thoughts on learning, part II
Filed Under Questions
During my second eLearning course, we were reminded that in many ways, computers are the dumbest things on earth. The great advantage that human teachers have over computers is that they are responsive. They can immediately tailor instruction to meet a learner where they are at, to answer their specific questions, and to explain things in ways that make sense to the individual. Human teachers can listen, reflect, care, joke, laugh, and support. Computers will never do that.
Computers are at a tremendous disadvantage because they can’t rely on any kind of social presence to create an environment where learning can occur. Instead designers have to rely on creating interactive experiences that do three things:
1) Enhance the learner’s motivation to learn,
2) Focus learners on behavior-enhancing tasks, and
3) Create meaningful and memorable experiences.
[All of these points come from Michael Allen's stuff.]
So where a teacher might be able to focus primarily on Content Structure and Sequencing (as well as, we hope, leveraging the social aspect of classroom learning), an eLearning designer has to successfully overcome additional challenges, including:
*Navigation,
*Learner Interface,
*Motivation, and
*Instructional Interactivity
By Instructional Interactivity, Allen means more than just clicking buttons, dragging and dropping objects, fancy animations, clever narrations, well-produced video, or interesting mouseovers. None of those things by themselves actually motivate learners or help them retain information. But the model he uses for interactivity is important. And I think this is where computer based learning might have something to teach teachers. Stripped of all the social power that teachers carry, the best eLearning seems to satisfy the four categories of this model:
CONTEXT
Do teachers provide a framework or a context for what they are trying to teach? Can they successfully persuade students why certain skills are important to develop?
CHALLENGE
Do teachers design challenges or problems that are sufficiently interesting to engage students’ imagination?
ACTIVITY
Are the activities designed to help students rehearse the patterns of thought that we have set up in the context? Do students have enough “time on task” to develop habits and embed behaviors in their long-term memories?
FEEDBACK
Do we provide immediate feedback that helps learners to adjust? If students can succeed in a class without* paying attention to teacher feedback (i.e. they can sort of slide through the class on half a brain), then real feedback isn’t happening.
In all of these ways, we are challenged to think more clearly about our own flavors of Instructional Interactivity, and whether or not our learners are really taking away something meaningful and memorable. If you see a lack of motivation in your own learning/teaching space, this model may offer a way forward.
