Chapter overview

Chapter 1 introduces several critical learning principles that can be applied when designing a medical presentation and that have the potential of increasing the impact of individual slides, entire slide decks, and even entire educational events (see Stahl and Davis,2009a).

The first section discusses storyboarding, with emphasis on previews and reviews. A preview facilitates learner achievement by acting as a roadmap to alert audiences about important topics to come. Repeated reviews help ensure that messages are clearly delivered by providing a second chance for learning, by helping learners consolidate information, and by clarifying outstanding issues.

Between previews and reviews, delivering information in small multiples gives learners manageable packets of data and helps them to see differences as well as similarities between conditions. Thesecond section discusses how to organize the words of text and especially images as a sequence of small multiples to enhance impact.

The majority of audience members prefer visual components in their learning materials, so adding relevant images and figures can increase learning impact. The section on visual additions discusses how to provide visual cues without distractions or data decorations.

Principles of multimedia learning can help guide instructional design to best utilize these technologies. To increase the impact of presentations, information can be presented in both auditory and visual channels in ways that eliminate interference from the textual channel, present related information in close spatial and temporal proximity, and eliminate extraneous information.