Designing a Html5 type sound player button to implement Mayer's principle of modality
Spanish version
Written by: Prof. Orlando Carcamo Berrio

Through this article I present to you my implementation of the modality principle proposed by Sweller's (1994) cognitive load theory and Mayer's (2005) cognitive theory of multimedia learning. The modality principle recommends replacing written descriptions with spoken descriptions when giving explanations about the preparation of a task or a job on a platform or virtual classroom. It states this principle that since auditory or visual information is processed independently, then the student's working memory is not overloaded. I explain my application of the modality principle through the design of a sound player button to access the teacher's instructions in audio form on online educational platforms. In the design I used HTML5 and JavaScript.


In my college courses I use a delivery mode known as blended learning. It is a combination of two instructional methods: face-to-face teaching and online teaching. The online dimension of this approach is carried out with the help of a Moodle installation. Each semester I upload users to the different courses by means of a CSV list. Once the courses end, users accounts have to be deleted. The deletion of users can be done all at once if we reset or reinitiate the course they belong to. However, sometimes we have a course with different groups and we want to delete just the students of one group while keeping the others.
En uno de mis cursos virtuales tuve dificultades con algunos estudiantes. Al momento de calificar los trabajos enviados, estas personas no tuvieron nota porque sus trabajos no aparecieron. Naturalmente, ellos reaccionaron al hecho por los canales de comunicación indicados y nos dimos cuenta que la causa del problema no fue la irresponsabilidad de los estudiantes sino una especificación técnica de Moodle.