How to design and present clear computing lessons

Learning something new requires effort. Learners take in new information by listening and observing. When a lot of information is presented at once in a lesson, that can create too much cognitive load for learners — a barrier to understanding and engagement.

To help you design and deliver great computing lessons, we’ve written two new Pedagogy Quick Reads focused on Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning. These research-backed principles give you practical strategies to lower your students’ unnecessary cognitive load during lessons, leading to better learning outcomes.

In this blog, we introduce the two new Quick Reads (Designing multimedia for clarity and Designing multimedia for understanding), which you can download for free to:

• Find practical tips for how you can apply Mayer’s Principles to your lessons
• Read a summary of the research behind them

The blog also includes some examples for how to apply the principles in your computing lessons.

If you’d like an introduction to the idea of cognitive load, you can find the Quick Read about cognitive load theory here.

What are Mayer’s Principles?

Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning are practical principles that will help you create clearer resources and present information in a way that avoids unnecessary cognitive load for your learners.

Mayer’s Principles are based on three related facts:

1. You can present information to learners in auditory form (e.g. spoken explanations) and visual form (e.g. written text, diagrams)
2. There are limits on how much new information people can take in at the same time
3. Teaching materials that are not well-structured can cause too much cognitive load, which negatively affects learning

Designing lessons for clarity

Our first new Quick Read focuses on the following Mayer’s Principles for making your lessons as clear as possible, so that learners can connect the information they see and hear in real time.

• Make all the information you include coherent, meaning that it is directly relevant to the learning objectives and does not distract learners’ attention
• Guide your learners’ attention by using signals such as arrows, bold text, colour, or auditory cues
• Avoid redundant information, such as a slide with a diagram and a paragraph explaining the diagram, or a slide that you speak about without adding new, complementing information
• Present related words and visuals in the same space, e.g. place your text labels, or explanations directly adjacent to diagrams, images or code segments they describe
• Present related words and visuals at the same time, e.g. by pairing narration with imagery

Designing lessons for understanding

Our second new Quick Read shares three Mayer’s Principles for how you can structure your lesson delivery to support your learners’ understanding:

• Structure lessons or demonstrations into clear, manageable stages or segments, rather than presenting the information all at once
• When you start a new topic, begin with some pre-training by introducing key terms, components, or goals and how they relate
• When you present diagrams, flowcharts, or code examples, explain this visual information using the other modality, meaning spoken narration, instead of using paragraphs of text

Applying Mayer’s Principles to your computing lessons

We suggest you consider implementing Mayer’s Principles when you next design new lessons or want to adapt materials that you reuse regularly.

Here are some ideas on how you use both sets of principles in common computing teaching scenarios.

Live coding and code walkthroughs

When displaying a new Python script or Scratch project, avoid adding long, written paragraphs of commentary to explain the code. Instead, place short text annotations or sub-goal labels directly next to the relevant lines or blocks. As you run through the code, use your pointer or live typing to guide your learners’ focus (signalling) and explain in words how the program works at the same time.

Starting a new topic such as networking

Before students move to a new topic, for example networking, consider what words or concepts your class needs to be familiar with. Allocate a few minutes at the start of your lesson for pre-training to introduce terms like LAN or bandwidth and how they relate to the lesson.

Consider how your lesson can be divided into stages to allow for better understanding (segmenting). Each stage should build on the previous one and feed into the next one. For example, when you explain how data moves across a network, you can introduce each step separately before combining them all into a complete model of a network.

Consider how you display visual information to your class. Ensuring related diagrams and labels appear close together, only include relevant materials and no decoration on your slides (coherence), and avoid simply reading out words on the slide identical forms of information (redundancy).

Supporting multilingual learners with Mayer’s Principles

Mayer’s Principles are even more important for educators teaching multilingual learners or non-native speakers. When learners need to work harder to understand the language, poor lesson design can slow down their learning significantly.

Mayer’s Principles can help you with this challenge:

• Applying the coherence and redundancy principles will allow you to make your explanations and slides as clear and concise as possible
• Using signaling will mean you help learners to follow along and know what is most important
• Presenting diagrams that illustrate computing concepts clearly will help your multilingual learners understand your spoken explanation much more easily (modality)

Intentional design for lasting understanding

By intentionally designing and presenting lessons to give the right amount of information in the clearest way, you make it easier for your students to focus and build a lasting understanding of computing concepts. When your lesson materials align with how our brains process information, learners can build stronger mental models and approach independent learning activities with greater confidence.

Read our new Quick Reads to find out more and discover the research behind Mayer’s Principles:

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How to rapidly design and adapt quality learning experiences for your students

At this time of year, many educators are considering ways to update their content ahead of the new school term. Whether you’re a teaching assistant or head of department, it’s important to ensure that the content you’re updating — or even designing anew — is relevant and high quality, and meet learners’ needs. In today’s blog we’re highlighting ‘ABC learning design’, and how it can be used to rapidly design and improve learning experiences.

We also share our new ABC-focused Pedagogy Quick Read, which you can download for free to: 

• Find practical tips on how to use the ABC process and related approaches with your learners
• Read a summary of the research behind the framework

What is ABC learning design?

ABC learning design is a rapid, hands-on approach to design and develop blended learning experiences. The framework has traditionally been used at undergrad level, and had a lot of success when used in response to the global pandemic in 2020, when learning experiences had to quickly transition from being delivered in-person to being accessible remotely. 

The model is centred around six learning types:

• Acquisition: Learning by reading, listening, or watching
• Collaboration: Learning by working with others towards a common goal, involving co-creation and shared outputs
• Discussion: Learning through dialogue, sharing ideas, and responding to others
• Investigation: Learning by exploring, comparing, and evaluating new information or experiences
• Practice: Learning by applying knowledge and skills, receiving feedback, and refining understanding
• Production: Learning by expressing understanding or creating something to demonstrate knowledge and skills

Before continuing, it’s important to distinguish between ‘learning types’ and the widely discredited concept of ‘learning styles’. Whilst learning styles refer to fixed characteristics or preferences of learners, learning types refer to different kinds of learning activities and pedagogical approaches that can be designed into a course.

These learning types are representative simplifications of pre-existing learning theories. For each learning type, educators can use different activities to deliver that type of learning. The activities will depend on your context and what’s right and applicable for your students.

How can I apply ABC learning design?

ABC learning design is often done in a team-based workshop setting (you can do it by yourself as well). Firstly, you analyse your existing content. Consider the goal of your current learning sequence, and assess how your learners are going to reach that goal with the different learning types.

By analysing existing content and activities, you can then identify what’s missing from your sequence. This allows you to build on existing gaps and consider different types of activities you could implement. You then create a set of learning cards, which help you to storyboard and plan your new learning sequence.

Learning cards are typically postcard-sized and colour-coded to one of the six learning types. Colour coding helps you to tell the cards apart, and to easily see which learning types are or aren’t included in your sequence. 

Each card has the name and a short description of the learning type on the front, with examples of associated digital or in-person learning activities on the back. The learning cards:

• Make the design process more engaging
• Help with decision making
• Support discussions if you’re working in a team

Adapting ABC learning design for your context

ABC design can be contextualised to your classroom, practices, and school, and to the technologies you have available. For example, on the back of each learning card you could include a set of activities that have been tried and tested in, or approved by, your school. Alternatively, you could link to other frameworks or teaching approaches that work for you and your students. 

Learning cards can also be used to collect other insights about teaching and learning within your context, and used as reminders of pedagogies to implement, as well as practical concerns. They can also help you to consider if there are opportunities for cross-curricular links within your learning sequence.

A shared toolkit you can reuse

In a computing department, ABC learning cards can become a shared resource that give fellow educators an understanding of what’s possible. The cards can be used again and again to help plan future learning experiences. 

By running an ABC workshop and creating these learning cards, you and your team will put together a contextualised learning sequence toolkit specific to your school and learners.

Integration with universal design for learning to improve accessibility

In our blog How to build young people’s agency through accessible learning, we explored the universal design for learning (UDL) framework. UDL aims to support educators to reduce barriers for learners. It helps educators to create learning environments that are accessible and effective for all learners by providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression.

Gormley et al. (2022) described an initiative to integrate UDL within ABC learning design. They developed adapted ABC learning cards where the reverse side included specific UDL prompts, in addition to the usual example activities. For example:

• An acquisition card could include the prompt “Will materials be available in a variety of formats (text, audio, and visual)? Will videos be captioned and transcribed?”
• A production card could include the prompt “Are there multiple ways for learners to demonstrate their understanding? Can they choose between writing, presenting, or creating?”

By including these UDL considerations directly on the ABC cards, the design team ensured that accessibility and inclusivity were central to learning design conversations.

Adding UDL prompts to your learning cards is a fantastic way to help you design accessible learning sequences.

Applying ABC learning design: Some ideas for computing educators

In 2020, during the pandemic, the Computing at School (CAS) Research Working Group worked with classroom teachers to apply ABC learning design in their own contexts. 

Following some training, teachers analysed their existing classroom activities and then developed a range of suitable alternatives for remote learning, categorising them into low-tech, mid-tech, and high-tech options. 
The different activity options were then added to their own sets of ABC learning cards and used to help adapt lessons for remote teaching. You can read more about the project and view example cards on the CAS website.

The benefits of using ABC learning design

Potential benefits for educators:

• Enables more rapid creation and delivery of high-quality content
• Allows you to audit your current learning sequence and identify gaps that can be improved upon
• Provides a shared, contextualised toolkit for curriculum design

Potential benefits for students:

• Tailored, engaging, high-quality learning experiences

Want to hear more about ABC learning design?

If you’d like to find out more about ABC learning design, you can download our Quick Read for free.

You can also listen to a thought-provoking discussion on the topic between James Robinson, Carrie Anne Philbin, Jane Waite, and Matthew Wimpenny-Smith in season 1, episode 6 of the Hello World podcast: Could curriculum design be as simple as ABC?

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