How can you design meaningful interactivity without blowing your budget? How can you set up your e-learning for great engagement and better knowledge retention? Let's explore four simple strategies you can use, pretty much regardless of your tools. Presentation by Cammy Bean, VP of Learning Design
16. What do you see as the obstacles to including
meaningful interactivity?
17. What do you see as the obstacles to including
meaningful interactivity?
Too costly.
Takes too much time.
We’re not creative enough.
I don’t have the right people to build it.
Stakeholders don’t value it.
I don’t really know where to start.
61. Get them talking. To each other.
What did
you
think?
How did
you do it?
Here’s
what I did
that really
worked.
Here’s what
I did that
really didn’t
work.
Reduce your learners to lifeless, braindead corpses...‘tis the season after all.
It’s not about clicking next to continue. It’s about what happens in between.
“Two things that interact with each other” – drugs or muscles that work together.
Doctors might be concerned with how drugs interact with each other in a patient.
inter + act
Muscles work together -- they interact to move your leg.
Human to artifact: you can touch it and it will respond to your inputs.
An interactive electronic device that responds to human touch….
Dialing a telephone (even an old fashioned one – interactivity is not a recent invention!)
Using a piece of software
This is the behavior of the user interface and what we often think as “interactivity” – software that responds to inputs from humans. Like a word processor… There are typically expected behaviors…
Photo credits: Cammy Bean.
Human to human communication – when two people interact with each other – we talk, we laugh. We’re in RELATIONSHIP with each other. Social interaction.
Interactivity lives on a spectrum of learner control and user freedom.
“Passively” watching a video with no controls over audio or video.
Although tv watching has increasingly become an interactive exercise as we tweet and post to facebook about the shows we’re watching. And yes, you do have a remote to turn it off and on…or now to even select what on-demand show to watch.
Immersive 3D world where you have complete control over what you do and where you go
Screen shot: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/media/screenshots/screenshot-of-the-day/cataclysm?view#/cataclysm-ss1310
Cognitive Fidelity: A representation of a complex system that helps users to understand the system. This representation does not necessarily give an exact description of the system's actual working <Brown1986>. Cognitive fidelity should enhance a user's capability to construct a mental model of a system.
http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/jargon.html
Cognitive Fidelity – does it map to the problem-solving process?
Contextual Fidelity – does it map to the on-the job performance environment?
Potentially novice learners might require more contextual fidelity…
Games – exposure games for contextual or cognitive fidelity…create a fantasy game that provides cognitive fidelity (e.g., make a
“I have a few theories about cognitive fidelity (the process by which a game represents the content in high fidelity, but not necessarily the context - and that those might be just as good for transfer...and example might be using the lean six sigma process to build a weapons system that will defend the earth from the impending alien attack...same process that you would follow and therefore high cognitive fidelity, but low contextual fidelity because its not a realistic situation...however in my area where we teach so many multidisciplinary fields (navy, air force, marines) who have their own weapons systems process its hard to build a game that doesn't violate at least one of their rules, so by creating a fantasy environment I bypass their context, and hopefully lead to learning that is more readily transferrable because its context agnostic.) “ ~ Alicia Sanchez
Enter search text into a search field, answer an MCQ.
Clicking for clicking’s sake and the danger of seductive details. “The arousal effect”
Clark and Mayer provide some insight into why clicky-clicky bling-bling happens:
“...consumers may feel that a “jazzier” product will hold the learner’s interest better. This is the premise underlying the
arousal theory, the idea that entertaining and interesting embedded effects cause learners to become more
emotionally aroused and therefore they work harder to learn the material.”
Photo: “red lips isolated in white” http://www.flickr.com/photos/taniasaiz/4546732837/sizes/m/in/photostream/
Drill and kill is one way to get learners to practice your content. And practice, is good, right? Well, not always. When we force learners to practice without context, they’ve memorized facts but may not be able to apply them correctly in context. This is why Jeopardy Games are for the most part useless as learning tools. Unless you’re a noted game show host, you’re day job isn’t working at a Jeopardy Board. We need to provide more contextual opportunities for drill exercises that will help the learner both retain and apply the knowledge they are practicing.
Sebastian Deterding calls this a“disconnected challenge”.
“So I have actually used a lot of those types of games (The skiing example) for kill and drill type things. Memorization, vocabulary retention that kind of thing. That is pretty much the limit of their applicability. The types of games that have the most beneficial performance based impacts are experiential games, where the player is allowed to actually participate in the content and make some decisions on their own.” ~ Dr. Alicia Sanchez
Jeopardy: http://www.c3softworks.com/products/classroom/bravo-classroom/index.html#4
Spin the wheel: http://www.raptivity.com
Avoid interactivity for interactivity’s sake. The consequences: leads to learner fatigue, distracting, doesn’t promote deeper understanding
To better encode new knowledge by having them engage with the material in a meaningful way. To get them applying their new knowledge through practice…
Think about the interaction –
Relevant clicking should enhance the instruction and helped the learner make real connections
It’s not about the mouse and where you click – it’s about engaging someone cognitively, getting them interacting with the content by thinking about it, reflecting on, even doing something with it.
Make it cognitive! Reflection counts. Let the learner think about the purpose of the interaction. And remember that interaction happens IN THE BRAIN and not just on the screen. No clicking involved.
fi
Build in opportunities for self-assessment and self-reflection.
Put a human face to something as dry as financial regulations. When we can connect with the people in the stories, we feel their pain and we can see why this content matters.
Tell a story that connects to them emotionally – we remember stories better.
Paul Mitchell had a series of DVD videos. Instead of just having that be a passive experience, we created note sheets for the user to download and write notes on the module. For their audience, this approach worked really well.
In this example, what the learner needed to be able to DO at the end of the day – was to answer other hair stylists questions. So we created a classroom scenario where they could work through challenging questions posed by their soon-to-be-students.
By keeping the focus on what the learner needs to be able to DO…you make it relevant…which brings us to our next point:
This is a game-based approach, good for practicing systems and service skills together
21 focused practical resources
Most are 5 minutes or shorter
Follow the whole interview cycle
Work in sequence, or if experienced as dip-in support
Variety of interactive approaches:
Focus on practice
Animations – perception vs reality
Videos - good and bad examples and stories
Observe and critique scenarios
Question structuring practice
Candidate rating practice
Note taking practice
Takeaways and reminders
Ongoing occupational psychologist coach to give feedback and support
Thiagi’s Four Door Model:
Library: content and presentations – videos, elearning tutorials, PDFs
Playground: games and activities to provide practice and reinforcement
Café: Social learning activities for reflection and integration (wikis, blogs, forums, etc.)
Evaluation Center/Torture Chamber: testing and assessment
Brandon Carson 2010 eLearning Guild: http://shemp65.typepad.com/eLG-4-DoorModel.pdf
This is similar to the full branching simulation approach but the model is designed so that
should the learner make a mistake in the scenario they get shown to a discrete relevant
section of the tutorials. Once they complete the relevant module they can then return to the
choice they got wrong and see if they can continue with the scenario without making further
mistakes. The appeal of this approach is that learners have that extra degree of motivation to
absorb the learning points, as they have just confronted that particular learning gap.
Engage by Connecting: Add in offline human interaction!
Well, then, speak to them like human beings. Address them as “you” and have a conversation with them. You might reconnect with whatever human bit is left inside of them…
They’re coming to get you…
Take the Call to Action and make it personal.
In this case, a real-live manager will follow up with the learner…
More call to actions...with specific links to take the experience beyond the eLearning event...”beyond the course”