Key Ideas From This Week's Reading & Burning Questions:
Baggio Chapter 7
Baggio Chapter 8
Baggio Chapter 9
Clark Chapter 3
Clark Chapter 4
Clark Chapter 5
Clark Chapter 6
Dervin’s “Qualitative Research in Information Management”
Burning Questions:
1) What will be the most clear, effective way to share a resource for my colleagues to use?
2) If I create digital content, does it need to be a website?
3) Are there other ways to share digital resources? If so, what are they?
Baggio Chapter 7
- Use visuals to draw the learner’s attention to the material being taught
- Strive to align the learning intent and the learner’s attention
- Good slide design helps the learner take in the presentation
- The learner takes in the entire slide as one visual image
- Position the content on the screen so the learner can read it naturally (left to right/top to bottom)
- More is not always better!
- Learning is to about how much you know, it is all about what you can get the learners to take in
Baggio Chapter 8
- Learning and performance objectives are important
- Three Principles for Determining Your Visual Objectives:
- Know Your Learner
- Stay on Target
- Create a list of learning objectives and match them with a list of your visual objectives
- Write a statement about what you are trying to achieve through the use of your visuals
- Develop a Visual Strategy
- Write your strategy down
- Your strategy should be determined by your content, learning objectives, learners, and budget
- Remember: attention on intention
- Make sure your plan supports your content
- Always make the objectives part of your visual strategy
- Five Easy Steps for Aligning Visuals and Connecting to the Learning Objective
- Keep it simple
- Keep it clear
- Keep it focused
- Connect with the content
- Connect with the learner
- Content is king! Visuals support the content
- Mirroring is positioning the text and graphics on opposite sides which wakes up the brain
- Content is the key to getting the information out, form is what attracts the learners’ attention and holds it
- Imagination is what takes the visual components and relationships and turns them into something that is internalized by the learner
- There should be a working and complementary relationship between what you are delivering and how you are delivering it
Baggio Chapter 9
- We are fascinated by seeing people on TV or in presentations (i.e. Sesame Street, Blues Clues, etc.)
- Screens usually stay in front of the average person for about 5-15 seconds
- Using images of people helps ground the situation, and certain attributes will either add to the probability of learning or detract from it
- Repetition is one way of getting things to stick in our short term memory
- It’s important to use neutral people or people in situations that enhance the learning experience, never, ever detract from it
- The three most important things in any presentation are levity, brevity, and repetition
- Everyone has a dominant sense (i.e. sight, sound, touch…), but it doesn’t mean you exclusively use that sense in all occasions and situations
Clark Chapter 3
- “A procedure is a series of clearly defined steps that result in achievement of a job task.” (pg. 45)
- To successfully teach a task, one must first teach a set of procedures for how to successfully complete that task.
- Two types of procedures: linear an decision.
- Linear: Made up of clearly specified observable steps (sequential)
- Decision: Made up of two or more linear procedural sequences (like a flow chart/different outcomes yield different procedural steps)
- Give students a list of procedures during the task that requires the procedures to be executed
- Good format: Step/Action/Example
- To be effective, training (teaching) must provide r4elevant information interspersed with frequent practice exercises
Clark Chapter 4
- A concept is a mental representation or prototype of objects or ideas that include multiple specific examples (i.e. “chair” incudes rocking chairs, folding chairs, etc.)
- Just because a learner can state a definition does not mean that she can actually recognize an instance of the concept when he/she sees it.
- The ability to distinguish a concept is called discrimination.
- At the application level, the employee can identify the concept by picking a valid example from a number of similar items
- Write a supporting learning objective to establish a learning goal
- When teaching concepts, it’s important to teach definitions/examples, along with counter-examples
- To verify that learning objectives have been understood by my students, I need to administer a test that matches the learning objectives, and is similar to the format of the practice exercise
Clark Chapter 5
- Facts are in three types of formats: concrete objects, unique data, and associations in statements
- It’s important not to ask employees (students) to memorize a lot of information at once.
- Facts can be processed only at the remembered level
- Goal: To minimize memorization of facts by having workers (students) actively use those facts during their job tasks (classroom tasks)
- Use diagrams for concrete facts
- Integrating descriptive text into the diagram reduces the split attention that happens when learners have to mentally connect text separated from graphics
- Use tables and lists for data
- Use technology for actual information-it can be formatted with tables, diagrams, lists, 360 degree views of graphics, etc.
- For assessment, use realistic simulations that require using factual information to complete the evaluation
Clark Chapter 6
- Processes can be psychologically processed at the remember or application level
- Procedures vs. Processes:
- Procedures are directive in nature, processes are descriptive
- Procedures tell people how to go about doing a task, while processes tell them how something works
- Processes are classified in three categories:
- Business systems depicting organizational work flows
- Technical systems depicting stages in mechanical systems
- Scientific systems depicting how natural phenomena occur
- Processes can be presented briefly at a high level or more extensively with considerable detail
- Processes involve a series of events-stages rather than steps
Dervin’s “Qualitative Research in Information Management”
- In sense-making, humans naturally make “bridges” to fill in gaps in information. Bridges are constructed through gaining information, or using strategies and skills to get to the next step. Studying sense-making involves studying the ways that different individuals navigate this metaphorical bridge.
- When Dervin discusses a time-line interview, she breaks her recording into three categories: “The Events, The Gaps, and The Helps.” I liked this visual model. “The Events” states the situation the individual is working through, “The Gaps” are the questions that individual has in order to work through their situation, and “The Helps” are what will lead to the resolution(s).
- Sense-making can be objective. One person may wish to use accuracy to measure something, where another person may use familiarity to measure something. When people share personal observations, there are limited observations.
- There are differences in questions like, “How well did my students retain that information?” vs, “What strategy did that student apply to get that answer correct?” There are different ways to measure these types of questions, and different approaches to seeking these answers. This is important to keep in mind as I refine the data I am gathering for my Capstone Project.
- Communication is key. On page 69 Dervin wrote that, “Sense-making is seen, thus, as a generalizable methodology developed for the study of all situations that involve communication.”
- I think that Dervin is trying to teach that processes can be subjective, and it is important to be inclusive when gathering data. Dervin talks about “The Observer Versus the Actor.” She stated that the majority of our current research asks questions from an observer’s perspective. She said that we can construct a world for the users which makes things less authentic. I thought this was very helpful as we are currently collecting data for our capstone project. It’s important to take a step back, and focus on the actor (our students) in a more authentic way, and not pushing them into a small study to get data out of.
- Sense-making focuses on behavior. Behavior can be a reaction to ideas used in the past, or incorporate new ideas when an individual is placed in a new situation
Burning Questions:
1) What will be the most clear, effective way to share a resource for my colleagues to use?
2) If I create digital content, does it need to be a website?
3) Are there other ways to share digital resources? If so, what are they?