For the past two decades, my colleagues and I at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have been investigating ways to improve learning with multimedia instructional materials. In this chapter I share the fruits of our efforts, based on 70 experimental comparisons between multimedia lessons that are consistent or inconsistent with a particular design principle. Overall, I review 10 research-based tactics for how to design multimedia instructional materials, such as Web-based lessons and paper-based instructional manuals.
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