Carol Twigg's research on effective learning through e-learning

Pedagogy

Carol Twigg points towards the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education developed by Arthur W. Chickering and Zelda F. Gamson (1987)

1.     Encourage contact between students and faculty

2.     Develop reciprocity and cooperation among students

3.     Encourage active learning

4.     Give prompt feedback

5.     Emphasizes time on task

6.     Communicates high expectations

7.     Respect diverse talents and ways of learning

The trick is to recognise these and other pedagogic virtues and then apply them to large numbers of students. Good pedagogy is easy to apply with small numbers of students where one-on-one tutorials and close attention to student progress is possible.

Other projects demonstrate statistically significant improvements in student understanding of course content by comparing the performance of students enrolled in traditional and redesigned courses on commonly administered examinations. Redesign-course students in statistics at Penn State, for example, outperformed traditional students on a content-knowledge test, with 60 percent correct answers in the traditional format and 68 percent correct in the redesigned classes. At Carnegie Mellon University, the performance of redesign-course students in statistics increased by 22.8 percent on tests of skills and concepts, and redesign-course students also demonstrated an enhanced ability to identify the appropriate statistical analysis to employ in a given real-world problem situation. At Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU), the average score achieved on a commonly administered standardized test by students enrolled in the traditional fine arts course was 70 percent; in the redesigned course it was a significantly higher 85 percent.

Continuous Assessment and Feedback

E-assessment increases quality of learning by students as well as reducing workload on instructors:

·         numerous computer-based assessments give students instant feedback on performance

·        automatic assessment and feedback enables repeated practice with frequent feedback

·         students complete quizzes before class and are better prepared once they get there

·         quizzes provide powerful feedback to both students and faculty 

Increased Interaction among Students

Collaborative software can result in a more learner-focused system promoting active participation while giving the instructor an opportunity to ‘see’ their students in action:

·         simple technology to support opportunities for discussion among students

·         small discussion groups promote active participation by students

·         informal discussions are non-threatening to students

·         instructors monitor student contributions to discussions

Continuous Support

Support at all times, for internet savvy students, has become an expectation. It gives their learning journey coherence, sustaining interest, participation and learning. The research showed that small group work was beneficial, sometimes triggering peer pressure which led to meeting assignment deadlines.

Online Tutorials

One of the more obvious applications of the technology is to provide online learning resources:

·         interactive tutorials and exercises that give students needed practice

·         computer delivered presentations

·         computer delivered demonstrations

·         web-based reading materials developed by instructors or in assigned textbooks

·         examples and exercises in the student’s field of interest

·         links to other relevant online materials

·         individual and group laboratory assignments

Wisconsin had developed 37 Web-based instructional modules in chemistry by July 2001. Each module leads a student through a particular topic in six to 10 interactive pages. When the student has completed the tutorial, a debriefing section presents a series of questions that test whether the student has mastered the module’s content. Students especially like the ability to link from a problem they have difficulty with directly to a tutorial that helps them learn the concepts needed to solve the problem. 

Virginia Tech uses a variety of Web-based course-delivery techniques like tutorials, streaming video lectures, and lecture notes as tools for presenting materials in a linear algebra course. Consisting of concrete exercises with solutions that are explained through built-in video clips, such tutorials can be accessed at home or at a campus lab. In redesigned courses, tutorials have taken over the main instructional task with respect to transmitting content: 84 percent of the students enrolled in Virginia Tech’s linear algebra course reported that the computer presentations explain the concepts effectively.

Learning Assistants (LAs)

The use of Learning Assistants is often treated with suspicion by trainers, yet this research showed that LAs can actually be better than fully fledged trainers in some circumstances. They have several advantages:

·         close to course content

·         good communication skills with their peers

·         awareness of misunderstandings that occur in the course

The University of Colorado-Boulder (UC) and SUNY at Buffalo (UB) found that LAs were better than in lieu of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs). In Colorado’s redesigned introductory astronomy course, the LAs act as a vital go-between in that they pass on knowledge of where the 200 students are and what problems they’re facing. This solution may also be good for the self-esteem of the LAs.

Carol Twigg's resarch on cost effectiveness of e-learning

Cost analysis model

The first lesson from this research is the obvious, but not often applied, principle that the application of technology in learning will have greatest impact on larger courses.

Results

The results were astounding. With 30 redesigned courses taken by 50,000 students:

·         all 30 reduced costs by 40 percent on average

·         cost saving ranging from 20 percent to 84 percent

·         increased course-completion rates

·         improved retention

·         better student attitudes toward the subject matter

·         increased student satisfaction with the new mode of instruction

·         cost savings of $3.6 million each year

But it was the means to these ends that were interesting. Some clear lessons about the application of technology to learning were learnt.

Cost reductions

Unless the organisation sees e-learning as a fundamental shift in practice, success is unlikely. A good measure for assessing costs is ‘cost per student’. There’s no real mystery as to how this can be improved, by having:

·         reduced costs with fixed number of students

·         fixed costs but increasing student numbers

·         lower drop-out rates and repeat courses

Whatever the strategy, it is clear that cost control or reductions need to be taken seriously. This may be difficult within an institution, due to cultural resistance and other obstacles, but it does have to be taken seriously. A cost, quite simply is a loss. If it can be reduced one should be duty bound to realise that saving, so that the money can be saved, or better spent elsewhere.

One of the most useful findings in this report is the honest appraisal of potential cost reductions. It is clear that people are the most expensive link in the learning chain. If technology can be used to reduce the amount of time faculty spend in teaching, monitoring and assessing students, considerable cost savings are possible.

The most effective cost saving applications of technology were:

·         Online Course-Management Systems

·         Automated Assessment of Exercises, Quizzes, and Tests

·         Online Tutorials

·         Shared Resources

·         Staffing Substitutions

·         Reduced Space Requirements

Online Course-Management Systems

These systems can administer students, classes and content. Many offer collaborative learning software. The cost reductions come from:

·         Reduced time on assignments

·         Reduced time by faculty on marking assessments

·         Reduced photocopying and distribution of course materials

·         Increased efficiencies in monitoring students

Automated Assessment of Exercises, Quizzes, and Tests

E-assessment automates much of the process. Huge savings in time and costs come from the automation of the design, delivery, grading and posting of assessment results. Much more formative assessment also takes place. This type of feedback motivates students reducing drop-out rates.

Online Tutorials

Online content is accessible 24/7, consistent, sustainable and scalable. It reduces the workload on teachers by presenting knowledge prior to the teaching, making teaching easier, as well as being available for reinforcement at any time. This can radically reduce the amount of teaching time on a course, or reduce the need for high-cost faculty staff. A huge range of such material can be made available from simple documents, spreadsheets and models to full blown tutorials and simulations.

Shared Resources

Avoiding duplication of effort is one of the greatest potential cost savings in education. When one gets away from the idea that every teacher is also a course designer, shared effort pays dividends. This proved to be a considerable source of cost savings. Once shared resources are online, huge amounts of time can be saved by both instructors and students.

Staffing Substitutions

Faculty are often the most expensive cost item in any course. By substituting some of the teaching time with lower cost learning assistants, considerable cost savings were achievable. The University of Colorado, SUNY at Buffalo, Virginia Tech, and Penn State all use learning assistants as a major cost-saving device. These LAs also proved more effective, in some cases, dues to their closeness to the audience, course and typical misunderstandings. Another neat variation on this theme is the ‘course assistant’ who handles all non-content queries by students. This can account for up to 90% of actual student queries.

Reduced Space Requirements

An often overlooked cost saving is the reduced need for expensive classrooms and lecture rooms for face-to-face instruction. This is not always easy to realise but Central Florida and others did recoup costs due to reduced space requirements. 

Summary

As one would expect, some are saving less than they thought they would, others more. However, the research ‘With regard to cost savings’ was described as ‘an unqualified success’ with the 30 courses are expecting a savings of about $3.6 million annually. Interestingly, the major cause of variation in cost savings was the way in which faculty time was treated. Greater savings were achieved by those who redirected faculty time. Those who simply redirected faculty time to other activities on the course did not achieve anything near these savings. Non-faculty support was another major factor.

In simple terms, quality can be delivered at reduced costs through the appropriate use of technology. What seems to matter is a holistic redesign of the whole course to optimise ALL available resources; the use of faculty, technology and other support staff.

For a more European perspective research from the Centre for Educational Research at the OECD is also worth examining, although it is less focussed with less rigour and therefore has  with lots of ‘jury’s out’ conclusions.

The research is available from "E-learning: The Partnership Challenge", from the OECD, with detailed case studies of 20 post-secondary education institutions from 13 countries. It identifies best practices/innovations, faculty changes and academic trends. This and other reports often ask the wrong questions. They simply look at what is happening, not well structured, well funded research projects which put hypotheses to the test.

Another important point is that the institutions may be slow in using e-learning, but students are not. It is difficult to find a learner who is NOT an e-learner, coming as they do from a generation which has grown up with the internet and Google.

Favourite e-learning research

I'm often asked to provide a piece of research to support e-learning and one of my favourites is a full paper on Carol Twigg's research. What follows is a short summary.

Transforming learning through e-learning

There are three key questions when looking at transformation in education and training:

Is it cost-effective?

Are we seeing better learning?

Can drop-out rates be reduced?

Answers to these questions were sought in one of the most detailed and influential pieces of research into course redesign from the Center for Academic Transformation in the US, funded by an $8.8 million grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The Program in Course Redesign, led by Dr. Carol A. Twigg supervised a truly innovative, wide-ranging and significant experiment in the use of technology in learning. In the light of increasing participation, rising costs and problems with student retention, the research tackled the issues of costs, effectiveness ad retention head-on.

Background to research

Out of hundreds of applicants, 30 research universities, comprehensive universities, independent colleges, and community colleges in all regions of the United States institutions each received a grant of $200,000. The research wisely focused on the courses that generated most enrollments. Just 25 introductory courses cover a third of all students in four-year institutions and half of all students in community colleges. In many of these courses, the drop-out rate ranged from 15% at top research universities through 30-40% at comprehensive universities and to a staggering 50-60% in community colleges. Widening participation clearly has consequences in corresponding drop-out rates after only one year.

Successful transformational tactics

The findings showed that the benefits flowed. Not from an incremental strategy, led by institutions, but from transformational change.

There were several transformational pedagogic changes that were marks of success:

1. Concentrate on large enrollment courses (larger impact and cost savings)

2. Improvements apply to many types of courses

3. Don’t fiddle, redesign the whole course

4. Don’t bolt on new technologies to existing physical system

5. Don’t stay with an unaltered concept of classroom instruction

6. Move students from a passive, "note-taking" role to an active-learning orientation

7. Move from an entirely lecture-based to a student-engagement approach

The point of the research was to have some sort of transformational effect on these institutions and the chosen courses. There had to be a shift from the old to the new so that comparative measures were meaningful.

Carol Twigg’s conclusion, at the end of this study was that we have “traditionally assumed that high quality means low student-faculty ratios, and that large lecture-presentation techniques supported by cheap labor constitute the only viable low-cost alternatives. But it is now clear that course redesign using technology-based, learner-centered principles can offer higher education a way out of this historical trade-off between cost and quality. New models demonstrate that it is indeed possible to improve learning and reduce costs at the same time. For the first time, we can have our cake and eat it too.”

Contact me if you want full paper.

Mind reading and learning

Brain scans are really starting to come into their own with a flurry of studies showing how thoughts and memories are represented.

Where am I?
In a study from Current Biology, Several game players were trained to recognise simple 3D environments, University College London researchers then scanned blood flow changes and could tell, JUST FROM THE SCAN, where they were in the environment. In other words the scientists could literally read their minds. Their spatial memories can be read as neurons in the hippocampus, a key area in the formation of memories in the brain, called ‘place cells’ activate as they move around. There are clear, identifiable, functional structures representing how memories of this kind are encoded. There’s been some interesting speculation around reading minds and lie detection and it’s a very long way off. Understanding memory formation (the key to learning) is taking big leaps forward.


What am I doing?
My favourite brain scan study is the groundbreaking Pasceul-Leone piano experiment that showed the same levels of brain activity when both PLAYING AND SIMPLY IMAGINING a piano exercise. In other words we can learn by visualisation and mental rehearsal. Volunteers, who had never played the piano, were split into three groups. First, the control group simply listened to the piano being played over five days. The second group were taught to pay simple five finger piano exercises. The third group were simply taught to imagine they were playing the piano. The brain scans of the last two groups were almost indistinguishable. (Pascual-Leone et al Journal of Neurophysiology 1995)

This has huge implications for learning as it stresses the importance of rehearsal (practice), something long known in the psychology of learning, but much ignored in educational and training practice. I like to see this in combination with a clever study from Arizona State University took several elements of instruction and eliminated them one by one from an e-learning programme on 'computer literacy', using 256 students. They wanted to see what instructional components really mattered in e-learning. ‘Practice’ was consistently shown to be the factor that led to significantly improved results and attitudes. (British Journal of Educational Technology. In ‘The Impact of instructional elements in computer-based instruction’ by Martin, Klein and Sullivan 2006)

Where is it going?
Last year the University of California in Berkeley unveiled their realtime scanner in Nature,. This was put through its paces. People were asked to look at thousands of different images of people, animals, maps and so on. these were analysed, stored and the data used by a computer to correctly predict what someone was looking at JUST FROM THE SCAN. Mindblowing!

As brain scans start to uncover how memories are encoded, stored and recalled, we can look forward to significant advances in improving learning. Many of these improvements, such as sleep, chunking, visualisation and spaced practice could be implemented from what we already know in standard memory theory. What’s exciting about scan research is the possibility of really locating and identifying the physical and chemical pathways. This in turn could lead to massive increases in learning efficacy, increasing plasticity, faster recovery from injury and limiting the effects of dementia and other diseases.

Teacher training tantrums

Usual negativity around plans to have six month teacher training for mature professionals who want to teach. Union leaders throw hissy fits, what a surprise, and the teacher training establishment claim it’s not possible. But Brown was sticking to his guns on this one. He wants someflexibility and a change in the makeup of the teacher population.

Here’s 10 reasons why it’s not only possible, but desirable:

1. Teach First has being doing this for some time, placing teachers in schools after six weeks. They do this by being tough at the selection stage, something that many think is lacking in the normal route.

2. Select high calibre candidates, and the time can be halved. Many have proven, transferable skills and experience e.g. organisational management, HR, finance, projects and people management. Traditionally, few teachers have much of this.

3. Widens the profession to include more people with outside experience in a variety of jobs, something that must be good for the children.

4. All potential teachers have spent three, four or more years studying their subject and the higher qualified graduates have shunned teaching in the past, enticing them back sound like a good thing.

5. Quicker they get out of the lecture-heavy teacher training and into the classroom the better. Many of the skills can only be learnt by ‘doing’. Schools are the proper vehicle for this.

6. Current PGCE courses demand that you wait until September/October for a course start date. Even in the case of flexible courses such as the OU, you still have to wait months to start.

7. A year-long PGCE doesn’t make you a teacher. The idea that there’s some fixed period where you’re fed content, and out pops a teacher, is hopelessly outdated. Smart, experienced people with existing skills can certainly be fast-tracked.

8. I’d go further and argue for trainee teachers to go straight into schools and do far more distance learning and e-learning to support them in their probationary period. Don’t make this a fixed period; make it depend on reaching competency.

9. You can teach in a University without any teaching qualification.

10. We need good teachers – fast! The quicker we get people into the profession and classrooms the better.

Obama comparison

Compare this with Obama's speech today. Obama’s gloves came off in an attack on declining standards in education in the US. Poor grades and poor teaching were identified. On teachers, he pitted himself against the school unions, demanding performance-related pay, linked to results, and less protection for poor teachers. "If a teacher is given a chance but still does not improve, there is no excuse for that person to continue teaching," he said. "I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences." Urging an end to "the soft bigotry of low expectations," Obama said states needed to stop "low-balling expectations" for students and urged longer school days and years.

He got booed on this when on the campaign trail, but he’s sticking it out.

Can you imagine Brown making such a speech? I think not.

 

Social networking is not networking

Leave them kids alone

Social networking among young people is partly the result of parents keeping them indoors. Helicopter (read paranoid) parents wouldn’t let them hang out in parks, shopping centres or anywhere else for that matter. Packing their schedules with after-curricular activities, they couldn’t just wander and hang-out, so they began to hang-out online. Parental anxiety produced the networked society. Then parents turned on all of this wasted, online time and wanted to get them back out into the fresh air, the real world. Finally, parents started to social network themselves and relaxed a little. Turns out the kids were fine all along.

I want to be in my gang

All of this is OK. Kids don’t blog as they don’t have a lot of long-winded stuff to say, so they say lots of little, often inconsequential things within their peer group. And listen up parents/adults - you ain’t in their peer group. Despite what they tell you, you’re not their friends. They don’t want you there. They don’t want you in their gang, and they don’t want to be in your gang either. This becomes more intense as they become sexually charged teenagers, still mostly ‘look at me’, ‘chat’ and ‘party’ stuff. It’s the confirmation of the group that matters not the content or ‘networking’ (that’s a parent term). Neither is all of this disassociated from the real world. It emerges from real world relationships and is mostly about real world events – pics, tales about last night, where we going next and so on. Young people don’t confuse the two, only worried parents.

You may imagine that social networking breaks down barriers between classes, gender and age. Not particularly. The social divisions remain. MySpace was for everyone but when Facebook with its university and college pedigree came along, it sucked in the wanabees. Now that Facebook has seen a mass colonisation by adults, we see young people flooding out the back door.

Twitter – adult only content

Twitter is not used by young people because adults use Twitter – it’s too public. They want personal branding, socialising, privacy and their own place to play, somewhere the adults don’t snoop. They don’t want a functional, open, online, snoopers’ diary. They don’t want older people to know where they are what they’re thinking and what they’re saying to each other.

Adults, on the other hand, are more purposeful on Twitter. They want everyone to know what they’re up to. They rattle on about civil liberties but are far more promiscuous with their privacy. They don’t hang out in the real world and neither do they online. They’re busy, busy, busy and want to tell everyone just how busy they are. There’s little time for nonsense – well maybe sometimes to show you’re human. Twitter is remarkably free of humour and honest tweets about lazing around, getting sizzled, arguments – real life stuff. It’s like reading lots of tiny classified ads.

Kids are synchronous, adults asynchronous

Youngsters are big on IM but dismissive of email. They like their conversations to be multithreaded, quick, funny, and frothy. They want dialogue not a series of monologues. IM gives them effervescence and privacy. Hence the messenger acronyms; POS – Parents Over Shoulder, POTS – Parents Over The Shoulder, PRW – Parents Are Watching, P911 – Parent Alert, PIR – Parent in Room. Kids are synchronous beings, adults asynchronous. Adults much prefer Facebook status reports and Tweets.

Social networking is not networking

Of course almost none of this social networking is actually about networking, in the sense of meeting new people. It’s about networking with the people you already know or lie just on the periphery of that set – one or two degrees of separation at most. Social networking is a myth, it’s socialising largely with people you know.

Future?

Realguard (sic) actions by Andrew Keen and Susan Greenfield will attempt to stop progress by creating PR friction, but the numbers are too big and they’re not read by the participants of social networking. Social networks, at present, are emergent phenomena, as they largely reflect and reinforce social groups, rather than creating social groups. This is unlikely to remain true for long. It turns out Robin Dunbar’s social grouping limit of 30 and 150 were wrong. Social networks are pushing people out of their social comfort zone. Encounters with people of different ages, social class and geography are pushing everyone to be, little by little, more adventurous. Who knows where this will lead.

Rocket Science? Not even science!

Inspirational - yeah, yeah
Yet another, ‘inspirational teacher’ genre programmes from BBC2. Here we have a clueless physics science teacher confusing ‘cor-blimey’ with ‘cognitive change’. Fireworks were his solution to teaching physics and chemistry. Good idea, but he had no idea how to relate the fireworks to the science, and his preparation was woeful. The science was noticeable by its absence. He also seemed to know nothing about chemistry, openly admitting that he ‘hadn’t a clue how different chemicals created different colours in thermal reaction. He’s always confusing his copper colour – blue or green Mr Smith – he admits he doesn’t actually know.

Of course, fireworks are eminently impractical in schools so first up is a trip for the class to the countryside to see a specially commissioned £2000 firework display – OK so cost is obviously not an issue. First problem, it’s mid-summer and he has to get his kids home to bed, so they’re set off in daylight – oh and the display was so ‘crap’ that one of the kids was in tears. TTFN as Mr Smith says.

Next he’s off to the University of Brighton, where some luminescence experiments, way beyond the curriculum, are recommended. So the kids mix two chemicals but have they actually learnt anything? No. He defaults into one of his favourite lines - telling the pupils to tuck their shirts in.
Back to the fireworks drawing board. The chemical store in the school hasn’t been opened for years, so the locks are corroded and stuck, and the light-bulb doesn’t work. The chemicals are over 25 years old, so inert (bit of a problem in fireworks). He’s too late to order new chemicals.

He’s on surer ground with physics. However, the use of a slinky spring to show waves is hardly innovative. I can remember that from 40 years ago. And here we go again – an overnight trip to see a fireworks display in (oh no) Blackpool. ‘That’s a man’s firework, that is’ says Mr Smith, showing entirely expected, sexist tendencies. To be fair they did like the fireworks. Did they learn any physics – not a damn thing.



Headmistress, Mrs Holt is retiring. Another opportunity for fireworks? They get stuck into woodwork (not science) to build the fireworks scaffold. Oh dear, you guessed it – the party had to be cancelled.



Another school trip is planned at huge expense – mining copper in Scotland, the US and a trip to China, where fireworks were invented. A bottomless budget and science has still to make an appearance. What a waste of time and money.



Watch out Beedle’s about
It’s in the same genre as the equally appalling Channel 4 programme on adult literacy, Can’t Read Can’t Write, with Phil Beedle, behaving like a headless chicken. Phil is touted (on his own website), as the UK’s ‘most inspirational teacher’. If this is true, we’re in real trouble. He ranted and railed against the existing system, then applied (badly) some basic phonics teaching (which is the orthodoxy anyway). Even with the lure of TV he only got six out of nine adults through a basic literacy test after nine months. Given the scale of the problem we’d have to bankrupt the educational budget to get things done this way.



Phil was clueless on the basic psychology of teaching literacy. He did lots of soul searching, narcissistic pieces to camera, but after criticising the system, he simply parroted that same system on screen. He was hopelessly teacher-centric and failed to get the learners engaged with examples and work from THEIR perspective. This buffoon is quoted as an authority in high level government reports and bandied about as some sort of schools’ saviour – God forbid.

Move on
We need to move beyond this cliched view of the 'inspirational' teacher towards the 'competent' teacher, who can hold a class and actually teach the subject at hand within the time and budgeted resources of a school. Not these performing monkeys with their banal personal ideas, devoid of any real understanding of the subject or the mind. Teachers can be inspiring and inspiration can come from sources other than the teacher. It's clear that technology inspires young people, so why keep it outside the school gates. The difference is that technology is cheap and scalable.

Wonderful 'learning designer' pen portrait

Starting Out
by Sam Baynham (LINE Communications)

Looking back now, I knew very little about e-learning when I walked through the doors. I still don’t know how to capitalise it.

I was offered the job here at LINE about nine months ago, and I walked into LINE as an employee for the first time eight months ago. I had a worryingly blank desk that has since been strewn with about a thousand post-it notes and papers, a blank and uninviting e-mail account, and absolutely no clue what I was really getting into.

I learned quickly that the writing skills I thought I’d ’d been hired for were not the be-all-and-end-all of the job. In fact, they were only one part of the long, involved complex process that I was going to learn to be a part of.
Job one, of course, was finding the kettle. Job two was sitting down with my fellow trainees and my new line manager, Paul, to discuss the training schedule.

“Well,” said Paul, “Here’s what you’re going to learn in the next few months.”
Two hours later, he’d finished the list.
“And then of course, we can start your stage two training.”
-Stage two?
“Sure. There’s a few stages.”
Oh dear.

I don’t know quite what I’d expected, walking into a new field as a graduate trainee. I suppose I thought I’d get a few months of on-the-job training, then get on with it. As it was, I was writing course material very quickly, under the watchful eye of a senior designer, but the formal training process is still ongoing and will be for quite some time. Training sessions take place every Friday, with one of the senior designers bringing up a discussion point and the rest talking about it, arguing about it, drawing diagrams about it and generally getting stuck in.

In my first few months I learned a number of things. I learned that phrases like ‘a number of things’ are the enemy of good learning, and should be taken out the metaphorical back, stood up against the wall and shot. ‘There are a variety of…’, and ‘There are many reasons…’ are also enemies of the people, and deserve the same ruthless treatment.

These old friends of the waffling student writer have no place in learning because they don’t communicate anything, I discovered.
In fact, if I had to pinpoint the largest single thing I’ve learned in this job, it’s that writing and communicating can be decidedly different things. A learning designer must be an efficient communicator, able to file down complex information to a sharp point and present it to the learner in the leanest, most efficient form possible.
As well as all that, an LD must also be an explorer, searching the dark continents of content for the rare hooks that will engage and draw in the learner. Of course, that’s not all of what an LD is. An LD is also a scientist, and sometimes something of a detective, especially when it comes to background detail.

At this point, I know I sound a lot like I’ve drunk the corporate kool-aid, and I suppose I have to a certain extent. I’ve never had a job where people were so passionately involved in their work, and it’s infectious.
The passion doesn’t just end with the work that we’re doing at any one time, but extends to the field in general, with long discussions of the newest learning techniques.
In fact, the sheer volume of information and knowledge can be dizzying at times, but the involvement is incredible, and you can find yourself coming home at night with your head still fizzing from what you’ve learned in the day.

The things you learn are of course not limited to learning design technique.
I’ve tried a dozen times to explain to my Dad what a learning designer does, but he can’t quite believe I can write learning content about a subject of which I knew nothing a week before.

In truth, I sometimes don’t quite believe it. The absorption process for new information is one that no amount of training can really prepare you for, so you have to find something that works for you.

One week, you can be learning about correct oil rig construction, the next military weapon repair technique, or how to break into the retail banking sector. The information is diverse, and it needs to be absorbed fast, but it’s not the information that is the most essential part of the process. The subject matter experts (or SMEs) will provide you with the raw knowledge, so engaging with them is the real skill, and it’s not one that someone who’s used to writing in solitude gets used to quickly. (Obviously, the office is a lot nicer than a lonely garret. We have a coffee machine, for one thing, an entirely new addiction I’ve developed since I became a learning designer.)

SMEs, of course, want the best, but they also want to know that what you’ll produce for them will be the best representation of their work and effort. We build our courses together, pick them apart together, and often tug at loose threads from different ends. A successful project, I’ve learned, is as much about people skills as it is about learning and writing.

So I’m sitting at my desk, now looking a lot smarter and less unkempt than when I joined as a fey young student. I have the now ubiquitous cup of coffee and apple and I’m sitting at a computer that’s straining at its little virtual seams with things I’ve done or need to do. I’ve been part of the development of a new online tool for Learning Designers that has unified our knowledge, and now the Graphic Design team want one as well. One of my bosses has documents for me to proof, another has a new editing technology he needs testing. And I’m still a trainee, still a learner.

Even when I’m a full designer or even, heaven-forefend, a senior designer, I’m going to be learning for the rest of my career. This is, after all, a digital technology; It’s never going to stand still, there are going to be new technologies, new challenges and new projects, all of which I’m going to have to adapt to. Above all, there’s going to be new knowledge, new things to learn and to teach.

To be honest, even only eight months in, I don’t think I’d wouldn’t have it any other way.

'Pupils better than teachers with ICT' says Ofsted

I was going to write a piece on the recent OFSTED report, that was wildly misreported in the press, but Bob Harrison's done a far better job in this article.

I think a bnigger problem is the quality of the OFSTED inspectors. I've witnessed a few of these and the inspectors are often good, worthy but retired-out people who are somewhat distant from technology. If the pupils are better than many of the teachers, then believe me, they're a lot better than the inspectors.

The Class – a class act

French film ‘Entre les murs’ has for some reason been translated as ‘The Class’ and it’s a harrowing look at education in a French school. It’s the first French film in 21 years to win the Cannes Palme d’Or and is only bettered in its forensic examination of education, in my view, by the fourth series of The Wire. It tears into the a system that is falling apart around the ears of pupils and teachers alike, a system that is stuck in some sort of strange time warp.

Many films fall into the romanticising of education, whether it’s the Harry Potter public school genre or Dead Poets Society movies that portray teachers as superheroes. Few face up to the contemporary problems that The Class relentlessly explores. We experience nothing in the film but the claustrophobia of the classroom, staffroom or tiny concrete playground. The camera never leaves the school premises and the physical environment squeezes in on the pupils, teachers and occasional visiting parents. The school, like a prison, creates its own culture and conflicts. It is doomed to be a source of friction between all of the participants.

The pupils are far from being compliant learners. They’re feisty, questioning and don’t really see the point of the antiquated literature and teaching they’re expected to unquestioningly learn. Crushed into a tiny room, shoulder to shoulder, they’re a tough bunch to control. At the same time they’re full of life, charming, witty and certainly not stupid. The film lets the action run for nearly an hour without much in the way of narrative or plot, a brave thing to do, but it gives depth to the characters, which is the film’s strength. The kids are not mindless idiots and the teachers are not uncaring moaners or inspirational geniuses. The problem is quite simple; The Class – the claustrophobic class, is an artificial environment where people are forced to do things they don’t want to do, and inevitably clash. It leads to a tragic denouement with one of the pupils being expelled over a linguistic misunderstanding.

The film focuses on the language of learning, and classroom claustrophobia things I’ve blogged on before. The kids are eloquent about the things they know and love but monosyllabic about the things they’re being taught. Teaching seems to make them clam up. The exception is when they’re given the opportunity to express themselves on computers, using pictures they’ve taken on their mobiles. In other words, use the media they know well and they’ll flourish.

The acting, given the age of these kids, is superb and the director ping pongs between teacher and pupils to create a sense of real dialogue, conflict and sometimes respect, even admiration and love. At times it’s very moving. But don’t expect to walk out of the cinema feeling good about schools – it’s quite depressing in its analysis of a game that is almost designed to grind out to a long, drawn-out, nil-nil draw. Everyone’s gets on everyone else’s nerves. The staffroom talk is excruciating, and no doubt real. The kids go to school to watch the teachers work and the teachers grind away in a zero-sum game, where most of those in the class will not really make much progress. It’s heartbreaking to see the quiet girl, almost invisible for most of the film, comes up to the teacher at the end of the year and says she hadn’t understood anything.

Slumdog e-learning

Don't slam the Slumdog!
In early January I dared to criticise Slumdog Millionaire at a dinner, and got verbally lynched by several guests. These maulings have continued, and if you want to cause a lively argument at dinner or in the pub – slam into Slumdog. At the same time I posted a critical review of the film, interestingly, got some favourable comments about the film’s slum-porn and improbable plot, direct from India (such is the power of blogging).

E-learning inspired the story
It turns out that the inspiration for this film was Sugata Mitra’s fascinating ‘hole in the wall’ experiments. I met Sugata two years ago in Berlin, where I saw his superb presentation on computers placed in poor villages and slums in India.

Like me, Sugata Mitra told the original writer that he didn’t like the title and premise of the film and would have preferred a tale of escaping poverty through education, not the capricious and ridiculous idea of fate and a western quiz show, “that kind of plot would have been more in the spirit of my hole-in-the-wall project”. What Mitra didn't like was the celebrity culture promise of escape through luck and fame.

Mitra simply put these things in walls and let the kids get on with it, and the results are spectacular. They don’t vandalise the computers and quickly learn how to navigate and then learn English, maths and other subjects. It sounds almost surreal, but he has the video evidence to back up his findings. Delhi now has 48 computers in walls and when he asked these poor children what they wanted to do with Skype, they asked for an English grandmother to read them stories. This has now happened. That's a real fairytale and is truly inspiring, as it presents real solutions and ideas, not some sort of Mamma Mia, quiz show, feelgood fantasy.

Lessons learnt?
Technology is a liberating force in learning, especially when it is used outside of the classroom, in real world contexts. Give individuals the means to expand their own horizons and they do, even paying for the privilege. The majority of families and individuals in the developed world have paid relatively large sums from their own pockets to buy computers, internet access, mobiles and games consoles. This has led to a renaissance in communication, writing, exploration and curiosity. In the developed world we have just reached the point where the majority of people on the planet have a mobile phone. Yet education still adopts a siege mentality, keeping this stuff out side of the school, college and university gates. It’s people power that makes the difference and in the end it’s the consumer adoption of technology and content that has changed, and will continue to change, education.

Brain Rules - John Medina

Dr John Medina’s an eccentric, he’s also an academic, an American academic, and therefore not scared of getting his message out to practitioners. If only this were true in the UK. His book is readable, full of good examples and not short on serious research. All of this is supplemented by some excellent YouTube videos, a good website and blog.

12 Brain Rules

His 12 Brain Rules are a practical list of things you as a parent, learner or learning professional can immediately apply:

EXERCISE Rule 1: Exercise boosts brain power.
SURVIVAL Rule 2: The human brain evolved, too.
WIRING Rule 3: Every brain is wired differently.
ATTENTION Rule 4: We don't pay attention to boring things.
SHORT-TERM MEMORY Rule 5: Repeat to remember.
LONG-TERM MEMORY Rule 6: Remember to repeat.
SLEEP Rule 7: Sleep well, think well.
STRESS Rule 8: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
SENSORY INTEGRATION Rule 9: Stimulate more of the senses.
VISION Rule 10: Vision trumps all other senses.
GENDER Rule 11: Male and female brains are different.
EXPLORATION Rule 12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

EXERCISE Rule 1: Exercise boosts brain power.
A sedentary lifestyle is bad for your brain and your grades. We evolved in an environment that punished sedentary activity –you’d starve or be eaten - with estimates of our ancestors walking 12 miles a day. Exercise boosts brainpower. To be specific the gold standard appears to be 30 mins of aerobic exercise, two or three times a week. He calls upon evidence from Blair, the 10,000 British Civil Servants trial and Yancey to recommend integrating regular exercise into schools and workplaces.

SURVIVAL Rule 2: The human brain evolved, too.
I’m less impressed by this rule. In fact it isn’t a rule as it’s not prescriptive, merely a description of how the brain evolved and differences in its function. Skip it.

WIRING Rule 3: Every brain is wired differently.
Our genetic inheritances and neuroplasticity mean we are all very different. This gets him back on track with some real recommendations around smaller class sizes and an education around attainment not attendance. He’s keen on e-learning, especially if it’s adaptive and provides good feedback, something that’s difficult in large classes. Finally, he goes as far as recommending a Manhattan-size research project to decide on optimal blends of teaching and technology

ATTENTION Rule 4: We don't pay attention to boring things.
Better attention means better learning. The ten minute drop off in attention in lectures/presentations should lead to lectures and presentations being bootstrapped at ten minute intervals through interaction, emotional or other attention-demanding events. Our attentional spotlight is so singularthat we DO NOT multitask. The Broadman Area 10 takes one input at a time – this is why using a mobile phone while driving is so dangerous. It is you imagining what’s going on in the other person’s head that is so dangerous. Brake onset times are slower in cellphone users than in drunk drivers! We CANNOT process multiple attention rich feeds. It’s not possible. We switch between tasks. He rubbishes the common perception that young people can multitask and damns the Mozart Effect. Interruptions can lead to it taking 50% longer to complete a task and a 50% increase in errors.

SHORT-TERM MEMORY Rule 5: Repeat to remember.
Memory is not simple. We have a variety of connected types of memory. This is important and has real and immediate implications for learning. First, realise that most learning results in forgetting if memory is not understood and strategies employed to prevent it. Encoding matters, especially elaborative encoding, the elaboration through meaning, connection, emotion and other techniques, and results in dramatic improvements in recall. The more handles you put on memories the easier they are to haul back into consciousness. Context and relevant, real-world examples have been shown to be elaborative, a strong argument, he states, for not learning in the disembodied world of the classroom.

LONG-TERM MEMORY Rule 6: Remember to repeat.
Semantic and episodic memory, along with its subset autobiographical memory, are explained but it is the recommendations around maintenance rehearsal, through spaced practice, that make this the best chapter of the book, and the best rule. Think or talk about things immediately after they’ve happened and follow Ebbinghaus and Wagner’s research in spacing out your practice. Dan Schacter’s excellent The Seven Sins of Memory gets a mention and he strongly recommends shorter learner episodes of learning, interleaved and spread across time, rather than the normal fixed, long doses. To keep it simple, repeat what was learned in the morning again in the afternoon. He would love the recent trial on spaced practice in Teeside.

SLEEP Rule 7: Sleep well, think well.
In China last year I saw children in schools put down for a nap after lunch. This was regarded as normal. Why? Sleep loss means memory loss. Offline processing during sleep matters. Sleep is needed for learning, as you will replay it over and over again. Sleep is your internal teacher. Enough said.

STRESS Rule 8: Stressed brains don't learn the same way.
An interesting chapter as it relies heavily on the work of John Gottman, and his research around parental conflict and its effect on the attainments of their children. Here, I think, he relies too much on parent induced stress and not enough on school induced stress – bullying, test pressure, peer pressure and so on. In any case, stress in harmful to learning, whatever the source, so learn in a calm, quiet environment.

SENSORY INTEGRATION Rule 9: Stimulate more of the senses.
E-learning gets a mention again through the good work of Mayer, who recommends learning content that has simultaneously presented words and pictures, not text alone, with extraneous noise excluded and multisensory lessons. I didn’t know that Starbucks bans employees from wearing perfumes – detracts from the coffee smells apparently.

VISION Rule 10: Vision trumps all other senses.
We do not see with our eyes, we see with our brains. What a great sentence. PSE Pictorial Superiority Effect is so pervasive that we can remember thousands of faces and pictures after just brief exposure. We were constantly on the move when we evolved and have sensory systems that expect this, with our attention raised in vision, preferring images and moving animation. He recommends far more pictures and animation in education, training and presentations.

GENDER Rule 11: Male and female brains are different.
This is a very strange chapter and a bit muddled. He makes a great play of differences, but doesn’t recommend different approaches to learning.

EXPLORATION Rule 12: We are powerful and natural explorers.

The brain has an evolutionary envelope and has evolved to solve dynamic problems while moving in an outdoor environment. So how would you design a learning environment? A classroom? Two interesting ideas emerge at the end of the book. First schools designed around the ‘Medical School’ example where there’s a strong theory/practice mixture. You learn through clinical practice in a real, practising hospital, as well as academically. This was an idea put forward by Dewey many years ago, and long overdue. Second, a teacher training college that focuses on brain science.

Neuroastrology

What Medina really hates is neuroastrology, the spurious use of neuroscience in learning, such as the Mozart effect, right/left brain theories and so on. Both of these are mentioned in the booklet given to parents from the school my kids attend. Teachers in education are largely in the business of brain development (the only exception is PE) yet they are strangely ignorant of most brain science and the classroom is an anti-brain environment.

"If you wanted to create an education environment that was directly opposed to what the brain was good at doing, you probably would design something like a classroom. And if you wanted to change things, you might have to...start over."