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. :-)