Our challenge: designing a simple, accessible format for communicating with parents. Seems simple, but, we have concerns about security, different “platforms”, user/manager-friendliness and above all, will anyone even look at what we create??

In this design process we are to consider the linguistic cognitive domain and ask ourselves: what we are putting out there? How can we create a form of communication that is inviting for parents based on their social/economic demographics? If our goal is fluency and readership, how do we best reach and engage our audience?

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“Cognitive Load” is discussed in Nine Ways to Reduce Cognitive Load in Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer and Roxana Moreno. The authors contend that “the cognitive load is a central consideration in the design of multimedia instruction.” Not that our website/blog is not meant to “instruct” exactly but there is an important message here…

Here are the Three Assumptions About How the Mind Works in Multimedia Learning as discussed in the article:

Dual Channel: Humans possess separate information processing channels for verbal and visual material.

Limited Capacity: There is only a limited amount of processing capacity available in the verbal and visual channels.

Active Processing Learning: requires substantial cognitive processing in the verbal and visual channels.

www.uky.edu/~gmswan3/544/9_ways_to_reduce_CL.pdf

How do I relate this to my design for my blog/website to communicate with my parents? How does “Cognitive Load” figure in to the Cognitive Linguistic Domain?

1) There needs to be a mix of visual and written data on my site. 2) There needs to be a suitable amount of each visual and textual information on my site.

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Today we talked about creating a newsletter that is emailed regularly as a good place to start in getting parents engaged. The benefits of a digital newsletter are: parents can access it at their convenience, it won’t go missing like paper ones do, it can be linked to a blog or other sites, students can contribute/create the newsletter. Sounds good, now…

…back to the Linguistic Cognitive Domain and considering the design of a newsletter, I got from reading, Communicating with Parents: Strategies for Teachers that newsletters should consistently have the same font, style, layout, and use everyday language and be well-proofread. www.adi.org/journal/ss05/Graham-Clay.pdf

My interpretation: keeping some things consistent from newsletter to newsletter makes the reader (parent) feel at ease, and more likely to engage with the information given.

Communication via a digital newsletter encourages better relationships with parents, even if it’s only one-directional. Parents will see photos with captions, updates on learning progress and goals we’re trying to meet, thus making them feel more connected. Seeing their child in context of their school day will additionally (I hope), foster a greater sense of community and appreciation for the work educators are doing.