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Shepherd accused of sensationalist claptrap

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Interview with Elaine Bontempi, Ph.D., Instructional Designer; Innovators in E-Learning Series

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Khan and AI: Open Online Courses

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Massively scalable training

1. I’ve never been in a country with the optimism I found in China – the students I spoke with had a strong sense of China coming into its own. We are entering Chinese century (or several). By 2020, their economy (gdp) is expected to be about $20 trillion annually. This forecast seems to vary a fair bit, depending on how much the speaker or organization is trying to scare listeners with the west to east power shift. The faculty, students, and government officials that I spoke with are well aware that they are entering their destiny as a superpower. I met a few western researchers – who have worked in China for over a decade – and they described how China is becoming more assertive with partnerships and joint ventures. China is not willing to simply have their students poached by higher education systems around the world. China is experiencing rapid growth in the numbers of international students studying for a degree (rather than only spending a year for the “Chinese experience”).

2. My hosts were exceptionally courteous. I spoke at a K-12 conference in Nanhai District (just outside of Guangzhou). The program to kick off the conference included about 1 1/2 hours of greetings from various levels of government. Dinners and lunches included a stream of dishes that I simply couldn’t keep up with. The key, apparently, is to taste, not eat everything. Chinese visitors to other countries must feel like we’re a bunch of slouches – we simply don’t honour our guests the way they do.

3. The construction is astonishing. So is the smog. I’ve seen documentaries and read articles about both, but until you experience it in person, it’s not real. The construction in particular is mind boggling. Roads, buildings, railways, and airports are being built on a scale that I don’t think has ever happened in human history.

4. Social spaces are impressive. In Guangzhou, my hosts took me down to the Pearl River late one evening. The walkway and park areas were packed – people were dancing, performing, singing, or just randomly hanging out. The energy was contagious. I felt the urge to take up Thai Chi. Or singing. Or something artistic and social.

5. The internet in China is unusable. At least for me. Diigo didn’t work. Gmail was hit and miss. Twitter didn’t work. Niether did Facebook (but that’s not a loss for me, I’m rarely there anymore). My daily information habits (google reader, tag in diigo, tweet, etc) simply didn’t work. I do a fair bit of traveling and I’ve never felt as disconnected as I did in China. However, this doesn’t mean that they don’t use twitter-like tools. I came across this presentation – Social Media In China – that provides a good overview of the tools and technologies available. I’m starting to think that China blocks services less for censorship and more for giving their software companies an opportunity to gain traction.

6. I should learn Mandarin. So should my kids.

7. As polite, courteous, and attentive as my hosts were, they work their speakers like rented mules . Their culture is very much one of learning and wanting to glean what they can from others. The passion for learning is something I haven’t experienced as intensely elsewhere as I did in China. The day would start with a breakfast meeting, followed by two hour presentations, working lunch, afternoon sessions, travel to evening presentation, social dinner, presentations until late in the evening. At least this was the pace in Guangzhou. I’m told Shanghai has a less hectic pace. I was disoriented most of the time – English road signs are common – but I really was at the mercy of my hosts. There is very little I could do on my own. In Europe, I can get by with English. In China, I very rapidly discovered I needed translators. I couldn’t order a coffee (tea) or beverage on my own. Even hand gestures were futile. It’s quite a fatiquing process.

Finally, a few quick notes from the IADIS conference, particularly Prof Gao Hong Qing: Dean of Network Center, He Nan Normal University, China. He spoke on the topic of Cloud computing in China Education

Internet Stats in China:
457 million online
34.4% penetration
Over 300 million mobile internet users
73 million new users in last year alone (2009 to 2010)
78% access internet via desktop
66.2% mobile
45.7% laptop (but fastest growing segment (2010)
Time online: 18.3 hours per week (2010). Slight decrease from 2009.
Ages 10-29 largest users of internet

Learning online:
Growing rapidly (no stats given)
Open University of China – largest online university in the world
Modern distance education project in rural primary/secondary schools (all classrooms can connect to the internet).
Currently 2429 university/colleges linked to china education and research network. 64, 797 middle/primary schools.
IT needs to help universities address their “business challenges” of doing more with less, reduced risk, etc.
Cloud computing in China: 660 million yuan ($103 million) has been allocated for cloud computing research

The prominence of US-based tech firms was significant: Microsoft has a huge footprint. As does Cisco. The language of the presentations (especially on cloud computing) was indistinguishable from what I hear at western conferences.

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A few thoughts on China and education

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Face-to-face is for special occasions

Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer’s book e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning – now in its 3rd edition.

An expert in evidence-based elearning – author of seven books!

Ruth@clarktraining.com

Let’s reflect back on the three editions of the book – what’s stayed the same and what’s changed?

Technology has changed! Smart phone…search functions…facebook/web 2.0…gaming…the cloud.

And what’s happened in your own life – new job? new family? losses? gains?

Some surprises:

Virtual classroom – SLOW adoption
Online collaborative learning? We’ve seen the tech expand; what about the research?
Multimedia principles – basically the same
Growth in scenario based
In 2001 = about 11% of delivery media was elearning; in 2009 to 36% – gradual decrease in instructor led.

Goal of books – help practitioners apply evidence based elearning guidelines to design, dev, eval of multimedia learning —> to help us move toward professionalization!

So are we an emerging profession? Are we still order takers? Or are we growing to become business partners? (64% of audience said – we’ve become more professional in the last 20 years as a profession, but not much…)

First half of book based on Mayer’s multimedia research…

Section 3 (of book):

Summary of Mayer’s research (use of graphics and words) – multimedia, contiguity, modality, redundancy, coherence, personalization, segmentation pretraining.

Working memory – we can hold five chunks (used to say seven, plus or minus 2). The cognitive model of working memory hasn’t changed that much.

But now we’re talking more about cognitive load. (didn’t talk about that at all in the first edition.) Credit to Sweller.

3 Forms of Cognitive Load:

intrinsic (the complexity of your content) – listen to the audio, translate it, construct a response and pronounce it quickly – the number of cognitive activities you have to perform. When you have greater intrinsic load, you have to attend more to cognitive load.
extrinsic – extraneous load put onto learner by poor design.
germane load – the good stuff. When people are learning we want people to be engaged with their working memory.
Your job – to manage intrinsic load (esp when high), keep extraneous load low, and to maximize germane load…(you’ll see more about this in the 3rd edition of the book).

Eye Tracking Research

Meta-Analysis

Right now just have a few experiments in this area…

Section 3 (of book): Use of Key Methods

Evidence around practice, collaboration and learner control in learner.

Research on examples and worked examples — where was learning better? (A) example, practice, example, practice…OR B) example, practice, practice, practice) – does more practice lead to better learning? –> worked examples/A) was less training time and better outcomes/fewer mistakes on the test. Combining worked examples with practice gives you better and faster learning).

Better learning transfer when you distribute practice.

Worked examples lead to better learning outcomes for novices…having worked examples for the expert actually depressed their learning outcomes (the expertise reversal effect). Some instructional methods for beginning learners may degrade learning for experts. (it might disrupt the experts own working models). So as we worked with experts, we should FADE back worked examples…

Some problems with worked examples: learners can gloss over them. Need to make worked examples more engaging. Add a self-explanation question. Add a question that forces the learner to process and think deeply. (e.g., – in a scenario program now ask “why is it important to verbally recap the doctor’s questions about contra indicators?”…)

Tests can be work-related projects that demonstrate quality.

The research on online collaboration

Evidence mostly around collaboration IN THE CLASSROOM vs. in an elearning setting. Need more research in this area.

Kirchner (2011 study) – collaboration in problem solving – notes that collaboration takes cognitive resources. Do you benefit enough? If the problems are relatively easy, then learning better in a solo setting. If problems more complex, then collab will lead to better learning.

Architectures

Three approaches to design.

Receptive – little overt engagement (as in this webinar) – documentaries, college lectures, books – these are mostly briefings.
Directive – traditionally used for procedures – have to do each step exactly in order. Used for software training. Instruct, Demo, Practice, Feedback.
Guided discovery – emerging in last five years – some people call this immersive learning.
Poll question – which architecture is predominant in your org’s elearning? (directive = Captivate; low percentage of guided discovery…) 42 % receptive, 45% directive, 4% guided, 8% we use all three equally.

A Look at Guided Discovery

(She’s showing a demo of guided discovery of a car repair – virtual shop that you have to go into and diagnose).

Good for critical thinking and problem solving.

“Experience packaged in a box.” – simulations.

Does it work? Research on part-task (more traditional directive learning) vs. whole task training (guided discovery) – better transfer with the whole task test….(e.g., how to use Excel to create a budget – to determine how well they could apply what they’ve learned in a different setting.)

Discovery vs. guided discovery: Mayer said “discovery learning does not work” – meta-analysis of discovery approach – much better learning from direct instruction or guided discovery. Pure discovery = let them explore and go here and there. It doesn’t work as well – learner’s need guidance.

Scaffolding – this means we need to do better scaffolding. We need to provide guidance and structure.

Start with simple cases and move to more demanding ones.

Case 1: demo; Case 2: let the learner complete part; Case 3: have learner do more; Case 4 – have learner do them all.

Ruth Clark new book – the essentials of scenario based elearning – she’s finishing it up now – will include scaffolding in Scenario Based eLearning (SBEL) – coming out next year.

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Ruth Clark: eLearning and the Science of Instruction: A 10 Year Retrospection

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Stepping Stones

Today I am the VP of Learning Design at Kineo, a global elearning company. We do a lot of work in Flash and Articulate, but see ourselves as tool agnostic.

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My life?in elearning

How to make good Elearning succeed in your Organization

ELearning can be much more effective, and cheaper than more traditional learning methods for many reasons.
ELearning can tailor itself in ‘real time’ in response to student progress. Immediate feedback allows the student’s progress to be monitored and the learning materials to be automatically adjusted accordingly. Students want to travel a lot but due to their schedule they might have to cancel their travel plans but if they had a travel cancellation insurance they can save the investments made towards their tour. The student can also monitor his/her own progress in an ELearning environment much more easily than in traditional learning environments.

Elearning can employ all of the senses in the learning process, by using the latest technologies. People remember 10 percent of what they read, 20 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what they see and 50 percent of what they hear and see. Because different people have different learning styles, allowing student to receive information using more than one of the senses increases recall greatly.

While few organizations find ELearning courses cheaper to develop than traditional methods, many find them cheaper to deliver once they are built . Visitors health insurance is required you overcome the unexpected health expenses while travelling overseas. Once an ELearning course has been built, it can be reused day in, day out and can be used to reach a potentially unlimited audience without the costs associated with more traditional methods of learning – for example, there is no need to pay an instructor, rent out a room, pay for lunch for the students or pay any travel costs involved in running a course.

A Student can choose the most convenient time and place in which to learn, and can also work at his/her own pace. For an organization, this can mean reduced cost of training, as the student does not have to take time off of work to attend training and there are no hotel / food / travel costs involved. For the student, this can mean more convenience. ELearning is always available, and can be fit around a student’s family and working commitments. Many students also tend to feel less intimidated by ELearning than they do by having to face other students in a classroom atmosphere, and compare their own progress to that of others in the classroom who may be of a different competency level, age, race or gender.

ELearning courses can be kept up to date much more easily (and more cheaply) than traditional paper-based courses. Only one copy of the course needs to be updated – course binders, books, and other materials do not have to be re-printed each time there is an update – and ELearning can thus much more easily and cheaply include relevant information from the student’s everyday life, from the latest news events or developments within an industry or academic field. This can make the courses more relevant, timely and more interesting to the student.

An ELearning program can help companies successfully train people in specific skills for specific performances (Study-Center.com offers ELearning in specialist skills to the Electricity industry as well as general courses in subjects like Telephone skills) while providing increased access to information tools for decision-making and general skills that effect overall employee performance.
Very importantly, ELearning is widely available to all, often extremely cheaply (sometimes even free!). With increasing numbers of people having direct access to the web (72% of employees now have access to a computer with internet access as part of their jobs ), a wide number of courses on a wide number of subjects is available, making it possible for people in remote locations and people with disabilities to participate in ELearning much more easily.

For the organization that developed a good quality ELearning course in the first place, it means extra income from that course, as well as the reputation for providing good quality ELearning content outside of the organization. For the purchaser of such ELearning content, it provides a cheaper way to develop ELearning content. And for the LMS host (in this case, Blackboard.com) it makes their LMS system more appealing to those who wish to use an LMS as they know they can choose from a wealth of ELearning content that has already been developed.