Wednesday, 10 September 2008

Interactivity

Excerpts from Michael Allen's Guide to e-Learning on interactivity...

Definition: Opportunity for learner to engage with the content by responding to a question or taking an action to solve a problem.

Interactivity has dual powers that are capable of achieving behavioural change:

  • THINKING – Thinking leads to understanding, which leads to increased capabilities
  • DOING – Rehearsed performance can build skills

Well designed exercises provide encoding opportunities – integrating new knowledge with existing knowledge in long-term memory; promoting more connections.

Interactivity creates external events (i.e. clicking and/or dragging) AND internal events (thinking i.e. classification, analysis, and decision making). Interactivity forces learners to commit to an answer before receiving feedback (unlike questions/puzzles in books).

Interactivity is NOT:

  • Navigation
  • Buttons
  • Scrolling
  • Browsing
  • Animation
  • Video

Essential Components of Interactivity

  1. Context – framework/conditions e.g. aerial view of office
    • Should simulate real-life environment
  2. Challenge – stimulus to action e.g. identify the most immediate safety threat
    • Good: apply learning, multiple steps, put at risk (i.e. start again)
    • Poor: revealing correct answer after mistake; using “No, try again.”
  3. Activity – Response to challenge e.g. decide, then move employee to your office
    • Good: allow learners to change their responses
    • Poor: artificial questioning (a, b, c, all, none), one chance, allows luck
  4. Feedback – Reflection of effectiveness
    • Good: instructive, honest (negative/positive consequences), delayed
    • Poor: immediate judgement, focus on passing test

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