I have a problem...

Not really, but I try to tie the title to the lesson. :-)

In this week's class, we discussed how to use e-Learning to promote problem solving skills. As always, I compare what our department produces with what I'm studying about in class, and we seem to do a good job of this. We include scenarios in our e-Learning courses and the scenarios are tied to the job. We don't follow some of the principles mentioned in this chapter, such as using job experts and seeing how they would solve a particular problem, or promoting learner awareness of problem solving actions and skills. The latter is done with some of our other training in which they are provided with flow charts to help document a process or procedure, but it doesn't exist in our e-Learning. I know that our audience typically doesn't have good metacognitive skills, but I think part of the reason is the rushed timeframe for our training. Sometimes, our team members are placed before a computer and told to complete x hours of training in a day. By flying through the course and skimming over the examples, learning isn't really taking place. I wonder if metacognitive skills on the job are influenced by the work culture. We can each have our own standards, but if they are met with apathy by coworkers and supervisors, do we still pursue them as strongly?

Collaborate... Moderate... Try Not to Hate

Remember the INXS song "Mediate" from their 1987 Kick album? That's one of the few remotely popular music references I can include, since my musical tastes are quite out of step with most music today. But that's a different story. As Sophia Petrillo always used to say when sharing a story about her past on The Golden Girls, "But, I digress."

This week, we discussed collaboration in e-Learning and how it improves the learning experience. I can attest to collaboration improving the distance learning experience, certainly. I'm in my second year of graduate school and most of my classes have been online. In most of those classes, we had to asynchronously collaborate with each other. We had to post responses to discussion questions to the class message board and we had to post responses to at least two other posts before we could consider our participation complete for that class week. Sometimes, I gritted my teeth when I did it, but ultimately I benefited from expanded viewpoints.

I am curious about collaboration in corporate e-Learning environments. I work in a retail training department and we have a very low degree of concurrency (except for when a new course launches) plus we have very low resources for monitoring such collaborative tools as message boards or forums. We tried to do a wiki and it sounded like the answer we had been seeking, but the project ultimately got canceled because there weren't enough resources for monitoring it to make sure that off-topic discussions didn't get started (which is a huge concern for management). Additionally, much of our audience consists of retail store employees who do not have a great deal of time for training. The vast majority of their time is spent selling or completing other tasks; they fit in learning when they get a chance. I'd love to try using collaborative tools, but I think we have to use it with certain segments of our learners and not use it across the board. I wonder if we could do a hosted blog or a wiki with just a select group and see how it goes. We're revamping some of our training efforts in 2008, so we'll see.

Feedback on Feedback

A consistent refrain in creating practice opportunities and assessments is the idea of feedback. Learners should have specific information about how well they did with the practice opportunities provide to them. Otherwise, they will not know whether or not they have enough of a grasp of the material to successfully retrieve it and use it at a later time. We have just studied a chapter on providing practice opportunities in e-Learning situations and the authors suggested that the feedback needs to tell the learner not only whether or not the practice was completed successfully (whether the answer was right or wrong, if appropriate) and why.

I agree completely that feedback is extremely important in both practice and assessment situations. I'm a bit perplexed on how much feedback to provide in an assessment situation. At that point, do you tell the user whether the question was answered incorrectly -- and do you provide the correct answer? Or do you direct the learner back to the instruction to find the correct answer? I've heard arguments for both sides. I am guessing that it depends on the audience and the purpose for the assessment.

Redundancy vs. Learning Styles: Mutually Exclusive or Possibly Compatible?

This week, we discussed the importance of avoiding redundancy in providing material to learners. Specifically, we discussed how providing the same material through a visual format (graphics), audio narration, and printed text can overwhelm learners and detract from learning. Presenting printed text and explanatory graphics can overload the learner's limited visual processing channel. The Redundancy Principle suggests that in most cases, it's better to show and tell, not to show, show, and tell. On-screen text or explanatory graphics can be paired with audio narration to appeal to both the visual and auditory channels.

This contrasts with the learning styles approach, which recommends that e-Learning designers include seemingly redundant methods of presenting materials to appeal to different learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). I'm sure this has been a lively debate for many years, because it does seem true that we have different preferences for processing new information. My partner is like a human tape recorder; he can hear a conversation and repeat it almost verbatim later. He is a strong auditory learner. I have to use a combination of preferences. I do need to hear it, but I also need to process it visually and kinesthetically if possible. Most of us do use a combination of styles.

So, where do the approaches meet? I think they both have a place in e-Learning design and they are not mutually exclusive. Is this where truly blended learning plays more of a role? We can have audio and visual information, but perhaps we can provide a worksheet at the end for learners to download that sums up the main points of the lesson. Maybe the worksheet could contain a practice exercise or two. Yes, there would be some redundancy, but the learner would have the choice of whether or not to use the additional (possibly redundant) information.

Let's Get Conversational

This week's chapter and discussions focused around making online training more personal and less formal. In a word, more conversational. I think this is a great idea, but it's something I have found difficult to put into practice. I was an English major as an undergraduate student and I have a tendency to lapse into formal writing whenever I am doing any kind of professional writing. To me, formal writing is designed to impress others -- whether it's a supervisor or an instructor -- and I guess I like to show off as much as anyone else. But as far as e-Learning is concerned, formal writing does not always apply, and I will endeavor (no... I will try) to incorporate more of an informal style when it's appropriate.

Another aspect of this chapter that I found interesting was the virtues of virtual coaches. To me, a virtual coach can be effective if credibility is maintained. We don't want learners to say, "That's really dumb" or "How silly" when the virtual coach appears; otherwise, we have lost the learner. I discussed this with my supervisor and she agreed with me that there's a fine line to be walked when implementing virtual coaches so that there's enough of a positive return (in terms of learning and transfer) on the investment of creating the virtual coaches in the first place.

Speaking about Audio

In this week's class, we discussed the effectiveness of using audio narration with images rather than using images and printed text. This is supposed to help prevent cognitive overload where too much information is being processed through the visual/pictoral channel. We did not go in great depth about it, but I wonder if this suggested rule applies more to e-Learning courses that do not often change. I work in a retail environment and our content is constantly being updated. Sometimes we've gotten audio recorded and the project is ready to roll out the door, and the entire concept changes mid-stream. This involves re-recording and re-coding, since typically you should include a close-captioning option. The majority of our online courses do not have audio, but some of our courses that are created in Adobe Presenter do have audio attached because it's so easy to include it.

Is there a happy medium? Or is it something that designers and clients determine on a case-by-case basis?

I Said It!

I was having a conversation with our director today and I casually used the phrase "cognitive overload" in a sentence. It just flew out of my mouth, and my hand flew to my stunned face as though I had just uttered an expletive. She was pleased to discover that school is paying off. She insisted that I share the news in my blog.

Consider it done!

Speaking of Madeline Hunter

We weren't speaking of Dr. Hunter, but I thought I'd use this title as a hook to lead you into this week's blog posting. In class last week, we discussed the importance of placing corresponding text and graphics near each other. This helps the mind create connections between words and pictures and increases the transfer of knowledge. I'm oversimplifying the point a bit, but I'm using it as a set-up to get back to Madeline Hunter.

When I read this chapter, my mind reeled back in time to the early 1990s when I was a young English major who planned to teach at the secondary level. One of my undergraduate classes focused on Madeline Hunter's 1982 book Mastery Teaching, and I remembered a discussion of how a teacher can create relationships by the way words are written on the chalkboard. I dug out my copy of Mastery Teaching and found a chapter called "Teaching to Both Halves of the Brain." In this chapter, Dr. Hunter discusses how teachers can use chalkboards to indicate relationships based on their position on the chalkboard. If a teacher writes the word NIXON above the word FORD, the student can infer that NIXON comes before FORD. But if the teacher wrote NIXON next to the word FORD, the student might infer that the teacher is drawing some kind of parallel between the two. Dr. Hunter closes this section of the chapter by saying,

"When we are aware of the power of position in space to suggest relationships, we avoid placing items on the chalkboard in a haphazard fashion or where there happens to be space. We place each item deliberately so its position indicates its relationship to other material on the chalkboard (causal, oppositional, numerical, comparative, categorical, etc.)" (p. 41).

I saw immediate parallels between a chalkboard and an e-Learning screen. The way we position items on a screen indicates a relationship, whether it's one or more textual concepts, corresponding text and graphics, or instructions and a practice exercise.

I love it when I can tie new learning back to previous learning!

Book reference:

Hunter, Madeline. (1982). Mastery teaching. El Segundo,
   California: TIP Publications.

Animation Time, Come On!

For this week's class, I had the opportunity to create my first animated GIF. The instructions suggested we use a tool called GIMP, but I didn't feel that I had sufficient time to become familiar with a different software package. I toyed with the idea of using Photoshop or Fireworks, and ultimately decided on Fireworks. I found a great tutorial to help me get started.

I used a sprite sheet found on the ShyGuy Kingdom site. Once I found a sprite sheet that had a good sequence of events, creating the animated GIF took very little time at all in Fireworks. I selected the graphics I needed from the sprite sheet using a rectangular selection tool, copied them into frames in Fireworks, and optimized the file as an animated GIF.

I'm quite proud of the little thing, but I can't post it to show you. Apparently, Blogger.com is having problems uploading images right now.

Getting Around

Our most recent class topic was Learner Control; specifically, how navigation schemes can help or hinder learning. Not only do poor metacognitive skills cause learners to make poor choices, but poor navigation can achieve the same result. If the learner doesn't know where to go next, he or she might just close out of the course and never come back if the experience was frustrating enough. One of the key reasons that some learners do not complete online learning is because of technological issues. This could be due to a variety of reasons: the course froze up; the data didn't transmit properly; or the navigation wasn't clear enough. An easy way to ensure clear navigation in an e-Learning course is to use a program such as FlashForm to help you build a template. It includes many of these things.

On a side note, I did a post for our wiki on Mystery Meat Navigation. This is a subject close to my heart because our department made an ill-advised move a few years ago and designed our website with a classic example of mystery meat navigation. Users had to click on unlabeled images to find out how to navigate through our site. It was a resounding flop and created a good deal of ill will that it took us over a year to resolve. We went back to a more standard navigational format within a year, but I've kept a screen print of the problematic navigation on my cubicle wall ever since as a reminder to keep our users in mind. It's not hard to see the allure of navigational styles where the user navigates through a series of images and mouseover menus. It is cool at a conceptual, "gee whiz" kind of level, but if it doesn't help users navigate, it's a lot of work for nothing. My favorite example of MMN (I think it deserves its own acronym) is the web site of a certain restaurant famous for its delicious burritos. It's better than it used to be, but when you load the site, you get a lone image in the upper left-hand corner. Hint: You click on that image to display the navigation. :-)

Scott's 3 Stages of Using Graphics

I love working with graphics, but I went through a series of stages to get to that point. I don't know if other e-Learning developers have encountered the same thing. Unfortunately, I can't think of a clever name for my theory (based solely on my experience), so I'm going to call it Scott's Three Stages of Using Graphics. Sometimes simplicity can be catchy... or so I hope.

1. Stage 1-Shying Away from Graphics Altogether: When I first started working in an e-Learning group, I knew very little about e-Learning and tended to shy away from using graphics. I probably didn't know much about them then and thus they seemed somewhat mysterious to me. My courses at that time were mostly text with very few graphics, which were put in only at my supervisor's insistence.
2. Stage 2-Using Too Many Graphics: When I got the hang of using graphics, I used them all the time, whether or not they were contextually accurate. I filled presentations with clip art and other graphics because I thought I was making it look pretty, but all I really did was clutter it up.
3. Stage 3-Using Graphics Judiciously: Now, I've learned that graphics should be used in an appropriate context as demanded by the content. I rarely stick a graphic in a course or on a web page just to have one there. I haven't perfected this skill yet, but I'm learning more about selecting the right graphic and placing it correctly so it complements the material being taught and doesn't create cognitive overload.
   

I guess stage 4 will be the ability to create my own graphics. Hopefully my Photoshop class will help me in this regard!

Finding the Value of Training

I found myself moaning a bit today about the value of training in a corporate setting. Why do we do what we do? Are people coming to the class (or logging into an online session) just to check off an item on a to-do list or get their supervisor off their back, or are they there because they want to learn something? It struck me as resoundingly similar (sometimes I can be hopelessly naive) to the challenges that educators face in classrooms every day. I thought that in corporate training, there was a bit more urgency attached to it, because potentially one's livelihood could be at stake. I wonder if there's much that can be done -- especially from a distance education standpoint -- to add more value to training and make it less of a pill and something of a treat. True, we can make e-Learning interactive, aligned with the best learning theories, interactive, and even fun, but value has to be added at the learner level or the organizational level. Where does that value come from? I'm going to keep searching for answers, but I'm certainly open to suggestions.

Copyright this!

Despite the somewhat defiant title of my post, I'm a great believer in copyright laws. Without them, why would any of us compose symphonies, write a novel, code a new application, or perform any feat of original creativity? We learned a great deal about copyright laws this week and the most interesting thing I took away from it is how the laws have responded to advances in technology. The 1909 update came about when radio and film were first beginning to emerge as new channels of communication. At that point, we were still eighteen years away from the first all-talking film.

I've seen some websites discussing the issue of copyrights and screenshots, but most of the commentary I've read is that a screenshot could be considered a derivative work since it's an adaptation of an established work. It could fall under fair use guidelines, depending on how it is being used. Here's a link with a discussion about it.

Educators, I imagine, must walk a fine line when utilizing copyrighted materials in class. The threat of legal action is very real. Distance educators face more stringent guidelines. The TEACH act became law in 2002 and spelled out more guidelines about how distance educators can use copyrighted materials.

How Green Is Your Distance Learning?

Here is an interesting take on distance learning. I work in a corporate training department and I have seen many presentations and sat in on a countless number of conference calls and webinars from companies who promise to help you build a business case for implementing distance learning. Among the strategies they often suggest are the hard time and money costs (i.e. - instructors aren't on the road all the time, so they aren't requiring company funds to stay in hotels and travel from location to location). But this is the first time I've seen a company touting the 'green' aspect of distance learning.

http://www.ilinc.com/resources/casestudies/globalknowledge

My boss forwarded this link to me. Enjoy!

In the beginning...

Welcome!

This is my first post on my first blog. The primary purpose of this blog is to meet a requirement for one of my graduate classes (CECS 5110) at the University of North Texas, but hopefully I will find this enough of a fun experience that I will continue blogging after this semester is over.