Multisensory elearning and Dyslexia
Support
LLU+, South Bank University
Gareth Mason 2006
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Runners
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Good learners are good runners
Some can’t run as fast
Get them in the gym make them get a bit faster
Complain problems in the joints
Some one invents a bicycle
Hang on you can’t do that unfair advantage /
brakes might fail
• Wonderful opportunity opens up the world of
literacy
Ross Cooper
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Benefits of assistive technology
• Provides a bridge between students’ current skills and
the tasks they must perform by supporting them in skills
they have not yet acquired,
• evidence that some assistive technology tools can
contribute to strengthening students’ basic skills in
decoding, comprehension, and spelling and in reading
and writing fluency.
• Is not effective for students…….unless it is combined
with instructional and learning strategies that permit
students to take advantage of the power of the
technology.
Linda Hecker and Ellen Urquhart Engstrom Assistive Technology and
Individuals with Dyslexia
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A brave new multimodal world
How is it changing?
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Before long, however, we may see another major reversal
in the culture of education and work. Our sons and
daughters may learn mostly from experience once again,
actively, using all their senses, but this time using visual
and kinaesthetic computer simulations of reality as much as
reality itself.
(page 56, line 20)
In the Mind’s Eye (Updated version)
Thomas G.West
Prometheus Books 1997
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Supermarkets, Pubs
and Retail
Touch screens,
diagrams, templates
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Players Flex Their Mental Muscles
With Brain Age For Nintendo DS
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Brain Age presents players with a
series of fun mental brain-training
challenges that incorporate word
memorization, counting and reading.
It even includes sudoku number
puzzles,
The distinctive touch screen of
Nintendo DS lets users write their
responses, just as though they were
using a PDA.
Players even turn the Nintendo DS
sideways to make it feel more
familiar, like a book.
The more often users challenge
themselves, the better they become
at the tasks and the lower their
estimated DS "brain age."
http://www.nintendo.com/newsarticle?articleid=0QIMtjJfiaXyk8_1LzZunLkbKAq86WVl&page
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whole new world for everyone from
paraplegics to fighter pilots
Scientists
Gingerly Tap Into
Brain's Power
by Kevin Maney USA TODAY
October 11, 2004
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"The patient tells me
this device has
changed his life,"
“Move a cursor on the screen by
thinking about it”
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Assistive technologies
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“New information and communication
technologies”
They make it easy to use a multiplicity of modes, and in
particular the mode of image — still or moving – as well
as other modes, such as using music and sound effect
for instance. They change, through their affordances, the
potentials for representational and communicational
action by their users.
(Page5, line 8)
Gunther Kress,
Literacy in the new Media Age.
Routledge 2003
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Word processing
software
Screen
readers
Spelling
checkers
Reading
Writing &
Spelling
Vocabularies
Semantic
Links
Auditory
Speaking
Recording
speech / Voice
recognition
Visual
Organisation,
Planning & time
management
Formatting
tools Concept
mapping 12
Multisensory teaching and learning
strategies
• A structured multisensory program is widely
regarded as beneficial because:-.
– it enables learners to make sense of information in a
range of ways.
– It promotes an education that does not take learners
for granted, expecting them to learn in the same way.
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Connected terms
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Multimodality
Multisensory
Learning styles
Multimedia
Multimedia learning
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Cyber Learning
Multisensory
Multimodal
Learning
style
Learner
Strengths &
Difficulties
Multimedia
Modes
Learning
activity
Content
Affordances of
learning materials
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Neurodiversity
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Neurodiversity
“The rise of Neurodiversity takes postmodern
fragmentation one step further. Just as the
postmodern era sees every once too solid belief
melt into air, even our most taken-for granted
assumptions: that we all more or less see, feel,
touch, hear, smell, and sort information, in more
or less the same way, (unless visibly disabled)
are being dissolved.” (J.Singer, 1998)
Singer, J (1999), "'Why can't you be normal for once in your life?:
From a 'problem with no name' to the emergence of a new
category of difference: The Autistic Spectrum" in Disability
Discourse, Mairian Corker ed., Open University Press, February
1, 1999).
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Dyslexia
“ We would argue that Dyslexia is an experience
that arises out of natural human diversity on the
one hand and a world on the other where the
early learning of literacy, and good personal
organisation and working memory is mistakenly
used as a marker of ‘intelligence’ The problem
here is seeing difference as deficit.”
(Ross Cooper, LLU+ 2006)
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Differences
Differences with thinking,
• More likely to think visually rather than verbally,
lateraly than logically, intuitively than deductively
Differences with perceiving
• More than one way to learn e,g reading
Differences with making sense of information
• Require multisensory information
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A dyslexic cognitive style?
ƒ Holistic or ‘right brain’ rather than sequential or
‘left brain’ learning
ƒ Problems with order and sequence and breaking
sequences into steps
ƒ Difficulties with linguistic coding - visual auditory
or motor (limiting strategies for storing and
retrieving language)
Krupska and Klein (1995)
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Learning styles
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Learning styles
• Lots of interest in
learning styles and
debate
• Difficulties in defining
differences
• Learning styles are
much harder to define
unless they are seen
in relation task
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Multimedia Learning and
individual differences
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Learner differences
“While various individuals differences such as
learning styles have received the attention of the
training community, research has proven that
the learner’s prior knowledge of the course
content exerts the most influence on learning.”
Page 27 Elearning and the science of instruction
Ruth Colvin Clark Richard E Mayer
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Richard E. Mayer
Developed a cognitive theory of multimedia
learning
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– studies of how individual differences in verbal or
visual learning styles affect learning”
• “humans have separate information-processing
channels for verbal and visual information
• People are able to process only a small amount
of information in each channel at any one time
• Deep learning occurs when learners mentally
select relevant incoming information, organize it
into coherent structures, and integrate it with
prior knowledge.”
Five Questions...for Richard E. Mayer
By Lisa Neal, Editor-in-Chief, eLearn Magazine
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/www.psych.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/mayer/research/research.php
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Multimedia learning
• Determine high or low
knowledge learners
– test prior knowledge of the
subject
• Determine high or low spatial
learners
– Test spatial awareness through
block design
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Individual differences principle
• Ralph E. Mayer, University of California, Santa
Barbara; has conducted research into
multimedia learning
Results
• Design effects are stronger for:
• Low knowledge learners than high knowledge
learners
• High spatial learners than low spatial learners
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Learning styles matched to skills
• “The appropriate instructional methods need to
be used that will accommodate human
psychological processes and exploit the
capabilities of the technology.”
• “Humans have limited capacity for the amount of
information they can process”
• “Effective courseware should include
instructional methods appropriate to the learners
characteristics”
Elearning and the science of instruction
Ruth Colvin Clark Richard E Mayer
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