Caplan - The Case Against Education – some inconvenient truths….

Bryan Caplan has dared to ask an almost taboo question, ‘Could it be that we have too much education?’ Where is the economic evidence. part from the correlation between qualifications and salaries, which he explains through 'signalling. This is a brave question.

Education uber alles

In what is a deeply researched and comprehensive book, he concludes that education, especially Higher Education, is around 80% ‘signalling’, therefore much can be seen as of little value to society or even the students themselves. Not all, he still thinks there is essential value in the 20% proportion. A degree for many, however, has become a sticker on your forehead saying ‘hire me’. More people are getting ‘schooled’ for longer and longer and the percentage of one’s life being schooled is increasing. But to what end? Lots of people are now being prompted and pushed into being academic, when they are not, prolonging their schooling, when the evidence suggest that it “neither raises their productivity nor enriches their lives”. His ‘signalling’ theory explains some odd phenomena, such as prevalence of cheating, the final year being worth more than all previous years, rising graduate underemployment and so on. Signalling also raises salaries but not necessarily skills, through credential inflation, that is why he thinks it is so wasteful.

This leads him to the heretical claim that we should spend less on education, allowing that money to be spent elsewhere, such as health. He argues that arguments for lowering education spend tend to be politically unacceptable but “At what point would education spending be excessive?” - a reasonable question. His recommendation is that we need less spend as that will deflate runaway creditialism, without reducing skills.

Time and time again he uncovers key studies that are rather shocking, such as those on the lack of evidence for education improving critical thinking. He gets rather tired of educators telling him that what they do ‘can’t be measured’ – it is a cop out he claims. 

Schools

Why teach so much academic stuff for so long, for almost two decades, when they’re going to forget it anyway. Reading, writing and maths are necessary basic skills but much of the otherworldly curriculum, he argues, is outdated. Millions learning a foreign language in the US, merely for college admission, something they never use, and in any case couldn’t use, as they don’t gain even a basic competence. Schools have the odd and catastrophic result of making almost no one fluent in a language. As proof of futility of signalling he points out that we’re still teaching a dead language – Latin. Much of maths, especially algebra, abstruse number theory and geometry, and other subjects, are notoriously irrelevant, with little transfer, and even if useful, the knowledge is largely forgotten. The existing system seems unable to change, even when there is overwhelming evidence of failure – for example forgetting during the long summer recess.

Vocational learning

Caplan thinks we should Reboot vocational learning. This, he thinks, is a more worthwhile spend. We have evidence that it works from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. ‘Signalling’ theory tilts us towards rebalancing the system towards vocational. It raises pay, reduces unemployment and increases school completion.  The fact that it carries a stigma, reinforces his ‘signalling’ theory, where middle-class parents and employers rank vocational learners as inferior, is proof of his general proposition. However, the social return of vocational learning is clear and proven. In an interesting comparison, he notes that on-the-job training ‘internships’ are regarded as admirable for academic students but looked down upon in vocational learning. We have lost the admirable idea that early exposure to work, even Saturday jobs, are valuable, as “Early jobs are good for kids and good for society”. Unfortunately, we have a system that crowd-pleases the middle-classes, while the disaffected and school drop-outs become embittered. Forcing bored kids through a relentless diet of academic work for 13 or more years makes them resentful – it backfires. 

Higher education

Like Roger Schank, Caplan thinks there’s two things wrong with Higher Education, what we teach and how we teach it. Research on the idea that academia broadens horizons in also rather bleak. Post-testing, even among garduates in the US shows a woeful lack of skills and knowledge. Only around 60% of students attend lectures in the first place, no one takes courses in their University unless they are mandated (though it’s easy and free) showing a puzzling disinterest in wider intellectual development. One fewer degree, it would appear, would make little difference as credential inflation has been rampant. The answer to not having a good view at a concert may for the individual to stand up, but if everyone stands up, no one gains. Worse still, to push an academic track on the “failure prone majority is cruelly misleading”. 

International evidence

At the national level, he shows that research about the economic benefits of education seem to “vanish”. The effects when found, seem “puny” and do not seem to justify the vast sums spent on education, making it more of an act of faith than evidence based policy. There is even evidence that reverse causation may be at work here. It is not that schooling creates prosperity but prosperity leads to more schooling. The richer a country becomes, the more it spends on politically appealing education. Yet Harvard’s Lant Pritchett, formerly of the World Bank, did the data crunching and in a now famous article ‘Where has all the education gone?’ found little evidence between education and higher economic growth. Cambridge economist, Ha-Jon Chang refutes the idea that ‘more education in itself is not going to make a country richer’ and there are plenty of counter examples.

Inequalities

Even worse, could education spend be increasing inequalities in society? Challenging question. Inequalities are certainly rising, especially in countries with large education spends. Caplan argues that massive subsidies for education hurt the poor through credential inflation, which reshapes the job market to their detriment. The economy has not changed, we just have more graduates. The Road to Somewhere by David Goodwin, unpacks this phenomenon in the UK, in terms of the emergence of a 'graduate' class. A similar thing may have happened in the US and elsewhere. To continue on this treadmill, he thinks, is a mistake.

Online education

His signalling theory also explains why online education, that simply apes the current system, MOOCs for example, are bound to fail. No matter how successful they are, they don’t provide the ‘signal’  (the degree) and that’s what students are really paying for. Students are buying signals, not human capital. Online learning makes perfect sense in terms of access, flexibility, cost and convenience - yet all of that goes out the window if the signalling is absent.

Influence

As Caplan says, he is really a whistleblower. One of the reasons that education doesn’t really get put through the economic, sociological, political and pedagogic wringer, is that most of the people responsible for policy, have been through or work in its institutions. Confirmation bias is a powerful thing. His recommendations are that we focus on literacy and numeracy but cut back on spend to counter the non-productive ‘signalling’ and ‘credential inflation’ and spend more on vocational learning or other social goods, such as health, social care, whatever we decide. 

Bibliography

Caplan, B., 2018. The Case Against Education: Why the education system is a waste of time and money. Princeton University Press.

Schank – Scripts and doing…

Roger Schank is a critic of the current educational system, pointing to 19^th century curriculum, teaching by telling, lectures, memorisation and standardised tests, as structures and techniques that distort learning. With characteristic boldness, Schank often starts with the statement, “There are only two things wrong with education: 1) What we teach; 2) How we teach it.” So let’s look at his work through these two lenses.

1. What we teach

Schank’s research took him back to the 1892 curriculum in the US, where he found that the current subjects were fossilised into a curriculum designed for testing and to filter students for university. The very idea of a fixed curriculum seems odd to Schank, as it fixes knowledge and we mostly forget the stuff we’re asked to remember.

His bête noire is ‘maths’. Our obsession with maths and standardised tests impoverishes education. In fact the two are linked. Maths is popular because it is easy to test. Driven by PISA tests, which he debunks by showing that their supposed relevance is bogus, the world has become addicted to tests not performance. Algebra, in particular, he sees as a hangover from a fossilised curriculum.

Similarly with the sciences; physics, chemistry and biology, STEM subjects, he thinks, are overrated. Sure we need to learn how to write well in English but that comes through regular practice, not occasional essays. As for languages, Roger has lived abroad and as he speaks French, he finds the French taught in school laughable, as it rarely results in any real success and is not the language spoken in France. The classroom, he claims is not the place to learn a language, especially in a country where there’s no real opportunity for immersion or practice.

In short, school, he thinks, has turned into a funneling process for Universities. This is a big mistake. His solution is to have lots of curricula and allow people to follow their curiosity and interests, as this is what drives real, meaningful and useful learning, as opposed to memorisation and hoop jumping. Organise school, not around subjects, but cognitive processes that match what we do in the real world.

Higher education?

The idea that everyone should go to college he thinks absurd. It’s fine for some but not all. With impeccable, academic credentials, and a background in cognitive science, computer science and education, he explodes the view that Higher Education has of itself, as the pinnacle of teaching competence and achievement. Professors like research and mostly see teaching and undergraduates as something to be avoided. In any case, he thinks, they’re often very poor teachers, relying on stale lecture series that teach what they research.

To cut to the quick, Schank things Higher Education is a con. You pay through the nose for not very much more than a three or four year vacation and a good social life. The courses are poor and the system designed to select researchers.

2. How we teach it

Schank has a strongly libertarian view in that he wants to abandon lectures, memorisation and tests. Start to learn by doing and practice, not theory. Stop lecturing and delivering dollops of theory. We need to teach cognitive processes and acquire skills through the application of these processes, not fearing failure. What most people fail to realise about Schank is that his recommendations are based on a lifetime academic interest and contributions to cognitive science and a deep understanding of these processes.

Script theory

Based on an examination of language and memory, Schank explored the idea of personalised scripts in learning. This personalised, episodic model of memory led to a theory of instruction that exposed learners to model scripts by allowing them to experience the process of building their own scripts. We need scripts for handling meetings, dealing with customers, selling to others and so on. Knowledge is not a set of facts, it’s a set of experiences. This is not taught by telling, it is taught by doing, ‘there really is no learning without doing’. Interestingly, recent memory research confirms this view.

Learning by doing

He rejects the idea that we have to fill people up with knowledge they’ll never use. Too much education and training tries, and fails, to do this. We need to identify why someone wants to learn then teach it. In this sense he puts motivation and skills before factual knowledge. One can pull in knowledge when required.

Meaningful stories (scripts) lie at the heart of his instructional method. These contextualise learning and link to previous schema. A fierce critic of lectures and classroom education and training, he has developed simulation methods for exposing learners to script building environments, where they can learn by repeated exposure to failure and ultimately success. Expectation failure is when things turn out to be different from what you expected. This is when you learn. Breaking with traditional linguists and theorists of learning, he sees learning as a difficult and messy process, where failure is the primary driver. We match incoming problems to past experiences. Case-based reasoning is therefore instructive, where we learn by doing what we want to do. We also learn by making mistakes and reflecting on what those mistakes were and what we can do about them. Learning by doing, works. Learning by telling, doesn't.

In online learning this means using case-based instruction, emotional impact, video, role-playing, storytelling. Learners are put into situations that seem realistic to them, to solve problems, and possibly fail, and have someone help them out. Design is hard, reworking the thing into a case-based scenario; something that seems like a goal someone has, then to helping them accomplish it - that's learning.

Story-Centred Curricula

He prefers to deliver learning from mentored experience, not from direct instruction presented out of context. Fictional situations are set up in which students must play a role. They need to produce documents, software, plans, presentations and such within a story describing the situation. Deliverables produced by the student are evaluated by team members and by mentors. The virtual experiential curricula are story centred. Story-Centred Curricula are carefully designed apprenticeship-style learning experiences in which the student encounters a planned sequence of real-world situations constructed to motivate the development and application of knowledge and skills in an integrated fashion.

Cognitive processes

In his latest book Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools he focuses on cognitive processes as the basis for learning interventions.

Conscious Processes

1. Prediction: determining what will happen next 

2. Modeling: figuring out how things work

3. Experimentation: coming to conclusions after trying things out

4. Values: deciding between things you care about 

Analytic Processes

1. Diagnosis: determining what happened from the evidence

2. Planning: determining a course of action

3. Causation: understanding why something happened

4. Judgment: deciding between choices

Social Processes

1. Influence: figuring out how to get someone else to do something that you want them to do

2. Teamwork: getting along with others when working towards a common goal 

3. Negotiation: trading with others and completing successful deals

4. Description: communicating one’s thoughts and what has just happened to others

These are the skills one needs to master. By allowing users to fail in controlled environments, he saw that instruction is not about telling, it’s about real or fictionally constructed experience, involvement and practice, including the experience of failure.

Online education

In fact most current online education he sees as just a change in venue, not a change in method. He argues for much more problem solving, simulation and learning by doing. He is also critical of MOOCs largely “just lectures on line interrupted by quizzes and discussion groups” and he has little time for MOOCs, which he sees as replicating poor college courses.

Influence

Schank has turned most instructional methods on their head. He rejects the subject-led, academic approach, for a more meaningful, experiential, learn by doing method. Using sound principles in cognitive science, he uses case-based scenarios and stories are used to create contexts in which learners succeed, and just as importantly fail. As time passes, Schank seems to become more and more relevant. He’s seen as a heretic but most of the actors in education know in themselves that he’s exposing some deep truths.

Bibliography

Schank, R.C. (1975). Conceptual Information Processing. New York: Elsevier.

Schank, R.C. (1982a). Dynamic Memory: A Theory of Reminding and Learning in Computers and People. Cambridge University Press.

Schank, R.C. (1982b). Reading and Understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Schank, R.C. (1986). Explanation Patterns: Understanding Mechanically and Creatively. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Schank, R.C. (1991). Tell Me a Story: A New Look at Real and Artificial Intelligence. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Schank, R.C. & Abelson, R. (1977). Scripts, Plans, Goals, and Understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum Assoc.

Schank, R.C. & Cleary. C. (1995). Engines for education. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Assoc.

Schank, R.C (2005). Lessons in e-Learning. Pfeiffer.

Schank, R.C (2011). Teaching Minds: How Cognitive Science Can Save Our Schools

Illich (1926-2002) – Deschooling… prophetic on technology…

As an ordained priest, Croatian-Austrian Illich had worked with the poor in Puerto Rico but at 43 resigned from the Catholic Church because of what he saw as its institutional dominance and flaws. It was this that led to a similar evaluation of the ‘new Church’ of schooling and his seminal text Deschooling Society, not his title but the title chosen by his publisher. In fact it is misleading, as he argues not for the abolition of schools but their disestablishment, the separation of school and state, just as the Church and State were separated in the US. ‘Schooling’ for Illich confuses teaching with learning, grades with education, diplomas with competence, attendance with attainment. Schools are separated, unworldly places that lead to psychological impotence and we become hooked on their role in society to the extent that other institutions are discouraged from assuming educational roles and tasks.

Deschooling

We are ‘schooled’ in institutions run by technocrats that take responsibility away from other institutions for social responsibility and learning. It is all based on an illusion, he claims, the illusion that most learning is the result of teaching. Most people acquire most of their knowledge outside of school. Most learning happens casually, and even most intentional learning is not the result of programmed instruction. Most learning is, in fact, a by-product of some other activity defined as work or leisure.

He attack schooling on several fronts:

1. Age – grouping according to age

2. Teachers and pupils – that learning is the result of teaching

3. Full-time attendance – incarceration of the young

4. Packaging instruction with accreditation

Adults tend to romanticise their schooling, yet most, when pushed, recognise the smothering atmosphere of the classroom and that feeling of incarceration in school. Even supporters of schools and schooling recognise that the school has remained largely unchanged since Victorian times with their all too familiar classrooms, desks, terms, prefects, rituals, detentions, curricula, bells, corridors, timetables, prize-givings and reports. 

Educational diversity

By deinstitutionalising education, making it non-compulsory, we can return to its true, authentic value and improve quality. We need to break our addiction to traditional schooling and break its almost religious hold on our consciousness. Fascinatingly, he related this obsession with compulsory schooling to the religious, Calvinist idea of original sin; we are born imperfect and have to atone. It was not the abolition of schools that concerned him but the recognition that a wider and more diverse landscape was needed. He was prophetic in seeing alternatives in skills-centres, educational credits and the ‘possible use of technology to create institutions which serve personal, creative and autonomous interaction’.

Technology and education

Well before the age of the internet he foresaw the power of technology in education and knowledge. He saw an alternative to schooling through a network or service which gave each person the same opportunity to share his/her concern with others, motivated by the same concern. His core idea was that education for all means education by all. He sees us providing the learner with new links to the world instead of continuing to funnel all education through the teacher. In this sense, the inverse of school is possible, recommending four types of educational resource:

1. Reference services to Educational Objects

2. Skill exchanges

3. Peer-matching

4. Reference services to Educators-at-large

One could argue that this is starting to happen with the advent of technology in learning, through search, free content in Wikipedia, Open Educational Resources and social media. Many other formal and informal learning networks have arisen online.

University

His critique of the University system is as fierce as that of schools. He sees them as having betrayed their original values, becoming the ‘final stage of the most all-encompassing initiation rite the world has ever seen’. In practice, it is here that students redouble their resistance to teaching as they find themselves more comprehensively manipulated. This, along with unlimited opportunities for legitimised waste and the rising costs makes them ripe for reform. University, he claims, creates skills shortages by institutionalising professions such as nursing and teaching.

Once exposed to intense ‘schooling’ it is very difficult to free oneself from school and the expectations it sets. He is also right in noticing that this re-emergence of values comes through in educational reform, where he saw that the solution to bad schooling is always more schooling. He also resists the idea of turning our entire culture into a school through ‘lifelong learning’ and attacks the ‘teacher-as-therapist’ culture. He is opposed to pushing out the walls of the classroom until they envelop everything we do in our lives.

Influence

Although disparaged by many educators and academics, unsurprisingly, as he attacks their schooling institutions and outlook, Illich remains a huge influence on educational thought. His critique of schools is regarded as extreme but intellectually profound and related to the corrupt influence of institutionalisation, rather than political ideology or oppression. Above all, his ideas for alternatives, such as ‘learning webs’, were prescient.

Bibliography

Illich, Ivan (1973a) Deschooling Society, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Illich, Ivan (1973b) Celebration of Awareness. A call for institutional revolution, Harmondsworth Penguin.

Illich, Ivan (1975a) Tools for Conviviality, London: Fontana.

Illich, Ivan (1976) After Deschooling, What?, London: Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative.

Reimer, E. (1971) School is Dead. An essay on alternatives in education, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Nass & Reeves – Computers are seen as human…

The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass, two Stanford academics, is full of cardinal research studies on media in learning. It provides a compelling case, backed up with empirical studies, to show that that people confuse media with real life. In online learning this is a beneficial confusion: it is what makes movies, television, radio, the web and online learning work. 

Media equals real life

35 psychological studies into the human reaction to media all point towards the simple proposition that people react towards media socially even though, at a conscious level, they believe it is not reasonable to do so. They can't help it. In short, people think that computers are people, which benefits online learning.

Why is this so? We do not willingly suspend disbelief, it just happens. Think of a ventriloquist – it is hard not to see the puppet as a real person. In practice we can't help but see mediated experiences as actual people and objects. We swear at cars when they break down and kick objects when they cause us harm. We do it because the mind projects intention, even when it is not there. 

Hearteningly, it means that there is no reason why online learning experiences should be any less compelling - any less 'human' in feel - than what we experience in the classroom. As long as a media technology is consistent with social and physical rules, we readily accept it. If the media technology fails to conform to these human expectations and rules - we will not accept it.

The spell is easily broken. If the media technology fails to conform to our human expectations - we will NOT accept it. This is a fascinating rule for online earning. We must learn to design our learning experiences as if it were being delivered by real people in a realistic fashion. The effectiveness of the user experience on an emotional level will depend as much on these considerations as on the scriptwriting and media design and production. It all has to work seamlessly, or the illusion of humanity fails. This has huge implications in terms of the use of media and media mix. 

Scrap learning objectives

Let us take just one example; arousal. First impressions matter in real life, arouse people at the start and they will remember more. Yet if the first experience many learners have in an online learning programme is a detailed registration procedure followed by a dull list of learning objectives, you will have failed at the first hurdle. There is a strong argument for emotional engagement at the start of an online learning programme and not the usual list of objectives. On the other hand, persistent arousal and over-arousal can be counterproductive. 

Awkward pauses

Another simple Nass & Reeves finding is that we have real life expectations for media, such as our dislike of unnatural timing. Slight pauses, latency, waits and unexpected events cause cognitive disruption. Audio-video asynchrony, such as poor lip-synch or jerky delays on video, will result in negative evaluations of the speaker. These problems are cognitively disturbing and hinder learning. 

Experts matter

With experts, respected and authoritative views can, not only bring credibility to the programme, they can also increase learning and retention. For this reason many online learning programmes use a key subject matter expert, or someone with strong practical experience in the area, to anchor the theory and practice. This could be an academic, opinion leader, consultant or senior manager. People like identifiable experts. 

Quality of video no big deal

Nass and Reeves speculated that because peripheral vision is largely ill-defined and we are used to dealing perceptually with low visual fidelity in twilight, fog and so on, we are likely to cope well with low fidelity visual images. So they tested their hypothesis by measuring attention, memory and evaluation of the experience when viewing video. Interestingly, they could detect no difference between those who viewed low as opposed to high fidelity images. So don’t waste your money on broadcast quality video.

Quality of audio is a big deal

They also showed that users are more sensitive to the quality of audio than they are to video. This may sound surprising, but people are quite unforgiving when it comes to tinny audio with variable sound levels. Learners expect consistently high quality at a consistent volume., as we are attuned to close one to one, proximate speech. The lesson here is pay attention to the quality of your audio.

Big screens are good

Taking their experiments further they also discovered that the size and shape of the screen, and therefore image, mattered more than quality. Large screens and images were preferable to higher quality images and horizontal screens and images were also preferred over higher quality. In other words larger wide screen format monitors have more impact than quality of image. This raises interesting questions about mobile learning or small postage stamp images of teachers on screens.

Politeness matters

Perhaps the most surprising thing to come out of the book is the role of politeness - which, it turns out, is hardwired into our systems. People are polite to computers and expect them to be polite to them. The authors' studies show that when a computer asks a user questions about its own performance, the user will give more positive responses than when a different computer asks the same questions. People also respond to flattery from computers, and are hurt if they get negative feedback that is too harsh. They like to enter and exit from learning experiences with a polite entry or exit. This was well illustrated by the likely apocryphal story at Apple, when Steve Wosniak showed Steve Jobs the first Apple Mac screen it has a simple command > prompt. Jobs insisted that it said ‘Hello…’. I think we know who won.

Influence

These are just a few of the dozens of insights in this extremely worthwhile book, based on real research. It should be a must for anyone involved in producing e-learning content, or otherwise active in media production. 'If the designers of media would only follow their (Nass and Reeves’s) guidance, we would all gain through enhanced social graces in our interactions with media and technology,' says Donald A Norman. It is especially relevant to the rise of AI in learning, where the anthropomorphising of chatbots and AI in general both hinders and helps learning. In fact, AI is competence without comprehension, but the illusion of comprehension can sometimes help with engagement.

Bibliography

Reeves, B. and Nass, C.I., 1996. The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge university press.

Nass, C., Moon, Y., Fogg, B.J., Reeves, B. and Dryer, C., 1995, May. Can computer personalities be human personalities?. In Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 228-229). ACM.

Mayer - Over 500 studies on online learning… some surprising…

Richard Mayer is one of the most published researchers in the empirical testing of media and media mix hypotheses in online learning.  E-Learning and the Science of Instruction (2003) covers seven design principles; multimedia, contiguity, modality, redundancy, coherence, personalisation and practice opportunities. Clear explanations are given about the risks of ignoring these principles - with support from worked examples and case study challenges. It should be a compulsory text for online learning designers.

Media mix is not mind rich

His precise studies have confirmed that our media mix (text, graphics, audio, animation, video) in online learning is often flawed, resulting in cognitive overload and dissonance. Perhaps his greatest contribution has been in identifying redundancy as a serious problem in screen-based learning but he is also known for research that produces clear, practical recommendations that do not pander to those who think that media rich automatically means mind rich.

Less is more

If you were asked to sum up the psychology of learning in three words, it could be ‘less is more’, that is also Mayer and Clark’s mantra. In one study, Mayer, et al (1996) presented 600 pieces of scientific learning and found that briefer versions, which were concise, coherent and co-ordinated, resulted in far more effective learning. He is also precise in his recommendations, ‘There is a clear pattern in which the more words added to the core verbal explanation, the more poorly the student does in producing the core explanative idea units. These results are consistent with the idea that the additional words overload verbal working memory, drawing limited attentional and comprehension resources away from the core verbal explanation.’ The lesson with text is to cut it ‘til it bleeds! Bullet points, simple writing, highlighted keywords and short paragraphs are all useful screen writing techniques.

Avoid eye and ear candy

He is also critical of gratuitous graphics which are added to simply fill slots on pages of text. This is not uncommon in online learning, where designers simply take a noun within the text and slam in an associated image. This does nothing, according to Mayer, than add cognitive load and slow up learning.

Background music and environmental sounds create unnecessary cognitive load and distract from, rather than increase, learning. Music over longer periods can be annoying but this also applies to sounds, such as beeps or applause, that reinforce right and wrong answers. This may be appropriate in games, but not for most online learning. Ear candy is as bad as eye candy.

Media mix

He argues that ‘text and simple relevant graphics’ can improve learning as they use separate cognitive channels. They are not absolutist on these rules, as text within graphics can be useful when explaining a process or in labelling.

‘Text and animation’ which both use the visual channel, cause cognitive dissonance and often confuse rather than achieve learning. Animation, like video, should use audio narration, rather than accompanying text.

They claim that words in both text and audio narration can hurt learning. This is interesting as it is often assumed that one needs both to cover accessibility issues, using captioning. In other words, they argue for using ‘audio and graphics’ without screen text. According to Clark and Mayer (2003), ‘audio or text on their own’ are better than ‘text and audio together’. This is confirmed by another study by Kalyuga, Chandler and Sweller (1999) where the group with audio scored 64% better than the group with both text and audio. They claim that one or other is redundant and will overload the visual and aural channels.

Redundancy

A review of studies around this concept, known as the redundancy effect, by Sweller et al (1998) cites a list of research studies that all point to the damage done to learning when redundant material interferes with the efficacy of the learning. For example; they illustrate a point about leaving out extraneous or distracting graphics in media with an experiment, conducted by Harp and Mayer (1997), in which students were given a text to read on lightning strikes. Students who read the passage accompanied by elaborate colour photos with additional captions - as opposed to the text with simple graphics - showed 73% less retention of knowledge and 52% fewer solutions on a transfer test. 

Keep it close

Mayer (1989), Mayer Steinhoff Bower (1995) and Moreno and Mayer (1999) in five separate studies compared graphics with text close to the graphics, and graphics with text below the graphics, at the foot of the screen. In all five studies, learners who used the co-located text and graphics improved their problem solving by between 43-89%. Similar results have been found by Chandler and Sweller (1991), Pass and Van Merrienboer, (1994). Making the learner’s eye jump from one part of the screen to another is disruptive and reduces the effectiveness of the learning. Online learning has also introduced heavy doses of rollover text which is displaced away from the item over which the cursor rolls so that the pop-up text appears elsewhere on the screen at a distance from the item in question. The research confirms that this is to be avoided in learning programmes.

Personalise

Backed up by the work of Nass and Reeves at Stanford, they recommend a more conversational style of audio, using first and second person language. This is not to say that it should be over-friendly or condescending. It should feel like a dialogue, not a lecture. Note that they absolutely recommend self-paced user control, as well as frequent practice and context setting through interactions.

Lessons for production

His research explains why broadcast TV and web design companies often fail to produce good online learning. He is drawn to techniques that entertain rather than educate, often adding media that unintentionally degrades the learning experiences. In fact one often has to break the rules in instructional video, showing, for example, procedures from the point of view of the learner, rather than a third person view.

Conclusion

Clark and Mayer were among the first to seriously research the use of media in online learning and have come up with empirically tested conclusions, often repeated by others, which suggest that many common practices in online learning design are, in fact, wrong. They actually result in harming rather than helping the learning process. They call for simpler, less gimmicky use of media. Animation and audio do NOT necessarily lead to better learning and may, in fact, degrade the learning experience. 

Bibliography

Clark, Ruth and Chopeta Lyons (2004).Graphics for Learning: Proven Guidelines for Planning, Designing and Evaluating Visuals in Training Materials. Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer

Mayer R E and Clark R, E-learning and the Science of Instruction (see p61 for multiple references), Pfeiffer, 2003

Richard Mayer (2001). Multi-Media Learning. Cambridge University Press

Clark, Ruth (1999). Developing Technical Training: A Structured Approach for Developing Classroom and Computer-based Instructional Materials. ISPI

Mayer R E, Systematic Thinking Fostered by Illustrations in Scientific Text. Journal of Educational Psychology, 81, 240-246.  1989

Mayer R E, and Gallini J K. When Is An Illustration Worth a Thousand Words? Journal of Educational Psychology, 88, 64-73. 1990

Mayer R E  and Anderson RB. Animations Need Narrations. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 312-320. 1991

Mayer R E  and Anderson RB. The Instructive Animation: Helping Students Build Connections Between Words and Pictures. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 312-320. 1992

Downes & Siemens – Connectivism… cMOOCs…

Stephen Downes and George Siemens, have connectivism and MOOCs in common. Stephen Downes sees himself as a philosopher with a professional interest in online learning, specifically the use of network processes for learning. This includes MOOCs and many other species of open, collaborative and online learning. George Siemens is a complementary educator with similar views on connectivism and both a theoretical and practical interest in online learning and MOOCs.

Connectivism

Siemens and Downes developed the concept of  ‘Connectivism’, the idea that “knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks”. They see it as an alternative to behaviourism, cognitivism and constructionism. Downes makes it clear that he is not a social constructivist. ‘Connectivism’ is very different from ‘constructionism’, as the focus is on the connections, not the structures or meanings that are being connected across networks. Learning consists of the practices, by both teachers and learners that result in the creation and use of successful networks with properties such as diversity, autonomy, openness, and connectivity. This was a real challenge to the existing paradigms, that takes into account the explosion of network technology, as well as presenting a new perspective on the learning process. It has similar characteristics to those that believe in extended consciousness and cognition across technological networks.

MOOCs

In 2008, Siemens and Downes designed and taught the first cMOOC. This has led to a commonly quoted distinction between cMOOCs (connectivist) and xMOOCs. cMOOCs are open, learner-generated, with a greater use of social and other networked tools. xMOOCS, which in reality are most MOOCs, are more formally presented in a more traditional course structure, with video, texts, computer marked assessment, peer assessment and some social interaction. Siemens and Downes can certainly be said to have kick-started MOOCs but only in the sense of being the progenitors of one species of MOOC (connectivist), which have not yet reached any significant critical mass. While it is true that Siemens and Downes delivered the first MOOC, it was not the first massive, free or even open course (a fact acknowledged by Downes). Others in the corporate sector and online had delivered such courses. Nevertheless, they remain, on this front, pioneers in MOOCs and online learning.

Criticism

Connectivism has been challenged as simply a descriptive, umbrella term for what is known as social learning, a diffuse description of the simple fact that people are connected and learn by that means. It can also be seen as placing too much focus on the delivery mechanism, as opposed to the individuals’ cognitive processes, demoting learning to a mere epiphenomenon. Indeed, it does seem to demote what many see as real (personal and mental) cognitive learning processes and practice. As a ‘learning theory’ it can also be seen as descriptive of only a subset of learning. It is ‘a’ learning theory, applied by some, but can in no way be described as ‘the’ learning theory.

On MOOCs, the distinction between cMOOCS and xMOOCs is often misunderstood. The ‘c’ does not stand for constructivist (Downes is not a social constructivist), it means ‘connectivist’. In any case the distinction is too binary, as there’s a variety of MOOC types that defy this simplistic, binary distinctions. New taxonomies are emerging that more accurately reflect the variety of real MOOCs. This exaggerated binary distinction has led to simplistic criticism of many MOOCs as being poor in terms of their social dimension. This falsely skews the debate away from the variety of pedagogic approaches in MOOCs keeping the debate at an oppositional, binary level.

Influence

Downes and Siemens have defined a learning theory, connectivism, that has stimulated debate around the nature of learning, especially in a highly networked and increasingly technological world. Connectivism is a fascinating flip away from the preceding learning theories, in that it takes technology and networked processes as its bedrock, not behaviour, internal mental processes or socially constructed meaning. It has stimulated debate but has yet to really challenge other more dominant belief sets in the world of learning. Beyond this, they remain significant figures with high quality output, not only in terms of MOOCs, but across the whole learning sphere.Stephen Downes continues to generously inform the world of developments in learning and technology.

Bibliography

Downes S. (2007) Connectivism https://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=38653

Siemens, G., 2017. Connectivism. Foundations of Learning and Instructional Design Technology.

Kop, R. and Hill, A., 2008. Connectivism: Learning theory of the future or vestige of the past?. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 9(3).

Goldie, J.G.S., 2016. Connectivism: A knowledge learning theory for the digital age?. Medical teacher, 38(10), pp.1064-1069.

Schools must change… online must be part of their future… 12 recommendations...

‘There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune… On such a full sea are we now afloat…’ Shakespeare

Necessity is the mother of innovation… out of the blue teachers and parents have had to volte face and demand a huge daily dose of screen-time. Not that the young weren’t doing it anyway, it was just the ‘wrong’ type of screen-time. Teachers and parents, were all a bit wrong-footed by this.

DfE

The response to closing down schools by the authorities has been typically banal. Rather than think creatively, and pull back the Easter and Summer holidays, so that kids could get back to school when the crisis was over, taking the pressure off working parents and teachers, we threw ourselves off the cliff. All it needed was to push the September University term out to January next year with a catch up Summer term in 2021.

So desperate were many to continue ‘schooling’ that we did exactly the wrong thing and took the classroom online through Zoom. Online learning has been around for decades and few use the technology for lecturing online, but teachers rushed at the problem, often wanting to be a classroom teacher on a screen. The eponymous Zoom turned out to be a mad rush to talk at people online, rather than sit back and think about how best to do online learning. We saw students and parents overwhelmed by a tsunami of uncoordinated activity.

It showed how unprepared the education world was for this. With almost universal access through smartphones and the internet, almost all learners were au fait with online learning. Hundreds of millions use Duolingo of language learning, everyone uses Google, Google Scholar is a primary tool in research, Wikipedia is the largest knowledge base ever constructed and an array of free resources from Khan Academy to the BBC were available. YouTube is a huge learning platform. Yet we still got bogged down in petty security issues around Zoom, largely kids pranking because teachers don’t know how to use the settings on the tool.

So what will the consequences be?

First, no one is suggesting that schools shut up shop in the future and educate all kids online. But we can surely take some positives from this experience?

Parents

Parents are often overlooked in education but have had to take more interest in their kids’ education. Many will have gained a new respect for teachers and teaching. The problems of motivation and behaviour will have hit home hard. Parent expectations will change as they’ve seen how communications and online learning can be an integrated part of our future education system. Their relationship to teachers and schools will be different – stronger. They will also have had their eyes opened to online resources that their children can use, over and above those provided by the school.More power to parents.

Tools

Most teachers have had to go back to school. They saw that knowledge of online tools was necessary, as that these tools are what their pupils will be using in their work and lives in the future. They literally had a crash course in what one would call experiential learning, of delivering online, even if it is only Zoom. The advantages and disadvantages will have been experienced. Some will have realised that communications can be focused and rich with a lot of social collaboration and that less is more. Teachers have been upskilled and it is these tools will get more use in the future.

Content

Education is still largely down to teachers, often designing and delivering their own lessons and courses. Many will now realise that quality content also exists online, and can be reused, from Khan Academy in Maths to Duolingo in language learning and a ton of stuff across the curriculum from the BBC and other sources, where there’s a pile of free content that takes the weight off your shoulders. Some may also have experienced the promise of personalised feedback and adaptive content. With AI, personalised learning is now here, using smart software to deliver smart teaching. Many will take that experience and do good things with it when they go back to school. Teaching is king but content is queen.

Homework

I was never keen on the word ‘homework’ as it suggests learning is a chore. This was confirmed by research outlined by Guy Claxton. Nevertheless, teachers may now see a wealth of possibilities for online learning as homework, and drop some of the photocopied sheets and hackneyed ‘design a poster’ assignments. Learning at home will be more sophisticated.

Marking & feedback

Marking, one of the reasons teachers are so overworked, can to some degree, be automated, reducing workload. Formative assessment and feedback may have been tried with annotation tools, even video /audio feedback. More sophisticated adaptive, personalised techniques may have been used. Marking and feedback will be more automated.

Leadership teams

Many teachers rushed at the problem, delivering stuff, unaware that learners were getting demands from teachers in many other subjects. This was overwhelming for parents and learners. What was needed was a co-ordinated approach, with a clear timetable. Schools need to plan for their digital transformation with full digital strategies. There is no going back on technology. Leadership teams need a digital strategy.

CPD

We witnessed a rush by teachers to catch up on online learning using social media. Teachers asked for help and those of us who felt we had something to offer came back with recommendations and tips. I’ve long thought that Twitter was an excellent CPD tool. Many learning theory and practice experts are active and generous with their advice. I’d like to see organisations such as ReasearchED, go more fully online. The teaching profession need to shed their antipathy towards technology. Social media and online delivery for CPD.

Teacher training

There has to be a shift in mindset in teacher training so that online learning is a key skill for all teachers. Skills and practice in technology are now necessary in teaching. This prepares teachers for a future where online learning will be the norm, a portion of all educational processes. To be honest it already is – every learner already uses Google, YouTube, Wikipedia and a mass of other resources. Compulsory online learning in teacher training.

Learners

Learners have been forced to be a little more active and self-sufficient. This is no bad thing. Education, as John White explained, is the process of inculcating autonomy in learners – so they become autonomous in terms of looking after their health, finances, careers… and learning. Learners have been exposed to online learning and more capable of learning online.

Equity

There was plenty of comment about the digital divide, which rolls nicely off the tongue. But we mustn’t let this issue stop us from moving forward, using it as an excuse for inaction. most kids have a smartphone and the solution is to get technology to those that may not have an internet connection. My house had no books, that didn’t mean that my teachers refused to use books in learning. They made sure I had access to books. Learners with specific learning difficulties have long used tech to overcome their disabilities and problems. When you look at technology as a leveller not a divider, it can looks very different. Nevertheless, equity is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Teachers

Many teachers have risen to the challenge. Many will feel that it has been a different, difficult, even enlightening experience, where they had to quickly learn new skills. Hopefully many will continue to explore the world of online learning when they go back to school. Teachers must see technology as reducing workload and part of their job.

Establishment

The educational establishment, the DfE, quality assurance bodies and Ofsted, really do have to waken up and see this, not as a setback but an opportunity. We must not get held back by the same old arguments that the only good teaching is in classrooms. Sure much good teaching takes place there but it also takes place elsewhere. These bodies are not meant to be a brake on progress but they often are. This has to change. Online learning should, to some degree, be part of all learning experiences.

Conclusion

‘There is a tide in the I would hope that parents have a new found respect for teachers and realise that their kids are not the angels or not as ‘gifted’ as they had thought. I also hope that teachers have a mutual respect for parents realising that they are also key to educational process. Teachers may also have found that the online learning community is not a bunch of corporate clones trying to rip them off but people just like them, with kids, trying to improve the world. Lastly, technology in learning should be seen, not as the enemy but as a useful and necessary tool, as it is in almost all areas of human endeavour. We all have much to learn from each other. As for the kids, they’re mostly there already… 

Prensky - Digital natives and immigrants… and games…

Mark Prensky is a lively New Yorker and ex-teacher who set the pace on the use of games in learning with his evangelistic book Digital Game-Based Learning (2001). Prensky claims that today's educators/trainers and learners are from separate worlds. Sure, learners have a short attention span nowadays - for the old ways of learning! His point is that the old ways are inappropriate for the new generation of learners. His argument is that games make learning cool. School and most learning experiences are not cool.

Digital natives’ versus ‘Digital immigrants’

Yes, it was Prensky who was responsible for this useful, and some claim, overused phrase. These terms have become commonplace and Marc has helped make them common currency in the learning field. Digital natives are those who grew up with computers, texting, searching, games consoles and thrashing about in software – the twitch generation. Digital immigrants are those who have had to enter their world and learn about them later in life. Then there’s the often forgotten, but not uncommon Digital aliens, those who remain outside of the system.

There has been much criticism of this distinction as being too black and white, encouraging the view that all young people have full, online, literacy skills, which they clearly do not. However, the distinction is a useful heuristic device in that it points to the obvious generational shift in terms of the commonplace use of online technology, especially computer games. There has been a demographic switch and demonstrably higher use of technology by younger people. They literally learn technology skills at a very young age, such as texting, posting, messaging and increasingly the use of cameras and images. His arguments about context are clear.

Some prefer the generational distinctions, so loved by marketers, and argue that these are better researched, such as Generation X/Z and Millennials. However, many of the critics are academics, like Michael Wesch, who see digital literacy in rather abstract and academic terms. They claim there is no real difference. This is not born out by the usage stats on social media, txting, gaming and use of mobile devices. To be fair Marc moved on and his redefinition towards ‘Digital Wisdom’ has tackled some of the older criticisms. His primary arguments are that education has a problem with relevance, context and audience. The curriculum, he believes, is antiquated, the world for which students are taught has irreversibly changed to include both personal and workplace technology and the students have new experiences and different expectations. We have seen huge changes in pedagogy, especially since 2000, with search (Google), crowdsourced knowledge bases (Wikipedia), video (YouTube), audio (podcasts), social media and voice. These are all radical pedagogic shifts that require new skills. 

Games and motivation

The real power in the book comes from the arguments he gathers on motivation, and using game techniques to improve learning. Games' designers know a lot about motivation. They have to - or their games won't sell. There is, therefore, real mileage in taking the magic dust of game design and sprinkling it on learning. His analysis of what makes games tick is exemplary and matched by a similarly strong analysis on learning in relation to simulations. The difficulty, however, is in bringing these two worlds together, and Prensky is not entirely convincing in making these two worlds congruent. Games may not be as widely applicable in education and training as he imagines.

The primary advantage of gamification is motivation but this can be short-lived if it simply means introducing extrinsic behavioural rewards. However, computer games have long used smart pedagogy; learning through failure, level structures, keeping users within a defined skill level until mastery is achieved, simulations and constant feedback, are all strengths in games with real pedagogic worth. 

Criticism

There is a whole raft of arguments against the use of games, especially in reflective, higher forms of learning.

For example, it is quite difficult to argue that the violence in games has no effect whatsoever on players, then argue that games make great sense for behavioural change, for example in military simulations. Why has the military spent so much on games and simulations if it has no psychological effect? This is a dimension to the 'games in learning' debate that is often underestimated by the games evangelists. Games distract, disappoint or even destroy learning.

Cognitive load - Gamification may well introduce extra cognitive effort that may outweigh any planned advantage. This may result, not in cognitive gain but cognitive overload. This can be counterproductive and can hinder rather than help learning. Don’t imagine that games techniques can be inserted into learning experiences without extra cognitive effort.

Distraction - Games can distract from true learning. In learning, often contemplation, steady progress and cognitive calm are required - not the cognitive distraction of cheap gamification. In this sense, needless gamification can hinder learning. As Merrill said, “there’s too much ‘-tainment’ and not enough ‘edu-‘ in edutainment products”. True motivation does not come from gimmicks, it comes from a true understanding of the needs of your audience. For adults, this rarely means gamification.

Disappointment - this is a danger where the learner is set up to experience a game which actually turns out to be a rather weak affair. Children brought up on a diet of blockbuster, real-time games are often bored by poorly designed, educational games. Poor efforts at games and gamification can disappoint. The problem with games is that although they seem exciting and fun, they are actually fiendishly difficult to design and make. The lesson here is that learning does not always need to be ‘fun’. It sometimes needs to be taken slowly, seriously, with intense focus and persistence.

Destruction - in some cases, games can even destroy learning. This is the argument put forward by Postman. If game-playing induces an expectation that learning must always be an amusing experience, then setting such an expectation risks producing the opposite effect in contexts where amusement is absent. In this way, a games-based approach might undermine other more traditional forms of education and training. Another side–effect is that gamification encourages competitive, rather than collaborative, behavior.

Pejorative -  ‘Game’ can be a pejorative word for some. Not all older learners appreciate the idea of games in learning and may find it faddish, even condescending. Games of a certain type may also exclude female audiences. It may be difficult to get gamified learning experiences accepted by the people who have to implement them or older, more conservative, audiences.

Naive behaviourism - collecting coins, rubies and other tokesn may be fine, if you're 10 years old, but less interesting to adults. This simple Pavlovian form of rewards is often little more than behavioural fluff. The aim is often the false god of addictive learning. Unfortunately, it is all too shot-lived. The gamification becomes a little tired, even tiresome.

Influence

Some also argue that games may turn out a generation with better IQs, better skills, more attuned to technology with a more enlightened learner-centric attitude towards learning than any previous generation. Many also argue that we should harness the strength of games, while setting their weaknesses to the side. Whatever your view, Prensky is a pioneer and tireless campaigner for games in learning.

Bibliography

Prensky M. (2001) Digital Game-Based Learning

Prensky M. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants (From  On the Horizon (MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001)

Prensky M. (2006) Don't Bother Me Mom - I'm Learning Paragon Press

Prensky M. (2010) Teaching Digital Natives—Partnering for Real Learning Corwin Press

Prensky M. (2012) From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning

Prensky M. 920120 Brain Gain: Technology and the Quest for Digital Wisdom

Bennet S (2008) Journal of Educational technology vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 775-786, 2008