Learning Basics for Course Developers
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This presentation was done for a departmental professional development at my corporate company. It was done to introduce course developers with no education background into the concept of learning and why it was important to "buy in" to the theories. I created some content and pulled bits and pieces from other works. Sorry if I was lousy at
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Learning Basics for Course Developers
- 1. Instructional Design How people learn and why it matters to you?
- 2. Lunch and Learn Courses Learning: How? Why does it matter? Creating effective eLearning courses Working with SMEs Designing a Great Course Building better test questions
- 4. Learning is a Science
- 5. Course Development Rules 101 1.Only 3 – 5 close objectives in the course Working Memory Schema Cognitive Load 3. Connect information to previous knowledge 2. Keep words-per-slide to a minimum Learning Concepts
- 7. The brain doesn’t like it!
- 9. Working Memory Learning Concepts 1.Only 3 – 5 close objectives in the course Course Development Rules 101
- 10. Working Memory
- 12. 3 - 5 things More complex Fewer objectives =
- 13. Work this problem in your head: 137 +849 ___________ Now, try this one in your head: 2130134 1374295 +8497283 ______________________986 12,001,712
- 15. Course Menu Ways to use this product Introducing our new product How our product will change your life How to sell our product Customer scenarios Test Your Knowledge Changes in the product series Another important thing to note Choose a section to begin.
- 16. Working Memory Learning Concepts 1.Only 3 – 5 close objectives in the course Course Development Rules 101
- 17. Cognitive Load 1.Only 3 – 5 close objectives in the course Working Memory Cognitive Load 2. Keep words-per-slide to a minimum Learning Concepts
- 19. …more words equals more learning, right? text on a slide = learning
- 20. Look at My Headline! Wooo hoo! Important stuff here!! Let’s not summarize anything because every word that I have ever thought of about this subject is super important! Another important point here! (Along with non-relevant clipart below to show how happy I am…and to make the page pretty!) ◦ This one is so so sooooo important that we need three sub- bullets! ◦ See! Another bullet! ◦ Here is the last one! And this one is even more important, so I think it needs a sub-sub-bullet!! …or two Maybe one last sub-sub-sub bullet just to make sure that I got my point across
- 21. Yay! I love to take eLearning courses that are full of text. I learn so much when I read and read and read a screen! A course developer’s fantasy
- 22. Reality: Learners don’t learn well by reading bullet point after bullet point of text. …assuming they can even stay awake long enough to read it. Zzzzzzz
- 24. Cognitive load: The amount of working memory being used during learning Cognitive load = Brain weight
- 25. Working Memory I love a good metaphor. Cognitive Load Theory
- 26. Working Memory Difficulty Cognitive Load Theory
- 36. Creating Schemas What is this “schema thing” that you are talking about?
- 37. Course Development Rules 101 1.Only 3 – 5 close objectives in the course Working Memory Schema 3. Connect information to previous knowledge Learning Concepts 2. Keep words-per-slide to a minimum Cognitive Load
- 38. Schema: A “tree of previous knowledge” that we use to connect new information.
- 39. What does that mean?
- 42. W T M H Y E L A B P P Example #1
- 43. W T M H Y E L A B P P (That’s amore)
- 44. Once we activated our “that’s amore” schema, most of us could retain more information.
- 45. Does your course connect?
- 46. Example #2 The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell, After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. (Bransford & Johnson, 1972)
- 47. The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell, After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will then have to be repeated. However, that is part of life. (Bransford & Johnson, 1972) Doing laundry
- 48. Once we activated our “laundry” schema, we understood, and the process made sense.
- 50. Course Development Rules 101 1.Only 3 – 5 close objectives in the course Working Memory Schema Cognitive Load 3. Connect information to previous knowledge 2. Keep words-per-slide to a minimum Learning Concepts
Editor's Notes
- Series of instructional design lunch and learns – bring an educational perspective.“From a learning perspective”My goal is to make you experts….not just in building a course. You are already experts in your own rights in that area, but in learning.I want you to be able to work with a SME, and when they make a suggestion that you feel isn’t right…or that you KNOW goes against best learning principles, that you can use “from a learning perspective” too.
- To be an expert in a field, you have to know the “why”.I’m a “why” person when I’m passionate about learning something.When I am given a rule, a best practice, a tip….I question it. I need to know why I should do something or why I shouldn’t. And when it comes to learning, who made up this rule? Was it based on researched?
- Not a Chemistry, Biology science.Cognitive science based on research and theories.
- The need to “buy in”Brain-based, research driven tips that are a fundamental part of course development.
- Most people use Powerpoint like this because that is what we have been taught to do. That is how PPT layouts were structured.Powerpoint was developed by engineers as a tool to help them communicate with the marketing department—and vice versa. It’s a remarkable tool because it allows very dense verbal communication. Powerpoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer. But often it’s not. Countless trainings fail because developersuse PowerPoint the way Microsoft wants them to, instead of the right way.Communication is the transfer of emotion. Learning and training deal closely with communication. Learning is often about communicating your company’s point of view. It’s about getting others to adopt your rules, to help them understand why you’re excited (or sad, or optimistic or whatever else you are.)If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures and bullets, then cancel the training and send in a report.
- Our brains have two sides. The right side is emotional, musical and moody. The left side is focused on dexterity, facts and hard data. When you show up to give a presentation or create an elearning, people want to use both parts of their brain. So they use the right side to judge the way you talk, the way you dress and your body language. In an training situation, people usually come to a decision as to if they are going to tune in or out by the time you’re on the second slide. After that, it’s often too late for your bullet points to do you much good.
- Ironically, it seems like most elearning courses can be traced back to PowerPoint in some capacity.Fun fact: over 30 million PPTs made daily. Over $252 million wasted each day due to non-effective training: both live and online
- If you develop courses that have too many objectives it makes it difficult for learners to effectively understand the material being presented. It overloads their working memory.
- Working memory is limited to how many pieces of information at any one time.
- When you design e-learning courses, you will want to consider that your learners have a limited capacity to process incoming information.This is true for all learners, even those who are well-educated and who learn quickly. No matter who you are training, what their expertise level, how smart they are, how long they have been on the job….they all have a very limited working memory capacity.
- In the 70’s, the theory was that your memory could hold 7 items. As research has been developed over the decades, it has been shown in many, many studies that the number really is three to five things that people can hold in their working memory before it starts to disappear. Our brain is only capable of holding 3 -5 new pieces of information, max.The more complex and unfamiliar the information, the fewer operations that can be performed. Since memory is necessary in acquiring new information and developing skills, training should be designed to help the learner use the limited resources of working memory as efficiently as possible.That doesn’t mean that if you think the learner already knows the information, you should be able to stick in more content.
- To test your working memory:In the second instance, the “problem” is the same as the first. The processing is the same. You all know how to add. It really isn’t even any harder. The same skills are used. But for most of us, the second sum just asks for more remembering than the brain can handle; we can’t hold and manipulate that much information at once. (http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/498/)
- Once we got passed the first few digits, most of us probably had a hard time keeping the numbers in order. Our working memory was overloaded.And my guess is that some of you didn’t even attempt to work the second problem: if you’re like me, the very sight of it destroyed your motivation to try and solve it. When working memory is overloaded, it can destroy a learner’s motivation.If I had let you use a pen and paper it would have been pretty easy because it relieves the burden placed upon working memory by giving you a way to permanently record the once you finished processing them.
- That’s what happens to a learner when we overload them with course objectives.Their brain shuts down, they lose their motivation to take the course, and they just click through the material.You have wasted your time building the course AND their time taking the course.You may want to rethink the amount of content you are feeding the learner.Do they really need to know all of these objectives to do their job?<click>Should this course be broken down into a series of courses?Should the course audience be narrowed and different courses be given to the different audiences?
- Next time you create a course, ask yourself if you are keeping your course short enough to help the learner’s working memory.Think of the math problem and, even if the content seems simple, don’t overload them. Remember to keep the list of objectives short and sweet so that you aren’t overloading the learner’s working memory.In our next lunch and learn we will talk more about identifying your course objectives, but for now consider it your course menu.
- Cognitive load is my learning baby. I say this word often, especially when looking over a course with LOTS of words per slide
- Some developers believe that placing text on a slide = learning
- We want to keep training simple. We want to reduce the amount of cognitive load of a elearning course on a learner to give them room to actually learn the materials.
- Just like a lunch tray, your working memory has limited room.
- Some of your working memory is taken up by how difficult the material is. There is nothing that a course developer can do with this. Complex is complex.
- Some of your working memory is taken up by how the course is delivered. The visuals, the organization, the amount of text, the sounds….. Some of this is good and healthy, and some of this can be unhealthy – poor organization, too much text, narration with text, too many “bells and whistles” or unneeded interactivity can take up unneeded brain space. When you develop courses, keep in mind that every single thing that you place on the screen adds to the learners cognitive load so you want to make sure that it is really helpful, not “junk food”.In our 4th lunch and learn I’m going to show you good and bad examples of elearning and we are going to tie it all learning best practices.
- Some of your working memory is used up on “good work” where you are attaching new information to old information that you already have. You want this to be the main course of your lunch.
- If none of these are too difficult, you might have some space left over for other things.
- During difficult content, our brain is really thirsty…..we have to concentrate more. This leaves less room for worrying about other things.
- Sometimes, a lot of working memory can be taken up by how our information is delivered.
- ….sometimes this may even come at a cost of actually being able to link the information to your previous knowledge.
- In a perfect elearning world, we want as much working memory as possible focused on building existing connections.
- You can’t control how intrinsically hard the task is. You have little control over learner motivation and effort to learn it, but you have complete control over how you deliver the information, how much cognitive load you place on the learner, and how you connect the information to their current knowledge.
- Your job as a course developer is to reduce the delivery load promote schema building.
- We want learners to take the new information from our course and take it from their working memory and file it into their into long-term memory to build up to the intended expertise.
- To do that we need to build schemas in our courses.Experts just have bigger schema.
- As young children most of us develop a schema for reading that begins with learning letters and their sounds and eventually could read words without sounding out the letters anymore and then it matured into effortless reading of complex material. This “reading schema” is what allows us to focus on the meaning of what we’re reading rather than the process of reading. Can you imagine how tedious reading would be if you were still sounding out each word?
- This is a schema of an egg. Schemas allow the learner to quickly access large amounts of information stored. In other words, the schema, regardless of size or complexity, can often be accessed as one chunk of information. Everything we know we placed a schema. Think of the reading schema: You no longer have to sound out each of the letters—reading is an automatic skill, one chunk of information.Think of a picnic: We all have a schema about what a picnic is like (discuss)
- In the technology sector, we could say that each new product gets placed in a schema. Is it a laptop, an Ultrabook, a tower, a tablet, a multimode, a table pc? Once we find out, we automatically connect this item to what we already know about this category. One of our jobs is to give the product distinction over the other similar products while still trying to connect it with what the learner knows already. And fixing any misconceptions that they may have because of their previous knowledge.
- Look at the letters for 10 seconds and see how many you can remember.
- Most people can remember 4 – 7 letters, but what happens when I connect it to your previous knowledge?
- Once we activated our “That’s Amore” schema, we understood and recalled the text easier.
- I’m going to give you a minute to read this process.
- How about if I connect it to your previous knowledge?In this study 1/3 of the people heard the paragraph and they didn’t think it made much sense and couldn’t remember jack about it. Another third of the participants were told that the paragraph was about doing laundry before they heard it. These participants thought it made perfect sense, and remembered a lot about it. A third set learned the topic of the paragraph after they’d heard the paragraph. These participants didn’t think it made much sense, and like the first group, couldn’t remember much about it. In this case, the topic served to activated their schema — doing laundry—which was a schema that the participants already had somewhere in their heads. The topic helped the participants to work out the structure of the paragraph so that they could make sense of it, and this allowed them to remember more about it.
- Course developers should always try to activate the learner’s schema BEFORE they give new information, when possible.
- When we create solid training we make sure to design courses that bridges the gap between people’s previous knowledge and the new information. This allows the learner to use less working memory…and it promotes learning by making them have to think less, or reducing their “cognitive load.”
- The next time you wonder what you could do to improve a course, the first thing you should do, before you add any bells and whistles and interactivity, before you message me and say “hey look at this course”….go back to these rules. Have you followed them?Now that we have a foundation….if I throw out “cognitive load” or “schema” or “working memory”, now thatyou have something to connect it to…..we will focus more on the HOW?