Ruth Clark: eLearning and the Science of Instruction: A 10 Year Retrospection

These are my live blogged notes from December 13, 2011: eLearning Guild Thought Leaders Webinar

Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer’s book e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning – now in its 3rd edition.

An expert in evidence-based elearning – author of seven books!

Ruth@clarktraining.com

Let’s reflect back on the three editions of the book – what’s stayed the same and what’s changed?

Technology has changed!  Smart phone…search functions…facebook/web 2.0…gaming…the cloud.

And what’s happened in your own life – new job? new family? losses? gains?

Some surprises:

• Virtual classroom – SLOW adoption
• Online collaborative learning? We’ve seen the tech expand; what about the research?
• Multimedia principles – basically the same
• Growth in scenario based

In 2001 = about 11% of delivery media was elearning; in 2009 to 36% – gradual decrease in instructor led.

Goal of books – help practitioners apply evidence based elearning guidelines to design, dev, eval of multimedia learning ---> to help us move toward professionalization!

So are we an emerging profession? Are we still order takers? Or are we growing to become business partners?  (64% of audience said – we’ve become more professional in the last 20 years as a profession, but not much…)

First half of book based on Mayer’s multimedia research…

Section 3 (of book):

Summary of Mayer’s research (use of graphics and words) – multimedia, contiguity, modality, redundancy, coherence, personalization, segmentation pretraining.

Working memory – we can hold five chunks (used to say seven, plus or minus 2).  The cognitive model of working memory hasn’t changed that much.

But now we’re talking more about cognitive load.  (didn’t talk about that at all in the first edition.)  Credit to Sweller.

3 Forms of Cognitive Load:

• intrinsic (the complexity of your content) – listen to the audio, translate it, construct a response and pronounce it quickly – the number of cognitive activities you have to perform.  When you have greater intrinsic load, you have to attend more to cognitive load.
• extrinsic – extraneous load put onto learner by poor design.
• germane load – the good stuff.  When people are learning we want people to be engaged with their working memory.

Your job – to manage intrinsic load (esp when high), keep extraneous load low, and to maximize germane load…(you’ll see more about this in the 3rd edition of the book).

Eye Tracking Research

Meta-Analysis

Right now just have a few experiments in this area…

Section 3 (of book): Use of Key Methods

Evidence around practice, collaboration and learner control in learner.

Research on examples and worked examples  -- where was learning better? (A) example, practice, example, practice…OR B) example, practice, practice, practice) – does more practice lead to better learning? –> worked examples/A) was less training time and better outcomes/fewer mistakes on the test.  Combining worked examples with practice gives you better and faster learning).

Better learning transfer when you distribute practice.

Worked examples lead to better learning outcomes for novices…having worked examples for the expert actually depressed their learning outcomes (the expertise reversal effect).  Some instructional methods for beginning learners may degrade learning for experts. (it might disrupt the experts own working models).  So as we worked with experts, we should FADE back worked examples…

Some problems with worked examples:  learners can gloss over them.  Need to make worked examples  more engaging.  Add a self-explanation question. Add a question that forces the learner to process and think deeply.  (e.g., – in a scenario program now ask “why is it important to verbally recap the doctor’s questions about contra indicators?”…)

Tests can be work-related projects that demonstrate quality.

The research on online collaboration

Evidence mostly around collaboration IN THE CLASSROOM vs. in an elearning setting.  Need more research in this area.

Kirchner (2011 study) – collaboration in problem solving – notes that collaboration takes cognitive resources.  Do you benefit enough? If the problems are relatively easy, then learning better in a solo setting.  If problems more complex, then collab will lead to better learning.

Architectures

Three approaches to design.

• Receptive – little overt engagement (as in this webinar) – documentaries, college lectures, books – these are mostly briefings.
• Directive – traditionally used for procedures – have to do each step exactly in order.  Used for software training.  Instruct, Demo, Practice, Feedback.
• Guided discovery – emerging in last five years – some people call this immersive learning.

Poll question – which architecture is predominant in your org’s elearning? (directive = Captivate; low percentage of guided discovery…) 42 % receptive, 45% directive, 4% guided, 8% we use all three equally.

A Look at Guided Discovery

(She’s showing a demo of guided discovery of a car repair – virtual shop that you have to go into and diagnose).

Good for critical thinking and problem solving. 

“Experience packaged in a box.” – simulations.

Does it work?  Research on part-task (more traditional directive learning) vs. whole task training (guided discovery) – better transfer with the whole task test….(e.g., how to use Excel to create a budget – to determine how well they could apply what they’ve learned in a different setting.)

Discovery vs. guided discovery: Mayer said “discovery learning does not work” – meta-analysis of discovery approach – much better learning from direct instruction or guided discovery.  Pure discovery = let them explore and go here and there.  It doesn’t work as well – learner’s need guidance.

Scaffolding – this means we need to do better scaffolding. We need to provide guidance and structure.

Start with simple cases and move to more demanding ones.

Case 1: demo; Case 2: let the learner complete part; Case 3: have learner do more; Case 4 – have learner do them all.

Ruth Clark new book – the essentials of scenario based elearning – she’s finishing it up now – will include scaffolding in Scenario Based eLearning (SBEL) – coming out next year.

Avoiding the Trap of Clicky-Clicky Bling-Bling #devlearn

OK – so I can’t live blog my own session, but I can share my slides: presented Thursday, Nov 3 2011 at DevLearn in Las Vegas.

It was a great session – lots of conversation with the group which you won’t see on the slides, a few side bars and tangents, and some free t-shirts at the end!  Thanks to everyone who joined in.

And for the record -- I designed my slides to match the t-shirt I was wearing ;)

Avoiding the Trap of Clicky-Clicky Bling-Bling

View more presentations from cammybean

Ethan Edwards: 5 Most Important Analysis Questions You’ll Ever Ask #devlearn

My live blogged notes with session with Ethan Edwards of Allen Interactions (www.alleninteractions.com).

Same issues we’re dealing with in elearning today that we were dealing with 30 years ago.

Better elearning, better processes!

ADDIE…we’ve heard of it, is it iterative? etc.

Regardless of what you do – you need analysis/backgrounding.

Challenges of design for elearning:

• instruction must stand on its own
• can’t be adjusted or fixed on the fly (when we teach classroom…”let’s skip these pages.” if we make mistakes in analysis, then the learner is stuck…)
• must account for all things instructor might do

Does your org think elearning is formatting text, decorating screens and test? (so much elearning is like scrapbooking)

We want to create experiences that will create lasting and beneficial change in the performance environment

Where does analysis go awry?

• Often it’s skipped altogether. many authoring systems don’t support design – they provide formatting options.
• Or it’s perceived that analysis is already done by SMEs. SMES view analysis as a content dump and not a dialog. documentation of content does not equal design.
• Course already exists – conversion doesn’t require analysis, right?

These are failures. We shouldn’t accept them. Often trainers are too nice! Need to tell people when it’s a bad idea.

The Five Questions

1. what do learners expect to do after completing the course that they can’t do now? The purpose of elearning can’t be to create expertise. Expertise takes years to develop. Instead we should be aiming to create minimal competence.

Ask why is this important? Create a table: on the left list content “requirements”. along the top list the performance outcomes.  then put checks across the grid to identify what you really need to include.  There will be rows with no checks at all.

Push back on this is “well it doesn’t hurt to put in there.” But for every page that the learner says, ah I’ll just skip this, the more likely they’ll skip everything. Don’t overstuff the elearning with unnecessary stuff! If the SME still wants it, put it in resources.

You’ll find outcomes that are desired that have no content to go with them.

Most compliance training actually does have value to your org (don’t just do it cuz you have to)

Because elearning is $ to create, there’s no reason to create it unless there’s an outcome.

Even if your main goal is knowledge (don’t think it’s possible to have knowledge objectives)

The chance of learner mastering a performance objective when there is no opportunity to practice are slim.

So how do we translate moving your cursor into something with meaning (you can point, click, type)

If what you have people do is click a, b or c – that doesn’t translate into installing a router. There’s little opp for transfer.

I have never been asked a mult choice question in my daily life. Training prepares people to answer MCQs.

2. What are consequences to the learner if they fail to master the intended outcomes?

Often the learner’s highest level goal is to get through this course quickly!

Need to provide meaningful consequences.

Artificial consequences in elearning: a failing score, a jeopardy game where you lose money (that’s not a meaningful consequence).

Risk and consequences strongest tools to create motivation and buy-in. (Remember consequences to YOU or the ORG are often different than the cons. to the LEARNER).

Understand what the learner is motivated by. Relate those consequences to the real-world environment.

If I learn through the exercise that you’re going to tell me the answer, then I don’t do the work to figure out the answer. Make the learner figure it out.

3. Can you show me an active demo, a detailed sim, or provide an opportunity to directly observe the desired performance?

The expert assumes they know – they don’t always know what’s changed, or haven’t done it in years.

Include recent learners in your analysis. They remember what they didn’t know. They are now minimally competent (our target!)

4. What specific performance mistakes do new learners usually make?

The content is often not the challenge.

5. What tools, resources, or job aids, or help do successful performers (or even experts) use to do their tasks?

Often you want to help the learner use those tools.

Interactivity shouldn’t be designed to get correctness – instead encourage lots of mistakes! We add to our knowledge when we make mistakes.

So you might need a final test to “assess” – but don’t do that throughout – the learner feels too observed. Let the learner mess around.

You want the right things to be hard. In the real world, there’s no penalty for using the employee manual. Let the learners use their manuals in the elearning!

______________________

Time now for some demos on the Allen Interactions site: http://www.alleninteractions.com/content/case-studies-and-demos 

Showing an example where the exercise is to fill out a field notes 9for a copy interviewing gang members) – there’s no right or wrong, but the learner can compare their text input with an expert’s input.

Mastery is a better model – keep people working until they can prove they can do it without error.

Stepping Stones

The modern learning designer recognizes that they can’t actually design every step of the learner’s journey.

But they look for solid stepping stones they can put in place along the way.

Learning’s but a stream…

“Row, row, row your boat…”

 

Lots of new tidbits up on the Kineo website for the month:

•   An article I wrote “Learning’s but a stream”
•   Some hot new case studies (check out the project I worked on for Paul Mitchell which showcases a Moodle portal).
•   Steve Rayson’s ever insightful October elearning market update

If you missed our latest newsletter, you can find it all on the Kineo newsletter page!

Instructional Design for Mobile Learning #id4mlearning

These are my live blogged notes from a webinar today with Float Learning: Instructional Design for Mobile #id4mlearning. Advance apologies for typos or incoherence…

Brought to us today by:

• Adam Bockler, Float
• Gary Woodill, Sr. Analyst at Float @gwoodill
• Jeff Tillet mLearning Strategist and Evangelist at Float (formerly ID at T-mobile) @mojotillett
• Chad Udell at Float @visualrinse

www.floatlearning.com 18 month old company with focus on mobile. @floatlearning

Agenda: conversation points

• Where we came from
• Where we are at?
• Where’s it going?

Resources:

• Gary Woodill’s The Mobile Learning Edge
• Clark Quinn, Designing mLearning
• Barbara Ballard, Designing the Mobile User Experience

(We can tell a field is about to take off because there’s a big rash of books!)

What is instruction?

It’s a two way street.  But instruction tends to not be an equal relationship – there’s a power differential.

What makes good instruction is often a willing student.

So often people treat ID as just organizing information on a page.

A Brief History of Instruction

The modern classroom, 1770’s in Prussia – you faced the teacher who was the expert and the storehouse of knowledge.

Same metaphor applies to a lot of elearning – starting at a screen = staring at a teacher.

“Classrooms immobilized us…mobile devices now mobilizes us.”

We can use devices in the classroom to mobilize us – get kids out from behind their desks and moving around, gathering information.

Mobile learning starts to encourage diversity in learning (as opposed to traditional classroom which encourages conformity.)

Nowadays, there’s just way too much information.  Teachers can’t keep up.  In the workforce it’s overwhelming. 

The “just in case” model of learning isn’t very efficient. Now I need it where I need it and when I need it.

Moving from competency based learning to task based learning. Now learning according to what the task at hand is.

The last 50 years of ID

• Behaviorism (very simple, little bits) and Programmed Instruction. 1940s
• Bloom’s Taxonomy 1956
• Mager Learning Objectives 1962
• Gagne 9 Events 1965
• ADDIE…1975
• ADDIE and the 5 Rules of Zen 2002

The affordances of mobile devices are many – need to think about training and ID in new ways.

Growth of the Corporate University movement (represented a shift from hallway training and apprentice movement) – the increasing professionalization of training – and now we’re getting ready to move away from it. (We’ve tried to fit adults into this classroom model – shows a picture of some elderly gents looking uncomfortable whilst staring at the front of a classroom).

We’re not dismissing those old ways of learning – we’re finding additional ways.

We’ve tried to use all these old school metaphors (e.g., raise your hand while interacting with a CD ROM).

Technology Advancements: Here’s what’s changed…

• Computers
• Internet
• Gaming & Interactive
• Social or Informal

Use these tools/strategies/realities – differently.

Gamification and “Engagification”

"Bad ID with badges is still bad ID. Bad ID with badges is still bad ID."  (Chad Udell @visualrinse)

Saatchi and Saatchi study on gamification: http://www.slideshare.net/Saatchi_S/gamification-study

Here's a great presentation on the use of gamification and how it still needs an emotional aspect in order to be effective: http://www.slideshare.net/avantgame/we-dont-need-no-stinkin-badges-how-to-reinvent-reality-without-gamification

Augmented Reality

Take a picture of an environment and text labels appear in the picture. Or add images/objects onto the environment…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdlqtLVdTpw&feature=youtu.be&t=26s

http://floatlearning.com/2010/12/just-in-time-learning/

Is it performance support?

Some of the new things around mobile:

Physically, we learn better when there’s blood moving around – when we’re mobile. http://www.brainrules.net/

If you’re moving around and in the environment, you’re in context.  This may spark the need to learn more about something (e.g., if you’re in Venice, you want to learn more about Venice)

A brief history of Mobile Learning

Clark Quinn – early definition of mobile learning in 2001

Europe has done more around mobile

Commercial side starting to develop (e.g., mobile focused vendors like Float)

Four Conventional Learning Applications for Mobile Devices

1. Instructional support uses (elearning on a small screen – lectures, video, audio clips, notes)
2. Personal Organizers
3. Learning Management Systems on a mobile
4. Assessments

New Learning Application Categories

1. microblogging and text messaging “social media” (see: http://www.twitip.com/twitter-the-real-time-answer-engine/)

2. Research tool – data collection (go out into the environment and track things, collect data, then bring it back to the classroom for discussion)

3. Trend tracking and analysis

4. just in time information retrieval (Alerts go out when a bakery takes fresh bread out of the oven.  )

5. augmented reality

6. mobile gaming and virtual words (gamification…)

7. contextual learning – personalization and location (you know the person, where they’re located, what their needs and habits are and what they need at a certain place)

8. user controlled media/production/playback (use your personal devices for your own productions - “looking from the bottom up”)

9. performance support and coaching

10. Social networking and communities

11. environmental controls

12. haptic feedback

13. first person documentation

14. coordination and cooperation

15. collaboration

16. collective behavior…

“Unplanned learning. Do we have to plan all the ways that people learn? Maybe we relax…and lose control.” IDs in the mobile world

“We learn a lot from our peers – back to the apprenticeship model.”

So what does Float do?

www.floatlearning.com/blog

• Basic research and strategies
• Analysis on what’s going on within your companies
• Prototyping and building solutions

Buckets of Content

“Buckets of rain, buckets of tears, got all them buckets coming out of my ears…buckets of moonbeams in my hands.” ~ Bob Dylan

Us Instructional Designers like buckets. Neat little containers. Helpful for sorting things out. Good for pouring.

I’ve been thinking lately about buckets of content.

Most of the elearning we seem to create in the corporate space primarily falls into these buckets:

• Softskills
• Procedures
• Induction/New Hire
• Product Knowledge
• Awareness/Communications

Does this list seem right to you? What am I missing?

Photo credit: “Buckets of rain” by Cammy Bean

ID Guru: A new iPhone App for instructional designers

That Connie Malamed (@elearningcoach) is one smart cookie. 

And now she’s created, through an act of devotion and love to her profession, an iPhone resource for Instructional Designers.

It’s a glossary of ID terms – over 450 terms in all – in an easy to use and very hyperlinked format.

 

Need to sound smart in a client meeting, but missing that important term? Find it here.

Need a refresher on Bloom’s Taxonomy? It’s here.

Not sure exactly what Behaviorism is? It’s here.

I like it for its simplicity and its breadth.  In some cases, examples would make for a useful addition to the tool.

Connie imagined sitting in a dentist’s office and browsing through the app.  I haven’t had the opportunity to visit the dentist since I downloaded it to test out her hypothesis, but I think that’ll be a great use case.

At $4.99 in the iTunes store, you might think this is a pricey App.  Just remember, this will probably have a pretty small niche audience and won’t have the wide appeal of, say Angry Birds, nor did it have the resources of a huge corporation behind it, but rather the long hours and late nights of one woman who wants to give something back to our field.  (Hard to refuse that now, isn’t it?) 

And one more thing: Connie is looking for feedback and input on where she could take this next. So if you have any ideas, be sure to share them with her!

Psst...wanna gossip about elearning?

"Did you see the elearning that that team created? You know the one that was really boring and no one could remember a thing about? Remember how every screen was packed with information and endless text bullets? And how the learners were completely bored but had to sit through it because it was compliance training?"

You did?

Hopefully you weren't the designer on that one!

In this month's top tip on the Kineo website, we explore the juicy subject of gossip and how you can use it to tell better stories.

Photo credit: Gossip by exquisitur

Clicky-Clicky Bling-Bling Part 2

Part two of my article: Avoiding the Trap of Clicky-Clicky Bling-Bling is up on eLearn Magazine.

 

And if you missed part one, by all means….click here.

 

 

Photo credit: my bling bling by pheezy

Falling in Love all Over Again with ISD – with Allison Rossett at #ASTD2011

These are my notes from a session with Allison Rossett “Falling in Love All Over Again—With ISD” at ASTD ICE in Orlando, May 24, 2011. Forgive typos and incoherence…

*****

ISD got its start in WWII – when the country was preparing soldiers for war. 400 + films – taught standards. Observations in classes to see that standards were met.

From the war, these trainer types went into industry – telecom (ATT)

Walter Dick – “ISD is applied educational psychology”

Instructional design is all abut theory.

Behaviorism – incentives and consequences. what it looks like when you can do it. Get drill and practice, with knowledge of results. Practice, practice, practice. Great for pronunciation and vocab (Rosetta stone)

Cognitivism – what’s going on inside. Motivation. The mind and belly stuff.  Do they GET IT? Think alouds, scenarios, checklists.

Constructivism – bred of cognitivism. Discovery learning.  Find the key messages yourself.  Your own way of being better with customers. When people find their own way, they really get it. Webquests.  Emphasize the process of engaging with others – where there’s no one agreed upon outcome. John Dewey, Bruno, Vgotsky, Brent Wilson…

Connectivism – from know-how to know-where. Find it yourself through networks and community. Downes, Siemens. Personal knowledge management.

Motivation Theory – John Keller, ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction)

“Adult Learning Theory” – she doesn’t believe in it. Good learning theory is good learning theory.  Difference is that kids want to talk about dinosaurs.

Connectivism & ARCS: US Navy’s Project MMOWGLI – thousands of players participate to work with pirate attacks off of Somalia.  This is a gnarly problem. Don’t know what the protocol or policy is – not teaching to objectives – but we’re trying to figure it out.

ID Basics:

• begin with the end in mind, data drives decisions, classroom is good but often not sufficient
• ID is how we make good decisions

ADDIE – the problem with this…

ID Greatness:

They can see it is all about them their tasks, their priorities.  The WIIFM.

The experience is vivid and authentic – full of worked examples, with opps to think about and DO something. “So that’s how it works” – with commentary and progressive building checklists that explains how it works.

Success and stretch. (If it’s all success, then it feels like a waste of time).

The ID brings order to chaos. Make choices to extend lessons, information, etc. Don’t let the learner just flop about.

Evidence-Based Instructional Design

• just serving up a tasty buffet isn’t enough.
• people learn best with worked examples, repeated practice on stretch tasks

Greatness emerges from positive deviance!

Example of sales training in pharma:

• Find the lesson or message you want them to know. Have a really clear way – not a spreadsheet! – where we clearly communicate what greatness will look like.
• Then have classes, simulation. etc.
• On demand support

Great ID for CPR Training?

(www.articulate.com showcase example).  You find a person and you have 3 minutes to save the person. “You are walking down the street when a man falls to the ground…”  The conditions are real. It’s scary.

You don’t need stuff until you need it – performance support “Adult CPR app” – American Heart Association app.

Will you have it in the moment of stress?

Great ID touches minds and hearts.

Assure that employees experience some success as they grow. Build in success. Don’t start with a test that brings them to their knees. Not good for confidence.

Reveal your sources – why are they credible? – tell stories

Use two side arguments. Approaches that admit multiple views are more convincing than one-sided litany. Assume they are smart. People learn better from controversy.

Prepare them for the barriers you discovered when you did the analysis. Share the issues to come and the workarounds.

Encourage reflection. Provide some structure.

Use role modeling and conversations.

Use stories – show emotions and reactions.

Engage people in examination of examples.

Touch minds and hearts with stories that ring TRUE.

Deliver smarts – shifting it closer to where it’s needed.

 

Moving Forward

Always: practice, feedback, examples

Today: scenarios, commentary, checklists, coaching, problem solving, aided (mobile support) and unaided performance (learning)

Tomorrow: organization knowledge, community, social networks, performance support, choice!

 

Giving learners choices – is too much freedom too much?

Sometimes the learner doesn’t know enough to make a good choice. Need good scaffolding. The ID picks the right spots for choices. Help the learner make a good choice – structure. Don’t want to give them so much freedom that they fail or lose confidence.

Great ID:

• delivers solution systems
• delivers in rooms and into the workplace
• it is influential

Ellen Wagner on the Secret Handshakes of ID

Ellen Wagner has kicked it up a notch. 

Not only has she quoted me talking about naked kids on playgrounds in a new academic journal called the Journal of Applied Instructional Design, but she’s also elevated the conversation regarding the disconnect between Instructional Design degree programs and the real-world of corporate ID.

If you’re interested in ID, read on…

http://www.jaidpub.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/EssayWagnerApr2011.pdf

Good Ole Nextie, the Next Button

There’s been a lot of Next Button bashing in the eLearning business of late.

Such abuse!

Sometimes it’s warranted, no doubt.

But let’s not throw out the Next Button with the bathwater. She has her place – and when treated with respect and dignity, she can do wonderful things.

Read on for more about poor old Nextie….

If you have comments or thoughts on this ever controversial subject, please come back here to my blog and share your rant!

Three Tips for Putting the Humanity Back into E-Learning and More Top Tips

Oh, the humanity!  Is your e-Learning turning out more like a horror show for zombies than a program that actually helps, gasp, people?

Three tips for stopping the horror and putting the humanity back in:

1. Start with the learner, not the content
2. Get emotional
3. Watch your tone

For more of the meat on this one, read the full top tip on our website: Tip 44: Where’s the humanity?

And be sure to check out more top tips, including the latest: Tip 45: Video – bring out your inner guerilla

Live in NY! It’s Kineo…

Wednesday, November 10, Kineo hosted a live workshop in New York on rapid eLearning in the Enterprise.

We started the morning with introductions, asking people to share their burning issues.  Here’s some of what people shared:

• I’m a one-stop-shop – how do I learn more about tools?
• How do I speed up the process?
• Our sales team just wants text messages.
• My biggest problem is Apple’s war on Flash.
• How do I create more effective training?
• What about audio narration – am I doing it right?
• A lot of courses in a short amount of time.  How do I engage learners in a short time with a limited budget.
• Our challenge is creating eLearning for teachers when they can’t install anything on their computers.
• My bugaboo is that YouTube is blocked in schools.
• How do I scale development while maintaining instructional integrity?

The New York workshop included short sessions from Kineo’s Mark Harrison, me!, and Tom Kuhlmann of Articulate.  Here’s a quick rundown of what we each talked about:

Kineo’s Mark Harrison on Learning Models:

How often do you need to have an interaction?  The myth of needing an interactive exercise every 3-5 screens.  That is often the closest to a learning model that most interactive designers get. (A very simple model).

We need models to help stop the stream of consciousness writing.  These structures are crucial to building better elearning and can actually help you speed up the process.

• Knowledge and skill builder model (tutorial) – great for policies, processes, and procedures
• Scenario model – learn and apply or simulation – great for decision making, soft skills, and policies, processes and procedures
• Process or Systems training model (show me, try it, test me)

Mark tells the story of a 3 hour certification program he had to take before he could travel to a country abroad.  He had to pass the test before the ticket was issued. His solution? Screen grabs of the entire program that he then referred to as he took the test.  Is this what your learners are doing? Maybe you need to rethink your programs…

So let’s take a closer look at those models:

Knowledge and Skill builder (a variation on Gagne’s 9 Events):

• Get attention
• Set direction
• Present info
• Exemplify and practice
• Assess and summarize
• Action and support

See Kineo Design Hour: Learning Models presentation for more details.

AIDA: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (see the Kineo Top Tip: Learning from the Ad Men)

Cammy (that’s me!) on tone and writing for elearning:

Five guidelines:

• Keep it light
• Give it spirit
• Have a conversation
• Call for action
• Be adult

See the Kineo Design Hour: Tone of Voice presentation for more details.

Tom Kuhlmann The Rapid eLearning Story

Many of the people Tom talks to are one/two person eLearning shops.  As we evolve in our eLearning journeys, we often follow this path:

1. “convert this course” (when you’re just getting started, you need to get it online)
2. “make it look better” (I see that my course could look better. How do I do that better without being a graphic designer?)
3. “make it interactive” (how do I make my courses more learner-centric?)

1. Convert the course

Provide a structure for the course. When you’re just getting started, this structure can work well: welcome; instructions; objectives; section of content – intro, object, content, wrapup; assessment; summary

Basic graphic design principles:

CRAP: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity

Using graphics to craft meaning (it’s not just eye candy)

• The Non-Designer’s Design Book Robin Williams
• Slide-ology Nancy Duarte

If you want to be able to create more interesting PPT presentations, you need to learn more about PPT.

You’re developing meaning as you put things on the page.

Great resources from Cathy Moore:

• Dump the Drone
• Action Mapping

Take a company policy and build it the typical way, then apply “dump the drone” – before and after

Create your own eLearning style guide – and then tell the marketing department that’s what you use for eLearning.

Working with SMES: SMES don’t care about learning theories. Show them before and after.

 2. Make it look better

If it looks good, people will be more interested. the aesthetic is important.

Visual design creates meaning. We direct the learner’s attention through layout and what we put on screen and where.

Visual voice – imagine a western movie poster. It has a “voice” – probably a bit dusty, frayed, font is in that “Wanted” style.

Give your course a visual voice.

Tom describes a mind mapping process they use to create a visual identity for a program

3. Make  it interactive

Some rapid ID models you can follow to assemble your course:

Information & Interaction

one track that gets information in linear mode OR one track that gets right into the interactive mode

(See Christian Aid course example that Tom and Dave Anderson built for Lingo’s -- on Tom’s blog)

RSI – Rapid Situational interaction

Place your content in a relevant situation – you get all of your content in this route, but it’s presented through the situation.

The Usual Suspects

Have a situation (some context),…interviewing or surveying some choices – see Tom’s blog for examples.

Wrapping it up

All in all it was a great event – although it went by in quite a blur!  Thanks to all of you who attended and I just wish we’d had some more time for chatting at the end.

Clark Quinn is on the case! Solving the crimes of ID Malpractice…

There’s nothing like unraveling a good mystery…

Clark Quinn and I take a crack at solving the crime of instructional design malpractice –happening now in an e-learning  module near you!

Listen to the conversation here in my latest edition of the Kineo Talks audio series.

Power to the SMEs! – a Presentation the BBP Way

Today I presented a webinar through MyKineo:  Power to the SMEs!  Empowering subject matter experts to help create better eLearning.

It’s an interesting topic and one I’d like to dive into more with all of you…but what I really wanted to share was my presentation creation process!

I’ve been reading Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points. Well, I started it but then didn’t get beyond the first few chapters – realized I really needed a project to try it out with as most of the book is the how-to-do-it part.  

I pulled my project together yesterday in about four hours – included hammering out content, figuring out the BBP storyboard template, grabbing graphics, and learning how to use PPT beyond the basics that I know.  I’m proud to say I mastered Slide Masters last night!

Here are some initial thoughts on the process and the outcome.

The BBP storyboard template

The storyboard template – really an outline tool – helped me sketch out the overall presentation first and organize my thoughts. 

Unlike my usual presentation creation style – I actually thought about it first and mapped out my ideas before vomiting them all over PPT! (True confessions of an ID turned presenter…)

The template is a formatted Word document – if you buy the book you get it on the companion CD.  Once you complete the outline, you publish your “headlines” to PPT.

The structure

You start with an overall introduction – five slides that set the scene, identify the audience, introduce the challenge, present the hoped for outcome, and state the call to action (if you look at my deck, the call to action is “Help the SMEs see the forest and the trees with three key strategies”.

Next you create three key points to support the call to action.  Each key point gets three explanation slides.  An explanation slide then gets three detail slides which get into the nitty gritty details. 

Each slide gets a unique headline.  Gone are the bullet points.  And because you’re writing these at the outline stage – before you even get to your PPT, you can quickly see the structure and see where the gaps are.

Adding a visual theme

On my slide deck, I used slide masters to apply a distinct visual style to each of these three layers – the detail slides have a leaf in the corner, the explanation slides have a light shade of green, the key point slides are dark green with an image of a tree. 

The idea of this layer of visual design keeps the audience in tune with where you are, driving home that organizing vision.  And as a speaker I found it really helped me know where I was in the presentation.

Here’s a snapshot of part of the deck in slide sorter view – you can quickly see the structure

It’s a start…

OK, it’s not perfect.  I pulled this together in about four hours – but nothing like figuring it out as you go along.

I did NOT sketch out the slides in advance when it came to adding visuals, although this is a key part of Atkinson’s process.  It was getting late and I needed to get it done. 

I also did a half-ass job writing out the detailed content – my “transcript” so to speak.  Ideally, you write your script out so it’s all in the PPT Notes field.  If you’re look at my deck, you’ll miss all of the stuff I said, but perhaps you’ll get the idea.

In a few sections, I added more detail slides, blowing the whole holy trinity thing out of the water.  But it needed to be done…

Because it was an online webinar, I added a few questions here and there to increase audience participation.  That’s not part of Atkinson’s model.

I added some initial slides and some slides at the end to provide a final recap and some additional resources.  Not sure if that’s allowed in this system!

Check it out  and then share your feedback!

Power to the SMEs!

View more presentations from cammybean.

Check out Sasha’s e-learning blog

A new blog to add to your feed reader, chock full of instructional design tips as well as hands-on practical info and templates for you Articulate users. 

Here’s a really slick PPT template Sasha has created (and he’s even giving it away – what a guy!)

Check out Sasha’s e-learning blog!

Kineo Top Tip: Bring the learner into the design

Check out my latest eLearning top tip offering on our site:

Tip 42: Bring the learner into the design

Who’s at the heart of the eLearning design process?  Why the learner, of course!  And yet, the dear learner so often lies lonely and forlorn amidst the piles of binders, the loads of text bullets and the pages and pages of content.  So how can you bring them front and center?  Why, bring them into the design process! 

Read more…

Be good to get your thoughts.  What are ways you keep the focus on the learner during your design process, especially on rapid projects with tight, tight turnaround times?

What’s Your Experience? ID Degree or Certificate Program

A lot of people write to me asking for advice on how to break into the ID field or where to go get themselves a fancy graduate ID degree.

As a non-formally schooled ID, I can’t really help with this last question other than some vague direction.  (For part one of the question – well…I’ll come back to that another day).

So – to those of you who do have a degree or a certificate would you be willing to tell us your story? 

What school?  Was it online?  Why did you choose it?  What did you learn?  Did it help you get a job?  How much did it cost?  Was it worth it?  Would you do it again?

Share your thoughts in the comments – or write your own blog post and share the link in the comments.  Feel free to post anonymously if you’d rather.  Professor input on your own programs welcome. 

I just ask for honest input – no commercials or evil program bashing!

The community thanks you in advance…

Who has an ID degree?

If you’re curious, be sure to check out the results of the informal, non-scientific survey I’ve been running on this blog for the last couple of years:  Instructional Designers:  Do You Have a Degree in ID? 

The current stats (with 435 responses) show that 37% of practicing instructional designers have an advanced degree in the field.  You can view the latest results here (I think that link works – but it’s possible you need to be me to log in) or take the survey if you haven’t already.

More Resources

Christy Tucker has a great series on her blog:  Instructional Design Careers