Signal What Matters
Mayer’s signalling: bold, arrows and highlights direct attention to what matters. Use annotation tools to signal live during the explanation. Without it, learners search alone.
Find this under Reduce unnecessary cognitive demand
The strategy, as published
Exactly as it appears on the card
Part of Managing Cognitive Load in 05 Explanations & Modelling, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.
Why you might use it
The problem it may help with
Show a class a dense diagram or a long passage and every pupil must work out alone where to look. Mayer's signalling principle offers the fix: bold, arrows and highlights direct attention to the part the explanation is about.
Without a signal, learners search alone, and some will still be searching when the explanation moves on.
What it might look like
One version of it, in a classroom
Analysing a poem on screen, an English teacher highlights the two words under discussion as they are discussed, live, with an annotation tool. The whole class reads the same poem, but everyone is looking at the same two words at the same moment.
Try it
A way to begin
Next time a text or diagram is on screen, annotate it live during the explanation instead of presenting it pre-marked.
What to notice
Reading what happens
- How quickly eyes find the feature you are discussing.
- Whether pupils' own notes and annotations pick out the features you signalled, or different ones.
Things to think about
Before and while you use it
- Signal sparingly. A slide where everything is bold has no signal at all.
- Live annotation ties the signal to your voice, so attention and narration move together.
The wider thinking
Where the evidence sits
Signalling is one of Mayer's multimedia principles, developed from the same research programme as coherence and segmenting. The card’s attribution stands as published: Mayer.
The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Explanations & Modelling.
Keep exploring
Where next?
Back to this strategy in 05 Explanations & Modelling, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.
Want to take this further?
Support is available
Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.