About this project

Design thinking

During COVID-19 pandemic, students are being forced to change their ways of learning from in-person to remote. This is a huge change for a lot of students that they are no longer meeting their peers for group projects, or their professors or teachers for lectures. Staying at home might be comfortable for some students, while a great amount of college students find that they are not as effective anymore compared to pre-pandemic. Staying focused is the main problem that students face during remote learning, which can result in different consequences, according to Understood:

• Lack of structure

• Overwhelming external and internal distractions

• Less support from peers and teachers

• Not enough sleep

• No change in scenery or built-in breaks

• Long written communication

A great number of students of all levels are experiencing this remote learning situation at the moment, especially high school and college students. According to New York Times, students have been complaining that remote learning not only take away their enjoyment of hanging out with peers and friends, but also brings hard time in time management of coursework, personal life, sleep, and breaks.

I’m in my second week of online distance learning and it’s exhausting! Yes, school now starts at 9 am and we end at around 2:30, so it’s not like I’m doing school work all day. However, now I’m on the computer for about 4 or 5 hours at a time. Before the whole pandemic happened, I only spent about an hour, maybe 2 on the computer both at school and at home. At the end of the day, I don’t want to see another computer for a while. I actually did some research (on the computer) and I found that I was suffering from computer fatigue. Yep, it’s a real thing.

— Miriam, Oakland, CA

As a learning designer, and also a student who is experiencing remote learning at the moment, I think practical and actionable study tips can be useful for any students who are studying virtually. I would like to make this study tip video a good resource to go for the students who are struggling to find themselves right ways to study and learn effectively during the pandemic. This video should be short, relaxing, fun, and helpful that I would like to encourage the students to really think through their study habits at the moment and how to be more productive with the help of these tips. By raising their self-awareness, I hope the students can be more aware of the way they learn, thus push them to be more self-directed students in their later lives.

Design rationales

Background music in learning and working memory capacity

This video has upbeat background music going on. This might be argued as an extraneous load that would be got rid of according to Mayer's CTML. However, research from Lehmann and Seufert (2007) shows that learners with high working memory capacity learn better with background music. Whilst processing the music, they still have plenty of capacity left for the main learning task. Given the task isn't of high-order skills learning task, the background music should not take much space for learners' working memory, on the contrary, it can affect the learners' mood, bring learners motivations, increase the enjoyment of the mental and physical activity, enhance relaxation, etc (Griffin, 2006). This background music should not be seen as an extraneous load for learners, but on the other hand, a stimulus to keep them motivated, focused and interested.

Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML) and Cognitive Load Theory

The design of this project follows a number of Mayer’s CTML design principles in order to reduce the extraneous load and maximize germane load when learners are watching it, according to Cognitive Load Theory.

• Multimedia Principle

• Personalization Principle

• Coherence Principle

• Spatial Contiguity Principle

• Temporal Contiguity Principle

In this sense, this motion graphics video has infused with text and illustrative graphics to better visualize the content for the audience. The narratives are in a relatively conversational and causal way, which can help to manage and foster learners' germane load. The video is also designed to present the information mainly via short on-screen text and illustrative graphics. The placement and layout follow Spatial Contiguity principle that they are next to each other, and the animations for graphics and text make them arrive on the scene at the same time, which follows Temporal Contiguity principle.