Running Head: Let’s Do Dewey 1

Multimedia Product Critique #1: Let’s Do Dewey

Joy Rohrbaugh

Coastal Carolina University

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Multimedia Product Critique #1: Let’s Do Dewey

Because the internet is such an effective way to disseminate information, it stands to

reason that more and more resources would be placed there to get more visibility. In the case of

the website, Let’s Do Dewey (http://library.mtsu.edu/dewey/dewey2.htm#Exercise3), the

librarians of Middle Tennessee State University’s James E. Walker Library posted their website

to educate potential library users and student assistants on how the Dewey Decimal

organizational system works. This site is designed more for adult learners than children, and

covers information about who Dewey was and the history and development of the Dewey

Decimal System, in addition to clarifying how the system works and all the parts of a call

number.

An examination of this website and its design and information presentation reveals both

positives and negatives for instruction. One of the positives is the completeness of the

information as it is presented, basically giving a viewer any information he or she could possibly

desire on the Dewey Decimal System in one place. There were several opportunities given for

students to practice their new skills with feedback given and multiple links to further information

if the student felt additional study would be necessary. This use of the rehearsal theory (Driscoll,

2000, p. 90) gives learners a chance to repeat their skills in order to push them into long-term

memory. The information was presented on a verbal channel for the most part, although some

diagrams and other visuals were used to guide thinking. The redundancy principle was not

violated here, because the words and visuals were not combined with narration to cause

extraneous overload (Mayer, 2014, p. 279). Mayer’s (2014) personalization principle was used to
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make the information more approachable (p. 345), and Robin Williams’ C.R.A.P. principle of

repetition was honored in the similarity of the font colors and styles throughout the website

(C.R.A.P., n.d.).
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In spite of all its positives, however, this site contradicted proven design principles on

many occasions. While the site did include visuals in addition to the verbal information

presented, most of them were superfluous and only added distraction to the site, contrary to

Mayer’s coherence principle (Mayer, 2014, p. 279). Also, there was so much information

included that it would have very much benefited from Mayer’s signaling principle. Despite some

use of different colored fonts, it was difficult to distinguish the different sections and which

information was most important to look at first (Mayer, 2014, p. 281). In addition, the colors

chosen did not always provide enough contrast to the dark background, violating Williams’

principle of employing contrast in instructional design (C.R.A.P., n.d.). The material was often

too spaced out for easy comprehension, and this violated Williams’ idea of proximity (C.R.A.P.,

n.d.).
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There were multiple spelling and syntax errors throughout the site that made reading and

comprehending the information difficult, as it distracted from the site’s main instructional goal.

In addition, although there were links given for further information and practice, these links were

often broken and did not go anywhere. Even though the comprehensiveness of the site’s

information was actually one of its strengths, the sheer magnitude of the information called for

more scaffolding, in adherence to Mayer’s segmenting principle (Mayer, 2014, p. 317). While

the presentation was slightly personalized, the site could have benefited from a visual narrator,

making use of Mayer’s embodiment principle (Mayer, 2014, p. 345).

The volume of information presented here was such that the learner would experience a

severe cognitive overload, making it nearly impossible for all of the information to fit within

working memory simultaneously, much less to process further into long-term memory (Kalyuga,

2010, p. 6). This site would have been better suited to add to its nearly solely verbal arrangement

to a verbal and visual, dual-coded, presentation so that the information could be more efficiently

absorbed by the learners (Clark & Paivio 1991).

Although there are many aspects of Let’s Do Dewey that contain good instruction, if I

were to redesign this website, I believe there are several improvements to be made. First, I would

change the background color to a lighter color than the current dark blue. It is always visually

appealing to use interesting colors, but a white or gray background would make the information

easier to see and understand. Along these same lines, I would change the font to a sans serif

style, something like Arial or Calibri, so that the words would be less busy and difficult to read. I

would also use different font sizes and possibly heading colors to create more signaling

throughout the site.

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The illustrations, while amusing and interesting, are not contributing to the instruction, so

I would eliminate them; however, there are a few places where the information is organized into

a table form, and I might create additional tables to help clean up the visuals and help with the

learners’ information processing. I would take some of their existing visual examples of creating

Dewey Decimal numbers and turn them into diagrams, rather than simply posting them randomly

around the site. Several times on the site, the authors made attempts to be amusing or use

colloquialisms to make the information more approachable, but these were often lost among all

the other words. I would highlight these in order to make better use of them. To further

personalize the instruction, I would either incorporate a video to illustrate the information in a

different way and reemphasize the instruction, or I would use a narrator to help present

information on an auditory channel and eliminate some of the words on the site.

In order to make the instruction more manageable, I would segment the information into

several lessons rather than presenting all of it at once. In this way, I could scaffold and give

learners the opportunity to start from the beginning or skip ahead if they were more experienced

with the information. To make the purpose of the website clearer and instantly understandable, I

would also create an overarching title for the series, and use the same headings/title styles for

each, to create more continuity for all the lessons. Finally, I would rearrange the alignment of the

page for all of my lessons so that the learner could follow along without confusion, always

knowing what information should be read and absorbed next.

As I often tell my students, it is a simple process to create and publish something on the

internet, and that is why it is important to be a discerning and sometimes skeptical consumer of

web-based products. One of the criteria we look at is whether or not a website looks professional

and if it is visually appealing. In the case of Let’s Do Dewey, it seems that this site might fail one
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of our first tests. While it is full of very important and accurate information, the presentation

keeps it from being a good choice for anyone wanting to learn the finer points of the Dewey

Decimal System. With a few revisions to its appearance and organization, however, this site

could be a very useful one for training students to be effective users of the DDS. While I would

not recommend it highly, a savvy learner with some prior knowledge of the DDS would surely

be able to use the site for informational purposes, while a learner new to the system might need

additional assistance to incorporate the presented information.

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References

Clark, J.M., & Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory and education. Educational Psychology

Review, 3, 149-210.

C.R.A.P. Principles of Graphic Design. (n.d.). Retrieved February 9, 2018, from

https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_business-information-systems-design-an-app-for-

that/s07-01-c-r-a-p-principles-of-graphic-.html.

Driscoll, M. (2000). Psychology of Learning for Instruction (2nd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and

Bacon.

Kalyuga, S. (2010). Schema acquisition and sources of cognitive load. In J.L. Plass, R. Moreno,

& R. Brünken, Cognitive Load Theory (pp. 48-64). New York: Cambridge.

Mayer, R. E. (Ed.). (2014). The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (2nd ed.). New

York: University of Cambridge.