Less text = more learning

Do stakeholders want to add text to your materials?

A recent study has shown how more words can hurt learning.

The study compared three lessons about the same weather process. All lessons used the same illustrations but varied in the number of words.

The lesson with the fewest words resulted in the most learning.

Read the original publication: Journal of Educational Psychology.

See the summary on pp. 109-115 of Efficiency in Learning by Ruth Clark, Frank Nguyen, and John Sweller.

(Adapted from a post on Cathy Moore's blog.)

The Media Equation

Reeves and Nass have written a book on how humans interact with computers and other media:

The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places

Their equation "media = real life" means that people respond to the mediated world and the real world in the same fundamentally social and natural way. The authors explain that since the human brain has not evolved to respond to 20th-century technology it processes media as if they were real life.

To prove their equation, the authors combed through existing social science and psychology experiments that tested person-to-person responses in social interactions but changed the experiments to test person-to-computer interaction. In all cases, the results supported the media equation, demonstrating that people interact with media just as they interact with other humans.

In their conclusion, they call on engineers to heed this media equation and improve the design of computers for more effective human-to-media interaction.

In his blog, Donald Clark says that people confusing media with real life is actually a "highly useful confusion: it is what makes movies, television, radio, the web and e-learning work."

He highlights the following guidelines:

• Media equals real life
• There is no reason why online learning experiences should be any less compelling - any less 'human' in feel - than what we experience in the classroom. As long as a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules, we will accept it.
• Don't break the spell
• The spell is easily broken. If the media technology fails to conform to our human expectations - we will NOT accept it.
• Scrap learning objectives
• There is a strong argument for emotional engagement at the start of an e-learning programme and not the usual list of objectives.
• Awkward pauses
• Slight pauses, waits and unexpected events cause disturbance. Audio-video asynchrony, such as poor lip-synch or jerky low frame-rate video, will result in negative evaluations of the speaker.
• Experts matter
• With experts, respected and authoritative views can not only bring credibility to the programme, they can also increase learning and retention. A key subject matter expert, or someone with strong practical experience in the area, can be used to anchor the theory and practice.
• Quality of video no big deal
• Interestingly, they could detect no difference between those who viewed low as opposed to high fidelity images. So don’t waste your money on broadcast quality video.
• Big screens are good
• Larger wide screen format monitors have more impact than quality of image.
• Quality of audio matters
• Users are more sensitive to the quality of audio than they are to that of video. Learners expect consistently high quality at a consistent volume. Record good quality audio.
• Politeness matters
• Politeness is hardwired into our systems. People are polite to computers and expect them to be polite to them. People also respond to flattery from computers, and are hurt if they get negative feedback that is too harsh.

101 Undiscovered Freebies

Preston Gralla and Adam Pash have "scoured the Internet to come up with 101 innovative, entirely free downloads and services."

101 Undiscovered Freebies: The List

Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning

George Siemens and Peter Tittenburg have released their “Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning” both as a Wiki and as a PDF as a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities.

Introduction

Over the next decade, a duality of change - conceptual (new models of education) and technological (elearning, mobile devices, and learning networks) - offers the prospect of fundamental change in the practices of teaching and learning.

Information can now be acquired in any manner desired by the individual. Learners piece together (connect) various content to create an integrated network of information. Our learning and information acquisition is a mashup.

Change Pressures and Trends

We can add almost indefinitely to the list of theorists, activists, politicians, and business people calling for education reform (Toffler and Gates, for example, both suggest education is fundamentally flawed in its architecture).

Universities are at a historical juncture, transitioning from the industrial era to the information era, and from a national prospective to a globalised one.

As opposed to expert-produced information, amateur-produced information is generally easily accessible (in language and format). Wikipedia is one of the most popular web sites.

Hierarchical command-and-control models are limited; networked models of learning will replace existing curricular models.

Harvard's new core curriculum focuses on attributes and qualities of learners, rather than particular knowledge elements.

What We Know About Learning

Since the mid 20th century, cognitivism and constructivism have developed as learning theories to address the weaknesses of behaviourism. Literature on learning reveals the following four components:

1. Social - Learning is a social process. Knowledge is an emergent property of interactions between networks of learners.
2. Situated - Learning occurs within particular situations or contexts, raising the importance of educational activities mirroring actual situations of use.
3. Reflective - Learners require the opportunity to reflect on, defend, and share what they have learned.
4. Multi-faceted - Learning incorporates a range of theory, engagement, tinkering, and active construction.

The importance of engagement and motivation cannot be overstated as foundational to learner retention.

The full spectrum of learning must be attended to be the educational process:

1. Formal
2. Informal
3. Simulation
4. Mentoring
5. Performance support
6. Self-learning
7. Communities

Connectivism has been suggested as a model of learning in an age defined by networks. Connectivism is the view that knowledge and cognition are distributed across networks of people and technology and that learning is the process of connecting, growing, and navigating those networks.

A node in a neural network is a neuron. In a conceptual network, a node is an idea or collection of ideas. In an external network, a node is a person or information source.

Technology, Teaching, and Learning

Through the use of Google Docs, Skype, blogs, wikis, podcasts, flickr, YouTube, del.icio.us and other tools, academics can provide a rich learning experience often exceeding the static experience of an LMS.

Chickering and Ehrmann advocate for seven key good practice elements in online instructions:

1. Encourage contact between students and faculty
2. Develop reciprocity and cooperation amongst students
3. Encourage active learning
4. Give prompt feedback
5. Emphasise time on task
6. Communicate high expectations
7. Respect diverse talents and ways of learning

Effective learning online requires an instructor to focus less on lecturing and content presentation, and more on assisting learners in creating personal learning or knowledge networks.

New Learners? New Educators? New Skills?

Even though technology enables greater learner control and autonomy, learners generally value social contact and faculty guidance, especially when entering a new field or course of study.

Implementation

The use of technology for learning can be seen as a continuum with three key marking points:

1. Augmented - the course takes place in a traditional classroom setting, but technology is used to enhance the learning experience. E.g. podcasts, online quizzes.
2. Blended - the course takes place partly face-to-face and partly online.
3. Online - the course takes place entirely online with no face-to-face contact. E.g. blogs, wikis, online lectures.

Tools for creating content for online learning have improved significantly over the last few years. Articulate Presenter, Audacity, Engage, Flash, Jing, and Camtasia are tools that novice users can master in a short period of time.

Management of digital resources is an important consideration often overlooked by elearning developers.

Tools

• Blog
• Wiki
• Social bookmarking
• Audio and podcasting
• Image sharing (Flickr)
• Video
• Open education resources
• Microblogging
• Social networking software
• Web conferencing
• Aggregation
• Games, virtual worlds, and simulations

Conclusion

The use of technology for learning is influenced by developments in technology itself, global trends (economy etc.), societal trends, and trends within educational research. Greater use of emerging technology can serve as an important bridging process between the traditional role of education and the not yet clearly defined future.

Websites for Learning about Business

Jane Hart has compiled a list of FREE sites to learn about business.

The websites cover all aspects of business: strategy, management, leadership, marketing, finance, accounting, economics, as well as business skills.

A range of sites are included, suitable for business studies education, workplace learning, educators, learners, and managers alike.

The sites include both formal and informal learning resources: games, podcasts, blogs, videos, books, PDFs, as well as online courses, communities and other general resources.

100+ FREE websites for learning about business

Teaching Law by Design

My summary of a subsection on Selecting Instructional Strategies from Michael Schwartz's paper - Teaching Law by Design: How Learning Theory and Instructional Design Can Inform and Reform Law Teaching.

The Events of Instruction

There are general principles to designing instruction applicable to all learning objectives and learners:

• A lesson should be organised to include:
1. An introduction
2. A body
3. A conclusion, and
4. An assessment.
• Instruction should be "learner-centred, active, and meaningful."

The Instruction Introduction

The instructional introduction should accomplish 4 goals, causing learners to know what they are supposed to learn and how they are going to learn it:

1. Get students to attend the class
2. Establish the instructional purpose
3. Arouse the students' interest and attention
4. Preview the lesson

The Body of the Lesson

There are 5 events in the body of a lesson:

1. Recalling relevant prior knowledge
• Retrieve from long-term memory the knowledge and skills necessary and helpful in learning the new objective
2. Processing information and examples
• The instruction of new material (discovery or expository sequence)
3. Focusing attention
• Attend to the critical features of the concept or principle; pattern recognition
4. Employing learning strategies
• Creating a mnemonic, graphic organiser, or analogy, for example; supplying additional examples/problems; rehearsing recall and application or the learning; self-monitoring
5. Practicing, and giving feedback
• Problem-solving not to evaluate for grading purposes, but to allow the learners to develop their skills under supervision; should be sequenced from easy to hard
• Feedback should be informational; students should be told if their analysis is reasonable or not and why; feedback should be coupled with additional practice if the learner did not enjoy sufficient success
• For problem-solving objectives, it is recommended students are provided with a model answer
• Hints and guidance should be included early on during practice, but should decrease as learners develop their skills

The Conclusion of the Lesson

The overarching goal of the conclusion section is to allow students to consolidate their new learning. It consists of 3 events:

1. Summarise and review
• It takes time to fully grasp new learning; periodic cumulative review is recommended to ensure recall
2. Transfer learning
• The application of learning to new contexts; reference near transfer (application in a similar context) and far transfer (application in different situations)
3. Re-motivate and close
• Appreciate the importance of the learning; explore how information can be used in the future

Assessment

Suggest remediation instruction for those students who failed to demonstrate competency on the assessment. One way to implement this is to require those students who did not pass an assessment to restudy the subject matter and then (a) explain their errors, or (b) take a new form of the test.