The last two large organizations I worked at had a number of Flash developers, yet we had not graphic designers. My guess is that it is the case for many of the IDs.

I’d start with one of the books that I added to the comments above. Mayer and Clark do a fine job bringing the relevant studies into focus for those who create elearning courses, especially since most of us don’t have ready access to some of the educational psych journals.

I just came across this post searching for research on exactly this point. You write at the top of your post: “Studies show that using images and text to represent your ideas is more effective than just using text. The key is choosing the right images because those same studies show that images with no purpose can actually make learning harder.”

I’m very curious about this – could you point me to some of these studies please? I’d very much appreciate it.

Kristina

Feel free to quote any part of my post. In addition, you can find more research based content in my comment above in one of the books by Mayer or Clark.

I found your article quite interesting. Currently, I’m doing my research project based on correct image choice while using powerpoint presentations in the teaching of vocab. Therefore, your article is one of the best that I found to support my thesis. The thing is I need to quote and I dunno how I can do that.

Could you please tell me how I can quote this article??? and where did you get all this information from??.

Rodrigo
Chile.

Sometimes I will use multiple slides to build an animation. In the past that might have been one slide, but now it’s stretched over a series of slides. The user can’t really tell.

Also, here’s an interesting presentation that I think is a good example of how slide count is not relevant if the presentation is good.

The other point about considering multicultural audience is a very good one, as well…especially when it comes to images and symbols. Our culture definitely creates a bias in how perceive what we see. That’s fodder for a future blog post:)

Many thanks for sharing this information. I looked at Meet Harry’s presentation and I agree on the importance of having the right images when sending specific messages. However, I was a little bit concern about the numbers of slides used to do this exercise. I have heard that number of slides in presentations counts, especially if you want to call learner/customers’ attention and don’t let them get bored. Perhaps using the proper images AND considering the numbers of slides, I can create better presentations with useful meaning.

One more thing… As I’m not from United States I didn’t know what the group that represents the eagle. What’s the group’s name? (Perhaps something else to consider when having learners worldwide).

Regards,

Carolina