Creating lessons using Flash

 Learning Flash was a revelation to me. New learning elements such as keyframes, layers, motion tweens and the various intricacies of the Flash timeline did not stump me. I had watched www.lynda.com's lessons on Flash and it was literally a case of cognitive overload, given the hundreds of features of Flash CS5. Full Sail university's Flash lessons on i-tune were far better. It helped me create a 80 second lesson with 6 images, audio narration and a moving pedagogical coach. The size of the flash creation was impressive. The entire lesson was 655kb. I'm comparing this with other lessons I have created using the same images, audio narration and 3D animation and the size was 39 MB. 3D animation adds to the attractiveness without doubt. However, I'm not entirely sure if using 3D animation meets learning objectives better than a Flash animation sequence.

The learning objectives of my short lesson was to provide a alternative way of doing multiplication. Here's a breakdown of various eLearning design principles and how my lesson adheres to them.

Graphics - I’m using transformational graphics 

that illustrate changes in time. The images used

illustrate a sequence of steps that students need 

to follow in order to perform multiplication using 

Yeda’s method. The purpose of the lesson is to 

demonstrate Yeda’s method of solving 98 times 

93 and the graphics supports the instructional 

content very specifically.

Contiguity - The graphic images being used were pre-coordinated with the audio being played in the background. Pre-designing audio clips for specific images, helped in ensuring contiguity remains between the images and audio.

Modality & Redundancy - Audio narration has been used instead of text to explain the graphics. This has been done to avoid overloading the visual channel with graphics and text. By using audio narration to explain the graphic images depicting a way of doing multiplication, the lesson effectively engages both auditory and visual channel. Redundancy has been avoided by not having any written text explanation of the images except where absolutely necessary (e.g. why 100 is being used as a base for solving the problem).

Coherence - In the background of the audio narration, I have included sounds of a rural background to match with the landscape depicted on the lesson. One might argue this violates the coherence principle by being extraneous music. However, my thoughts were that for students, who are my target audience, this would serve to lighten the seriousness of a math lesson. Also, the volume of the background noise does not interfere with the audio narration.

Personalization strategy – The pedagogical coach Yeda is being used to provide audio narration to the lesson. The underlying thought is that Yeda is a sage and he lives in a rural area and he is telling the students how to do multiplication his way.

I would love to know your thoughts on the lesson, graphics and audio narration.

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