Chapter 7 Applying t

Chapter 7 Applying the Coherence Principle(聯貫性原則)
Adding interesting material can hurt learning

• We summarize the empirical evidence for excluding rather than including extraneous information in the form of


• Entertaining(有趣的) stories related but not essential to the instructional objective.


• Background music and sounds added for motivation.


• Detailed textual descriptions.


• Adding interesting but unnecessary material to e-learning can harm the learning process in several ways增加一些有趣但不必要的材料在數位學習當中，會造成以下幾種傷害:


• Distraction/分心: by guiding the learner’s limited attention away from the relevant material and towards the irrelevant material.


• Disruption/分裂: by preventing the learner from building appropriate links among pieces of relevant material because pieces of irrelevant material are in the way.


• Seduction/誘惑: by priming inappropriate existing knowledge that is used for organizing the incoming material.

7.1 Coherence principle one: avoid e-lessons with extraneous(無關的) sounds

• Avoid e-learning courseware that includes extraneous sounds in the form of background music or environment sounds.


• Especially the learner is likely to experience heavy cognitive processing demands.

7.2 Psychological reasons to avoid extraneous sounds

• Arousal theory/激發論: entertaining and interesting embedded effects cause learners to become more emotionally aroused and therefore they work harder to learn the material. 科學家發現當個體在遊戲被激發時，興奮、愉快、歡樂或是笑等生理反應，能促進製造某些化學物質，而這些化學物質影響到通過腦部愉悅區域的電流，造成好的感 覺，讓個體表現較佳。這種經驗會促使個體能持續某些活動或行為，並不斷追求最佳的激發程度（Goodale & Godbey, 1988）。此一追求暢懷經驗的過程，能將個體的生活品質予以改善，對於個人有相當大的價值。


• Background sounds can overload and disrupt the cognitive system, so the narration and the extraneous sounds must compete for limited cognitive resources in the auditory channel.


• Students will learn more deeply from multimedia presentations that do not contain interesting but extraneous sounds and music than from multimedia presentations that do.

7.3 Evidence for omitting extraneous sounds

• Clearly, adding background music did not improve learning and in fact, substantially hurt learning.

7.4 Coherence principle two: avoid e-lessons with extraneous pictures

• Some of the information is quite interesting but not related to the tasks involved in handling ammunition.( 指抨擊別人的材料,手段或依據等)

7.5 Psychological reasons to avoid interesting but extraneous graphics

• Adding extraneous pictures can interfere with the process of sense-making because learners have a limited cognitive capacity for processing incoming material.


• Extraneous pictures can interfere with learning in three ways: distraction, disruption, and seduction.


• Students will learn more deeply from multimedia presentations that do not contain interesting but extraneous graphics and video.


• Remember Distraction, Disruption, Seduction；The cognitive theory of multimedia learning, therefore, predicts that students will learn more deeply from multimedia presentations that do not contain interesting but extraneous graphics and video.

7.6 Evidence for omitting extraneous graphics
7.7 Coherence principle three: avoid e-lessons with extraneous words

• Avoid adding extraneous words to lessons.

7.8 Psychology reasons to minimize words in e-learning

• For the same reasons that extraneous sounds and graphics can be distracting, adding extra words can interfere with the learning process.


• Evidence for omitting extraneous words


• Less is more.

7.10 What to look for in e-learning

• Lessons that do not include extraneous sounds in the form of background music or unrelated environmental sounds.


• Lessons that do not use graphics and video clips that are related but not essential to the knowledge and skills to be learned.


• Lessons that present content in lean text or narration that presents the main points.