Learning Things - Learn to Play: Designing Tutorials for Video Games - page 41

Learner's Executive Controller
accesses data from the senses,
focuses attention to learn,
sends for data from LTM,
compensates for deciencies
and guides behaviour

Learner listens to
speech, music or
sound eect that
motivates, directs,
instructs, hints,
reminds or gives
feedback

Learner reads on-
screen text, a graphic
or animation as a
visual event.

Auditory System
Learner encodes gist
directly to phonological
store. Details indirectly
through an articulatory
loop

Visual System
Learner forms an interface
between visual and spatial
data in a visuo-spatial
sketchpad

Learner's Long-Term Memory
is gradually altered by the process

Figure 3.2 Attentional control theory diagram. (Figure reprinted with permission from Mann,
B.L. [2005]. Making your own educational materials for the web. International Journal of
Instructional Technology and Distance Learning , 10[2]).

teaching. If we can prove that we have altered someone's long-term
memory, then we have actually taught someone something. How
long-term memory alteration occurs is a matter of debate, but the two
learning theories that I think best describe it in terms of games are the
Attentional Control Theory and Cognitive Theory (see Figure 3.2)
of multimedia learning, both of which share similarities to an earlier
theory known as the Dual-Coding * theory. I will talk a little more
about the key differences between these theories in Chapter 6, and of
course, why any of that should matter to you.
Both the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning and the
Attentional Control Theory of Multimedia Learning break the human
mind down into separate sensory components: ears and eyes, most
particularly. Another theory by Wolfgang Schnotz is building on
these theories with his Integrated Model , which also shows promise for
learning from multimedia. † Long-term memory is gradually altered by

* Clark, J. M. & Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory and education. Educational
Psychology Review , 3(3).
† Schnotz, W. (2002). Towards an integrated view of learning from text and visual
displays. Educational Psychology Review , 14(1).