A question for the edu research and e-learning folks out there...

[usernamenumber]

I recently pinged some folks that I know specifically have backgrounds in e-learning research about some stuff I've been wrestling with regarding the "right" approach to designing e-learning materials, but it occurs to me that it can't hurt to open this question up to a larger audience.

If you were to look at the e-learning courses I develop, you would see a lot of text. More than you're probably "supposed to" see. Now, there are also plenty of interactive exercises, learning aids (e.g. flash cards) and quizzes too, but my approach is basically as follows:

• In the LMS, begin with a written summary of the topic at hand
• Provide deeper coverage, usually by linking to external docs in a centrally managed docs repository (the idea here is to be able to share and re-use documentation between departments)
  • These docs follow a strict single-topic model with no narrative connecting them
  •  In the LMS I include "glue" text between the links to provide narrative structure
• Include supplementary videos, but...
  • All videos are optional and never convey information that isn't also in the course text. All information must be available to a student who is accessing the course solely as text and static images.
  • Videos are limited to 10 minutes in length, on a single subject, emphasizing animations over text
• Provide hands-on exercises where possible, and demo videos elsewhere.
• Include frequent quizzes so students can self-assess between conceptual chunks of information

So, here's where my question comes in. The cool kids in e-learning, at least in the corporate world, seem to be using tools like Articulate, Captivate, etc to create their courses. I've taken courses that are created with these tools before, and while they're very pretty they're ultimately interactive, narrated PowerPoint presentations where most of the information is conveyed verbally (assuming the author isn't violating the rules of good presentation design and also cramming the text of the narration into the slides). I am extremely reticent to adopt this as an exclusive method of conveying information, for reasons I'll explain next.

A presentation on HR policies is one thing, but when I'm learning something technical, especially something that I'm not expected to memorize but am likely to need to go back and reference later, I want to have as much information as possible available to me, as quickly as possible. Put simply, I want a reference that I can both read closely and search/skim. If a narrated slide takes 5 minutes to cover a subject, then it takes 5 minutes whether I'm learning this information for the first time, reviewing it, or just checking to confirm that I already know what the slide is going to teach. Text (including static images) is the only medium I know of that allows for different access times in each of these use cases. So it seems to me that for sufficiently deep material (i.e. information students are expected to need, but can't realistically be expected to memorize in one go) I'm going to need to write a reference text anyway,  and if that's the case, then why not have the course materials be a sort of guided tour through the reference, using video presentations where appropriate, but always as an optional supplement to the central text?

I guess writing this out has helped me to articulate (heh) my real question at the heart of this: is there any actual evidence that, specifically for technical subjects being delivered to a technical audience, slide-based tools like Articulate et al actually teach more effectively than the "guided tour through a reference doc, plus exercises" approach? If they're not demonstrably better, then I'm looking at dropping a whole lot of money on software that will require a great deal more dev time and a lot of duplicate effort, as the course materials and reference materials are now completely independent despite overlapping subject matter, with no actual gain for the students.

I'm not saying these tools don't have their place, I'm just not convinced that deep technical training is it. Pointers to actual research would be great (I've done a bit of looking around, but haven't found much, probably because I don't know where to look for this sort of thing), but I'm also interested in hearing anecdotal reports from people who have been on the recieving end of various approaches to technical training at work. 

Thoughts?

Comments

[sprrwhwk.livejournal.com]

I can't speak to research or theory or otherwise address your question from a high-level point of view. I will say that, as a consumer of technical training, I *HATE* audio, video, or lecture as a means of conveying technical information, to the point of ignoring it if the information isn't presented in another format as well. I can think of at least one other person I know who describes herself this way as well. This was why I always hated classes where the material presented in lectures and tests wasn't also presented in the labs and readings, and generally did very poorly in the class, even though I usually sunk much more time than was theoretically required into the class as a whole. My best terms, in contrast, were the terms where I had someone to work with on the homework, where we could both fill the other in, and where the textbook was a good reference -- complete, well-organized, and well-written, and I could mostly read (and reread, and reread) it to learn. Similarly, I'm an almost entirely self-taught programmer, and I eschewed the "Learn C in 21 Days" books for the official language reference.

I've always justified it that I do technical tasks using muscle memory as a primary component, and until I've physically performed the task (even if it's a computer task) once or twice, I won't really remember it. Understanding for me always comes from copying the motions with slight variations until the underlying principles become evident. I don't know how much bearing this explanation has on reality, but I have certainly observed it, in myself and others, time and time again.

(Larp mechanics is another context I see this come up in. How many of us have been frustrated trying and failing to understand the verbal description of a mechanic, only to have it all come clear once we did it the first time?)

So I think my biases for technical training are a lot closer to yours than the Khan Academy style of e-learning which is popular these days.

[freckles42.livejournal.com]

So, it actually has more to do with learning styles than anything else. Personally, I am a visual-kinesthetic person, with moderate reading/writing and low audio. This means I do best when I can SEE and DO. (Which I think feeds into why reading/writing does decently for me; as reading is visual and writing is doing, even if it's not doing the topic in question.) I am also solitary - I learn best alone, working things through in my head. Group work *can* be an effective tool for me, but generally it's not really helpful.

Everyone learns differently. The best teachers set up their classroom so that all types of learners are accommodated. In my experience, being given options helps everyone. It's nice to provide a guideline/checklist for those who require structure or like that sort of thing (most people do to some degree or another) but it's best to give people choices and not assume they all learn the same or even similar ways.

That said, I don't know if there's a particular skewing of learning styles for your majority group. If so, obviously tailoring that direction is helpful.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

There's actually a fair amount of research on this. However, much of it is either in scholarly journals (meaning that it's like reading a PowerPoint presentation with 54 slides, each covered with 10-point print) or they're financed & presented by the companies making the software, which means they tend to emphasize the findings that suggest that the features of the companies software are the most effective learning tools.

This article (http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/453/nuts-and-bolts-principles-of-multimedia-learning), while somewhat superficial, does a decent job of providing some best practices. A few things that I've gleaned from the academic literature:

1) Don't put too much text on a single slide - it's hard to read whether in a presentation or on a screen, and people have basically acclimated to rejecting any text they read on a slide after the first minute or so of looking at it

2) DO NOT HAVE THE NARRATION BE THE TEXT ON THE SLIDE!!! People will stop listening AND stop watching and so you lose both channels of communication when you think you're providing two

3) As noted in several places, people have different learning styles. Given the length of this (and many of your other posts), I would guess that your personal learning style is compatible with long passages of written text. Asking people on LJ if long passages of written text is a good way to present material is like asking people at a They Might Be Giants concert if an accordion is a good thing to add to a rock band. You may walk away with some pretty darned consistent data that is not at all projectible to a larger, more diverse, population.

As freckles42 notes, it's difficult to know what the breakdown is in your class - even more so if it's e-learning. When I was teaching, I could check out to see if the majority of the class appeared to be attending to & understanding what I was saying and adjust my style appropriately. That won't be an option for you clearly. However, if you're expecting the class to be largely Gen Y or Millennials, statistically, you're going to be working with a group that is unlikely to have YOUR experience with reading & parsing long text passages, and so if you try to teach them that way, many of them are going to be putting more cognitive effort into getting through the mechanics or reading than actually learning the content. If that's not what you want, keep your slides simple, with one or two basic ideas presented on each. Then present the nuanced stuff in narration. If you want to provide the narration script to students who prefer it, that's awesome, and will allow you to reach a larger portion of your class.

Good luck!

[shinyquill.livejournal.com]

I am also terrible at audio processing and really good at huge swaths of text. I don't know too many people who are better at listening to words than reading them, though I do know audiobooks for the blind often have an adjustable speed (like the videos on coursera) that allows folks to hear a book much quicker than at the normal rate of speech. I suspect people who are not great at text and/or audio *are* a major part of the target audience for e-learning as traditional learning has gone less well for them. This said, anybody who writes code for a living had better be pretty comfortable with looking at, searching, and parsing huge quantities of on-screen text as that's a major part of their job.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

These aren't developers per se, but they do have to follow complex, written procedures for work, so that's a good point.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with the principles of good slide design (one reason I try to eschew text altogether in my animations-- same principle), but the question here is whether to even go with that paradigm in the first place. You and freckles do make good points about learning styles, though as you also point out, since my audience is both remote and worldwide, nailing them down to a single preferred learning style is problematic.

That said, I have been doing post-training surveys and have been getting good reviews from trainees in multiple countries, so that's something.

Thanks for the comments!

[laurion]

Given the different learning styles of different learners, you may want to have multiple approaches embedded in the course. The video narration is good for one set of learners, and may serve as a good first approach to the topic. The guided examination of the documentation can reinforce the material, especially for those who are oriented to learn from written words, while also introducing learners to the reference work they can return to. Because you're right, the video lecture is a terrible reference work. And then follow up both of those with exercises to catch the kinesthetic learners and to emphasize the practical application of knowledge to the learners.

i.e., like the idea of a balanced healthy plate of food with different food groups on it, you may need to take a balanced and blended approach to reach different 'audiences'.

But the key question: is the documentation the course, or the reference for afterwards? Is it possible to write one text to do both well? A reference text should give you answers when you look something up, but that breaks the educational principle of scaffolding.

Some thoughts...

[jingsaw.livejournal.com]

In my reading, the research does not really support a fundamental difference in learning between listening and reading. Although dual channel theory likely does apply to pre-attentive processing, the process of mental model construction is agnostic to the media source of the information. What does make big difference in predicting learning is prior knowledge, self efficacy, and time on task.

My suggestion would be to identify a simple task where the student can be successful and use the attention focusing power of self guided multimedia to walk them through that simple task. This will do two things for you - first it will build their self efficacy in this domain, and second it will provide you at least a baseline of prior knowledge for future learning.

A couple of other things:

Make sure to provide them with an orienting task before they start the unit. What are they going to do with this information in the short term? Will they need to summarize it? Explain it to other students? The task will help them develop their mental model.

After the learning is done, make sure they explain their thinking and learnings. This can be to themselves, or to other, in writing or not. This will help make their learning more robust in the long term.