{"id":22073,"date":"2025-09-03T01:01:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T05:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.learningguild.com\/?p=22073"},"modified":"2025-07-31T17:15:41","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T21:15:41","slug":"blending-blooms-mayers-visual-design-that-scaffolds-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningguild.com\/articles\/blending-blooms-mayers-visual-design-that-scaffolds-learning","title":{"rendered":"Blending Bloom\u2019s & Mayer\u2019s: Visual Design That Scaffolds Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Aaron Barlin<\/strong><\/p>

Advertise Here<\/a><\/div>\"Earn<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Slide decks are one of the most commonly used visual aids in learning and development\u2014yet they also commonly suffer from poor design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve likely observed these unusable visuals before: slides created with big blocks of text, with odd formatting of text and images, or with clunky templates that haven\u2019t been tailored to the learning outcomes at hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These graphical bad habits impair learners\u2019 ability to absorb the content<\/a> and they represent information dumping and visual clutter, rather than information design and visual prioritization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, L&D professionals can blend two frameworks that already exist in the field of instructional design to level up their slide deck game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By blending Bloom\u2019s Taxonomy and Mayer\u2019s Principles, we can better align our educational intentions with our graphic design choices. In other words, certain visual guidelines are particularly advantageous for helping learners engage in certain levels of cognitive activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Clarifying the usage of frameworks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For our purposes, mentions of Bloom\u2019s Taxonomy refer to its revised version<\/a>, published in 2001 by Lorin Anderson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mentions of Mayer\u2019s Principles refer to the most current and comprehensive edition of Richard Mayer\u2019s book Multimedia Learning<\/em>, published in 2020. (The Digital Learning Institute<\/a> has provided a publicly accessible summary of the principles defined in the book.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each level of Bloom\u2019s is paired with its most aligned Mayer principle. This leaves seven principles unassigned, which is intentional: Many of those, like the Multimedia Principle (use images and text together), are inherent to slide-based learning and less directly tied to visual design strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, Level 6 (creating) is not matched to any Mayer principle, as generative tasks typically depend more on open-ended prompts, collaborative experimentation, and real-world sandboxes than on the kinds of visual guidelines that Mayer\u2019s Principles provide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Level 1: Remembering & The Coherence Principle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Coherence Principle<\/strong> helps ensure learners are only exposed to visual cues that are absolutely essential to the cognitive activity at hand. This focus pares designs down to what makes the material clear, actionable, and, well, \u201ccoherent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cognitive task of remembering<\/strong>\u2014activating learners\u2019 prior knowledge as a foundation for building new knowledge\u2014leaves little room for distraction. Coherence is all about uncluttered visual cues that aid with the learning task at hand. By contrast, the overuse of visuals increases the risk of informational disjointedness, while lowering the chances of successful recall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s imagine that you are asking learners to recall a slide deck that they are proud of having created, in order to surface design principles that they already practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Do this!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"Image<\/figure>\n\n\n\n