AllThingsD Early Adopters ran a quote in their Voices section from an article at PCPro that reads like a page right out of Marshall McLuhan. Echoing McLuhan’s return of acoustic space and the role of the mosaic in everyday life, Dr Rosie Flewitt of the Open University comments on how the modern learner might be shifting from sequential linearity toward a simultaneous gestalt:
“E-learning experts argue that withholding computers at a young age could actually deprive children of modern communications skills. ‘One area of literacy that’s changing is the order in which things are presented – it isn’t linear, it’s organised spatially, and often some meaning is carried in the design, layout, images, sounds, movement, subtle changes in colour in a game – it’s all part of what literacy is in today’s world,’ says Flewitt. ‘These are fundamental changes to operational literacy, the biggest since the printing press.‘ ”
Naturally some question is left as to whether this effect is limited to young children as a group or if one can detect a tendency toward acoustic involvement among younger participants in college classrooms and corporate training centers. The main point, however, is that linearity might already be optional in the classroom, where new and different styles of presentation and involvement might be called for in order to better reach the audience.
To contrast Dr Flewitt’s comment on linear versus spatial literacy, consider this synopsis of McLuhan’s acoustic space by Library and Archives Canada:
“The key characteristic of acoustic space is that it engages multiple senses at the same time. It does not demand that objects be dissected to be understood; rather, the multiple parts co-exist simultaneously. To understand acoustic space, you must perceive all of it, not focus on one part. In other words, acoustic space demands that you apprehend figure and ground simultaneously, that the senses work together. McLuhan believed that oral cultures existed in acoustic space since their primary mode of communicating was speech.”
In this interview with Nina Sutton, Mcluhan explains the rise and dominance of visual space from the phonetic alphabet forward: McLuhan on Acoustic Space.
As a sidebar it is interesting to note that McLuhan eventually dropped the use of the term Global Village from his work preferring the term Global Theatre instead. Apparently Global Village goes back to the advent of radio while the notion of the Global Theatre is more a part of Sputnik, television and modern global communications.
I like the infographic (see below) “How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education.” It presents an interesting timeline of developments in educational delivery and provides a handy reminder of some things that I’ve forgotten with regard to trends and current industry buzz. And yes, education in all its forms is an industry and has its buzz.
First, looking at the history of distance learning and non-traditional (i.e., non-lecture/classroom) modes of content delivery, writers rarely admit anything that comes before television. Frankly, I never see radio mentioned. Maybe that’s because to most, television is the first “modern” technology. But, that said, there is a long tradition (Boston, 1728) of correspondence education that rises through the Victorian Era (University of London, 1858) that seems important in laying the groundwork of several notable non-residential K-12 programs and even, I suspect, to the acceptance of modern online universities. Perhaps not surprisingly, the British Open University is the first school on the graphic to enter the fray in the early 1970s using television as its primary mode of disseminating lectures to the masses. Funny how television never really materialized as a great training tool. In retrospect, is that surprising?
This is the first of my jogged memories from the chart:
The UO (as it is known) makes perfect sense to me but when it was tried in the US it failed miserably (not so in the UK). You can read about it here. For those of you wondering, the flip side is also true in my case: Schools like the University of Phoenix (as they currently exist) do not make perfect sense to me and yet they are thriving in the US (scroll down the chart a bit), educational bubble notwithstanding. So much for my role as an industry pundit. In ancient times I would have been stoned to death.
Overall this graphic fosters a meme that I consider somewhat dubious: the Internet is changing the way we learn. I think you have to be careful with this one. First and foremost it is probably not the case that we are learning any differently than our forefathers. It is probably the case that we utilize new and different methods for obtaining information, gathering the rudiments of new skills and assessing our mastery of a subject or topic. But beyond that the need for engagement, practice, recall and synthesis seem to be standard among members of our species. As an example of some old wine in a new bottle masquerading as a new instructional form witness the Khan Academy. Is the actual process of learning – that is, the embedding of new knowledge or skills – any different here? Does it have to be to be important? This brings me to the second reminder:
Given the explosion in alternate forms of content delivery, I don’t know anyone who would go to a traditional college or classroom as a first choice.
Isn’t that odd? I have to confess, if I had to bone up on linear algebra or differential equations, say, I’d go to the Khan Academy (note mathematics as the example) or the Open Courseware Consortium, not to the local college. What’s that tell you about: a) my prior experience at university, b) the reputation of quality of American higher/continued education, c) the role of technology in my lifestyle, d) my lifestyle, e) the cost and accessibility of higher/continued education in America, f) the fact that too many of us have (had to) become consumer-oriented with regard to our learning (in contrast to our “certification”). Take your pick.
Interestingly, given the apparent rise of e-learning since 1999, you would think that we have a viable alternative to instructor-lead training in online web-based tutorials. On the whole nothing could be farther from the truth. Sadly, even though traditional classroom instruction might be foundering as designers search for compelling new forms to save live presentations, it’s hard to find evidence that e-learning as a genre ever succeeded in a big way. Taken as a whole completion rates for online courses are and have been deplorable, levels of engagement minimal (possibly explaining the previous point), and even when they are completed online courses don’t often meet educational objectives except in the most superficial ways when compared to control groups. E-learning does have some notable traits that distinguish it in the pantheon of educational delivery methods: it is a cost-effective way to broadcast information to a population that might have geographical and temporal constraints; and, it does drive consumers to virtual and brick-and-mortar classrooms when provided as an option.
Frankly, if I were saddled with the task of saving e-learning, I would go to YouTube.
Maybe what that says is that even though Television failed as an educational panacea in the early days of distance learning, Son of Television is back, bigger and better than ever before. But does any of this change what I have to do to learn linear algebra? Enough said.
At first glance Salman Khan appears a most unlikely revolutionary. Although well educated (note: he is neither an educator nor a psychologist) he has nonetheless, and from most accounts, single-handedly ignited a revolution in teaching that any “real” educator, government administrator or instructional designer would be proud to lay claim to.
What started as simple private tutorials in math for his cousins – utilizing what he describes as about $200.00 in computer accessories and shareware – Khan drew upon his innate interest in education (along with perhaps his own personal frustrations as a student) to craft a series of screen capture how-to guides for solving high school math problems. As word spread among friends and family members, viral interest forced Khan to move his homespun videos to YouTube to service his burgeoning audience, completely for free. The rest, as they say, is history.
At present the Khan Academy (a not-for-profit educational organization founded in 2006) has served over 51 million views from a library of over 2200 videos. In addition to math and physics, topics now embrace history and biology. School districts and major corporations are attempting to use and develop his methods for their own internal applications. Donations from private sources and the likes of Google and the Gates Foundation have subsequently allowed Salman Khan to quit his day job and devote his energies full-time to the development of his Academy and the distribution of educational programs worldwide (“providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere”).
Looking over Khan’s presentations on his methods you begin to wonder what makes the Khan Academy so successful. After all, this isn’t the result of a major educational research program, a sweeping government initiative, or a mass popular movement in educational reform. Further, what makes the Khan Academy even more interesting is that Khan’s tutorial method is not so much ingenious as it is ingenuous.
In several of his talks Khan is fairly straightforward in his assessment of what makes his method work. First and foremost, as Khan attests, each of the videos offers a lesson on a single concise topic (a “concept”) for no more than about 10 minutes. One key idea, cut in a bite-sized chunk, for a period not to exceed the boredom threshold of the average viewer. Given that the videos are recorded and stored online, the presentations can be played any time and repeated as needed by the student until he or she feels comfortable to move forward.
Another feature of the tutorials is the general tone they are given in. As Khan describes it, they feel like they are coming more from a friend than a teacher. You have a sense that Khan is there with you, sitting by your side, leading you through the problems with a pencil and paper. They are down-to-earth, enthusiastic and rigorous without a trace of giddiness, pomposity or pedantry. The student feels like “…there is an individual who cares about you,” Khan says. The student comes away with a sense that the instructor wants to help him or her over the obstacles in the landscape because he has been in the student’s place himself and sympathizes with the struggles that lay ahead.
Drilling down a layer into the Khan Academy’s unique style reveals even more about what makes the “secret sauce” special. Each of the bite-sized topics that are referred to previously are in fact carefully culled and curated learning objects. The trick, of course, is to first know the subject well enough to select which topics to present and in what order. Following that, the teacher must distill the concepts to their absolute essence.
This distillation process is, to all who have tried it, much harder than it looks. In fact, the ability to select and summarize complex material and ideas, rather than resorting to the indiscriminate slathering of a PowerPoint slide with bullets, might be one of the hallmarks of an educated mind. Clearly, Khan groks it.
Despite the thought and planning that goes into Khan’s presentations they can hardly be accused of being over produced. This is not Pixar doing technical training. If anything, the digital blackboard and colored chalk renderings show the human side of learning and mastery. The notes and diagrams often appear rough and awkward, but they are at the same time quite genuine, funny and sometimes – to the advantage of the learner – mistaken. As Khan explains it, he is often in the place of the learner and, in contrast to many schools and universities, has not rehearsed the solution beforehand, offering the student the patented procedure. Instead he lets the students witness his own thought processes as he wrestles with the problems and sometimes wanders down the wrong path from which he has to back out and start again – just like a real student.
Nowhere in Khan’s methods can be found any of the bells or whistles of modern post-industrial pedagogy. No Flash animation, interactivity, games, social networking tools, 3D graphics or monolithic learning management systems are to be found. In fact there is little beyond a virtual blackboard and some equally virtual colored chalk. You don’t even see Khan’s face.
The faceless almost tactile sketches and equations provide little distraction and promote focus on the material. This decidedly low-tech solution to training might harken back to ancient watch-me-do-it tribal methods but its effectiveness is not lost on Khan’s students, many of whom write to express thanks that they are not only mastering their classes for the first time but excited about the subjects as well.
Khan’s approach is to teach for academic competency. That is, he instructs in the methods and procedures that assist the student in passing standardized tests and formal exams. After the student completes a module, test problems are offered through a program that Khan designed himself that acts to monitor student progress and flag trouble areas for the teacher. The student is asked to correctly answer 10 problems in a row before moving to the next module. This final process closes the instruction, feedback and assessment loop in Khan’s method and further acts to eliminate the small voids in understanding that can multiply as the student moves forward. Interestingly YouTube assists in the process as well, offering statistics on usage and attention.
One of Khan’s own revelations about his method is telling: it’s so simple and effective that he does not see why anyone needs to give live lectures anymore.
Although he does not refer to it by name, Khan points to (and his method directly parallels) the use of what is commonly called the Inverted Classroom. In an inverted classroom recorded presentations impart new information prior to class while class time is taken up with teachers and peers solving problems (or “doing homework”) quite in reverse to what is traditionally done in schools and training centers.
The results of this method have so far been compelling. Both teachers and students benefit. Teachers benefit because more of their time is spent in directed remediation (particularly if they use Khan’s monitoring software), problem solving and exploration of the material. Students like the inverted classroom because it potentially transforms class time into something useful and interesting. In Khan’s case the testimonials from parents, teachers and students are hard to ignore. His academy and tutorials do work.
More needs to be seen to ascertain whether the Khan Academy represents the future of education as some claim. But what is clear is that it stands as a forceful reminder of what can be done to improve the instruction of certain skills and particular subjects while simultaneously improving the classroom experience for everyone.
According to a study at North Carolina State University, the effectiveness of online training might be enhanced if online educational helpers, or avatars, closely match the student. Researchers Tara S. Behrend and Lori F. Thompson designed instructional avatars using a program called People Putty to match or contradict gender, race and teaching styles of 257 test subjects involved in an online training course. For example, subjects were asked “If you were teaching this course would you give specific directions on what to do or offer general suggestions?” Similarly, “Would you rate an individual’s performance based on how far a participant improved compared to where he or she started or relative to the performance of the entire class?” The avatars where then set in motion on the course, advising, guiding and assisting the learners according to their collected attributes. What the researchers found was a mixed bag of somewhat counter intuitive results.
“We know from existing research on human interaction that we like people who are like us. We wanted to see whether that held true for these training agents.” – Dr. Lori Foster Thompson
Measurements of enjoyment, engagement and effectiveness of the training suggest that each element has a different cause. Subjects reported being more engaged in the program when the avatar matched their race and gender. Learning, on the other hand, was enhanced when the online helper employed feedback and teaching styles more akin to that of the student. Whether this predisposition is strong enough to constitute an outright learning style remains to be seen. According the researcher Thompson:
“We found that people liked the helper more, were more engaged and viewed the program more favorably when they perceived the helper agent as having a feedback style similar to their own – regardless of whether that was actually true.”
Interestingly researchers found no link between enjoyment or overall success of educational outcome based on gender or race. Matching teaching style did, however, have a pronounced effect on performance on quizzes. What might come as the greatest surprise concerns the dominant factor affecting participants’ ratings of overall effectiveness and enjoyment. As it turns out the “perceived” similarity of the avatar is more important than the reality underlying its design.
“We found that people liked the helper more, were more engaged and viewed the program more favorably when they perceived the helper agent as having a feedback style similar to their own – regardless of whether that was actually true.” – Lori F. Thompson
What the study suggests is that perception might be more important than reality where avatar design and success of online training are concerned. In essence, if a learner believes that a particular online helper has been designed “specifically for people like you,” its effects will likely be beneficial to the outcome of the training. Regrettably from the point of view of the instructional designer and developer of the training, one-size-fits-all might be out the window:
“It is important that the people who design online training programs understand that one size does not fit all. Efforts to program helper agents that may be tailored to individuals can yield very positive results for the people taking the training.” – Lori F. Thompson
Participation in Pedagogical Agent Design: Effects on Training Outcomes, Tara S. Behrend, A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Psychology, Raleigh, North Carolina, 2009.
Although online instruction has grown to be far from a fad, I’ve noticed something peculiar about it. Online courses are nobody’s favorite. Well, that might be going too far. They are clearly among the favorites of administrators and managers hoping to distribute “virtual classroom environments” far and wide without the encumbrances of airplanes, hotels and school buildings, but I’ve never heard of a teacher coming specifically to the profession with a burning desire to teach online.
So far – and it might be too early to see this – the online experience has not produced a teacher, instructor or (God forbid!) an instructional designer who has had a Road-to-Damascus experience online, where one minute there is an ardent but resistant learner and the next a flaming would-be pedagogue anxious to commandeer the reins of a class in order to lead others to a similar experience. Interestingly, two professions that always seem to have an element of mission in them are the clergy (naturally enough) and teaching.
On the flip side students don’t (yet) choose online courses above face-to-face instructor-lead classes – fancy hotels and travel per diems notwithstanding. The reason this is important is that on the one hand it’s unlikely that anyone in the education professions today is going to be able to avoid teaching through or writing for the online environment; and on the other, it might not be a preferred medium, leading one to feel a bit out of place, awkward or even bungling as an online instructor.
Fortunately help is at hand. There are many good references and guides for online training that can assist the new-comer in getting started or serve as a refresher for those returning to the virtual classroom after a hiatus. One resource worth noting is Dr Curt Bonk‘s collection of online video primers for e-Teaching and Learning. The 27 videos focus on planning and delivery of online instruction. The presentations are directed at the college instructor but most are equally of interest to corporate and government trainers. Each video is about 10 minutes in length. Topics include:
Planning Online Courses
Managing Online Courses
Providing Feedback
Online Interaction
Quality Supplemental Materials
Blended Learning Implementation
Online Visual Learning
Webinars and Webcasts
Podcasting Uses and Applications
Wiki Uses and Applications
Blog Uses and Applications
Hands-on Experiential Learning
Assessing Student Online Learning
Trends on the Horizon
The video primers on e-Teaching and Learning can be viewed here at the Indiana University School of Education Instructional Consulting web site.
I don’t think this is much taught in Instructional Design courses, but the design of a presentation conveys information in and of itself to the audience. This is due in large part to the fact that all the elements of a course or presentation (including the presenter) constitute a Gestalt that is projected to the audience.
Good design matters because good design leads to clarity. And clarity facilitates perception.
The design elements often constitute the ground in the figure-ground relationship of the medium, but the whole package conveys a message. The medium is the message.
As an example of how design sends nonverbal cues to the viewer, take a look at the short talk by John McWade of Before & After Magazine. Although taken completely from the design world the example captures the effects of font, color and shape passed as a subliminal message to the unsuspecting eye.
It is not hard to cite these effects in educational media and presentations. How often does a slide, presentation or workshop exercise say “boring” or “we don’t care” or “this is not important” or “this is hard to understand” to an audience? Media evoke reactions from the viewer and the reactions are often affective in nature. Connie Malamed at the eLearning Coach puts it this way:
“This has strong implications for learning, because of the impact positive or negative feelings have on motivation, comprehension and retention.”
We design educational media for a reason. Well designed media lower the barriers to comprehension and assist the mastery of new skills. Things that detract from these goals include boring and inept graphics, awkward symmetry and poor layouts, illegible typefaces, abrasive or boring color schemes, and too much information.
Despite the fact that we are quick to assert that we live in The Information Age and are swimming in all kinds of media, data and sensory stimuli, it’s sobering to take a step back and reflect on the fact that information is not always where the focus of attention is. Marshall McLuhan was fond of saying that “We don’t know who discovered water, but we know it wasn’t the fish.” Information today is a little like that water and as teachers and instructional designers we have to pay attention to the differences between the medium and message if we want to be effective in what we do.
Right in keeping with this problem, the folks at MAYA Design have produced a really useful and (dare I say) informative animated short on the problem of distinguishing information from its presentational form. That is, in Gestalt terms, how to see the ground separate from the figure.
As an example of the problem of teasing information from its encapsulating medium, do you know what information is? Can you cite an example? What would you say if you were told that you can’t actually see or hear information? Would you be comfortable with the idea that neither the words on a page nor the numbers on a spreadsheet are information? In the words of MAYA Design, “Information has no form. It’s not made of atoms.“
So, what is information? In MAYA’s view:
“Information is what allows us to confidently make a selection from a set of given or implied alternatives.”
And what is our job then relative to information design? Our job is to give it form. We write it down, verbalize it, draw it and act it out. All with the intent of communicating it. Take a few minutes and look here or below and get reacquainted with the differences between medium and message.
MERLOT: Putting Educational Innovations Into Practice
Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching
As far as I know this is a unique web site and resource.
“MERLOT is a leading edge, user-centered, searchable collection of peer reviewed and selected higher education, online learning materials, catalogued by registered members and a set of faculty development support services.MERLOT’s vision is to be a premiere online community where faculty, staff, and students from around the world share their learning materials and pedagogy.”
“Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education.”
Partnerships are essesntial to the MERLOT community. We invite you to learn about the different types of partnerships in MERLOT and how your institution can be involved.
With 17 disciplines and more being formed, being a peer reviewer is a great way to be involved with MERLOT. See how you can become an active participate to the process.
MERLOT is a free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. The MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT) is a peer-reviewed, online publication addressing the scholarly use of multimedia resources in education. JOLT is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December.
The MERLOT International Conference is a venue for educators, administrators, and technologists who have interests and expertise in technology-enabled teaching and learning and who recognize the need to remain current in this rapidly advancing field of educational practice and theory.”
AllThingsD Early Adopters ran a quote in their Voices section from an article at PCPro that reads like a page right out of Marshall McLuhan. Echoing McLuhan’s return of acoustic space and the role of the mosaic in everyday life, Dr Rosie Flewitt of the Open University comments on how the modern learner might be shifting from sequential linearity toward a simultaneous gestalt:
