Instructional Design for Mediated Education feed

Limiting Digital Detritus

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0500

After a complex course build, there may be all sorts of digital detritus. These are raw files, some of them with different names but with similar contents as another file. There may be reference articles. There may be snippets of video that didn’t make it off the cutting-room floor.

In every complex course build, messiness occurs. Messiness would involve a variety of raw files.

For collaborative projects where there is no chokepoint for information and where creativity is the key element, that messiness results in a lot of extra raw files. Indeed, that messiness is a critical piece for reaching polished files.

Keeping Trim

While there’s a lot to be said for creativity and necessary minimum files for evolving finalized contents, there’s also an equal push to avoid having excessive amounts of digital information to organize, maintain, and occasionally, update.

Developing an e-learning course is about selecting relevant information and focusing learning for efficacy. It’s about being aware of what is already existent, so as not to reinvent the wheel. It’s about managing information in a way that is coherent and accessible.

Project Tidiness

Projects may be kept tidy with established ideas of quality information to keep. It also helps to have accurate naming protocols

Developing the Learning Hunger and the Research Tools

Another approach is to support learners by building a foundation for further learning, encouraging a hunger to learn, and then ensuring that they have the proper conceptual models and skill sets to do their own research and learning beyond one’s particular course (or program or degree).

There’s a lot to be said for coming out of a project with the necessary pieces intact. It helps to have the correct contents archived in some sort of order. And it helps to have the materials on the order of a couple gigabytes…or so.

All the Stuff that can Scotch a Video Project

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

A recent wrap-up to a project ended with my comment to my direct lead that we were very fortunate that everything went well with this half-year collaborative course build. I quipped, “You have no idea how many things could have gone wrong.”

That same lesson came back to haunt me on a different project, which involved a fair amount of videography. Let me preface this with the reality that I’ve had very good videography support on all my projects…until I ended up being the one behind the digital viewfinder.

Not Just Point-and-Capture

People talk of “cascading effects” that lead to difficulties. Well, my first rookie mistake was assuming that the digital camera was fully checked out and functioning. My focus was on making sure that I had all the equipment—the laptop, the digital projector, the charged batteries, the tripod and camera, the mini DV tapes, and all that, for the trek across campus.

My second mistake was assuming that the camera was set on automatic and was point-and-shoot. My third mistake was not figuring out where the rewind was for the usual test that I do… because when I did that test, which would have shown the problem, I couldn’t find the buttons for the rewind and playback.

Setting Up

At the site of the videography, the faculty member and I swiped the lamp for a softer look and the garish dried flower displays. We tested the dry markers for the white board. We did the full setup. We did video captures of her lectures…and then her guest came, and we did the interview. All

And it wasn’t until a few days later when I had time to transfer the contents that I noticed that I didn’t have any audio line. And then I tracked it back to the office to find out that the camera definitely had a problem and would need to be sent back for a fix. By then, I was faced with a need to recapture the entire session. The only positive point was that all four mini-DVs of the second day with this faculty member worked…and the sound itself worked.

Salvage Operations

Coming at the recapture, I learned much more about double-checking everything and learning about the equipment more thoroughly. I learned about paying attention to ambient noise during the capture by developing that other channel of awareness. Also, I paid attention to how people settle back into their chairs during an interview—sometimes making the camera field of vision seem a little lopsided…and how to adjust for that. I learned how to make sure I had both mics working and balanced. I learned to go with quality mini-DV tapes and not the cheaper ones on the shelves.

I was learning what could go wrong with digital video…and this second time around, when I hit Sony Vegas with the tape, I umm learned that dropped frames, too, were a possibility. Let me save that though for another time.

Employing Highly Interactive Virtual Environments for "Learning to Do"

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:00:00 -0500

The simulation creator and author Clark Aldrich held a webinar recently titled “The Unifying View of Highly Interactive Virtual Environment (HIVE) Learning.” While I’d long looked forward to this presentation, I ended up with one of those mash-up days that allowed me to log on for the last 10 minutes of the presentation, and so I ended up experiencing this presentation as a re-run. Still, I found much that was thoughtful about his ideas.

(Truth to tell, I have long enjoyed Aldrich’s irreverent and creative approach to design and his aversion to the arrogance he found in academia when he was working in industry and trying to bring in leadership professor talents to help build a simulation.)

An Active and Interactive Presentation

Embodying his message of active learning, he brought the online audience in to evaluate a series of screen shots of various games, simulations, and virtual worlds—and asked them to differentiate among them and to inductively identify what makes each of these unique.

He conceptualized Highly Interactive Virtual Environments (HIVEs) as the larger platforms and infrastructures within which games may be played (and within the set of games are educational simulations, as a subset). He describes the games as the “media” within the HIVE infrastructure.

He then solicited ideas from the participants for “metrics of success” in virtual worlds or virtual classrooms, then for games and then for educational simulations. This group was highly active and named a range of concepts. For virtual classrooms, they identified deeper sharing of ideas; participation; learning; performance, and the ease of creation, as some of the possibilities. For successful games, they had a vivid list: fun, addiction, wins and losses, scores, knowledge checks, levels of challenge, and retention. Metrics of successful educational simulations included learning outcomes, goal attainment, mastery, knowledge transfer, skills transfer, and awareness of complicated relationships—according to the group.

Aldrich’s conceptualizations were more developmental, with learners first having to understand the HIVE system and how to function within it, then experiencing the games and educational simulations to understand complex relationships, to ultimately be able to acquire the skills that they would apply in the world. He emphasized the importance of using light games to get learners started and comfortable with the system and media / game. He suggested that corporations that are looking to get into simulations not just focus on the infrastructure that they may purchase but the playability and quality of the games and educational sims that work with that system. People acclimate from lower levels of sims first and then progress developmentally to more complex and higher-level ones, he suggested.

The Invisible System

Aldrich suggests that there are three levels to a simulation. At the bottom level are the actions and tactics that people employ daily towards the aim of certain priorities or missions. Naïve individuals might assume that simply applying more effort may mean success. The real world, he suggests, involves an “invisible system” that confounds intentions and results in distortions between actions taken and end results. He used the concept of a swimmer caught in a riptide: a naïve swimmer would try to swim directly perpendicularly in towards shore, but a more sophisticated swimmer (and one more likely to survive) might take a different tact (conserving energy and swimming diagonally to the shore—is my assumption). Some actions may be counterintuitive but place a person closer to where he or she wants to be.

Useful Frustrations

Aldrich presented a slide on the process of learning using a simulation. He showed how there may be learner “frustration lows” when encountering difficult concepts and asked the participants how they would respond towards learners going through these tough moments. He applauded their range of tactics for not just giving them the answers or releasing them artificially from the frustrations. He pointed out that frustration plays a good and necessary role in learning.

Challenges in Assessing Educational Simulations

He offered some examples of strategies used in assessing educational simulations and admitted to sweating over assessments himself. He showed how adding some simulations to classroom time enhanced leadership training in a military setting in a study that was independently researched (separate from the vendors) and published. He showed a 360 pre- and post-assessment and showed how a simulation helped leaders reduce negative behaviors and increase positive ones (albeit the reduction of negative behaviors was more effectively conveyed in the sim).

Pre- and post- assessments are preferred to show “movement,” but learners dislike pre-tests about knowledge and skills for which they weren’t directly trained. Assessments usually need to be done shortly after a simulation to capture potential correlations and causations, but that then might miss the learning decay over time.

Costs-Per-Student and Time-to-Creation

Besides efficacy, there are practical considerations of cost per student and the acceptable time to creation. In private industry, reasonable costs for a simulation experience may be about $100 - $200 per learner; in universities, that may be closer to $45 per learner. The larger challenge is that most want 3.5 – 4 months of development time, not the 8 months that are minimum for a “decent educational simulation” built from scratch and on a pretty “aggressive” development schedule, he said.

Learning to Do

Clark Aldrich repeated his mantra of how people learn to be, to know and to do, and emphasized that more focus needs to be on the learning to do. His hope is that new media may be used to enhance both more of the “learning to be” and “learning to do.” He showed a slide of a human-embodied avatar and its many features in self-definition to demonstrate “learning to be.” His slide on building “learning to do” showed avatars in a 3D environments interacting and affecting their virtual worlds and changing their behaviors based on those interactions.

He concluded with the idea that linear content is being replaced by dynamic content in learning to promote more productivity in real worlds. His career has focused on his own “north star” of creating “learning to do” well.

Contact Information

This presentation is available on the Training Magazine Network at http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com/groups/show/261 with enrollment. The presenter may be contacted at clark.aldrich@gmail.com.

This online event, which was held July 14, was sponsored by the Training Magazine Network and featured as part of the Elluminate Series.

Scheduled Site Tune-ups

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

When faculty clients or groups contract with web designers for a product, they often use a memorandum of agreement (or understanding) to define the work that will be done. The MOA or MOU should often specify a site tune-up within a particular time frame after a site launches.

The rationale is that no matter how prescient a development team is, it takes testing a site in the real world with real users to know how well the design ideas play out “outside the lab.” It seems to be a healthy practice to see a site as something evolving—not only at the content level but also at the technological level.

This is not to say that the initial build did not involve plenty of research, plenty of innovative thinking among potential site users and professionals, plenty of wishful thinking, and plenty of creative designs. With all projects, there are digital residuals and working files to show the steps to the planning—the screen shots, the videos, and the planning documents. The archival of the site design is critical to capture the ideas that fed the initial design and would feed future evolutions of the site (with standards captured in a stylebook).

And so it was that a recent project has come across its six-month milestone, and resulted in a get-together about possible changes.

Protecting the Good

Over the months, there tends to be a build-up of feedback. It helps for an instructional designer to serve as a buffer here between the user side and the tech side—because some of the feedback may come across as frustrations. There usually has been a buildup of feedback from the various publics that the site has been shown to. And there tends to be that constant comparing of one site with another’s to see what innovations others have in terms of structure and in terms of contents. And the academic units hosting the sites may not have a clear sense of what is or is not possible in terms of the coding.

Approaching a site tune-up, the clients (which also form part of the dev team) does need a sense of balance—in terms of what is working vs. what isn’t. Sometimes, the team may get so enthusiastic about making changes and having the right formula this time that they seriously forget what is effective and powerful about the current site.

For example, one respondent looking at a site pointed to a different banal and static site with a very basic structure as a site to emulate. Later, when we discussed it deeper, it became clearer that the old site would not meet the needs that had been fulfilled by the newer site with the newer design. However, there were some elements from the older site that would enhance the current new site.

Piecemeal Changes

No matter how effective a site is, the webmaster and the development team generally cannot resist some piecemeal changes. These result in added buttons and features that may break the original consistency of the initial design and may result in unintended redundancies. Taking some time to back all the way out to look at the site holistically is helpful.

Semantics issues and naming protocols change a fair amount in a site. Sometimes, with new clients, these elements are not very clear until they’ve gone live, and then changes need to be put into place.

Information and content also accrue on a site. These may make the site unwieldy and may highlight needs related to the site for easier handling of the information and easier delivery.

Core Issues

Central site redesign elements tend to involve a range of the following:

Navigational structure;
The findability of digital contents; The ability to “package” similar contents for particular audiences and needs; The ability to overview site contents, and The representation of visual information.

For this particular project, the issues all seem to have to do with the limits of the technology and programming language (and what may be built) and usability—both for the front end (visitors to the site) and the back end (the builders to the site).

By contrast, site policies that have been well conceptualized tend not to change much, if any at all.

The Hardening of Initial Designs

It can be tough to return to a site and revise after the initial design has been hardened into code…and the database has been populated with contents. While the computer language may have enhancements over time and plug-ins that add functionalities, there still are true limits to what the code may achieve. This in-flexibility applies not only to global changes but sometimes even to smaller ones.

Even more tough to overcome may be the mental conceptualizations in terms of building on what is already known and familiar. There is a kind of resignation in accepting an extant structure that one has grown used to…competing with a sense of sentimentality for site designs that are wholly familiar (and often static)…competing with what one imagines to be possible.

In the Realm of Reasonable Coding

In a site tune-up, the ultimate limits see to be technological and time ones. The budget allows a certain amount of time and talent to be applied to the technology to deliver a site makeover. This has to be done on a live site and without disturbing the existing structure or delivery of services or delivery or contents. Users should be able to visit the site and still find some familiarity there.

Remote Learner Recommendations

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0500

Remote learners have many of the same needs as face-to-face students. These needs go beyond the learning to such things as getting letters-of-recommendation. For many such letters—such as verifying writing skills and academic work—I have no problems writing emails or letters or filling out forms.

What things get tougher is when students ask for letters recommending them for certain jobs that mention skill sets that I have no knowledge about. These may involve customer service, private information handling, care for vulnerable people, and some other permutation.

When the Academic Work is not Enough

People often use the quality of a person’s work to judge something of the person behind the work. Having taught for many years in college classrooms, face-to-face, I am very clear that a person’s work may reflect one small aspect of the person—but there is no generalizability beyond that. Professed values are not necessarily lived ones. Stereotypng from limited, academic work is not particularly helpful.

Hallway conversations are highly helpful in helping get a larger sense of a person. Listening to peers’ experiences with a person is also beneficial.

In the Absence of Real Information

It seems wise to not over-claim what one knows in any circumstance. This especially applies in situations of letters of recommendation. Unless I know something to be true, I generally won’t assert it. Having seen choices that students have made, I have a lesser sense of conviction about their choices or follow-through or application of talents.

Years ago, I was interviewed about one student I knew for his background security check. The interviewer was excellent—laid back, attentive, and totally non-leading. He understood limits to what could be asserted, even about a student with whom I’d worked fairly closely for over a year. That is the standard I go with now—before putting my own credibility on the line to vouch for another person. Security matters now more than in years’ past, it seems, and knowing the limits of online interactivity and just how thin a slice the online learning gives us makes me more leery of any assertions I can back up.

Escalating a Ticket to Level 2

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0500

Every so often, the proverbial curtain is pulled back, and one gets a sense of the inner workings of a company. This happened recently with an anomaly with a grading system in a learning / course management system. The downloaded grades did not fully download, and a number of columns of student work did not show any points.

I replicated this on my multiple computers and then called the 24/7 helpdesk. The person there asked me to delete my current browser and go a couple versions back—for the version that the system was built for, so I did. I went through the tedious add/remove programs process…put in the version of the browser they suggested, and tried again. Same thing. The one piece of good news was that the cumulative summary column was still correct—at least as compared to the system’s output of the averages in the online course (which showed all the grades in each cell). My assumption—hopefully accurate—was that if the computer showed the points, that would mean that it saw them, too, and counted them.

Real World vs. Lab Testing

The person who took my call at the helpdesk said she would try to replicate the issue…and would let me know by the end of her work session that night. And she did—very professionally—with a notice that she did replicate the issue (with slightly different results—a few more columns showed for her than me, but not all of them), and she escalated the ticket to Level 2.

While software systems are tested extensively, lab scenarios are always much more limited than live real-world testing (it seems to me)…because real-world involves lots of different applications and uses. The real world does push the edges. There are pressures of loads…and mis-uses of the system…and “contraindications” between various computer systems…and the challenges of the human element.

User Feedback for Fixes

This was a fun small victory in finding the glitch and gently moving it through the system towards a fix—for all. Healthy tech companies encourage the gathering of information from users to improve the product. And occasionally, users will come across something that is not their own challenge with understanding or using the system…but something that will change the code.

Going Scriptless for Podcasts and Vodcasts

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0500

There are plenty of educators who can speak coherently and amusingly off-the-cuff. They jot a few notes down about the main points they want to it, and you turn on the camera or the digital audio recorder, and they’re off. One or two takes, and you’re done.

This approach seems quite popular—with greater speeds of creation, more of a sense of speaker personality, more impulsivity, and more casual informality. There are also more chances for instructor gaffes, which endear instructors to students and make them more approachable and human.

In the Popular Culture

During a recent foray into the Web, I watched an informal movie review delivered by the driver of a car going down some city streets. It was a short and timely movie review. As far as I could tell, the only reason for this delivery was novelty—and having some background motion as the reviewer took an occasional slurp of pop from a cup that may have come from a drive-through. The camera was placed low and from almost under-the-dashboard. He worked well to create a mood of lightness and enthusiasm even in this constrained media channel. His vodcast was likely quite popular and was delivered through a mainstream mass media site.

Going Scripted

Scripts for podcasts have varying levels of complexity. I’ve worked on some that had the speaker ad libbing major portions. Others are defined down to the sound effects and spliced-in visuals. Some are read verbatim. Some involve directions for actions—like (stand up and draw the model on the whiteboard at this time)…

Whatever works best for the individual is fine, of course. It does help to have some thought put into one’s comfort level with speaking for recording.

The Double-Check

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0500

When I make rookie mistakes, I truly have no one to blame but myself. One recent one left me on the computers for five straight hours downloading video from two mini-DV cassettes because I had failed to save the media files with the project. I was trying to get done quickly, and had not noticed that the “include media” button had been un-clicked / untoggled by whoever used the software before I did. Not only that, but I usually edit the video as soon as I take it off the cassette, and this time, I was merely taking the contents off and was planning on returning later to address this.

All in the Method

Those who work regularly with multimedia know to be methodical and constantly aware…and to double-check indicators like file size and naming protocols. The point is to apply this consistently every time.

Whenever I inherit digital video equipment, I do have my process down—checking that the main battery and the backup battery are fully charged, that I have all the cords and connectors that I need, that all the equipment is there, and so on.

Inherited Settings and Equipment

I’m realizing that this is about inheriting software settings and equipment and having to notice the variances that stem from different users. I also have to be more aware that I don’t scotch someone else’s projects with my own residual settings or effects.

Okay, with videography, I am a rookie, so that’s my excuse. But having lost a perfectly good evening to work, I am determined not to repeat this same mistake again.

Accelerants for Innovations in Instructional Design Research

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:00:00 -0500

In every academic field, virtually, there is a push for discovering new information and new ways to doing things. This is also true for instructional design, which is a cross-disciplinary area.

There are also innovations from mulling over the extant research, which involve mostly qualitative and case-based works. There are the occasional quantitative types of research, but those are more about doctoral dissertations and system-wide research and the occasional business-funded research study. Truth to tell, it may be that the amount of energy, time, expertise, and resources to actually set up larger studies may limit what may actually be done.

Applied Research and Innovations

And yet, as I considered where the innovations come from, it’s more often than not through case studies and applied course (e-learning) building. What sparks new ideas is the application of new technologies to different situations (in a kind of technological determinism). Teams working together, with their different mental models of the learning, offer a rich cross-fertilization of ideas.

Pressure plays an important role as well. Time and budgetary pressures force decisions and innovations that might not emerge otherwise. They push people out of comfort zones. And those that think through solutions may come up with new ones (instead of just the fast and easy solutions). Doing more with less is also an important constraint to work within and result in strong innovations.

Taking on all Comers

So if needs provide opportunities for inventiveness, it is a good idea to broaden the range of projects and take on all comers. Every project has its learning curve, and in that curve are riches for innovations. Many lessons are painstakingly learned. The “burn” from failures help spark new ways of approaching issues. It helps to make up new playbooks for the different projects or to tweak existing ones to be more responsive to the needs of each new client and project.

Accelerants for Innovations in a Porous Environment

Most academic environments are porous and international ones. There are ties between individuals of various universities and colleges around the world. People share all sorts of endeavors, projects, and research. Information moves pretty easefully in these spaces. While there are intellectual property protections, there are not patents per se.

So what accelerates innovations in this field? It helps to have freedom to take risks and to try new endeavors and technologies. It helps to constantly train and add to the existing skill-sets (and not get complacent). It helps to have the right people on the team (to borrow Jim Collins’ “Level 5 Leadership” ideas), who have the professional interests and talents to move the work forward. Maybe it also helps to go for the tougher solutions and not the easy and simple ones.

Then, it helps to have the social ties to amplify and distribute the ideas that work. There are plenty of high quality publications and virtual communities in e-learning to push this forward. Various book publishers also offer important channels to distribute the ideas.

Awareness of Innovations

It helps to maintain continuous awareness of what is being learned. Sometimes, innovations may seem pretty mundane and not necessarily important. Therefore, it is important to stay attuned to what new ground is being broken.

This assumes there should be awareness of what the current research is showing and where the cutting-edge issues are. What generally gets published is what is new, and to get to that point suggests a lot of hard work, both theoretical and applied. They need to go into the stacks to find new information and ways of thinking about something to see with new eyes.

At the Line Level

Line level staff really do have a lot of power to innovate. While their work is seldom “cushy,” they do have access to plenty of critical insights to push forward the instructional design field. They have plenty of access to subject matter experts and others who make forays into the instructional design field.

That’s not to say that there isn’t drudgery (think mindless uploading), but even in that, there are spaces to think…to consider design…and to dabble.

Shadowboxing ideas from a theory “lab” never quite puts instructional designers into places where they can break new ground. Being in a room with faculty clients and working through real-world issues really is one of the best ways to innovate. And then finding the levers that motivate an individual to innovate helps accelerate the processes.

The World Digital Library

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500

The World Digital Library offers various resources from different times and locales around the globe. The contents may well be copyrighted because this resources is contributed to from a variety of copyright holders. The items are well labeled with metadata and tagging.

http://www.wdl.org/en/