IT 5130: Levels of Knowledge

After reading the “Individual Differences Principle” chapter from Mayer’s book, I realize that the learner’s level of knowledge about a particular topic impacts how well they retain and are able to apply what they learn. Even more than I realized, it’s important to understand your audience! This sounds obvious but we often create courses and expect them to help multiple levels of learners. For example, I know that I have created a course to teach learners how to operate a product. The intended audience for the course was end-user customers andddd service personnel. Based on what Mayer says, if I used multimedia learning events that were based on the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, the course will most likely benefit learners with low-level knowldege the most. In this case, that would mainly be the end-user customers.

I need to re-think how I plan these “Operations” courses.

I wonder what I can do to help the learners with a higher level of knowledge?

IT 5130: Mayer Chap 9-10

I just finished reading chapter 9 and 10 from Mayer’s Multi-media Learning book, and several questions come to mind. Last week, I had a idea to include a few “expert interviews” in an online course that I’m developing to help learners understand a few complex processes. I wondered how much pre-scripting I need to do? Should I just let the “expert” how the questions that I would like him to answer as part of the interview? Or should I plan it out in more detail?

Based on the readings where Mayer tells us that narration and animation is better than narration alone, I suspect that I should plan out the script so that I can work with the multimedia designer on the visuals needed to accompany the narration.

I need to think more about this… Thoughts anyone?

IT 5650: Planning for the Advanced Training

What I’ve Discovered as I Planned for an Advanced Course

• Students need to start with a solid understanding of the product before moving to advanced course.
• We need to add behind the scenes data flow type of information to our main field service online courses so that students understand the effects of the settings they make.
• In the Elements of a Science of e-Learning, Mayer talks about how to help learners understand explanations of how scientific systems work… Scientific explanations are a type of conceptual knowledge. When students were asked to apply their knowledge, here’s what was discovered:
• —-Dual channels: visual/pictorial and auditory/verbal
• —-Modality Effect tells us that students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text. Why? The animation can be processed in the visual channel while the narration is processed in the auditory channel thus offloading some of the demands of the visual channel.
• —-Contiguity Effect tells us that students learn better from animation and narration at the same time.
• —-Pre-training Effect tells us that students learn better when components explanations are provided before the presentation.
• One other note is that we should provide an interactive learning event before students get to the point of TMI to help students tie together what they just learned.
• The main course should teach students how to solve basic troubleshooting. If X happens, you do Y.
• All of this BASIC knowledge and skills can be learned online… Research supports this as well.
• Learning more advanced knowledge lends itself well to collaborative environments.

Learner supports such as Job Aids are important take-aways for students when there are things that students need to remember from the course but they won’t because there are too many details or because the information is complex. The content in the course should be more of a summary, and the job aid should include the information (including details) that students will need to know after class to perform their jobs. In addition, we need to give students practice questions that require them to use the job aid.

The advanced course should teach students how to think outside the box. It’s the type of information that doesn’t have a concrete set of be circumstances. There are many variables and the situation could be different for each customer.

Problem-based learning in groups (with a facilitator) helps learners guides students through constructing the knowledge they need. It allows for scaffolding.  The problems should help students develop the higher-level thinking needed to solve problems. Start with easy problems and work their way to more complex problems.

Problem Solving as a method: Learning is supported and enhanced through settings that encourage and enable communication and interaction among students.mKnowledge is constructed through social interaction. Students structure and restructure information to make sense of it when the collaborate.
What students can do with help they will be able to do on their own after practice.

IT 5650: Need More Advanced Training

My department has been asked to create more advanced courses for our field service teams. As a department, we have to figure out what this means. To date, we have been developing courses that helped field service learn how to use the product and perform basic troubleshooting. Based on initial discussions, it sounds like the field service teams need to better understand how the settings they make affect the behind-the-scenes operations of the product. With this understanding, the field service teams would be able to better troubleshoot the product.

For my final project, I will create a proposal for a solution that meets the needs of field service. I plan to start by conducting a needs analysis.

IT 5130: The Michael Welsh Presentation

I watched Michael Welsh’s presentation last night and was amazed at his ideas. He talked about ways to make learning more meaningful for students. He started with these assumptions/preconceptions that students have:

• To learn is to acquire information
• Information is scarce and hard to find
• Trust authority for good information
• Authorized information is beyond discussion
• Obey the authority
• Follow along

Throughout the presenation, he showed how incorrect these assumptions really are. He said that we need to “create platforms for participation” that allow students to learn. He quoted someone by reminding us that “nobody is as smart as everybody.”He said that students shouldn’t trust the authority for good information because there are so many resources for information, and the information can be validated. We need to help students learn how to use the tools to enhance their learning. He believes we need to help students become more knowledge “able” as opposed to the typical knowledeable.

He showed us an example portal that he uses in his classroom. It was creative and he backed it with reasons why it works. The portal is a place for collaborative learning. It included the use of free tools such as Diigo and Twitter. I was inspired by his ideas and forward thinking. I would like to be able to implement some of the ideas he shared in my workplace but am reluctant because I have to make sure that any of the discussions we have in the courses I work with are not able to be viewed by anyone outside our firewall.

I plan to spend the next few days and weeks thinking about how I could implement some of these ideas.

IT 5130: Trying Animoto

After looking at the tool Animoto, I was intrigued by what it could do, so I saved several of my PowerPoint slides as gif files and uploaded them to Animoto. While I think this tool could work well with photos, I don’t think it worked well for my content. Check out my video if you like.

IT 5130: Duarte’s Slide:ology

Duarte reminds us that it’s good to generate a bunch of ideas because good ideas don’t come along without time and effort. Early on in the project, we need to generate as many ideas as we can. We also need to sketch out our ideas so that we can start putting them into an visual format. After all, when we we’re creating instructional messages, we want learners to remember them. Soooo, we need to make them memorable!

She makes a good point when she reminds us to not get caught up assuming that people possess a level of knowledge that they do not.

In addition: we need to keep these things in mind:

• Simiplicity
• Unexpectedness
• Concreteness
• Credibility
• Emotions
• Stories

I’ve noticed that stories in particular keep coming up our the readings (recently in Gary Reynolds articles), and I can see the benefit as they can make the content relevant and memorable. Again, our learners want meaning from what they are told.