Cognitive Processes in Learning from Multiple Representations

Catalog description

Multiple external representations (MERs) refer to instructional materials that contain more than one representation for describing or depicting content. Examples are materials that include two or more representations such as verbal text, formulae, diagrams, graphs, animations, and so on. This course will also cover materials that include multiple text documents. Regardless of the specific representational combinations used, acquiring knowledge from these representations requires the learner to both comprehend the individual representations and integrate across them, a demand that students often face, but infrequently achieve. This course will cover the major theoretical frameworks used to understand the cognitive processes required for learning from MERs as well as current research addressing these processes.