Reading 3

Elizabeth Melendez Reading 3 Ch. 7-9

Redundancy, closely related to the rhetorical principle of repetition, is a tenuous design arrangement choice that can lead to diminishing returns. A deeper study of design and rhetorical principles can help a designer make better decisions regarding use of text and audio, or “boundary conditions” which can determine when redundancy, especially considering visual real estate, in a design is a good choice that does not overload the cognitive processing demands of the learner (key words, no competing graphics, etc). Basically, we want to avoid splitting the learner’s attention with redundancy of text and audio narration (redundancy principle 1).

Of obvious interest to me based on the focus of my thesis and eventual dissertation, is how exceptions to the redundancy principle affect learning in subjects like math.

Coherence, this is rooted in my pet principle for effective design: economy. This is not to say that good design should be strictly economical. But great design enlists the highest aesthetic quality with the highest level of thoughtful application and economy. Extra text and visuals are almost always the hallmark of an inexperienced or unskilled designer. What we called “nouveau riche” design with the advent of computer-aided graphics is also an artifact of the aforementioned technological democratization and content clutter. When anyone can pick up a mouse and generate content, the quality of the overall output of content is diminished by incoherent design choices in products flooding into the field. The benefit of having many years of experience in design informs a much higher and more coherent instructional design standard. For me personally, clean and elegant design are the result of coherent and economical design choices that enables the delivery of quality and effective learning and instructional design products.

Personalization, as a rhetorician, is something I also hold very dear to my own communication practice. I have used it quite effectively in my most recent project for the UGA Office of Research and find a conversational style is also very effective for instructor-led delivery. The ability to incorporate it into a digital product is also an element of effective communication and rhetorical practice that enables a designer to engage learners using their products.