Brian S. McGowan, PhD
Co-Founder &
Chief Learning Officer
Why Learning Theory
Won’t Drive Change?
April 10th
2014
Brian S. McGowan, PhD
Co-Founder &
Chief Learning Officer
Have you under-designed
your learning experiences?
April 10th
2014
If everyone knows that
walking a few flights of
stairs a day is better for
your health, why do so
few people use them?
3
Under-designed
exercise
4
Why do so many struggle
to get up and out of bed
each day despite any
number of alarms we may
set for ourselves?
What if you had to do 25 curls before
your alarm clock turned off?
Under-designed
‘wake-up’
What if instead of telling us how to behave
they would ‘show’ us how to do so?
Under-designed
Conservation
6
Or better yet, what if it were more
fun to invest our attention wisely?
Under-designed
Cleanliness
How would you design things if
you accepted the role of
Architect of the big picture?
Under-designed
Discipline
The underappreciated science of
learner-centric design!
Unconscious Nudges: Priming
Disfluency
Which of the wordswords on
this slide do you think
learnerslearners will remember
the most?
Symbols
Nudges and Memory
40.5
38.1
31.8
0
10
20
30
40
50
Smashed Bumped Contacted
Estimated Speed (MPH)
“How fast were the cars
going when they “____”?”
So what are the actions we
need to design for in
EdTech?
#1 Note Taking
15
#2 Reminders
16
#3 Questions
17
#4 Collaboration
Learning Actions Nudges:
Note-Taking and Reminders
18
Learning Actions Nudges:
Social Triggering
How should we rethink edtech?
An educator’s (new) obligations:
1.Acknowledge that learning and performance
is influenced in complex yet controllable ways
2.Design the structure around your content
that enables learning, and
3.Begin to effectively nudge your learners to
take their natural learning actions in simple and
efficient ways…
20
Brian S. McGowan, PhD
Co-Founder &
Chief Learning Officer
Why Learning Theory
Won’t Drive Learning?
April 10th
2014

Philly Edtech RETHINK session final

Editor's Notes

  • #2 Thank you… My Name is Brian McGowan… I am here this evening to tell you a story with 2 halves The first half builds introduces a few striking examples of how thinking and behavior can be manipulated in meaningful ways… And the second half will provide some context as to how these new ideas are relevant to learning and educational technology
  • #3 Thank you… My Name is Dr. Brian McGowan… I am here this evening to tell you a story with 2 halves The first half builds introduces a few striking examples of how thinking and behavior can be manipulated in meaningful ways… And the second half will provide some context as to how these new ideas are relevant to learning and educational technology
  • #4 Our story begins with a classic example a decision we are each confronted with many times a week…
  • #5 Our second example is another decision that we each struggle with each day….and another example of how to a simple solution may be underdesigned.
  • #10 Changes in physical strength and ‘performance’…pink leaves me ‘depleted’ – locker room must be
  • #11 Learners performed 23% on a test when questions were posed in disfluent font…
  • #12 2x’s the number of students completed spatial challenging puzzles in the presences of the illuminated light bulb imagery…
  • #13 20% Difference Speeding or not speeding
  • #15 http://aimdanismanlik.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/708b71e2d7e7992ba9fbdd90d3d32743.jpg
  • #22 Thank you… My Name is Brian McGowan… I am here this evening to tell you a story with 2 halves The first half builds for us a foundation and ensures that we each embrace an entirely new way of understanding why education so often fails. And the second half will provide an introduction to how we at ArcheMedX are leveraging technology to reengineer the process of learning and education.