The HG2S Training Blog

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.

THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, March 5, 2010:

“President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

Edward Tufte, Appointee for Member, Recovery Independent Advisory Panel
Edward Tufte is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science at Yale University. He wrote, designed, and self-published The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, and Beautiful Evidence, which have received 40 awards for content and design. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Society for Technical Communication, and the American Statistical Association. He received his PhD in political Science from Yale University and BS and MS in statistics from Stanford University.”

From ET:

“I will be serving on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel. This Panel advises The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose job is to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds:

‘The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board was created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 with two goals:To provide transparency in relation to the use of Recovery-related funds.
To prevent and detect fraud, waste, and mismanagement.
Earl E. Devaney was appointed by President Obama to serve as chairman of the Recovery Board. Twelve Inspectors General from various federal agencies serve with Chairman Devaney. The Board issues quarterly and annual reports to the President and Congress and, if necessary, “flash reports” on matters that require immediate attention. In addition, the Board maintains the Recovery.gov website so the American people can see how Recovery money is being distributed by federal agencies and how the funds are being used by the recipients.

Mission statement: To promote accountability by coordinating and conducting oversight of Recovery funds to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to foster transparency on Recovery spending by providing the public with accurate, user-friendly information.’

I’m doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I’ll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary.”

http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003e0&topic_id=1#

I think it was from Marshall McLuhan that I first heard:

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Now, for the first time, neurological evidence is demonstrating that this is literally true. Data published in the June 23rd issue of Current Biology shows that when we use a tool, even for a short time, it actually modifies the brain’s body schema. That is, the brain enhances the area of its map of our body associated with the tool. As reported in Science Daily:

“‘Since the origin of the concept of body schema, the idea of its functional plasticity has always been taken for granted, even if no direct evidence has been provided until now,’ said Alessandro Farnè of INSERM and the Université Claude Bernard Lyon. ‘Our series of experiments provides the first, definitive demonstration that this century-old intuition is true.’”

A report by the British Psychological Society describes the experiment:

“After several minutes using the grasping tool, the participants subsequent reaching movements with their hand were slower to start and stop, making them longer-lasting overall, compared with before the tool use – as if their own arm was now perceived as longer. Moreover, when the participants were subsequently blindfolded and asked to point to where they’d just been touched by the researchers, on the tip of the middle finger and on the elbow, the places the participants pointed to were further apart, compared with before tool use, again suggesting that they now perceived their arm to be longer.”

Interestingly the feedback loop from man-to-tool and back again is observed. From Science Daily:

“After using a mechanical grabber that extended their reach, people behaved as though their arm really was longer, they found. What’s more, study participants perceived touches delivered on the elbow and middle fingertip of their arm as if they were farther apart after their use of the grabbing tool.

People still went on using their arm successfully following after tool use, but they managed tasks differently. That is, they grasped or pointed to object correctly, but they did not move their hand as quickly and overall took longer to complete the tasks.”

The authors of the study go on to say:

“We believe this ability of our body representation to functionally adapt to incorporate tools is the fundamental basis of skillful tool use. Once the tool is incorporated in the body schema, it can be maneuvered and controlled as if it were a body part itself.”

Further information on this study can be found here:

Cardinali, L., Frassinetti, F., Brozzoli, C., Urquizar, C., Roy, A., & Farnè, A. (2009). Tool-use induces morphological updating of the body schema. Current Biology, 19 (12) DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.05.009

Death by PowerPoint

Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen has pulled an old skeleton from the presenter’s closet: The Technical Presentation: “Who says technical presentations can’t be engaging?” Scientific and technical presentations are often put in a separate class because they tend to be highly specialized, dense, and often a bad match for the limited bandwidth of PowerPoint. This, in combination with a variety of other issues (poor preparation, bad graphics, lack of clear purpose, no regard for the medium) often results in what is commonly known as the “Data Dump.” Too often we fall prey to this abuse, even when we are paying for the privilege of the presentation. Reynolds cites an essay by geologist J. Lehr (1985) who reminds us of our primary burden as presenters:

“Failure to spend the [presentation] time wisely and well, failure to educate, entertain, elucidate, enlighten, and most important of all, failure to maintain attention and interest should be punishable by stoning. There is no excuse for tedium.”

Avoiding the Data Dump requires work. Far too often presenters are pushed to deliver reams of data and complicated charts and graphs without the assistance of (or time for) a design(er). It’s almost unheard of (and perhaps ironic) that technical people have any background or knowledge of information design to help them prepare media. What’s worse, this blind spot is just as common in technical writers and instructional designers who fashion presentations for others to give. This is certainly one instance where good design can pay off.

With that said, what can we do to avoid inflicting a lethal PowerPoint presentation on a trusting audience?

1. Prepare in advance
2. “Own” the material
3. Simplify the look and content
4. Don’t read the slides
   
5. Avoid gratuitous anything (this may be a comment on 3. above)
   
6. Connect with the audience
   
7. Adapt the presentation to the audience
8. Tell a story
9. Rehearse the talk (this may be a comment on 1. above)

The notion of Teacher as Disc Jockey goes back at least to the time Apple’s iTunes introduced the concept of Rip, Mix, Burn to the world. Since then trainers, educators and instructional designers have been inundated by reports on social media, Web 2.0 and collaborative learning while fending off rising demands to crank out more educational media in less time, with less money. Now the prevalence of open source media and courseware has exceeded a critcal mass with thousands of open source courses being distributed by organizations like Open Courseware Consortium and ccLearn.

With that in mind educational technologist Scott Leslie of Victoria, BC, has gven an excellent talk on the current state of web-based open source tools and techniques available to teachers who need to rip, mix and burn a new course or presentation. Using the metaphor of the DJ, Leslie’s basic work flow follows these steps:

Search – finding the PLE diagrams

Sample – grabbing ones that weren’t already easily saveable

Sequence – tumblr? how to get in a mediaRSS feed

Record – my own PLE diagram

Perform – cooliris and wii controller?

Share – blog it

The reader should be cautioned: If you are not familiar with Web 2.0 concepts in teaching, this talk will be the proverbial ‘drink from a fire hose‘. Leslie presents dozens of sites and tools that designer and educators can use in the preparation and dissemination of a whole course or simple talk. Having considerable experience with these methods, Leslie suggests that we pick and choose among the sites and services for those that match our objectives and personal style.

“You may find the metaphor of ‘educator as DJ’ doesn’t work for you – fine. Maybe it’s ‘educator as mashup artist’. Maybe it’s ‘educator as painter.’ maybe it’s ‘educator as architect’. But…

I URGE you to seek out the metaphor YOU ALREADY BRING to your teaching practice, because inevitably you do. Becoming conscious of it is important not only because of how it lets you expand on it, but because the act of teaching IS the supreme metaphorical act; just as metaphor allows us new understanding by using a familiar vehicle that conveys attributes to a specific tenor, so do you as teachers seek to help your learners move from their existing understanding to somewhere new.”

Leslie’s talk is presented here in both slide and video formats. Notes and references are also included.

One of the students in Michael Wesch‘s video “A Vision of Students Today” holds a sign that reads “I buy hundred dollar textbooks that I never open.” Well, a small group of renegade publishers plans to fix that on both counts.

Flatworld Knowledge is one such attempt to “open source” the textbook industry. Founded by ex-pat textbook publishers, Flatworld is offering textbooks free of charge:

Our books might feel like your current book – for a minute. They are written by leading experts and are peer-reviewed, edited, and highly developed. They are supported by test banks, .ppt notes, instructor manuals, print desk copies, and knowledgeable service representatives. There the similarity ends.

Instead of $100 plus, our books are FREE online. We don’t even require registration! Students enter the URL they’re given by their instructor and start reading. It’s that easy. No tricks. No popup ads. No “a premium subscription is needed for that”. In fact, our free online books go beyond what standard print editions provide with integrated audio, video, and interactive features, powerful search capabilities, and more..

Even better – include the book where the rest of your course is! If you are an instructor using an Course/Learning Management System (like Blackboard, Angel, etc.) you will be able to integrate our book (and our instructor supplements) directly into your LMS (beginning March 09). Yep. Still free.

It is what it is. Just great books, by great authors, at a great price – zero. But we are NOT an eBook publisher… Don’t want to read online? Don’t. Read “Convenient Choices” below to learn about the convenient and affordable choices we offer students.

Flatworld allows students to read the books online for free, download audio or PDF versions, or buy printed copies:

Some will read online. Some won’t. Some want print books. Some don’t. We’re not smart enough to figure it out. So we won’t. Now there’s a novel idea. Let instructors adopt the best book for their class. Let students adopt the best format and price for them.

Kayo doesn’t read books online. She orders the black and white softcover for about $29 bucks. It shows up in a few days. Too bland for her friend Sam – he orders the color edition for $59. Not Sharon. She commutes everyday, so nothing but the audio book on her iPod will do. Then there’s Chaz. He’s indecisive. He decides, well, not to decide. He’ll order the self-print .pdf chapters when he needs them for $1.99 per chapter. Cool. And don’t forget Tessa. She never has enough time. She’ll cut to the chase with our mp3 study guides, mobile flash cards, and online practice quizzes with feedback. That’s convenient. That’s choices. That’s Flat World Knowledge.

Textbooks can be built to order and customized for a particular class or application:

Use our books “off-the-shelf”. After all, they’re crafted to meet market needs. But when was the last time you thought of yourself as “the market?” We thought so. So go nuts. Use our “build-a-book” platform. Drag-and-drop chapters into a new table of contents that suits your syllabus. Don’t cover the last chapter? Trash it with a click. Beginning Summer 09, you will be able to edit Flat World open textbooks down to the sentence level. Replace our example with one of yours. Add a paragraph on your pet research topic. When you’re done, click “adopt” and we’ll give you a special URL for your students. If they buy a print version, it’ll be of your unique book. Thank you print-on-demand technology! And thank you, Creative Commons. That’s our open license that allows you to do everything above and more, without any special permissions.

The current catalog is small but interesting. Titles like “Introduction to Economic Analysis,” “Risk Management for Enterprises and Individuals,” and “Project Management in a Virtual World” are available. The feeling you get from visiting their web site (and thinking back on buying textbooks in college) is that they are on top of an idea whose time has come.

Another novel venture called Scitable by Nature Education is offering mix-and-match articles on genetics that are coupled with social networking tools and content uploads from instructors and authors so that custom course materials can be dynamically fashioned as needed by teachers and presenters.

It will be interesting to see if these ideas and others like it spill over to other technical and scientific subjects and maybe even get adopted by corporate training departments that always seem to need training materials on fundamentals and industry standards.

In case you’re wondering, people are spending more time in front of more screens as sources of information and entertainment. Research conducted at Ball State University used a novel combination of technologies to monitor and measure the media Americans are using and for what purposes.

The data followed 476 participants and resulted in 952  observed days of recorded media usage. The study takes an unbiased look at what technologies Americans are using and does not delve into effects of particular media. The Video Consumer Mapping Study, as it is called, noted some surprising findings:

• TV users were exposed to, on average, 72 minutes per day of TV ads and promos—dispelling a commonly held belief that modern consumers are channel-hopping or otherwise avoiding most of the advertising in the programming they view.
• Despite the proliferation of computers, video-capable mobile phones, and similar devices, TV in the home still commands the greatest amount of viewing, even among those ages 18-24; thus, in the eyes of the researchers, appearing to dispute a common belief that Internet video and mobile phone video exposure among that group (and the next one up, ages 25-34) were sizeable in 2008.
• Rather than young people and retirees, consumers in the 45-54 age group average the most daily screen time, just over 9½ hours. The average for all other age groups is strikingly similar at roughly 8½ hours—although the composition and duration of devices used by the groups during the day varied.
• Even in major metropolitan areas where commute times can be long and drive-time radio remains popular, computing has replaced radio as the No. 2 media activity. Radio is now No. 3 and print media fourth.

• Contrary to some recent popular media coverage suggesting that more Americans are rediscovering “free TV” via the Internet, computer video tends to be quite small with an average time of just two minutes (a little more than 0.5 percent) a day.
• Early DVR owners spent much more time with DVR playback than newer DVR owners. At the same time, DVR playback was even more likely than live TV to be the sole medium.
• “Environmental” exposure outside the home, while still relatively small at just 2.8 percent of total video consumption today, could nearly double during the next few years.

A tables of results for “Average Daily Minutes of Media Consumption: Means Including Zero” can be found here.

Although I find that teaching the history of a subject is often a big help in understanding its present state, recent reseach from Amsterdam suggests that using illustrations (drawings and diagrams) in the teaching of history might have no positive effect on learning. Dr Maaike Prangsma and associates looked at the effectiveness of using various illustrations in the teaching of history and found that no discernible differences could be found in test results between illustrated and plain text presentations immediately after the instruction was delivered or six weeks later. Interestingly, the students did say that on the whole the graphics made the learning easier, leading investigators to conclude that the illustrations might enhance the efficiency of the training. The British Psychological Society’s report on the study claims that:

“The key finding was that the nature of the learning task made no difference to learning outcomes. The plain text version appeared to be just as effective as the versions involving a diagram, drawings, or combination of the two. The researchers were surprised by this result and offered a number of possible explanations. For example, perhaps the initial text on the fall of the Roman Empire was so effective it undermined any possible differential effects from the learning tasks. Or perhaps graphics aid science learning because there are clear rules about what different signs and symbols mean, whereas history lacks these conventions and the students therefore didn’t know how to use the visual aids.”

In agreement with a basic philosophical tenet underlining this blog, the authors of the study concur that garnering a positive appreciation of the subject matter presented is not to be ignored:

“The goal of educational motivation is not only to make learning more efficient … or effective … but also to make learning more pleasant such that the affective learning experience is more satisfying and learners will want to learn more.”

Further information concerning this study can be found in rewiew here.

Prangsma, M., van Boxtel, C., Kanselaar, G., & Kirschner, P. (2009). Concrete and abstract visualizations in history learning tasks. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 79 (2), 371-387 DOI: 10.1348/000709908X379341

Researcher Stephen Mahar of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and his colleagues have tested the effect of routine garden-variety animations on the learning of new concepts. Often used by presenters and designers in classrooms and training sessions, these stock slide show animations commonly found in programs like PowerPoint might have a negative effect on student learning.

The team used two versions of a presentation prepared in Microsoft PowerPoint, one with animation, the other without. Students were shown one version of the presentation and tested for comprehension and recall. Apparently, recall of static graphics was much better resulting in higher test scores among the group using non-animated presentation. There are some questions concerning what precisely was being animated (that is, why was animation employed?) and what was the nature of the animation? Further, Mahar et al. go on to suggest that the animation acted as a distraction rather than an enhancement given the nature of the material being presented (factual and “incremental”). Mahar and et. conclude that although the animations were received well by the audience, the benefit to learning is not only missing, it is counter-productive.

The researchers caution that the study evaluated teaching new concepts and it is possible that training more akin to a procedure, method or technique might prove a better match for animated graphics. A follow-up study is planned.

A report of this study is published in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning (“The dark side of custom animation” in Int. J. Innovation and Learning, 2009, 6, 581-592 ). See also: “Less is More When Developing PowerPoint Animations.”

Designers and authors of educational materials are constantly in need of quality content for presentations and courses. Given the ease with which media can be “borrowed” and used in courseware, the question of what is acceptable to use in a document or web site comes up frequently among designers and managers. Although it is not acceptable to use copyrighted materials without appropriate licensing from the author, the Creative Commons license does allow creative media to be shared and used in many educational applications. From the Creative Commons About page:

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

Look for the Creative Commons license. View this introductory video to get a better idea of what Creative Commons is and how to use it as both a consumer and producer of digital media.

Click to play

I am a big fan of Media Literacy, not only because it helps as a consumer of media but also because it aids in the production of efficient communications. If you know the sensory bias of medium you can better match it to an application.

Not surprisingly educators and trainers have become more aware of the varieties of media experiences in which their students routinely participate and learn through in their daily lives. The degree to which average people in North America acquire information through non-literate media can be shockingly high, leading many to conclude that the benchmark of phonetic literacy as the leading indicator of what it means to be literate may have to be augmented for the post-literate age we live in.

The Media Awareness Network is a good resource for parents and educators looking to manage and promote media literacy. One of their working definitions of media literacy is:

Media literacy is the ability to sift through and analyze the messages that inform, entertain and sell to us every day. It’s the ability to bring critical thinking skills to bear on all media— from music videos and Web environments to product placement in films and virtual displays on NHL hockey boards. It’s about asking pertinent questions about what’s there, and noticing what’s not there. And it’s the instinct to question what lies behind media productions— the motives, the money, the values and the ownership— and to be aware of how these factors influence content.

Media education encourages a probing approach to the world of media: Who is this message intended for? Who wants to reach this audience, and why? From whose perspective is this story told? Whose voices are heard, and whose are absent? What strategies does this message use to get my attention and make me feel included?

In our world of multi-tasking, commercialism, globalization and interactivity, media education isn’t about having the right answers—it’s about asking the right questions. The result is lifelong empowerment of the learner and citizen.

The Ontario Public School Board has a note on their web site about what they see as the emerging issues surrounding the new media and the future of the classroom. In it they mention:

“Today’s students are leaders in the use of technology and we know they want their learning experiences in school to reflect this,” said Colleen Schenk, president of OPSBA. “Students want to take the technology they use in their daily lives and integrate it with how they learn. They want their learning clearly connected to the world beyond the school.”

They go on to say:

Many students feel, however, that when they come into school they have to “power down” to fit into an environment that offers fewer options for learning than are available in the life they live outside of the school. This can erode students’ perceptions of the relevance of education as they experience it in many schools today. At the same time, students need the guidance and leadership of their teachers in judging the authenticity and worth of the information so readily available to them.

What seems clear is that instructional designers and trainers need to do several things to further the use of media in continuing education:

1. Educate learners about the biases and limitations of  media.
2. Show participants how to use new media for learning.
3. Develop the skills to master and employ new media in training programs so that participants want to take part in the training and get value from it.
   

PowerPoint slides and printed Student Guides alone are no longer sufficient. We should not be asking our students to “power down” to come to class. We need recognize that for the most part people today are learning all the time and we must work to make it easier and more efficient when they come to us for the formal experience. Far too often the opposite is the case.