Onlignment Archive – Page 21 – Legacy posts from Onlignment

Strategies for learning and performance support 2: instruction

In last week’s post I looked at the simple strategy of exposition. You will recall that this involved little more than the delivery of information from teacher or expert to the learner, perhaps with a little Q&A and discussion, but largely one-way. Exposition occurs live through lectures, presentations and webinars, but can also be packaged up in textual, audio, video or multimedia forms. Exposition can work well for independent and experienced learners, who will be happy to ‘get the information straight’, but is likely to be overwhelming for more dependent learners and novices, who are less familiar with what they know and what they need to know.

Instruction, the second strategy we are examining, is still a teacher/trainer-centred approach, but is much more carefully crafted to ensure that the learning outcomes are actually achieved, regardless of the learner’s ability. In this sense it is process rather than content driven. This process depends on the explicit and up-front definition of learning objectives and then the careful selection of appropriate activities and resources that will enable those objectives to be achieved. The process of ‘instructional design’ is teacher/trainer centred because it focuses on learning objectives rather than learmer goals; on the other hand, the fact that instruction is typically an interactive rather than a passive learner experience, means that the process can be adaptive to some degree to the individual differences of particular learners.

Instruction can be a live experience, whether in the workplace (‘on-job training’) or in a physical or virtual classroom; it can also be self-paced, through interactive materials delivered online or using offline media (workbooks, CDs, etc.). While learning at work occurs in many different ways, it would be fair to say that, for most workplace trainers and e-learning designers, formal instruction is what they do. Hopefully they will be doing it well, and that means the following:

being clear about outcomes;
concentrating on meeting a small number of key learning objectives thoroughly, rather than a large number only superficially;
following an instructional process which is appropriate for the objectives in question;
engaging the learner;
helping the learner to make new connections with prior knowledge;
presenting new material clearly and at an appropriate level, making use of demonstrations, stories, examples, visual aids and other tools to aid comprehension;
providing activities that allow new knowledge and understanding to be reinforced and consolidated;
allowing for plentiful opportunities to new skills to be practised, with the aid of timely and constructive feedback;
being responsive to the needs of individual learners;
providing support until all objectives are achieved.

Perhaps strangely, one of the key skills for instructional designers is to recognise when instruction is and is not an appropriate strategy. I’d say you’re likely to be safe going the instructional route when your target population consists of less confident learners, particularly those who are novices in the field in question, who need or want to be led step-by-step through the learning process, knowing they are capably supported. When these conditions are not met, instruction may still work, but you run the risk of ‘over-teaching’ and even patronising your population. Best to reserve your efforts for those who need them most.

Working with the iPad

It’s now two months since the iPad was launched in the UK, and so it’s timely that people are starting to comment on how they and others are using it. Inspired by these and other posts I thought I would jot down my own thoughts on how the iPad fits into my toolset.
The first time I took the iPad out, my laptop came along too as I couldn’t quite convince myself that the iPad would do everything I needed. Since then unless I know that I will specifically need it (such as for development work) the laptop has stayed at home; the iPad has quickly become my main portable device for business. I regularly travel up to London, and previously my bag would contain my laptop, its power supply, a paper notebook and usually whatever book I happen to be reading. Now all I take is the iPad. It really does have a battery that lasts all day, and combine that with no wait to boot up, and it really is just such a convenient device for accessing… well, everything.
I work at home, so the line between work and non-work activity has a tendency to blur, but the iPad somehow makes that less intrusive. I think perhaps because it’s so quick and easy to access things, activity like checking for an important email you’re waiting for is less likely to open the door to doing other things. In fact, one of the things I like most about it is the way it forces you to be focussed, because although background multitasking is on its way you can only ever be in one app at a time so there’s far less opportunity for distraction.
Some people have commented that at 16, 32 or 64GB it doesn’t have the capacity for serious work, but that hasn’t been a problem for me. All of my content lives in the cloud in one of three places – DropBox, Evernote or Google Docs, so if I want access to something I just open it via WiFi or 3G. The days of carrying your actual data around with you are pretty much gone, even if we don’t quite have ubiquitous access to the net yet. For the curious, my 32GB iPad currently has 26GB free, although I suppose I should mention that I don’t keep any music on it as that all lives on my iPod Classic.
Irrespective of location it has become my favourite tool for online communication, whether that’s via email, Twitter or other social networking tools. That has had the knock on benefit of keeping those things off my desktop when I’m working. I’ve also found that I manage my RSS consumption much more efficiently on the iPad, although that may be more down to the app I use (Reeder) rather than the iPad itself.
I guess you can’t talk about the iPad without mentioning its lack of support for Flash, but for me that’s really been a non-issue as it’s yet to stop me doing anything.
Despite having reasonably large hands I’ve found the on screen keyboard to be surprisingly good, but then I can’t touch type anyway so I don’t have a great typing speed to start with. If I know that I’m going to be doing a lot of typing I will take my Apple wireless keyboard with me too.
At Onlignment we’re all about working virtually, and the iPad is proving its worth as my portable virtual office. Apps from Skype, Webex and Adobe Connect mean I can be connected with the rest of the team wherever I am. I’ve no regrets about buying the first generation iPad, but I’m excited by the opportunities that future versions will bring.
Image Source: Apple UK

Strategies for learning and performance support 1: exposition

Those who design learning interventions and performance support materials have big choices to make, not only in terms of the social context in which the learning or support will occur (self-directed, one-to-one or group) and the medium (face-to-face, online, offline), but also in terms of the underlying learning strategy. In this and three following posts, I’m going to explore four key strategies, to work out when they work best and for whom. The first of these is exposition.

Exposition is the delivery of information from teacher or subject expert to learner. The process is essentially one-way, although it may include some modest Q&A or discussion. The strategy is top-down and teacher-centred because it is person designing and/or delivering who determines what information is to be delivered and how (and sometimes also where and when).

Exposition can take place in the context of an event, such as a lecture, a seminar or a presentation, and both face-to-face and online, using web, video or tele- conferencing software. Exposition can also take the form of content, using text, images, animation, audio and video. Historically this content was delivered using offline media, such as books, tapes, CDs and DVDs, although now it is as likely to be consumed online or downloaded for delivery on portable platforms such as iPods and e-book readers.

For exposition to work as a strategy, the student must be a relatively independent learner, with a good awareness of what they do and do not know about the subject in question. That way they will be able to determine what is most relevant and therefore most important to focus on and process further, whereas the dependent or novice learner could easily be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of undifferentiated information.

Because of the risk of cognitive overload, it is common for teachers, trainers and learning designers to opt for more interactive strategies such as instruction or guided discovery (which are coming up in the next two posts). This is fine where the target audience really needs support and structure to help them learn, but a major irritation to those who can cope by themselves (particularly senior professionals, such as hospital consultants, lawyers, accountants, executives, academics, etc.).

Because of the absence of interaction, exposition requires less design than, say, highly-participative face-to-face workshops and self-paced learning materials. However, careful planning is still going to be a great help to the reader, listener or viewer:

Making clear what is the most important information and what is just nice to know.
Using story-telling and anecdotes to bring abstract concepts to life.
Making the most appropriate use of media elements – text, images, animation, audio and video.
Paring down the volume of content to reduce wasted time and minimise the risk of overload.
Modularising the content so it can be easily random-accessed and reviewed.

Exposition can also play a supporting role in other strategies:

As background material to be accessed before or after an instructional session.
As content for learners wishing to formalise their understanding of a subject that is primarily being tackled through a process of guided discovery.
As material that can be accessed on-demand from a supporting content library.

In summary, I’d choose exposition as a strategy when I need to control what information is delivered and to whom, and when I feel confident that the target audience will happily be able to work with this information without a great deal of support. If I judge the situation right, then I’ll save an awful lot of money not having to run workshops or create interactive online materials.

Getting the job done with live online training

At the eLN Showcase event on 9th July, the Onlignment team each presented a Pechu Kucha (20 slides, each 20 seconds in duration). Today we present Phil’s session, titled Getting the job done with live online training.
Most training is carried out live in the classroom or on-the-job, but face-to-face instruction is not always the most practical or cost-effective option. Web conferencing allows you to continue to offer live training but without the need for all participants to be present in the same location. The ‘virtual classroom’ is ideal for running short training sessions, follow-ups, seminars and meetings. In this Pecha Kucha session, you’ll learn how leading organisations are making use of web conferencing to provide more training more efficiently and how they have equipped their classroom instructors to make a successful transition to online delivery.

Enjoyable Elearning – Is it an oxymoron?

At the eLN Showcase event on 9th July, the Onlignment team each presented a Pechu Kucha (20 slides, each 20 seconds in duration). This week we’ll make them all available here, and we start with Clive’s session titles Enjoyable Elearning – Is it an oxymoron?.
We all know that elearning is growing in popularity, primarily because it’s efficient. It helps employers by cutting travel costs and allowing more training to happen more quickly. It helps employees because it allows them to obtain learning when and where it suits them. But none of this means that learners ‘like’ elearning; for many it’s just another mundane chore. So is it possible for elearning to be enjoyable, or is this an oxymoron?

Blackboard lit up by Elluminate

Last week, Blackboard, the largest commercial provider of learning management systems to the education sector, purchased not one but two web conferencing providers that also have a strong educational heritage – Elluminate and Wimba. Now, although I have used Blackboard for five years or more now to deliver an online certificate for one of my clients, I certainly have no warm feelings for the company; firstly because I actually prefer Moodle, even though it’s essentially free, but even more because of Blackboard’s outrageous behaviour a year or two back in claiming it invented the LMS and going after its main competitors for extravagent royalties. It failed, I’m glad to say, and it will take Blackboard years of being terribly nice to repair its stinking reputation.
I don’t know Wimba, but I have an affinity for Elluminate, which the eLearning Network and ALT uses to run its joint public webinars. It is a capable web conferencing platform, with a number of features which make it especially suited to use as a virtual classroom (Onlignment’s Phil Green is a big fan). It’s possible that both Elluminate and Wimba would find it hard to survive on their own in the long run against the competition faced by the big IT and telecoms operators that are beginning to dominate web conferencing (Cisco, Microsoft, Adobe, AT&T, etc.). Whether Blackboard provides it with much protection is dubious. After all when Saba bought Centra, which was at the time one of the major corporate web conferencing platforms, its profile dropped enormously and now it is a speck in the market compared to WebEx.
In George Siemens’ posting about the takeover, he takes the position that Blackboard is making a sensible move because “synchronous tools represent the fastest growing technology segment in education, and the one with the greatest prospect for future growth.” At Onlignment, we like to think so. But I’m not sure that it really helps to integrate the LMS with web conferencing, particularly in the workplace, where the decisions to purchase these platforms are likely to originate from different places in the organisation: HR look after the LMS, and IT look after business communications, which includes web conferencing. And a good LMS should be able to integrate seamlessly with any web conferencing platform, just like it should do with any authoring tool or HR system.

Photos from the eLN Showcase

Here are a few photos from last week’s eLN Showcase event in London.

Rhyming couplets the key to Pecha Kucha success

Onlignment’s Phil Green looks pretty pleased with himself having won the Pecha Kucha competition at the eLearning Network’s annual Members’ Showcase in London on Friday. Phil’s script consisted of 20 rhyming couplets – one for each slide. Phil’s presentation will be available as an online video soon.