Even in a digital learning environment text remains an important representation form. Text is ideal for an explanation in case of abstraction. An important subcategory in e-learning is that of instructive texts (“How to …”). See “calliope”website through the the ‘In- depth’ section.
- Text allows abstraction.
- Text has the lowest density.
- Text has the lowest development cost.
Text has a low speificity.
In any case, we must take into account the fact that the text is read on a screen (see Module 3, DEVELOPMENT).
We recommend (cfr. Mayer) to combine text as much as possible with other forms (image, drawing, diagram, video, …). Text can e.g. also focus on something that the student would overlook in a video.
