Tag Archives: learning styles

Redundancy hurts comprehension

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I got to discussing slide presentations with a group of friends on Facebook yesterday. Most of them are preachers, and we were commenting on an article about how the Google CEO does presentations (the link is in today’s Links to Go).

The discussion got me to reading again, reminding me of an idea that I sometimes forget when making presentations: redundancy hurts comprehension. I don’t mean the repeating of ideas; I mean the common practice of trying to present information via two channels at the same time. If the information is the same, the brain can’t deal well with the redundancy and copes by not processing the information as it would.

Where this affects churches is in this: if you read a passage of Scripture and project the text on the screen at the same time, people will understand less of what you read and not more.

Surprising, isn’t it? Yet studies have shown this to be fairly consistently true. You can read a fairly recent one here (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223078244_The_effect_of_redundant_text_in_multimedia_instruction); here’s an excerpt from the abstract:

The results show that whatever the type of text presentation (sequential or static), the duplication of information in the written mode led to a substantial impairment in subsequent retention and transfer tests as well as in a task in which the memorization of diagrams was evaluated.

Logic tells us that projecting a Bible passage while it is being read will allow people to choose to either listen or read. But if we think about it, we know that’s not true. It’s next to impossible to see text on a screen and not try to read it, just as it’s almost certain that we will try to understand something that we are hearing. As our brain tries to do these two things at the same time, it fails miserably.

It’s funny though; when asked if visual/auditory redundancy help them learn, most people respond “yes.” (Note this study on the National Institute of Health website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4088922/)

So if your church puts Bible texts on the screen while they’re being read, I’d suggest that you speak up and suggest a change. Blame me. Or blame science.

Presentation suggestion #4: Varying learning styles

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560469_oldschool_2One of the justifications for using visual presentations in church is the fact that people learn in different ways. Traditionally, three principle principal learning styles have been identified: visual learners, experiential learners, and aural learners. Some learn by seeing, some learn by experiencing something, some learn by hearing.

Eddie Sharp, who now preaches down in Austin, did an interesting experiment a few years ago. He intentionally varied his language from sermon to sermon. In one, he used lots of “visual words”—what we see in this passage, the image presented, etc. In another, he focused on feeling words, emphasizing emotions and empathy with the characters in the Bible story. In a third, he focused on “hearing” the word of God. After each sermon, a different group of people came up to say how much the sermon had impacted them.

Eddie’s experiment shows that you don’t have to have a projector and a screen to appeal to different learning styles. It also reminds me that just using a presentation won’t necessarily appeal to different styles either. When putting together a sermon with a presentation, appeals to different learning styles should be kept in mind. Our services have traditionally rewarded those who liked to learn by hearing (hence the term auditorium and the arrangement of our seating), as well as those who preferred highly rational, non-emotional worship.

[As a side note, back in the 1980s, Flavil Yeakley wrote an excellent study of the discipling movement in our brotherhood. The best chapter in the book was “What We Can Learn From the Discipling Movement.” There he spoke of how our traditional evangelistic style appeals to introverts more than extroverts. That may have changed in twenty years, but it was interesting then.]

I favor the use of presentations largely for this reason, the need to reach out to other learning styles. It’s not the only way to reach out to them, but it can be an effective way.