Multimedia and Adult Education: Key Principles for Effective Learning

Abstract

Multimedia have emerged to be a powerful resource for teaching and learning various subjects. Multimedia is a way of presenting information to an audience in multiple formats such as text and pictures. Research shows that multimedia facilitates deep learning for both young and adult learners. In this paper, it is argued that multimedia is a great tool for teaching and learning and some key principles to be followed for effective use of multimedia in teaching and learning are presented. Multimedia principles and theories discussed in this paper are multimedia principle, cognitive theory of multimedia learning, signalling (or cueing) principle, split-attention principle, and redundancy principle. It is concluded that it is important for teachers/tutors to adhere to multimedia learning principles and theories in order for multimedia to be a great tool for enabling effective deep learning.