Learn. Show. Repeat.

Tag: eLearning

  • The Next OzLearn Tweet Chat is on 9/12/14

    Ozlearn tweet chat

    On Tuesday 9th December at 8:00pm AEDST (UTC +11hrs), @OzLearn is having its final monthly twitter chat for 2014. We are very fortunate to have Nigel Payne – @ebase – join us! You can read an introductory post for the chat by clicking here.

    To join the chat, go to Twitter at 8pm on 9/12, search for @OzLearn and join in the conversation (don’t forget to add #ozlearn to your tweets).

    There is also an OzLearn LinkedIn group where you can view the Storify of the chat afterwards.

    Hope you can join us for the chat!

  • Working with Cognitive Load

    When I first started working as an eLearning instructional designer I became interested in the learning process and how people learn. I figured that if I knew more about information processing and learning, I could hopefully design more effective courses and materials. I came across a book called Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load by Ruth Colvin Clark, Frank Nguyen and John Sweller. In this book I discovered – among other things – Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) which is based on studies of human cognitive architecture – how we process and organise information.

    In our brains, we have two types of memory. One is our working memory, which we use to process new information. The capacity of our working memory is quite limited so it can only handle so much before it becomes overloaded. The second is our long-term memory, which is where we store information from our working memory and where we retrieve that information from later. Within our long-term memory, information is organised into schemas, which are organisational frameworks of storage (like filing cabinets). Not exceeding working memory capacity will result in greater transfer of information into long-term memory.

    CLT proposes that there are three types of cognitive load:

    Intrinsic: this is the level of complexity inherent in the material being studied. There isn’t much that we can do about intrinsic cognitive load; some tasks are more complex than others so will have different levels of intrinsic cognitive load.

    Extraneous: this is cognitive load imposed by non-relevant elements that require extra mental processing e.g. decorative pictures, animations etc. that add nothing to the learning experience.

    Germane: these are elements that allow cognitive resources to be put towards learning i.e. assist with information processing.

    The three types of cognitive load are additive so according to the theory, for instruction to be effective:

    Intrinsic load + Extraneous load + Germane load < Working memory capacity

    To assist learners in transferring information from their working memory to their long-term memory, we need to present the information in such a way that it reduces extraneous cognitive load (non-relevant items) and, if possible, increases germane cognitive load (items that assist with information processing). Note: I’ve found that much of the literature tends to focus on reducing extraneous cognitive load.

    Mayer and Moreno (2003) conducted research into ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. Their research, built on CLT, was based on three assumptions:

    1. Humans possess separate information processing channels for verbal and visual material (Dual Channel).
    2. There is only a limited amount of processing capacity available via the visual (eyes) and verbal (ears) channels (Limited Capacity).
    3. Learning requires substantial cognitive processing via the visual and verbal channels (Active Processing).

    They found that designers should do the following to assist learners in processing information:

    • Present some information via the visual channel and some via the verbal channel.
    • Break content into smaller segments and allow the learner to control the pace.
    • Remove non-essential content – this includes background music and decorative pictures that don’t add value.
    • Words should be placed close as possible to the corresponding graphics.
    • Don’t narrate on-screen text word-for-word.
    • Synchronise visual and verbal content i.e. don’t place them on separate screens.

    As instructional designers, we need to be aware of the cognitive requirements our designs impose and ensure that our learners can meet those requirements. We must also ensure that all aspects of our design focus on adding value to the learning experience.

    References:

    Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load (2006) by Ruth Colvin Clark, Frank Nguyen and John Sweller. Pfeiffer

    Mayer, R. E. & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist. 38, (1), 43-52.

  • Integrating Motivation with Instructional Design

    As an Instructional Designer, motivating learners is an important consideration because in reality learners are not always motivated to learn. They are busy, have other things to do, don’t see the course/session as being important or have had a bad learning experience in the past. I’ve written previously about motivation – Motivation and eLearning – which was about satisfying autonomy, competence and relatedness needs of learners. I’ve come across Dr John Keller’s motivational design model known as ARCS and thought it was worth sharing.

    The ARCS model comprises four major factors that influence the motivation to learn – Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction. It’s described as a problem-solving model and helps designers identify and solve specific motivational problems related to the appeal of instruction. The model was developed after a comprehensive review and synthesis of motivation concepts and research studies. It has also been validated in studies across different education levels.

    Dr John Keller

    The four categories of motivation variables consist of sub-categories along with process questions to consider when designing:

    Attention = Capturing the interest of learners, stimulating their curiosity to learn.

    • Perceptual Arousal: What can I do to capture their interest?
    • Inquiry Arousal: How can I stimulate an attitude of inquiry?
    • Variability: How can I maintain their attention?

     

    Relevance = Meeting the personal needs/goals of the learner to affect a positive attitude.

    • Goal Orientation: How can I best meet my learner’s needs? (Do I know their needs?)
    • Motive Matching: How and when can I provide my learners with appropriate choices, responsibilities and influences?
    • Familiarity: How can I tie the instruction to the learners’ experience?

     

    Confidence = Helping the learners believe/feel that they will succeed and control their success.

    • Learning Requirements: How can I assist in building a positive expectation for success?
    • Success Opportunities: How will the learning experience support or enhance the learners’ beliefs in their competence?
    • Personal Control: How will learners clearly know their success is based upon their efforts and abilities?

     

    Satisfaction = Reinforcing accomplishment with rewards (internal and external).

    • Natural Consequences: How can I provide meaningful opportunities for learners to use their newly acquired knowledge/skill?
    • Positive Consequences: What will provide reinforcement to the learners’ successes?
    • Equity: How can I assist the learners in anchoring a positive feeling about their accomplishments?

     

    The following link is to a YouTube video where Dr Keller discusses the ARCS Model, some background in its development and the addition of volition to the model.

    ARCS: A Conversation with John Keller

    Apart from the motivational aspects of the model, what I really like about ARCS is that it puts the learner at the centre of the design process.

    After all, that’s how it should be.

     

    References:

    arcsmodel.com

    Keller, J. M. (1987) Strategies for stimulating the motivation to learn. Performance and Instruction. 26 (8), 1-7.

  • Showing My Work #7

    Often when we talk about our work, we talk in terms of ‘what’ we did. The Showing My Work series of posts aim to also capture the ‘how’ something was done.

    E-Learning Heroes Challenge #42 – Smartphone Video. The brief: This week, your challenge is to record, edit, and publish a training video using your smartphone. Choose a topic that allows you to record multiple videos for your project. The focus on this challenge is as much about editing as it is recording.

    I almost didn’t do this challenge because I thought I wouldn’t have time but I did, and it turned out to be one of the most fun challenges I’ve participated in. The first thing I needed to figure out was the subject and I gravitated towards my Nespresso coffee machine and I thought about creating some a ‘how to use’ clips – setting up, using and cleaning. In this demo I was also able to put into practice a couple of tips that I picked up from David Anderson and Tom Kuhlmann.

    Filming the videos
    As the challenge was about using your smartphone to create the videos, I wasn’t sure how mine would turn out as I was using my trusty old iPhone 3G. I have zero equipment for holding the phone steady so I made this little stand using some post-it-notes and bulldog clips:

    Picture1

    I also made supports using different combinations of books to give me different heights and angles:

    Combined Picture

    The whole thing was shot in my kitchen. I just moved things out of the way so only the coffee machine was in the shot:

    Picture5

    It was pretty basic but it got the job done (I think so anyway).

    The visual layout
    How a course or module looks, plays an important role as it creates an atmosphere or a context for the person completing it. Literally, it sets the scene.

    Tip #1: Have a look at the company website to get some ideas for the look of your module.

    So that’s what I did. Here’s a screen shot of the Nespresso website:

    Nespresso website

    See how it’s quite dark – black is a prominent colour and the text is white. As this was going to be some help videos on how to use the machine, I thought it was appropriate to use similar colouring in the demo so that it fits in with the company look.

    When creating a piece of eLearning I like to use ‘Master Slides’ because they ensure consistency and they save lots of time. You can have multiple master slides in your project to use when you need them. So, I started with a black background and found a couple of images from a Google search:

    MS1

    But I had a slight problem. See how the image of the cup of coffee doesn’t go right across the screen. It looks like its floating and I needed to do something with that. In this case, I couldn’t just expand it across the slide because it would give a ‘stretched’ look, like this:

    MS2

    Tip #2: Take a grab of part of the image that won’t be affected by stretching.

    So I took a snip of a section of the coffee image and saved it as a picture (see the red box below). I used the Snipping Tool on my PC but something like Snagit would also work. Then I inserted the snip image back into the slide, positioned it on the same place where it came from then pulled it across the screen:

    MS3

    The end result is that it looks like one image and there’s no stretched look:

    Master Slide

    Now I have a Master Slide that I’ve set up once but can use multiple times.

    The demo itself
    To create the demo, I made one of the screens a ‘home screen’ which has access to each of the three videos. When you click on an iPad screen, it zooms in and the video starts to play and once it’s finished, it zooms out again. It looks like it’s happening on the one screen but each time you click on an iPad, you are actually going to a separate screen that has the video file in it.

     Nespresso Storyview

    The reason I did it this way was because I wanted people to be able to choose which video they watched based on what they need to do and I couldn’t do this and use the zoom function three times on the one screen.

    When you look at the ‘Home’ screen you can see what looks like the videos ready to play but they are actually a screen shot of the first frame of the clip. When you click on it and zoom in, you are actually going to a different slide. When the video ends, you automatically go back to the Home screen.

    What I learned
    One of the things that I learned from this challenge is that you don’t necessarily need a big, high-end production to create some videos to use as performance support. I mean sure, it can look quite slick if you did but I was able to create this demo in just a few hours and it gets the message across. It also taught me to be resourceful and that you can do more than you think you can!

    Here’s the demo, you can click on the image to view it:

    Smartphone video demo

    Let me know what you think and you can see all of my ELH Challenge entries on My Portfolio page.

  • Motivation and eLearning

    Motivation has been and continues to be a widely studied area across many of life’s domains. Motivation is the energising force that initiates and sustains behaviour and ultimately produces results. Many motivation theories focus on the amount of motivation, with a larger quantity said to result in improved outcomes. However, as educators we shouldn’t focus on generating more motivation from people but instead focus on creating conditions that facilitate the internalisation of motivation from within people.

    Self-determination theory (SDT), an empirical theory of motivation by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, focuses on the degree in which behaviour is self-motivated and self-determined. It’s one that’s struck a chord with me because of its usefulness, applicability and it’s backed by extensive research.

    SDT proposes that all humans require the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs, namely:

    • Autonomy (a sense of being in control and having freedom),
    • Competence (a sense of being able to do something i.e. being competent), and
    • Relatedness (a sense of being associated or connected to others).

     

    Contexts that satisfy all three basic needs will help support people’s actions, resulting in more sustained motivation over time and positive outcomes. According to SDT, engaging in activities for their inherent satisfaction and that are enjoyable are said to be intrinsically motivating. This is because the motivation to engage in the activity is coming completely from within the person – it’s been fully internalised. The SDT continuum shows various forms of motivation from no motivation (amotivation) to intrinsic motivation which leads to self-determined behaviour.

    SDT

    Video Game Play – An Intrinsically Motivating Activity

    Every year globally, people spend huge amounts of money and time playing video games. Most people who engage in video game play choose to do so voluntarily, because it is fun and they enjoy it, thus making game play an intrinsically motivating activity.

    Research by Ryan, Rigby and Przybylski into the motivation to play video games (regardless of the game type) found that motivation is accounted for by how well the game satisfies our three basic psychological needs:

    1. Autonomy – the extent to which the game provides flexibility over movement and strategies, choice over task and goals, and rewards that provide feedback and not control.
    2. Competence – the extent to which tasks provide ongoing challenges and opportunities for feedback.
    3. Relatedness – the extent to which the game provides interactions between players.

    In addition to need satisfaction, their research also found that:

    Presence – the extent to which the player feels within the game environment as opposed to being outside the game manipulating the controls, and
    Intuitive controls – the extent to which the controls make sense and don’t interfere with feelings of presence, were also important as they allow players to focus on game play and access the need satisfaction provided by the game.

    gamification

    What’s that got to do with eLearning?

    Learners are not always motivated to complete eLearning modules/courses – it might be a requirement of their job or as part of a qualification. But, imagine if we could replicate the motivational pull of video game play and apply similar techniques to eLearning courses. Imagine if people wanted to complete them. If we can use strategies to support their competence, autonomy and relatedness needs we can assist learners to internalise their motivation of these types of externally regulated activities.

    Here are some ways that you can apply to your eLearning that can help improve learner motivation by satisfying their basic psychological needs:

    Autonomy:
    1. Allowing people to make meaningful choices that have consequences.
    2. Providing people with more than one way to reach their end goal.
    3. Allowing people to customise their environment e.g. choosing a character.
    4. Encouraging people to take risks and be creative during the eLearning module/course.

    Competence:
    1. Making the goals clear and structured.
    2. Allowing multiple opportunities to complete parts of the eLearning module/course to allow people to build their competence.
    3. Requiring people to frequently make decisions to keep the eLearning module/course moving forward.
    4. Measuring performance in multiple ways.
    5. Increasing the difficulty as people progresses through the eLearning module/course.
    6. Linking progression (the reward) to competence.
    7. Providing people with constant and varied feedback and support.
    8. Allowing people to review or replay earlier parts of the eLearning module/course.
    9. Recognising achievement.

    Relatedness:
    1. Providing space/areas for interaction and discussion e.g. forums.
    2. Providing opportunities for collaboration e.g. tasks.

    Motivation plays an important role during eLearning experiences and our challenge is to create eLearning that people want to engage in. As educators, we have an opportunity to assist people to internalise their motivation in the way we design and deliver learning experiences. While it’s not always easy, we should use strategies that help satisfy the competence, autonomy and relatedness needs of our people if we want to improve their motivation towards the module or course they are completing.

     

    References:
    Deci, E. L. & Ryan, R. M. (2008) Facilitating optimal motivation and psychological well-being across life’s domains. Canadian Psychology. 49 (1), 14-23.
    Kapp, K. M. (2012) The Gamification of Learning and Instruction. Pfeiffer/ASTD
    Niemiec, C. P & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence and relatedness in the classroom: applying self-determination theory to educational practice. Theory and Research in Education. 7 (2), 133-144.
    Ryan, R. M. & Deci, E. L. (2000) Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology. 25, 54-67.
    Also, check out this website for more information on self-determination theory: http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/