Multimedia Critique Paper 2 1

The Many Formats of Piktochart

EDIT 720*D1

Olivia Foy

July 24, 2022

Multimedia Critique Paper 2 2

Introduction

Multimedia products are a necessity in the classroom. Not only does it provide students

with the opportunity to be creative and express their understanding of class instruction, it also

gives the chance to collaborate among peers and educators. As beneficial as incorporating

multimedia presentations and products in the classroom, it needs to adhere to the principles

associated with multimedia integration into learning instruction. Educators need to ensure that

the programs and apps being used in their instruction are deemed successful in providing enough

evidence of linking to the principles as to not overwhelm cognitive abilities and working

memory. One program that is being used more and more frequently in the classroom is

Piktochart (https://piktochart.com/). Piktochart provides educators and students the opportunity

to use a variety of formats of text ranging from schedules to posters and presentations. While it is

a great tool to use, does it follow all the properties of multimedia principles?

Setup and Features

Piktochart is a program that is easy to follow and walks through each format. The first

thing to do is to create an account. Once an account is established, the home screen is featured on

the screen similar to below where it allows the user to choose from a selection of templates or

browse them all at once if there is not a clear idea of where to start.
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Once a template has been selected, the user is able to edit and add any of the features that can be

seen in the image above. The creative element consists of integrating various forms of graphics,

text, as well as other forms of media. Videos can also be added to presentations, whether it is a

video that is uploaded from desktop or one from an outside program such as YouTube. Even with

the free account, there are so many interesting features to use and, as always, the user can also

upgrade at any time to incorporate other features in their presentations as well. Since this is a

presentation-based multimedia product, it can be adapted to any setting and subject-area.

Piktochart is also a great resource that will allow students the opportunity to be creative in their

design of content and will be more engaged in depicting the important information that is
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adapted to the audience of their peers. With this great resource in mind, it is interesting to see

how it fully demonstrates the principles that will allow readers to understand the content without

overloading their cognitive capacity.

Multimedia Principles Analysis

For the duration of this paper, I will be using information from the book, Multimedia

Learning by Richard Mayer. According to Mayer (2020), these are several principles that should

be evident in instruction in order to help students better process the information and retain what

they are learning. Concerning the different principles included in the text, some of the topics

correlate with Piktochart more than others. When analyzing Piktochart, it is evident that several

principles stand out in this program. One of the principles that is really evident is the Spatial

Contiguity Principle. According to Mayer (2020), this principle emphasizes that learners best

understand information if the words and images are in close relation to each other on the page.

Piktochart templates integrate the text and images together among the pages so that the reader

does not have to spend time drifting their attention from page to page, linking the information

together. It flows easily and provides a clear picture of what the author is trying to convene to the

reader. The Coherence Principle can be established as the templates from Piktochart allows only

the necessary information to get the message across to the audience. This should help limit

extraneous information and allow the reader to understand the information without experiencing

cognitive overload. Since videos can be added to the presentation as well, this program can be

said to follow the Modality Principle as well. According to Mayer (2020), this principle

emphasizes the importance of narration and images to help the learner better understand.

Narration can be added to the template to reiterate the information being presented in the product

whether it be a flyer or a brochure. This will also be more engaging for the learner than just text
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alone. Of course, as a multimedia product, this program follows the Multimedia Principle as well

by illustrating graphics as well as text formatted different ways on the page.

Along with demonstrating some remarkable integration of principles, there were several

principles that could have stood out more in the development of the program. For instance,

Piktochart does not use the Signaling Principle as much since all the information is composed

together on the same page. Different text formats and shapes can be added to provide more

emphasis on a particular word or phrase in the presentation, but the reader still has to decipher

which section of the information is crucial to read first. Similarly, while some templates such as

brochures can divide information into different sections, most of the information is displayed at

the same time, leading to a lack of signaling as defined by Mayer’s Signaling Principle. Also,

depending on the choice of format, some of the information can be seen as interfering with the

Redundancy Principle since information can be overstated with images and text as well as if

narration is involved. Most of the formats contains majority text while only a few is based on

narration which means that captions and other labeling will most likely be included which can

cause issues with redundancy in the information. However, most of the other principles are

present in regards to overall analysis of the Multimedia Principles.

Conclusion

Piktochart is a well-known program used for research and presenting information. It

allows educators and students the ability to incorporate a variety of formats and technique to

engage the reader and help them retain the information. Being a multimedia product, it follows

many of the principles as explained by Mayer (2020). This program does an excellent job of

demonstrating the importance of the Spatial Contiguity Principle as well as the Coherence

Principle by effectively arranging the information in the layout of images and text to be depicted
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together so that the information is better understood and extra details is no longer needed. The

audience will have a better opportunity to retain the content being addressed in the presentation

and the format of the template will provide the viewer with an easy way to access the

information. While Piktochart did an outstanding performance displaying several of the

principles associated with multimedia, there were still others that were not portrayed in as much

effect. For instance, the Signaling Principle was not as evident as others due to the abundance of

information being displayed on the screen at the same time. This can also place the demand on

the readers to decide for themselves the focus of the overall concept of the presentation,which

can be overwhelming for readers without much prior knowledge in the topic being discussed. As

mentioned in the report, Piktochart is a beneficial resource to incorporate into the classroom

setting, even if instructors have to determine which features are better than others.
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Works Cited

Mayer, R. E. (2020). Multimedia Learning (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.