Customer Reviews

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning (Essential Knowledge Resource)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As someone who has been designing multimedia elearning programs since '95, I found this book simply the most useful book on this subject for anyone serious about getting multimedia learning right.

The book is full of references to well designed studies published in refereed jounals where the principles discussed were meticulously examined by learning researchers.

This is refreshing in a field where most books are anecdotes written by programmers (ala Michael Allen) or website designers. This book actually gives you design principles to follow to increase student learning while debunking many (too)popular theories about good design (such as the usefulness of extra tidbits of information, how to mix pictures and text, when to use audio in an animation, whether a self-playing presentation is better than one where the user clicks through, etc, whether all learners learn best from non-linear presentation, etc.).

I'd highly recomend this book to anyone serious about getting educational multimedia design and elearning right.

I have been developing and teaching online courses for several years and have an extensive library that I have collected over that time. I have found this book to be one of the four or five I return to on a regular basis.

As a person who serves as a reviewer for other faculty work, I lament that this book is not required reading. In addition to discussing how to correctly use technology it also spends significant time looking at how students learn and how we, as faculty, should adress students in an online environment.

Although I agree with the reader from Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada that the book reads like a university textbook, I have found it very useful for designing and justifying my designs of online instruction. When someone wants you to change your design, you can respond by saying, "According to Clark and Mayer, people who learn from integrated text and graphics performed 68% better." Stats like that help to justify budgets!

I find this book very helpful for any instructional designer or elearning content developer because it gives sound guidelines based on research about how to improve instructional design for elearning content.
It provides many graphic examples and research links.
I asked for the book months before it was published and I am not disapointed.
You can incorporate these criteria explained in the book in your designs rigth away.
I have bought many elearning books, and I find this one very very helpful for my desings

The only thing its that I find it a little bit repetitive in their findings, but it makes no harm...

ciao jc

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction is a must have for anybody that is already a pro, or just starting out at designing web-based instruction. The authors give outstanding guidance for every step of the way, from explaining theories to the best way to set up your web site. It shows excellent illustrations of what to do, as well as what NOT to do. This book is a tool that every one in the business shouldn't be without.

Hi: I found the book to be very useful in helping me design an e-learning program. The basic concept of the book is that simple is best; do not overload the learner with extraneous information. The book is nicely laid out and the authors practice what they preach in the learning design of the book. The only weakness I found was the examples used. They seemed dated and not really applicable.

Overall a great learning experience for me. I read it twice and will review it periodically as I work on different projects.

Over several million years, humans have learned from other humans, by speech, action and observation. It can be strongly argued that this is hard-wired into our genes, as the survival advantages of communication and learning from each other are obvious. In the last few decades, a new and fundamentally different form of learning has emerged. This form of learning requires only one human, the learner. Instruction is carried out via a computer, which has the advantage that it never grows frustrated or impatient with the student and will repeat the lesson an indefinite number of times.
However, the first attempts to replace the human instructor were not successful. Early programs that were little more than drill and practice were dull and students lost interest very quickly. The repetitive nature and lack of originality proved to be a near-fatal weakness. The first online courses were little more than correspondence courses, where the correspondence was electronic rather than via letters. As was the case with correspondence courses, a small percentage of the students did well, but most found them inadequate.
It turns out that the successful electronic delivery of learning material is very hard, much harder than the traditional method. It requires new forms of thought and a great deal of attention to detail such as colors and sounds. Electronic delivery also requires a level of sensory stimulation, such as a combination of visual and audio, which is consistent with traditional modes of learning.
Therefore, until computers reached the point where the instruction could be multimedia and user-driven, e-learning could never really be a viable alternative. Now, that has changed and this book contains a large amount of collected wisdom about how to construct and evaluate quality lessons. The authors summarize an enormous amount of research in the field, presenting it in an easy to understand manner. I created online courses for a college and instructional material for my corporate training classes before I read the book and I found their pointers to be right on the mark. They described many of the problems I encountered and their proposed solutions were generally similar to those I found through trial and error.
If you are considering either the development of online courses or are evaluating some for purchase, then you should read this book. The current power of computers can easily convince you that electronic education is much easier than it actually is, and this book will help you avoid making errors.

With many years of experience in building eLearning and educational software I was looking for a reference to back up my "I know it when I see it" thoughts on good and bad courseware. This book met or exceeded my expectations. I like that the chapters are shorter and that the observations are backed up with study results. The References section is a valuable collection of eLearning studies in itself. There are also useful checklists included with the book.

There are some newer technologies such as Wikis and Blogs that are not covered in the book, but since the authors focus on proven techniques with studies to back them up it's unlikely such technologies would receive a lot of coverage at this point.

If you're responsible for designing or reviewing courseware this is a very good nuts-and-bolts reference.

I have been designing and developing e-Learning for 6 years and this book has been wonderful to help remind me of some basics, teach me a few things, and give excellent practical advice as I continue developing. I am not one to read textbooks or non-fiction but I find this writing style very easy to read and I am able to easily apply the concepts. If you have never developed e-Learning but are studying the topic in school, this book may come across as dry and hard to read. Hold on to it and pick it up after you've been developing for a year or so and I'm sure you'll find it as useful as I have.

This book is a wonderful resource for newbies and experienced e-Learning developers alike. Finally we have do's and dont's based on actual research and real-life users. For a relatively new and ever-changing field, some rules are critical, and this book does a great job of providing them. I would definitely recommend this book.