Four principles for designing instructions

This paper gives four principles for preparing multimedia instructional sequences and experimental methods for applying the principles. It also describes the empirical experiments on which the principles are based. Principle 1 is a criterion for good terminology for unfamiliar objects, actions, and situations, with methods for deriving such terminology. Principle 2 tells how to overlap visual and spoken elements in time (as in a movie or a lecture with slides) to form good associations. Principle 3 states that division of instructions into conceptual units should agree with people´s natural conceptualization. A method is presented for finding the natural conceptualization. Principle 4 treats mixing audiovisual instruction with hands-on practice in learning a procedure.