19 MINDS · How people actually learn

Words and pictures, working together.

You will learn eight research-backed rules for combining words and pictures, by seeing them used on one short lesson. It takes 3 minutes.

First, four words you'll need

This is a short lesson on how lightning forms. Before it starts, here are the names of the parts. (Learning names first is one of the principles.)

Updraft: air moving up
Charge separation: plus at the top, minus at the bottom
Stepped leader: a path of charge moving down in jumps
Streamer: a path rising from the ground

How lightning forms

Six steps. Press Next when you're ready for the next one.

Warm, moist air rises

Warm, moist air near the ground rises in an updraft and cools as it climbs.

Water and ice form

The cooling air can no longer hold its water, so water droplets and ice crystals form a cloud.

Charges separate

Droplets and ice collide in the turbulent cloud. The collisions separate charge: negative near the bottom, positive near the top.

A leader steps down

A stepped leader, a path of negative charge, moves down from the cloud in short jumps.

A streamer reaches up

As the leader nears the ground, a streamer of positive charge rises to meet it, often from a tall object.

They meet: the flash

When they meet, current rushes through the joined path: the return stroke. That is the flash you see.

That lesson used six of Mayer's eight principles. The other two are about narration, and this page has none. The table further down shows where each one was.

Watch the clip

The clip takes a cluttered version of this same lightning lesson and fixes it one principle at a time. Each fix shows a before and an after.

46 seconds · lesson 19 of 20 from the full video

The name for it

THE NAME FOR IT

Mayer's multimedia learning principles

Richard E. Mayer · Multimedia Learning, 2001

Evidence-based rules for words plus pictures: cut extras, cue what matters, keep words beside and in sync with images, chunk, prime, and use the ears.

The eight principles, and where this page used them

Principle	What it says	On this page
Coherence	Cut what doesn't help, however fun it is.	No fun facts, no "So cool!" badges. Only what builds the idea.
Signaling	Cue what matters and how it's organized.	The new part in each step is bold in the text and colored in the picture.
Spatial contiguity	Put words next to what they describe.	Each picture sits right next to its words.
Temporal contiguity	Show it while you say it.	On a page, words and picture appear together in each step.
Redundancy	Don't print the narration on screen too.	Not used here: this page has no narration to duplicate.
Segmenting	Let people go at their own pace, in chunks.	Six steps, one at a time, and you press Next when you're ready.
Pre-training	Teach the names of the parts first.	The four names came first, before the process.
Modality	Words through the ears, pictures through the eyes.	Not possible here: the video and this page have no narrator, so words stay on screen.

Mayer's research found each of these effects in controlled experiments. Most of them come from one limit: people process words and pictures in separate channels, and each channel holds only a little at a time.

TAKEAWAY

Every element should help
the learner build the idea.

Check your own lesson

Delete anything decorative. If it's fun but doesn't build the idea, it goes.
Put every label on or beside the picture it names.
Split long sequences into steps the learner moves through at their own pace.
Teach the key terms before the process that uses them.
If you narrate, don't also print the same words on screen.

Ask your agent

PROMPT

Turn the explanation below into a short multimedia lesson using Mayer's principles.
- Start with a glossary of the 3 to 5 terms the learner needs (pre-training).
- Split the process into 4 to 8 steps the learner advances through (segmenting).
- For each step, describe the picture and put the words right beside it (spatial contiguity).
- In each step, cue the one new part, both in the text and in the picture (signaling).
- Leave out anything interesting but not needed (coherence).
- If there will be narration, say what is narrated and keep the on-screen text to labels only (redundancy, modality).

Explanation:
[paste here]

What good output looks like: a glossary, then numbered steps that each pair one picture with a few words and cue the new part.

Sources

Richard E. Mayer, Multimedia Learning, 2001 (3rd edition, 2020). The lightning lesson is one of Mayer's classic research materials.
The lightning steps on this page are simplified for teaching.