One of the surprising revelations I have had while searching for Presentation Facts is that there is a lot more applicable research out there than I first thought. There is also research that is fundamental to the work Presentation Professionals do everyday. Perhaps the most foundational work can be found in the research and writings of Professor Richard Mayer.

Mayer is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He has written many articles and 18 books in the areas of educational psychology and learning. His most immediately applicable book for Presentation Professionals is Multimedia Learning published for the first time in 2001. In this book, Mayer lays out seven foundational principles of learning directly applicable to the development of presentations. While Mayer’s focus in this book is on delivering instructional messages in educational environments, I see no reason why his principles would not be applicable to other types of presentations as well because the underlying cognitive processes involved are the same.

Mayer’s definition of multimedia is simple and clear:

“A multimedia instructional message is a communication using words and pictures that is designed to promote learning.”

This definition includes presentations where information is presented through words (spoken) and pictures (visuals). In Multimedia Learning, Mayer painstakingly lays out the scientific and well researched case for his seven principles of multimedia learning. All are vital, foundational principles of presentation development as well.

Mayer’s seven principles or multimedia development are:

1. The Multimedia Principle: Students learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
2. The Spatial Contiguity Principle: Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen.
3. The Temporal Contiguity Principle: Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.
4. The Coherence Principle: Students learn better when extraneous words, pictures and sounds are excluded rather than included.
5. The Modality Principle: Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text.
6. The Redundancy Principle: Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation, narration and on-screen text.
7. The Individual Differences Principle: Design effects are greater for low-knowledge learners than for high-knowledge learners and for high-spatial learners than for low-spatial learners.

Multimedia Learning is a must read for people serious about building presentation visuals on a solid foundation of empirically proven principles.