For many children growing up in the 70’s and early 80’s Schoolhouse Rock was a staple during Saturday morning cartoons. These short films have been helping educators since 1973 covering topics such as parts of speech, multiplication, science and social studies. Schoolhouse Rock aired from 1973 to 1985 and new episodes were created from 1993-1999. When the creator noticed that his son was able to quickly memorize popular songs yet was struggling to memorize his multiplication tables, he began to write songs to help him learn the multiplication facts. These songs evolved into three minute video clips that would help many children learn their facts as well as other important academic information. Each episode features simple animation coupled with a song and a minor amount of text. Each clip is set to a distinctive tune making it easy for students to memorize the song and apply it to their personal studies. Many students find it easier to learn the multiplication facts using songs as well as other topics such as the Preamble to the Constitution. The series is now available for purchase on DVD and can be streamed from various websites such as YouTube, SchoolTube and TeacherTube. For the purpose of this critique, the Schoolhouse Rock: Grammar – Unpack Your Adjectives clip will primarily be discussed, however, some principles apply to other Schoolhouse Rock clips also. Whether intentional or not, the creators tapped into several multimedia principles as they developed the Schoolhouse Rock series. According to Richard E. Mayer (2014), multimedia learning takes place as people build mental images from words (spoken or printed) and various types of pictures. Research supports the use of multimedia in education. The use of the animations coupled with the catchy songs by Schoolhouse Rock, allows students to quickly learn the material presented following the multimedia principle, which basically states that most people learn better from a combination of words and pictures than from words alone (Mayer, 1994). The Schoolhouse Rock series uses basic animations coupled with narration throughout their video clip. Throughout the video clip, individual adjectives are emphasized by being presented in print form. Schoolhouse Rock’s sporadic use of print when narration and animation is in use is supported by the modality principle. This principle is based on the concept that people learn better from graphics and narration than from graphics and printed text (Mayer, 2014). The primary source of text in Schoolhouse Rock video clips is through narration rather than printed text. It is also supported by Kalyuga, S. & Sweller, J. (2014) which found when students are presented with the same information at the same time in different modalities, students will need to expel more working memory in order to try to process both sources of information at the same time. By having single words emphasized and not the entire song being close-captioned during the video clip, it helps to reduce extraneous cognitive load. When considering the type of cognitive load students using Schoolhouse Rock would experience, extraneous cognitive load is at a minimum based on Kalyuga’s view (Kalyuaga, 2010). As students are building connections between the given adjective coupled with their use in grammar and transferring this new knowledge into their working memory, the intrinsic cognitive load experienced should not be overly taxing on the students at the level that this material is delivered. An animated example of the adjective is given along with the narrated and print adjective. Although use of print and narrations are generally discouraged based on Kalyuga and Sweller’s redundancy principle (2014), the individual printed words given sporadically throughout the video does not appear to add too much extraneous cognitive load. The use of the songs also help the student to make connections and chunk the information together in order to expand the working memory. Drawbacks to the use of Schoolhouse Rock are evident also. In the Unpack Your Adjectives clip, a youngster has returned from camp and is telling friends about the adventures that took place while introducing and using adjectives. The cartoons are very basically drawn which may be a drawback to students watching today as they are more familiar with high quality digitally designed animation. The topic of camping may not be a familiar one for many of today’s children as they seem to be spending less time outdoors due to safety concerns and the availability of video games. In dual code theory according to Clark and Paivio (Clark 1991), imagery processing is affected by instructions, the value of the material being studied, and the ability and tendency to use imagery (Clark, 1991). Children in large, urban areas may not be able to place the real world value to these videos in present day, unlike children during their initial airing on television. A redesign of the animations using more updated digital graphics may make it easier for today’s students to identify with the characters and situations they are experiencing. Another drawback in the Schoolhouse Rock series is that some of the animations coupled with the songs can cause the students to split their attention too much between the lyrics of the song and the busy animation taking place on the screen causing additional extraneous cognitive load. At times, this extremely busy animation coupled with lyrics will add a sporadic word in print also which may also further split the attention of the student. This split-attention principle in multimedia learning was discussed by Ayers and Sweller (2014), in which they state that instructional split attention occurs when students have to split their attention between necessary sources and mentally integrate that information at the same time. In instances of busy animations, coupled with the sporadic word, extraneous cognitive load may be added based on the redundancy principle as explained by Kalyuga and Sweller (2014). In the Schoolhouse Rock: Grammar – Unpack Your Adjectives, this split attention principle is not as evident as in other videos such as Conjunction Junction and Pronouns. Videos that do contain extremely busy animations could be simplified and use less busy animations, as well as the removal of the sporadic text to help to reduce extraneous cognitive load brought on by the split attention principle.
References Ayres, P & Sweller, J. (2014). The split-attention principle in multimedia learning. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. (pp. 206-226). New York: Cambridge.
Clark, J.M., & Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory and education. Educational Psychology Review, 3, 149-210.
Kalyuga, S. (2010). Schema acquisition and sources of cognitive load. In J.L. Plass, R. Moreno, & R. Brünken, Cognitive Load Theory (pp. 48-64). New York: Cambridge.
Kalyuga, S. & Sweller, J. (2014). The redundancy principle in multimedia learning. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. (pp. 247-262). New York: Cambridge.
Mayer, R. E. (2014) Introduction to multimedia learning. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning. (pp. 1-26). New York: Cambridge.
Mayer, R.E., Sims, V.K. (1994). For whom is a picture worth a thousand words? Extensions of a dual-coding theory of multimedia learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 86, 389-401.