How Dual Coding With Teachers changed the way I present

How Dual Coding With Teachers changed the way I present

It was early 2019 that two things happened at about the same time.  First, Edu-twitter was exploding with Oliver Caviglioli inspired graphics, and I was reading about Cognitive Load Theory, and planning to present on it at a conference.   I ordered "the book" (Dual Coding With Teachers) but continued with my presentation after being inspired by the graphics I saw on twitter.   My walls of text were transformed into the following slides.

After Dual Coding With Teachers arrived I analysed my slides agains the advice in the book, and saw the following problems with my slides:

• The fear of white space: Information was pushed right to the edges of the slides.
• The urge to cram lots of information in: There was too much information across the slides.
• The urge to be 'artistic': There was not a clear grid, and the slides were too random in the placement of information.

I already had my key content, but this needed to be rationalised, so I went about changing my slides in the following ways:

• Clarify purpose: Figure out exactly what it is that you want to communicate to the target audience.
• Organise sequence: Cull irrelevant and duplicated points, group ideas, and fit these ideas into a narrative.
• Align content: Fit the information into a grid
• Restrain design: Ensure that colours, images and text are consistent, and leave plenty of white space.

The result was that the original six slides were condensed into one slide shown below.  When I presented on this slide I discussed most of the information on those original six slides, but in a more coherent way which didn't overwhelm the audience with slide fatigue.

I originally thought that Dual Coding with Teachers would help me to improve the design of my presentation slides, which it did, but it provided more than that.  The process of organising information simply and visually helped me to clarify the information I wanted to share, in both my own thoughts, and within the presentation.

If you haven't purchased a copy of Dual Coding with Teachers yet, I can't recommend it highly enough. I think it has value for anyone who presents information in any profession.

Dan (@dan_braith)

More notes about notes

More notes about notes 

In my first blog I wrote about using note sheets for teaching year 8 earth science, rather than have students copy out notes for themselves.  

After this initial success, tried the Same method when teaching Newton's 2nd law of motion to a year 10 class, and it did not go as well as I had hoped. Students, for the most part, appreciated not having to copy out the notes. However, it was clear to me that students were more confused than when I last taught the same lesson last year using PowerPoint. So what happened? 

After speaking to some students after the lesson, their feedback was that they missed having time to process information and then having the information explained by the teacher. On my reflections of this I think that the note sheets (in the format I am using) work when element interactivity (complexity) is low, but don’t work in the same way when element interactivity is high.

If we contrast a year 8 lesson on igneous rocks with a year 10 lesson on Newton’s Second Law then I think you’ll see what I mean.

In a year 8 lesson on igneous rocks  students learn that igneous rocks form from the cooling of magma or lava, that there are two types of igneous rocks depending on where the rock formed (above or below the surface of the Earth), and that these two types can be identified by crystal size.  There is also very little prior knowledge needed to access this content.

In a year 10 lesson on Newton’s Second Law students learn that the acceleration of an object  is proportional to the size of the net force acting on that object, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object.  Students also need to solve questions using the F=ma equation and rearrange the equation to solve for mass and acceleration.  In addition to this students need at least the following prior knowledge: understand acceleration, understand Newton’s First Law, know what a force is, and know how proportionality and inverse proportionality work.

A lesson on Newton’s Second Law clearly has more parts (elements) that interact and support each other (interactivity) as students learn.  An advantage that using PowerPoint provided in this circumstance is that it requires information to be broken down into what can be presented on one slide.  Using PowerPoint I will usually have students copy down notes, and then I’ll spend some time explaining, discussing and questioning before moving onto the next slide.

By using a note sheet instead, I attempted to cram all of those discussions into one longer discussion at the start of the lesson. As students started to answer a set of (what I thought were) well crafted questions I was seeing repeated misunderstandings from lots of students.  I simply attempted to explain too much complex information in too short a time-frame.

So, for a lesson where element interactivity is high, the PowerPoint method was superior because there is a limit to how much information can go on one slide, and so allows for a stepped and structured approach.

In general I am keen to move away from having students spending valuable teaching time copying notes, but my current note sheet method is not up to the task of effectively teaching content with high element interactivity.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be rethinking how I approach such content in the classroom.

Back to the drawing board!

Dan (@dan_braith)