My lst post described a portion of the Coherence Principle which says that extraneous sounds, graphis/visuals and extraneous text should be avoided in e-learning. One mught think that providing a richer text to describe something would be better. But in the world of e-learning more is not better. There is considerable evidence that adding extra words/text interferes with learning in an e-learning environment.

However, what can improve learning with less text is another principle called the Modality Principle. The Modality Principle says that presenting words in audio format rather than on-screen text can result in significant learning gains (Clark & Meyer, 2011). Essentially, when the material being presented is complex, fast paced and/or contains graphics then audio text should be applied. If audio is not present then this type of course should be avoided for a good learning experience. Individuals have separate processing for visual and audio. Adding audio to the lesson relieves some of the overload on the visual so the individual can absorb more information than if just one mode of instruction is provided. People learn more deeply from multi-media lessons when words explaining concurrent graphics are presented as speech rather than as on-screen text.(Clark & Meyer (2011). The modality Principle applies only when there are graphics and text on the same screen.