Search Results for: engag

Social Cognitive Processing

6 September 2011 by Clark 4 Comments

In an earlier post, I tried to convey the advantages of social activities in formal learning from the cognitive processing perspective, but my diagram apparently didn’t work for everyone. I took another shot for a presentation I gave on mobile social at the Guild’s mLearnCon, and I thought I’d raise it here as well.

I’m going through this diagram line by line, from the top.

If you go from just having an idea (first line) to trying to capture it as a product (next), whether a diagram or a screed, to communicate to some hypothetical reader, you find out that you might not have thought it out fully (the first benefit to having a personal journal, e.g. blogging). And you do some processing to generate that product.

Then, if someone actually reads it, they do some processing.

If they write a response, they do more processing to crystalize their thoughts.

Then, the author, when reading it, also does some more processing.

If someone else reads it, that person does some processing, and if they write a comment, well, the process continues.

The author could then write a reply to one or both, and that causes even more processing. And so on.

And this is good. Processing is part of learning, and focused processing is part of good learning design. So, having learners capture and communicate their thoughts is a valuable learning activity. It can be personal reflections, e.g. “what does this explain in my past” or “what will I do differently in the future”, or responses to a question.

If other learners are asked to read and constructively comment (not just “great post”), you can get valuable learning outcomes.

This extends to the social learning situation. Here, you have every learner contribute their initial thoughts on a group assignment (recommended).

Then, every learner reads the other proposals, and they start to put out their integrated ideas.

As they negotiate a shared understanding as a group response, some great processing is happening.

Ultimately, they create an outcome that’s richer than what they’d create on their own.

If you’ve created the right amount of ambiguity in the project, you’ll get some great discussions. The processing benefits here are because the learners will bring somewhat different interpretations and experiences to the project, and that diversity allows a mre robust understanding to emerge.

Consequently, I suggest that social learning adds benefits to the learning experience beyond what individual assignments can achieve. You can mimic some of these effects by staging additional information, but it’s not quite as effective as individual learning (nor near as engaging).

So, does this make sense? And, hopefully, inspire you to find ways to add social interaction into your learning experiences? It’s not unique to social media, but social media give you a channel to bring these benefits to learning whenever and wherever.

Immersion or collaboration?

25 August 2011 by Clark 2 Comments

In something I’ve just been involved in, I realized I had a question. I’m a fan of scenarios (read: serious games), to the point that I’ve written a book about how to design them! I’m also a fan of social learning, and consequently argue for the benefits of collaborative assignments. They both have the opportunity for powerful outcomes. The question, naturally, is which makes sense when?

This is an important question, to the point that I’ve recommended it as a critical hiring criteria: that a candidate can not only articulate when you should do which, but also articulate how to do both. Really, if you’re responsible for learning design, you need to go farther: when would you use scenarios, role-plays, or collaborative assignments? How would you capitalize on the experience, formatively? How would you design such a practice?

This gets into not only your pedagogical philosophy, but also your meta-cognitive ability. Before you read my answer, take a moment and think: what’s my answer? Seriously: what is your answer?

In short. my take is on the nature of the task the learners will be performing in the real world. Will they be performing individually, or will they be working as a member of a team? There are processing differences (I do recommend that there is collaborative reflection after an individual learning scenario, to get meaningful processing). Regardless, the core nature of the real world task should be closely aligned to the practice situation. If they’ll perform alone, make it a scenario. If they’ll work in a group, make it a collaborative task, or a multi-player scenario/role-play.

Regardless, it’s worth checking: who’s your audience, what are your learning goals, and what is the most appropriate practice. So: immersion, or collaboration?

WIIFL

24 August 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

What’s In It For Learners?

In organizations, we talk about addressing WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). As a key component of motivation, we want to connect to individuals viscerally. With my focus on engagement in learning, I’ve felt it’s important to address the conative (anxiety, motivation, etc) of learners as well.

What I’ve meant by this has included having introductions that viscerally capture the consequences of the knowledge (positive or negative, dramatically or comically; I’ve a predilection for comically negative), help them connect the learning to the broader context of the world, help them understand why it’s important for them, remove anxiety, etc. I believe we need to open up learners emotionally as well as the well-known benefits of activating relevant knowledge cognitively.

I was just writing up a list of what would need to change for schools to be effective, and as I was riffing on epistemology (having learners understand and take responsibility for learners), it occurred to me that we needed to address the WIIFM, and I realized it’s about WIIFL. We need to explicitly address what makes the learning experience valuable to learners. I’m sure we’ve all heard learners say something like “I’ll never use this”. If it’s true, bin it. If it’s not, then help them see it.

On a set of content I was lead on the design of (math), I created the spec for our introductions to show how the content would get used in real life, and then we worked through meaningful examples and practice items. In another set of content I created the engagement for, we used a professional cartoonist to create a comic that introduced every section.

We don’t emphasize enough helping learners understand why they should care, so is it any wonder why they question the WIIFM? And it’s not presenting the learning objectives that we use to design, it’s a more coherent story that uses, essentially, marketing to get them to get it.

Ask yourself, if and when you’re creating a learning experience: WIIFL. If you do, you can either eliminate unneeded content, or help learners connect in a motivating way. If you don’t, you risk learners tuning out and staying away. Which isn’t a worthwhile investment of time and money.

Digital Helplessness(?)

5 August 2011 by Clark 3 Comments

Recently, I’ve been hearing quite a bit of concern over the possibility that reliance on digital, and increasingly mobile, technology may make us stupider. And I don’t think this is just easy to dismiss. In a sense, it could be a case of learned helplessness, where folks find themselves helpless because after using the tools, folks might not have the information they need when they don’t have the tools.

Recently announced research shows that folks change what they remember when enabled with search engines: they don’t remember the data, but instead how to find it. Which could be a problem if they needed to know the data and are not digitally enabled in some context.

As has also been conveyed to me as a concern is whether folks might not engage in learning about their environs (e.g. when traveling), and in other ways miss out on opportunities to learn when dependent on digital devices. Certainly, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been concerned about how disabled I feel when dissociated from my digital support (my external brain). Yet is there a concern?

My take is that it might be a concern if people are doing it unconsciously. I think you could miss out (as m’lady points out when I am reading instead of staring out the window every moment as we take the train through another country :) on some opportunities to learn.

On the other hand, if you are choosing consciously what you want to remember, and what you want to leave to the device, then I think you’re making a choice about how you allocate your resources (a ‘good thing’). We do this in many ways in our lives already, for instance how much we choose to learn about cooking, and more directly related, how much to learn about how to do formatting in a word processing program.

Yes, I’ve been frustrated without my support when traveling, but that’s chosen (which does not undermine my dismay at the lack of ability to access digital data overseas). I guess I’m arguing for chosen helplessness :). So, what are you choosing to learn and what to devolve to resources?

A jot of design

22 July 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

Ordinarily, I don’t even look at vendor products when offered free trials. I like to remain unbiased, and not give free advice. I retain the right to look at what interests me, not what might be commercially expedient (a perverted legacy of my academic tenure, no doubt :).

However, two things interested me about this particular offer. First, it was an iPad app supporting design. Given that I’m very much about improving design, *and* quite into mobile, this was of interest. Second, I mistakenly thought it came from Michael Allen’s company Allen Interactions, and he’s not only been an early advocate of engaging design, but also he’s a supremely nice guy to complement his smarts. It turns out, of course, that I jumped too fast to a conclusion, and it’s really from Allen Communications. Oh well. I’m talking about DesignJot, btw.

Now, I’m not going to give a formal review, because instead I want to use this as an opportunity to reflect on supporting design. Though you’ll likely get some idea of what it does and how.

Briefly, this app takes Allen Communications analysis and design process, using the acronym ANSWER, and provides support for using it. You initiate a new project and then get support for design by having questions and even subtopics and questions under that rubric that you fill out for analysis. That information then populates some initial parts of the design support, which then guides you to define strategies and sub-components. There are note-taking and sketching tools too.

The notion of supporting the design process is not new, certainly it was key in the toolset used by one of the major content developers in the past, and such performance support is a good idea. Scaffolding process is an obvious outcome of how our brains work (systematic creativity is not an oxymoron), so the question becomes one of what process you are using as your guide. Without any guidance about ANSWER, I did a spot-check for one of my heuristics and it wasn’t in there. Overall, there seem to be some good and odd things. Using someone else’s particular process may not be your cup of tea, and while you can add your own questions, youcan’t, as far as I could tell, add to the template.

There are some hiccups, e.g. I was surprised that some of the information isn’t carried forward, and some of the interface is a bit counterintuitive (e.g. home button sort of to the right but close to the middle). On the other hand, there are handy tips for many if not all of the steps.

The choice of making it an iPad app is interesting and understandable. It certainly makes it easy to carry around as you talk to SMEs, etc., and that makes it reason enough. The output functions are interesting, however, seeing it produces a ‘project’ file which I *think* only works with another instance of the iPad project (e.g. sharing), or PDFs. Which isn’t bad, as it’s not clear what else you might use, but I might prefer a more manipulable format like an Excel or HTML output that I might post-process.

I think the idea of creating performance support tools on mobile platforms makes a lot of sense. Whether you want to trust to their choice of questions and structure is another question. Overall, it’s an interesting business move, an interesting mobile move, and an interesting chance to reflect on the design process.

A Storied History

14 July 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

Rothenburg ob der Tauber (RodT) is a charming small town that has retained it’s medieval nature through both design and chance. The story is interesting, but more interesting for my purposes here is how You can learn that story.

One of the opportunities available in Rothenburg is the Night Watchman’s Tour, where a local dressed up as a night watchman walks you through various stops around town and tells Rothenburg’s history. You pay at the end, so you could skip paying, but after the experience it is definitely worth the money.

The story telling is interesting; it’s very personal, starting with the life and role of the night watchman, a low class (because of ignorant prejudice) but important job. Across the course of the talk, the perspective becomes one of a proprietary interest in the city itself. The events are recited with a very causal but also human level of detail (e.g. how the post-war administrator’s mother’s connection to RodT saved the town). There is a self-deprecating humor that leavens the message.

Also interesting is the story-telling style. The character speaks with great projection, but also in an almost sing-song style. There are somewhat odd but engaging emphases. It’s hard to characterize (I couldn’t reproduce it), but it worked.

As my lad said, it’s the most interesting history he’s ever learned. And that, I think, says a lot. Don’t neglect the power of story, as Roger Schank would have us remember. Wrap up the details in a narrative that ties it together, as our brains are optimized for understanding in this way.

Quick mobile thoughts

27 June 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

SIM card vending machine

It’s obvious that mobile is booming, as you can tell from this shot taken as I deplaned at Heathrow Airport on my way from mLearnCon conference to an engagement. It made me reflect on an interesting tension that emerged at the conference. The resolution will happen, so it’s a question of when, not if, but it’s still a pain.

I was honored to be part of a closing panel with some very clever folks (Bill Rankin, David Metcalf, Carmen Taran, Jim Box, and Richard Culatta, to be specific) responding to crowd-sourced questions. Paul Clothier served as ringmaster, and the highest rated questions were lobbed at us.

One of the emergent themes was considering what would be really innovative mobile learning applications. We imagined things from individual coaches to universal teachers. All this requiring, of course, a pretty robust infrastructure.

And of course, as I sit in an airport (awaiting the 3rd and final leg of which Heathrow was the first), and recognizing that I can’t use the data plan on my phone for fear of penury, I’m still quite frustrated with the situation. However, there is hope.

advert for a ubiquitous data package

On the wall right next to the vending machine, which I also captured, is one solution. Here, Vodafone is offering Brits mobile internet when they travel, at a very favorable rate. This is better than the solution I thought was possible: having a service at an airport where you hire a personal wifi device for some reasonable rate of $10 a day or something that you return when you finish your trip.

My traveling companion on the post-US legs (and Internet Time Alliance colleague), Charles Jennings, resides in the UK and said that the competition between providers supports this sort of offer. £2 is far better than the rate I was hoping for, and way better than a $1 – $20 per MB that is my current option.

Unlike some who worry that we might lose thinking skills, I’m quite happy to devolve certain tasks to my external brain, and only retain the ones I wish to keep for myself. And once I’ve become so enabled, it’s painful to do without. I’m glad to see some are getting viable solutions, and hoping I’ll have one soon too. So we can come up with even more fabulous ways to accessorize our brains. Which is what we want to do!

Getting iNtimate

23 May 2011 by Clark Leave a Comment

In a recent post, I talked about the difference between a smartphone and a tablet (substitute PDA for smartphone if that’s how you roll). I’ve been thinking more about that, and have wondered about the effects of a particular phenomena.

In my experience, I have found the relationship with a tablet to be more ‘intimate’ (to use the technical term :). What I mean here is I hold it close instead of arms length and I touch the device itself, not some intermediary peripheral. Even using a touch interface to swipe and pinch (ooh!) is qualitatively different that point and click. The question is, what does this mean for the outcomes of the interaction, rather than the interaction itself?

Cognitively, if you’re closer to the interaction, more engaged with the content, it would seem plausible that more would ‘stick’. Particularly compared to a desktop, where you might be distracted by the shiny objects (new messages, whether email, IM, or whatever).

And I’m perfectly comfortable with that alone, and inclined to believe that what you experience with a tablet comes close to what you experience with a book: it’s a dedicated interface (by and large) for consuming content, and it’s a directly tactile interaction as opposed to one that’s indirect. I’d suggest that it’s plausible that a tablet experience is cognitively more tangible than what’s represented through a laptop or desktop.

Now, how about the emotional experience? Is there anything there? Is that intimacy anything more than just a minimization of distance? Here I’m on more tentative ground, but I’d be inclined to believe that the more direct experience is more emotionally engaging, coupling a sensory experience with the cognitive. Would that have a beneficial influence? I can’t say.

What I can say is that when we couple the more immediate experience of a tablet with the power of digital interaction, we’re moving into area that has real potential to accelerate the learning experience. If we can interact with an engine-driven simulation, a serious game, we’re combining an intimate experience with an engaging one, and beginning to combine two powerful experiences in ways that may allow the whole to be greater than the sum of the parts. But wait, there’s more!

First, however, let me add in a recent discovery: I was alerted to a new form of app for the iPad, a combination of a comic book and interactive games. While this particular instance, Imaginary Range, is purely entertainment focused, I was intrigued by the approximation of an experience I’ve been interested in co-opting for learning purposes. I’ve long been an advocate of the comic strip format (aka manga or graphic novels) as a communication tool because of the ability to add meta-cognitive annotation (thought bubbles), strip away unnecessary contextual details, low bandwidth requirements, trans-cultural familiarity and more. The ability to use a powerful story with meaningful interactions is pretty intriguing, capitalizing on what we’re talking about.

The extra dimension to cap off this trifecta is to add in the social element: so learners can reflect on their experience compared to others, or even better, collaborate. When we can have tablets providing ways for learners to interact with content, each other, and a learning mentor, we have a potentially transformative environment. And that’s worth getting involved with.

Alternate Pedagogies and Experiences

18 May 2011 by Clark 4 Comments

In writing about mobile for higher education, other than meeting learner administrative and information needs, I obviously focused more on the formal learning roles mobile devices could facilitate. And one of the things that has been of interest to me is looking differently at pedagogies.

Traditional

In the traditional view, we activate the learner’s interest, we present them with the concept, we provide examples, we have them practice (with feedback), and we conclude the learning experience. I think this makes sense cognitively, but it doesn’t make sense when we start considering the learner’s emotional side. Unless we open up the learner emotionally, I reckon the rest of the effort won’t stick. We can do this with the intro, but there are other approaches.

Navigable/adaptive

For one, we don’t need to stick to the traditional order. At least with elearning, we can make the order navigable, allowing the learner to choose what they want to see. We took that approach when we developed a course on speaking to the media (which had some other innovations too) back around 1997. It was also seen at UNext. We provided a ‘follow the bouncing ball’ path for uncertain learners, but anecdotally we found half the audiences, presumably confident self-learners, explored in other approaches than the recommended approach.

This approach also provides the necessary structure to support adaptive systems, which can present different objects at different times. We used this approach when developing the Intellectricityâ„¢ system that adapted the learning experience based upon learner characteristics.

Problem-based

The approach I typically refer to as the problem-based approach (similar approaches are seen in case-based, project-based, and service learning) essentially puts the problem, an overarching practice, first. By showing the learner the type of problem this learning experience will help you address, you build in the emotional side. Now they’re understanding why this is important, and are motivated to go explore the concept, examples, and perhaps do trial practices before it matters. This is the pedagogy that drives the interest in serious games, embedding meaningful practice in a compelling context.

The problem-based approach more closely mimics the motivation learners will feel when faced with real performance contexts, and makes the content more meaningful. Engaging the learner in meaningful practice provides experience for reflection, and shifts the instructor to be a facilitator and guide instead of a content presenter.

The point, of course, is to think more broadly about the learning experience, tapping into intrinsic motivation, whether for learning or for the problem, and start embedding what we know about the emotional side of learning into the learning experience.

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