Coaching practices for Mayer Multimedia Learning
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Mayer Multimedia Learning, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I learn everything in just one channel
- I always reach for the way of studying that feels most comfortable to me, and I’m starting to wonder if "this is how I learn best" is just an excuse to avoid the methods that actually work but feel harder.
- I force everything into the format I’m comfortable writing
- When I’m teaching something visual I cram the slide with a busy diagram and a wall of text on top of it, and I can see people’s eyes glaze over trying to read and look at once
- The mental pictures I make to remember things come out flat and gray
Practices that may help
- Use multiple modalities to encode information, not just one
Read about it, draw it, say it aloud, and use it in an example — all in one session.
The Learning Styles Myth: What the Research Actually Says - Stop studying "to your style" — study to the content
Choose your study method based on what the material requires, not what feels comfortable.
The Learning Styles Myth: What the Research Actually Says - Match study format to content type, not to self-concept
Spatial content deserves diagrams; sequential content deserves narrative — regardless of your preferences.
The Learning Styles Myth: What the Research Actually Says - Use spoken audio for explanations paired with visual diagrams
Split visual and auditory working memory resources to process more information than either channel alone can handle.
Cognitive Load Theory: Learning Within Working Memory Limits - Judgments of Learning: Why You Misjudge What You’ve Learned
Judgments of learning (JOLs) are in-the-moment predictions about how well information will be remembered later. Thomas Nelson’s research showed JOLs are often inaccurate — biased upward by current processing fluency — causing learners to declare items "learned" prematurely and under-study material they will later forget. Delayed JOLs and retrieval-based checks produce more accurate predictions and better study-time allocation. - Amplify images with sensory detail and emotion
Add sound, smell, movement, and emotion to your mental image to make it stick.
Peg System Mnemonics, Made Practical - Highlighting audit and replacement
Replace passive highlighting with active annotation that requires understanding to produce.
The Fluency Illusion: Why Easy Reading Fools You Into Thinking You’ve Learned - Adjust how many interacting elements you introduce at once
Introduce concepts with high element interactivity only after prerequisite elements are automated.
The Expertise Reversal Effect: When Help Becomes Harmful - Keep verbal and visual channels separate
Avoid presenting spoken narration and dense text at the same time.
Working Memory: How Your Brain Holds Thoughts in Play - Retrieval: test yourself instead of reviewing
Recall the material from memory rather than re-reading it.
Ultralearning: Aggressive, Self-Directed Learning
Related concerns
- Are Learning Styles Real
The popular idea that people have fixed learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) and learn best when instruction matches their style is not supported by controlled research. Dozens of studies have found no benefit to matching instruction style to supposed learning style. The better question is which study method works best for the specific type of content — and the answer to that question is well studied and quite different from the learning-styles framework.
- Audio Visual Learning
Split visual and auditory working memory resources to process more information than either channel alone can handle.
Use spoken audio for explanations paired with visual diagrams
- Learning Styles Debunked
The popular idea that people have fixed learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) and learn best when instruction matches their style is not supported by controlled research. Dozens of studies have found no benefit to matching instruction style to supposed learning style. The better question is which study method works best for the specific type of content — and the answer to that question is well studied and quite different from the learning-styles framework.
- Modality Effect Learning
Read about it, draw it, say it aloud, and use it in an example — all in one session.
Use multiple modalities to encode information, not just one
- Multimodal Learning
Read about it, draw it, say it aloud, and use it in an example — all in one session.
- Multiple Modality Encoding
Read about it, draw it, say it aloud, and use it in an example — all in one session.
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