ll start by confessing that this book is my first full-fledged read on eLearning – I’ve read articles and posts related to online training, but an entire book seemed a daunting task, being a long commitment. Hence, the idea of a book never appealed to me until I got my hands on the PDF of this book’s 3rd edition.

As the title implies, the book literally talks about the science behind instruction and other aspects of an online material – title isn’t just a bait. There’s so much that one can learn from this book that I can’t and I won’t document it over here. You can read about it in brief in the book’s digital introduction itself.

The best aspect of this book is that each chapter starts with an unresolved example, and by the end of the chapter, one finally solves it. It not just talks about the rationales behind using a guideline and a principle, it rather shows them through various hypotheses and theories. It doesn’t just straight away say – use _______ when you need to ________; it starts off by mentioning the prevalent practices and then uses the backed-up researches and experiments to justify their usage or non-usage.

This book has helped me to understand the whys of elements that I didn’t even know I needed to learn. To name a few – why use multimedia, why use audio, why not to use text and audio simultaneously, why avoid certain graphics, why animation for processes and statics for procedures, why not extraneous wordings, etc. – I know these sound very basic, but aren’t strong basics the core of everything? Learning the science behind any guideline can even help one explore its wider usage.

Those who are new to this industry can benefit the most from this book, while the experienced ones can use this to refresh their concepts and reasons. But you never know it might clear your doubts, ones which might have been nagging you your entire life, ones which you never cared to go to the depth of, or it might shirk the clouds off of your misunderstandings that you never even knew existed. So, do give this book a try. Try the latest version though – 4th is the latest, if I’m not wrong.

It’s a core academic kind of book – that is to say it can come across as boring, so do not try to gulp it down in one go. Because if you do so, you’re very likely going to abandon it midway. Have it spread over a period of a few weeks, or at least a few days. Whatever you learn, make a note of it then and there, because you will come across a lot of new stuff, and your brain can only take so much new on its platter at a time. Be motivated because only intrinsic motivation and interest to learn about the the said topics will keep you till the last page.

Overall, a brilliant-read on eLearning! I perhaps enjoyed it so much because this was the first of its kind that I got to read and have no scale to compare it with, so please excuse my (potential) bias and (possible) ignorance.

Do refer me similar books if you know any – I’d love to explore and learn from them too.

[Leonard Houx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mayer and Clark's writing is dull and stuffy. Yet their book does what no other book I know of does: survey every important principle and theme in instructional design. Not only that, it reviews the scientific research done in each area. The most important book I've read on e-learning by far.

[Lauren Perotto · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of great information and research. But extremely dull and repetitive. And for a book on E-learning you'd expect at least a little color. Somewhere. Just once.

[Roger Market · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I could give this 3.5 stars. I think it deserves more than 3 but maybe not quite 4. While it has some great information, it is very repetitive (and not usually in a way that's helpful). In fact it could probably be condensed to half the page count, maybe less. Moreover, while the book does a good job outlining some best practices of e-learning design, its own design leaves something to be desired (e.g., the contiguity principle is an important concept, but the book itself doesn't follow this principle in many cases, which is frustrating because the reader has to flip back and forth between pages). I realize this isn't an e-book version, but still, the book should at least try to mimic the principles it's teaching, not only to match the content but also just so readers can understand it. This may be a publisher issue, however; the authors may not have had a say in where images went. So now I feel more comfortable giving it 4 stars. :-)

[Barb. D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must-read for everyone building, reviewing, buying, applying, or otherwise using eLearning in their L&D setting. Lots of content repeated from "Evidence- Based Training Methods", but hey, a little spaced repetition never hurts, does it. Of course, with a fast changing field such as this one, a book published 4 years ago may already seem "old", but most of the principles are unchanging - although I'm sure research is buzzing with further developments which will be reflected in some future edition in due time.

[Ashley Fricker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much of this was common sense in creating an e-learning environment. Demonstrations on how to apply would have been helpful.

[Sahil Parab · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is written specifically for professionals who make learning contents, modules, and work on the design and graphics part.

Corona Pandemic has pushed everyone to adapt the e-learning and virtual classroom session already, so the suggestions provided in this book are no longer applicable now. One should have read this book before 2018/17.


Thanks,
Sahil

[Billy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clark and Mayer lay out several good examples and principles for instructional design in digital learning formats. Very useful if you're designing or analyzing tutorials.

[Ellie · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is, unfortunately, a boring topic.

[JP Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

They do the science so you can instruct better.

[Paul Signorelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer bring peer-reviewed research and a clean writing style to this well organized introduction to e-learning principles and practices. They make connections to earlier, decades-old learning formats including instructional films to show that “what we are seeing under the e-learning label is not new” (p. 20). They effectively use chapter headings and subheadings to offer helpful tips—“use words and graphics rather than words alone” (p. 51); “place corresponding words and graphics near each other” (p. 67); “present words as audio narration rather than onscreen text” (p. 83); and “use conversational style and virtual coaches” (p. 131)—as part of their own instructional techniques. Furthermore, their inclusion of numerous screenshots to provide examples of effective and ineffective e-learning serves as a model of how those providing or producing e-learning modules can approach their work. Their section on “how people learn from e-courses” (Chapter 2) serves as a brief introduction to a subject covered more thoroughly in James Zull’s "The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning," and Chapter 3 (“Applying the Multimedia Principle: Use Words and Graphics Rather than Words Alone”) is a brief introduction to a topic covered in greater detail in Cliff Atkinson’s '"Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire.

[Kristie J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this excellent and straightforward textbook. The authors present various guidelines for online instruction that have been tested and validated in scientific studies. The book is well-organized and gives just the right amount of information, not too much and not too little. It was easy to read and understand, and made me feel confident that I can design and develop effective and interesting e-learning modules myself.

[Luis Brudna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente livro sobre e-Learning. O valor do livro está no cuidado em basear as afirmações em evidências coletadas em estudos científicos. E estudos realizados em bases experimentais, e não apenas opinativos.
É claro que as afirmações do livro podem, e devem, ser discutidas; e é isto mesmo que os autores desejam.

[Kathleen O'Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

E-learning and the science of instruction focuses on the guiding principles of instructional design. Using the principles of design outlined in the text helps designers understand how the learners need the screen, audio and knowledge checks to move through the information so the learner can demonstrate undertanding in an assessment.

[Linda Aksomitis · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an instructional designer and blogger, I rely a lot on the research and recommendations in this book. The book is well organized, so it's easy to jump directly to relevant sections when I'm looking for ideas or reviewing content. Each of the examples provided in each chapter clearly demonstrates the guidelines provided, so make them easy to apply.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous book for any instructional design nerd. It provides a great overview of what cognitive science research has taught us about cognitive load and its implications for the design of e-learning. This isn't the most recent edition, but it's still a great resource.

[Aaron Dietz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty decent summary of knowledge on instructional design, backed by data. This is a follow-up book, basically, to work they've put out before, so it isn't essential to those who are already familiar with the material.

[Khalid Almoghrabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

a light book on designing e-learning courses with rich principles and research studies although it might be half the size in regards to the material covered.

[Sara Q]

Seen mentioned here: http://gettingsmart.com/blog/2011/12/...

[Robert Frost · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good review of Mayer's Principles of Learning.

[Mandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although slightly dry at times, this book is proving more useful to me professionally than any other book in the past year.

[Gabrielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful, research-based information on the most effective ways to design e-learning courses. Could have been condensed to be more effective. A little too wordy in some parts.

[Peter Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third edition (2011) is a must-have reference for e-learning design. It is a classic that has been updated and presents clear advice with evidence.

[RegalTHG · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compared to other books on this subject I found this very easy to read. It's very practical and straightforward, offering tangible tips and realistic scenarios.

[airrunkle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really well organized and documented

[Fifi · Rating 3 out of 5]

'it's not the delivery medium, but rather the instructional methods that cause learning.'
#dezinvanhetboek #thepointofthebook

[Betsy G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great introduction to e-learning. Examples are a little specific to Dreamweaver.

[Robin Boulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The information in this book was very helpful; however, the book is very reptitive.