Dealing with the learner continuum in a computer based or web based environment

Today at work one of my co-workers had to vet a computer based module designed to teach people how to use Microsoft Outlook. He is very tech savvy, and after less than five minutes of exposure to the content he was like “Are these courses designed for fifth graders, I am sure if I gave my 5th grade son this he would understand.” This brings out a very important issue especially in the non-traditional learning environments........

Who should you tailor your course for?
Well for one thing every course should have a target audience and this should also be made clear some where in the course description/introduction and learners should have access to this. This will ensure that the content is tailored to this group and potential participants can determine if the course is for them or not.
Another method of filtering learners is to divide courses in to levels and explicitly state the prerequisite knowledge that learners need to have in order to benefit from the course.

Learners! Learners! Learners!
In customer service, the customer is always right. In instructional design the learner is always right. By this I mean everything that we do should be geared towards the learners and their needs and interests. It’s like clothes, your friend may buy an outfit and it complements her/him well, but you would never in a wild dream buy that. The same is for a course one learner from the target group may find the course engaging and interesting and another who is not apart of the target group may think it’s pathetic. The important thing is that it meets the needs of the target learners!

What happens when the target group is diversified?
Well we all know sometimes it’s not that simple as sometimes, instructional material has to be designed for a wide audience. In a face-to-face environment there is much flexibility where that is concerned. However, what to do in a web-based or computer based environment? Well this is where choices come in , give learners choices in their navigation, thus if they are familiar with some of the content they can move on. Have quick explanations and more detail ones depending on the learner. Have a look at these post from The Rapid eLearning Blog

• 3 Essential Questions every learner wants answered
• Here's why unlocking your course navigation will produce better learning
  

How do you tailor your instructional materials to meet the needs of diverse learners?

A Cup of Inspiration: Making the Lights Come On!

On Friday, September 5th, I attended The 21st Annual St. Louis American Foundation's Salute to Excellence in Education Banquet. It was a very well coordinated event and it was very inspiring. Each of the awardees did a video presentation/interview on what motivate them as teachers and this was shown at the banquet. Interesting but not surprising almost all the teachers said that what keeps them going is when the lights turn on for students…when you can get a student who was oblivious to the content area to respond and say…”I get it now…I understand”. For the kindergarten teacher it was the fact that most of them leave her class literate.
This should be the aim of every instruction to turn the lights on despite the age group. Here are some things to bear in mind when preparing for instruction to ensure that the light’s get turned on. These are especially relevant for adult learners:

Know your learners
-What are their interests?
- What attitudes and skills do they bring to the course?
-How do they prefer to learn?

Identify what you want them to learn
-Decide on the general outcome skills/knowledge that learners must have.
Example, should they be able to use software, carry out a process?
- Ask your self if learners are to achieve this general outcome what do they need to know and do?
Example, for software do they need to know parts and functions?
- It may help to start off broad and then further subdivide.
For example I may have: Interface of the software as 1 thing that they need to know and under that section have: Command tabs Command sets.
-Get the content for each area in details bearing in mind the level that your learners are at. Ensure that you provide enough information for them to understand; for procedures include cues where necessary……the things that they should look out for, avoid, as well as indicators that the process has been completed successfully.

Decide how learners will show understanding
From the content that you have developed decide for each section how learners will show you they understand, using what is called instructional objectives. These should be measurable, and student centered…the image below is an example of one and the components.














Decide how you will impart the information
Based on the nature of the content and your learners learning style come up with strategies, will use demonstration, role play, video presentations.
What delivery media will you use: Face-to-face, Self paced, virtual learning environment, hybrid etc.
How will you sequence it?

Develop your materials
What ever format you have chosen develop your materials so that it is appealing to the audience and conveys the message. This can be achieved by using the right images, font faces, highlighting important points etc.

Evaluate constantly
For each decision that you make get some feedback and use the information to revise what you have done.

Remember it’s all about the learner!!

How do you make the lights come on?

40 Hours Work Week

One day last week at about 4:30pm, I was at work and I felt a little lethargic. However, in the morning I was up and perky and was in optimal performance gear. I came in at 10:00am (late, my usual time is about 8:30) and by 4:30 I was feeling like I needed my day to be done. Is something wrong with me? Do I need vitamins? Or Is something wrong with the 40 hours work week?…According to this model even though I don’t feel optimal I should force my self to work 2 more hours to ensure that I fulfill the 8 hours per day; which for some is minimum, as they often work longer hours.

Where did it all start?

I went to Google … I Google everything. I wanted to find out what was the significance of the number 40. Was it that psychology research proved that within this time frame we perform best?

Let’s deviate for a moment…don’t worry the detour is not too far off our topic route: Have you ever wondered why phone numbers have 7 digits after the area code or why social security numbers, phone numbers etc are grouped..Well in my Psychology class I learnt that studies proved that our short term memory can store between 5 and 9 items (Chunks or individual) at a given time. This was then used to come up with what is called the Miller’s Magic number 7 using a range of -2 or +2.
So back to our 40 hours per week…I am wondering if the 40 hours came about the same way.

I found a great article “Does the 40 hour work week need Overhauling” that explains it all for the American culture. In summary:

• It started with the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938
• This act cut the work week from 60 hours to a maximum 44 per hours week. (Wow can you believe this?)
• Seven years later it was changed to 40 hours per week.

The reality

Well quite startling, studies have shown that people are working more than 40 hours per week in America. Employers are hiring fewer people to do more work. The explanation was that they are trying to save on providing health care benefits and pension….oh well trying to save at the risk of employees health….does that make sense?…When people get overworked they are more prone to be ill.

Despite this there are others who are plain workaholics and don’t feel good unless they work more. Others have no family obligations or social life so instead of going home to the walls of their home they consume themselves with work.

The Slacker Phenomenon

What is interesting is that in some working environment putting in quality time for 8 hours and leaving when the time is up is considered slack. Geeky mom’s blog post titled “The-40 hour work week” highlights this phenomenon. She mentions that some people even though they are done with work stay back and put in ‘face’ time to prevent being seen as a slacker.

Balance


Balance is important but hard to create. However, my ideal working environment is one that is output based. Give me a project, give me a deadline and I work at my own pace. Geeky Mom’s post asserts the same preference. Click here to read how one IT worker cuts his time from 80-100 hours per week to 40 hours.

Future

Gartner has an article that predicts by 2015 there will be 20 hour work week job descriptions to accommodate skilled high quality workers who need to balance work and social/family life.

• How many hours do you typically work per week?
• What are some ways to balance work and family/social life?
• What do you think about the 2015 prediction?

Please Share!!

Information Processing

As I have said in previous post, I have been assigned to lead a wiki project. However, I am part of a bigger team that involves creating a website as well. With SharePoint in the picture the concepts that we have of each has to be slightly adjusted to fit the mold that this platform provides. We have an even bigger challenge as even though the two projects are separate they are not exclusive. The website will contain links to pages on the wiki and vice versa. Below is an outline of the process so far and some internal challenges that we have encountered.

The Decision Making process

In order to decide what should go on the wiki the following steps were taken:

1. The executive team went through a period of brain storming of categories.
2. The results of the brain storming process were put in a diagram
3. Each team lead (Members of the executive body) discussed the categories with their individual teams and solicited feedback, whether the categories made sense, additions etc.
4. Each team member was asked to show the categories to their managers and get feed back as well.
5. The executive team discussed all the feedback and decided what was feasible and what made sense.
6. The initial categories diagram was updated to reflect feedback and decisions.
7. The executive team met again and finally discussed and approved the categories

NB: During this process decisions were made about what content would be best for the website and what would be best for the wiki as well.

Conflict

So it’s data collection time and confusion has started. The same people who were in the executive team meetings when decisions were made and questions were asked start asking questions that should have been asked during the decision making process. However, during the meetings they nodded their heads in agreement and never voiced their opinions. Some of the questions that they are now asking are questions like “why was this category included?” and make comments like “this category don’t make any sense” , “This is unnecessary”, “We need to pick what goes on the site, we cant accommodate everyone”. So my question is, were these people sleeping in the executive meetings when we were asked to examine the categories and pick what is feasible and what made sense?

Application to teaching and learning

This really brought home to me, how important it is to clarify and confirm learners’ understanding. The truth is being exposed to knowledge does not mean it is processed. Thus we have to make sure that we assess students learning and assess it in a way that will give valid results. For example, if I wanted learners to use MS Excel to build a gantt chart, asking them to tell how it’s done or do a multiple choice quiz may not be a good assessment. Giving them an opportunity to demonstrate the skill is what is necessary.

So we are in the meeting and we assume that everybody understand why the decisions were made and they agree. Who knows maybe they too thought it made sense. Notice when the issues came up, when they had to pay close attention to the information, when they were required to use it. The same is for our learners we have to draw their attention and give them opportunities to use the information in order for learning to be effective.

Project Management Lessons Learned

I once read a book that said when in brain storming or decision making meetings everybody should speak and I now agree. As the persons who are raising the questions now are persons who spoke very few words in the meetings. Thus meaningful comments should be solicited from all.

I was rather upset when all the email threads started coming, but now I think it’s just obvious that the goals and decisions of the project were not understood by all and all were not in agreement. The good thing is that it has been brought in the open before the project advanced. Therefore as project managers or anybody in leadership we have to ensure that the people involved understand and getting a “I understand” is not good enough. We have to come up with creative ways of effectively passing on the vision and soliciting feedback.

What are some of the ways you use to assess learning?

How do you know that your students understand?

In project management how do you confirm if participants understand the goals and task?

Please Share!

More on SharePoint

SharePoint Complaints Community
Thanks to web 2.0: I love it!! Collaboration and useful information at your finger tips…….
After I made my post yesterday, I went in search of some answers to our SharePoint problems. I found Lawrence Liu’s blog that had people complaining from 2007 till now. He acknowledges that SharePoint wiki is not the best breed of wiki, and I guess we should look at the bigger functionality and value that SharePoint offers…..just in case you are not familiar with SharePoint watch this SharePoint Demo.


Poor excuses
I hope that Microsoft (MS) looks in to the complaints and make the necessary changes to the new version. Even though it has been acknowledged that it’s not the best breed of wiki, I am still very disappointed and it is hard to believe that MS would release a product that leaves out the core characteristics/functionality that defines the technology….I’m sorry it is just crazy. I guess the wiki functionality was not a priority in their package.

Solutions
Towards the end of the complaints solutions were proposed on Lawrence Liu’s blog. In addition KM space blog offers a free plug in solution called Office connector in the post What to Do with SharePoint wikis
Tia also posted about Central Desktop check out the review of that.

Reflection
Well we just need to examine our options and see which tool best meets our goals and budget. The answer may be a combination, what makes it even better is that a lot of vendors are allowing third party integrations...yippee...no monopoly around here!

What other solutions are out there?

Please Share