Backing up a bit, suppose you were asked to design and deliver a class or training session that had to maximize educational outcome – meaning, it had to work as a learning tool more to the benefit of the students than the teacher – no holds are barred, and you knew of a technique that resulted in an 80% improvement over the traditional lecture method. Would you use that method? More to the point, could you justify not using it? Well that is what Deslauriers, Schelew and Wieman found (see Science article below) when they compared the lecture with a more interactive class they designed to teach physics. All things being equal, if you supplant the lecture with a presentation that is designed to work more in accord with how most people learn, test scores go from 41% for the garden-variety lecture class to 74% for the interactive class. Pretty impressive stuff.

So what is the nature of the design of the interactive class? Put simply, research in cognitive psychology suggests that learners will get better results if they use what they have just been given right away. The theme: Deliver new information, play with it, use it to solve problems, evaluate mastery of the skills and concepts, repeat as needed. Deslauriers, Schelew and Wieman’s physics students were hit repeatedly with questions during class that they had to answer with clickers. Students frequently worked in groups where they were challenged to use their new knowledge to solve problems. Lastly, the students were evaluated in part using two class tests rather than the traditional single mid-term exam.

Let’s make it clear, pouring the old wine in a new bottle does not make it sweeter. Content matters. Doing homework in class and listening to lectures at night is not “flipping the classroom.” Recording lectures and putting them on YouTube or iTunes U is no solution:

“A University of Maryland study of undergraduates found that after a physics lecture by a well-regarded professor, almost no students could provide a specific answer to the question, ‘What was the lecture you just heard about?’ A Kansas State University study found that after watching a video of a highly rated physics lecture, most students still incorrectly answered questions on the material.” — David H. Freeman, Discover Magazine

Even in the best cases of well-thought-out well-designed interactive classes some likely criticisms remain. There is an issue with the Hawthorne Effect that needs to be retired, but personal experience suggests that these findings are not surprising or unusual, at least in kind. Another question that surfaces is whether this kind of interactive class lends itself to subjects like literature, philosophy, history or political science. What are the limits of the approach?

Finally, we have to ask why if there is so much evidence and personal experience against lectures do we persist in giving them? The answer might well be wrapped in four prominent qualities of the practice: 1) lecturing is easy and cheap to do; 2) we have been taught to accept bad lectures as normal (for well over a thousand years!); 3), they (certainly the live version) create an illusion of interactivity between the presenter and audience that is not supported in actual observation (see D. Clark below); and 4), they stand as proof by the presenter and/or the institution that the material has been covered and “delivered” to the audience.

Pragmatically, and for the reasons above, lectures inherently favor the presenter and the institution. Lectures originated in a time when books and information were both scarce and expensive and colleges needed to solve a problem of distribution. Closer to the modern era lectures appear to be supported by tacit agreement with the dubious notion that teaching and telling are the same thing:

“The problem is not with the lecture but with the idea that receiving information is the key part of learning.” — Dominik Lukeš

The notion that the lecture’s time has come is finally reaching the Academy. Educators like Graham Gibbs (see below) have been questioning its value for over thirty years. More recently university professors like Stanford University’s (formerly) Sebastian Thrun have had their own epiphanies on the matter:

“Mr. Thrun told the crowd his move [away from Stanford] was motivated in part by teaching practices that evolved too slowly to be effective. During the era when universities were born, ‘the lecture was the most effective way to convey information. We had the industrialization, we had the invention of celluloid, of digital media, and, miraculously, professors today teach exactly the same way they taught a thousand years ago,’ he said.” — Nick DeSantis, Wired Campus

Dr Wieman likewise has his own concerns about his colleagues and the future of the lecture in science instruction. As recorded by David Freeman of Discover Magazine:

“But scientists who teach have proven reluctant to toss out the lecture, never mind the evidence that it doesn’t work. ‘They say this is the way it’s always been done, and it was good enough for them, so it’s good enough for their students,’ Wieman says. Were this attitude to hold in medicine we would still be bloodletting, in physics we would be trying to reach the moon with very large rubber bands, and in economics we would still be suffering major worldwide financial crashes. (Well, physics and medicine are advancing, anyway.)” — David H. Freeman, Discover Magazine

What seems certain is that we are on the foothills of a major shift in what happens in the classroom. What develops in terms of the effects on corporate, college and military training remains to be seen. After all, it might not result in a single universal one-size-fits-all form. How this upheaval in teaching feeds into distance learning and web-based training is another discussion that almost certainly has to rear its head. The resultant form of the instructional process is anybody’s guess, but what is certain is that whatever it evolves into, whatever we see as the best fit for our instructional purpose, teaching well will remain hard work.

References.
Freeman, David, H., Impatient Futurist: Science Finds a Better Way to Teach Science

http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~jiayang/me1005/2011f/2011%20Science-%20Improved%20learning%20in%20a%20large-entrollment%20Physics%20class.pdf

Gibbs, G., “Twenty Terrible Reasons for Lecturing,” SCED Occasional Paper No. 8, Birmingham. 1981.

Clark, Donald, “Don’t Lecture Me” – ALT-C 2010.

Clark, Donald, “Lectures selling students short: evidence from ‘Science’ “

Lukeš, Dominik, “Putting lectures in their place with cautious optimism“

DeSantis, Nick, “Tenured Professor Departs Stanford U., Hoping to Teach 500,000 Students at Online Start-Up“

Deslauriers, Loius, Schelew, Ellen and Wieman, Carl, “Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class” Science 13 May 2011: Vol. 332 no. 6031 pp. 862-864

“E-learning experts argue that withholding computers at a young age could actually deprive children of modern communications skills. ‘One area of literacy that’s changing is the order in which things are presented – it isn’t linear, it’s organised spatially, and often some meaning is carried in the design, layout, images, sounds, movement, subtle changes in colour in a game – it’s all part of what literacy is in today’s world,’ says Flewitt. ‘These are fundamental changes to operational literacy, the biggest since the printing press.‘ ”

Naturally some question is left as to whether this effect is limited to young children as a group or if one can detect a tendency toward acoustic involvement among younger participants in college classrooms and corporate training centers. The main point, however, is that linearity might already be optional in the classroom, where new and different styles of presentation and involvement might be called for in order to better reach the audience.

To contrast Dr Flewitt’s comment on linear versus spatial literacy, consider this synopsis of McLuhan’s acoustic space by Library and Archives Canada:

“The key characteristic of acoustic space is that it engages multiple senses at the same time. It does not demand that objects be dissected to be understood; rather, the multiple parts co-exist simultaneously. To understand acoustic space, you must perceive all of it, not focus on one part. In other words, acoustic space demands that you apprehend figure and ground simultaneously, that the senses work together. McLuhan believed that oral cultures existed in acoustic space since their primary mode of communicating was speech.”

In this interview with Nina Sutton, Mcluhan explains the rise and dominance of visual space from the phonetic alphabet forward: McLuhan on Acoustic Space.

As a sidebar it is interesting to note that McLuhan eventually dropped the use of the term Global Village from his work preferring the term Global Theatre instead. Apparently Global Village goes back to the advent of radio while the notion of the Global Theatre is more a part of Sputnik, television and modern global communications.

References.

AllThingsD: Early Adopters

PCPro: How Much Tech Can Children Take?

Library and Archives Canada: Old Messengers, New Media: The Legacy of Innis and McLuhan

McLuhan, Marshall. The Gutenberg Galaxy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan, Playboy Magazine (©1969, 1994) by Playboy. Download here in PDF: (mcluhan-playboy).

Source: MIT

Substitute (instructional design | course development | teaching | writing | learning) where you see “research” and “physics” in the excerpts below.

“But when it came time to do some research. I couldn’t get to work. I was a little tired; I was not interested; I couldn’t do research!… And then I thought to myself, “You know, what they think of you is so fantastic, it’s impossible to live up to it. You have no responsibility to live up to it!”… Then I had another thought; Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics. Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing – it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics…. So I get this new attitude… I’m going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever. Withing a week I was in the cafeteria and some guy, fooling around, throws a plate in the air…. I had nothing to do, so I start to figure out the motion of the rotating plate… And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was ‘playing’ – working, really – with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos; my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned wonderful things. It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly…. There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.” – Richard Feynman, excerpts from Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman

There. How does that make you feel? More importantly, how does that make you feel about your work? Worth a try, isn’t it? After all, if Feynman had not realized the connection between play and learning he might have stayed in funk much longer and, perhaps, missed the opportunity to experience the pleasure in discovering something really interesting. (I am tempted to end the last sentence with something like “…that ultimately led to a Nobel Prize in Physics,” but I know enough about Richard Feynman to avoid that one. He would be quick to say that nothing he did was ever about winning a prize.)

Attribution

Miki at PythonWise

References

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman (PDF)

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: The Best Short Works of Richard P. Feynman

The Feynman Lectures on Physics

Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

Related Posts

Cargo Cult Science and Education

Apparently the visual system favors rectangles with rounded corners, making layouts, interfaces and presentation graphics easier to view and take in. Having a hard time believing that rounded corners make a difference, try this. Look at the images below. Which is easier to look at?

Attribution: uxmovement.com

The reason the circle appears more agreeable is because we are wired to prefer round to sharp edges (and by extension round to sharp things). Keith Lang at UI&Us quotes researcher Jürg Nänni on the eye-brain’s peculiar penchant for roundness:

A rectangle with sharp edges takes indeed a little bit more cognitive visible effort than for example an ellipse of the same size. Our ‘fovea-eye’ is even faster in recording a circle. Edges involve additional neuronal image tools. The process is therefore slowed down. – Professor Jürg Nänni as quoted by Keith Lang (see below)

Anthony Tseng at UX Movement presents two other examples where rounded corners aid and abet the perception of graphical information. The box diagram is a common graphical type used in organization charts and process diagrams. Note the differences between the rectangular and rounded lines. The curves add flow to the procession through the diagram.

Attribution: FMC Visualization Guidelines

In a second example Anthony Tseng shows how rounded corners not only guide the eyes but also act on the attention of the viewer. In what might be a great tip for instructional designers and artists notice how the use of the corner radius acts to focus attention on what is inside the boxes.

Attribution: Anthony Tseng

Rounded corners also make effective content containers. This is because the rounded corners point inward towards the center of the rectangle. This puts the focus on the contents inside the rectangle. – Anthony Tseng at uxmovement.com

Still wondering why we see so many rounded rectangles in objects around us?

Attribution: UI&Us

References

Tseng, Anthony, “Why Rounded Corners are Easier on the Eyes“

Lang, Keith, “Realizations of Rounded Rectangles“

FMC Visualization Guidelines

Silentium - Latin for "Shut Up & Pay Attention"

A recent study from researchers Louis Deslauriers, Ellen Schelew and Nobel Laureate Carl Wieman suggests that the Methuselah of instructional technologies, the venerable broadcast lecture, might finally be showing signs of going the way of geocentricity and the four humors. Applying methods taken from the theory of “deliberate practice” by psychologist Anders Ericsson, the research team introduced a more interactive, discussion-based and assessment-oriented approach to a physics class that strongly implies major improvements to science and engineering instruction in general.

The setting for the study involves two groups of electromagnetics students (control: 267; test: 271) wherein both were given the same learning objectives and enjoyed the same pedagogical approach (but not the same instructors) for the first 11 weeks of instruction. On week 12, Deslauriers and Schelew (both of whom have limited teaching experience) jumped into the fray and according to the BPS Research Digest lead the test group utilizing “…discussions in small groups, group tasks, quizzes on pre-class reading, clicker questions (each student answers questions using an electronic device that feeds their answers back to the teacher), and instructor feedback.” And, what is especially important to note here: there was no formal lecturing. According to the researchers the object of the game was:

“…to have the students spend all their time in class engaged in deliberate practice at ‘thinking scientifically’ in the form of making and testing predictions and arguments about the relevant topics, solving problems, and critiquing their own reasoning and that of others.”

In contrast to the test group, the control group went on learning the same material in the normal (typically passive) fashion epitomized by classroom lectures for probably the last 900 years. The students, however, apparently noticed a difference. As quoted in the BPS review:

“Student engagement (measured by trained observers) and attendance in the control group was unchanged in week 12 compared with earlier weeks. In the intervention group, attendance rose by 20 per cent and engagement nearly doubled.“

The critic or cynic might assert that the presenters were putting on a better show in the test case. What about student performance? On the first day of class after week 12 both groups were tested on what they had learned the previous week. In addition, as part of the preparation for the test, both groups were given all the materials used by the intervention group, i.e., the clicker questions, group activities and problem sets, and exercise solutions. The results are as striking as the jump in student engagement:

The non-lecture intervention group averaged 74 percent correct while the control group averaged 41 percent. Factoring out random guessing, the intervention group did twice as well as the traditional lecture students (the effect size being on the order of 2.5 standard deviations!). Not to be downplayed, student reviews rated the non-lecture approach very positively. Ninety percent said they enjoyed the process.

Jeffrey Mervis writing for the AAAS ScienceNow magazine quotes Wieman as saying:

“ ‘It’s almost certainly the case that lectures have been ineffective for centuries. But now we’ve figured out a better way to teach’ that makes students an active participant in the process, Wieman says. Cognitive scientists have found that ‘learning only happens when you have this intense engagement,’ he adds. ‘It seems to be a property of the human brain.’ ” – Jeffrey Mervis, A Better Way to Teach?

Given the novelty of the technique and the overt nature of the study there has been some criticism of the results based on the Hawthorne Effect. The research team discounts this criticism on the basis that the intervention only occupied a small percentage of the students’ overall daily learning activities. Drilling a little deeper, psychology professor Daniel Willingham (as recounted in Carey below) cautioned that the study might not have been designed well enough to discern which of the factors introduced in the new classroom style account for the gains in student performance and to what degree.

In what might be one of the clearest victories for proponents of the Inverted Classroom the research team is optimistic of the result and reckons it can be generalized to a wide range of post-secondary courses. No doubt further studies can be expected. The study in question is supported by a $12 million dollar program to investigate new methods to enhance science instruction using research-backed methods.

References.

Deslauriers, L., Schelew, E., and Wieman, C. (2011). Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics Class. Science, 332 (6031), 862-864 DOI: 10.1126/science.1201783

Carey, Benedict (2011). Less Talk, More Action: Improving Science Learning
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/science/13teach.html

Mervis, Jeffrey (2011). A Better Way to Teach?
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/05/a-better-way-to-teach.html

Dwyer, Liz (2011). Research Proves College Lectures Need to Go the Way of the Dinosaur
http://www.good.is/post/research-proves-college-lectures-need-to-go-the-way-of-the-dinosaur/

Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice
http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html

The Inverted Classroom
http://www.hg2s.com/blog/2009/11/14/the-inverted-classroom/

Is the Internet Changing the Way We Learn?

I like the infographic (see below) “How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education.” It presents an interesting timeline of developments in educational delivery and provides a handy reminder of some things that I’ve forgotten with regard to trends and current industry buzz. And yes, education in all its forms is an industry and has its buzz.

First, looking at the history of distance learning and non-traditional (i.e., non-lecture/classroom) modes of content delivery, writers rarely admit anything that comes before television. Frankly, I never see radio mentioned. Maybe that’s because to most, television is the first “modern” technology. But, that said, there is a long tradition (Boston, 1728) of correspondence education that rises through the Victorian Era (University of London, 1858) that seems important in laying the groundwork of several notable non-residential K-12 programs and even, I suspect, to the acceptance of modern online universities. Perhaps not surprisingly, the British Open University is the first school on the graphic to enter the fray in the early 1970s using television as its primary mode of disseminating lectures to the masses. Funny how television never really materialized as a great training tool. In retrospect, is that surprising?

This is the first of my jogged memories from the chart:

The UO (as it is known) makes perfect sense to me but when it was tried in the US it failed miserably (not so in the UK). You can read about it here. For those of you wondering, the flip side is also true in my case: Schools like the University of Phoenix (as they currently exist) do not make perfect sense to me and yet they are thriving in the US (scroll down the chart a bit), educational bubble notwithstanding. So much for my role as an industry pundit. In ancient times I would have been stoned to death.

Overall this graphic fosters a meme that I consider somewhat dubious: the Internet is changing the way we learn. I think you have to be careful with this one. First and foremost it is probably not the case that we are learning any differently than our forefathers. It is probably the case that we utilize new and different methods for obtaining information, gathering the rudiments of new skills and assessing our mastery of a subject or topic. But beyond that the need for engagement, practice, recall and synthesis seem to be standard among members of our species. As an example of some old wine in a new bottle masquerading as a new instructional form witness the Khan Academy. Is the actual process of learning  – that is, the embedding of new knowledge or skills – any different here? Does it have to be to be important? This brings me to the second reminder:

Given the explosion in alternate forms of content delivery, I don’t know anyone who would go to a traditional college or classroom as a first choice.

Isn’t that odd? I have to confess, if I had to bone up on linear algebra or differential equations, say, I’d go to the Khan Academy (note mathematics as the example) or the Open Courseware Consortium, not to the local college. What’s that tell you about: a) my prior experience at university, b) the reputation of quality of American higher/continued education, c) the role of technology in my lifestyle, d) my lifestyle, e) the cost and accessibility of higher/continued education in America, f) the fact that too many of us have (had to) become consumer-oriented with regard to our learning (in contrast to our “certification”). Take your pick.

Interestingly, given the apparent rise of e-learning since 1999, you would think that we have a viable alternative to instructor-lead training in online web-based tutorials. On the whole nothing could be farther from the truth. Sadly, even though traditional classroom instruction might be foundering as designers search for compelling new forms to save live presentations, it’s hard to find evidence that e-learning as a genre ever succeeded in a big way. Taken as a whole completion rates for online courses are and have been deplorable, levels of engagement minimal (possibly explaining the previous point), and even when they are completed online courses don’t often meet educational objectives except in the most superficial ways when compared to control groups. E-learning does have some notable traits that distinguish it in the pantheon of educational delivery methods: it is a cost-effective way to broadcast information to a population that might have geographical and temporal constraints; and, it does drive consumers to virtual and brick-and-mortar classrooms when provided as an option.

Frankly, if I were saddled with the task of saving e-learning, I would go to YouTube.

Maybe what that says is that even though Television failed as an educational panacea in the early days of distance learning, Son of Television is back, bigger and better than ever before. But does any of this change what I have to do to learn linear algebra? Enough said.

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Infocus 'What Not To Present' Contest

It’s not clear whether the presentation experts at InFocus Labs have opened a Pandora’s Box with this event, but their “What Not To Present“ contest apparently overwhelmed even their most staid judges in terms of popular response and the degree to which things can sink and still be considered acceptable. The response from the field was both daunting and gratifying:

“Our ‘What Not to Present’ contest was epic! Many thanks to all of you kind folks that submitted entries and spread the word about it. Many amazingly horrendous slides were sent in from all around the world. We laughed. We cried. We cringed.”

Naturally once the floodgates were opened the selection of a winner was not at all an easy task.

“We randomly chose our top 3 winners, but then quickly realized that we had to do more. So we are giving away ANOTHER projector to the slide we thought was the most horrendous. We passed the ugliness around the InFocus offices and to many of our partners pandering for votes – and we have a winner!”

Prizes generously include InFocus projectors and accessories.

Suspense mounting? Here’s the First Place winner from the random selection round:

See yourself in that slide? Me too. Kind of makes me cringe. Hopefully we all have slides like that locked securely in our pasts.

But that’s not the point of the “What Not to Present” competition. The good folks at InFocus must surely be sick and tired of their excellent products being associated with – one might even say equated to – the kind of visual flotsam that populated this contest. And they’d like it to stop. So, in an ongoing effort to assist in cultivating our design and presentation senses they are going to offer ongoing therapy to the readers of their blog wherein experts Garr Reynolds and Ellen Finkelstein will offer free advice on how to make presentations attract our attentions for all the right reasons. So, stay tuned. In the meantime, and capturing a feeling right at home on these pages, Ellen Finkelstein offers a few tips on how to avoid being submitted as a contestant in next year’s “What Not to Present” contest: Have Compassion on Your Audience!

Now, ready for this year’s Grand Prize Winner of the worldwide InFocus “What Not to Present” competition? Here you go.

Further Reading

PowerPoint Overload – Two Pounds of Sausage in a One Pound Bag

“The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within”

“PowerPoint Does Rocket Science–and Better Techniques for Technical Reports”

What started as simple private tutorials in math for his cousins – utilizing what he describes as about $200.00 in computer accessories and shareware – Khan drew upon his innate interest in education (along with perhaps his own personal frustrations as a student) to craft a series of screen capture how-to guides for solving high school math problems. As word spread among friends and family members, viral interest forced Khan to move his homespun videos to YouTube to service his burgeoning audience, completely for free. The rest, as they say, is history.

At present the Khan Academy (a not-for-profit educational organization founded in 2006) has served over 51 million views from a library of over 2200 videos. In addition to math and physics, topics now embrace history and biology. School districts and major corporations are attempting to use and develop his methods for their own internal applications. Donations from private sources and the likes of Google and the Gates Foundation have subsequently allowed Salman Khan to quit his day job and devote his energies full-time to the development of his Academy and the distribution of educational programs worldwide (“providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere”).

Looking over Khan’s presentations on his methods you begin to wonder what makes the Khan Academy so successful. After all, this isn’t the result of a major educational research program, a sweeping government initiative, or a mass popular movement in educational reform. Further, what makes the Khan Academy even more interesting is that Khan’s tutorial method is not so much ingenious as it is ingenuous.

In several of his talks Khan is fairly straightforward in his assessment of what makes his method work. First and foremost, as Khan attests, each of the videos offers a lesson on a single concise topic (a “concept”) for no more than about 10 minutes. One key idea, cut in a bite-sized chunk, for a period not to exceed the boredom threshold of the average viewer. Given that the videos are recorded and stored online, the presentations can be played any time and repeated as needed by the student until he or she feels comfortable to move forward.

Another feature of the tutorials is the general tone they are given in. As Khan describes it, they feel like they are coming more from a friend than a teacher. You have a sense that Khan is there with you, sitting by your side, leading you through the problems with a pencil and paper. They are down-to-earth, enthusiastic and rigorous without a trace of giddiness, pomposity or pedantry. The student feels like “…there is an individual who cares about you,” Khan says. The student comes away with a sense that the instructor wants to help him or her over the obstacles in the landscape because he has been in the student’s place himself and sympathizes with the struggles that lay ahead.

Drilling down a layer into the Khan Academy’s unique style reveals even more about what makes the “secret sauce” special. Each of the bite-sized topics that are referred to previously are in fact carefully culled and curated learning objects. The trick, of course, is to first know the subject well enough to select which topics to present and in what order. Following that, the teacher must distill the concepts to their absolute essence.

This distillation process is, to all who have tried it, much harder than it looks. In fact, the ability to select and summarize complex material and ideas, rather than resorting to the indiscriminate slathering of a PowerPoint slide with bullets, might be one of the hallmarks of an educated mind. Clearly, Khan groks it.

Despite the thought and planning that goes into Khan’s presentations they can hardly be accused of being over produced. This is not Pixar doing technical training. If anything, the digital blackboard and colored chalk renderings show the human side of learning and mastery. The notes and diagrams often appear rough and awkward, but they are at the same time quite genuine, funny and sometimes – to the advantage of the learner – mistaken. As Khan explains it, he is often in the place of the learner and, in contrast to many schools and universities, has not rehearsed the solution beforehand, offering the student the patented procedure. Instead he lets the students witness his own thought processes as he wrestles with the problems and sometimes wanders down the wrong path from which he has to back out and start again – just like a real student.

Nowhere in Khan’s methods can be found any of the bells or whistles of modern post-industrial pedagogy. No Flash animation, interactivity, games, social networking tools, 3D graphics or monolithic learning management systems are to be found. In fact there is little beyond a virtual blackboard and some equally virtual colored chalk. You don’t even see Khan’s face.

The faceless almost tactile sketches and equations provide little distraction and promote focus on the material. This decidedly low-tech solution to training might harken back to ancient watch-me-do-it tribal methods but its effectiveness is not lost on Khan’s students, many of whom write to express thanks that they are not only mastering their classes for the first time but excited about the subjects as well.

Khan’s approach is to teach for academic competency. That is, he instructs in the methods and procedures that assist the student in passing standardized tests and formal exams. After the student completes a module, test problems are offered through a program that Khan designed himself that acts to monitor student progress and flag trouble areas for the teacher. The student is asked to correctly answer 10 problems in a row before moving to the next module. This final process closes the instruction, feedback and assessment loop in Khan’s method and further acts to eliminate the small voids in understanding that can multiply as the student moves forward. Interestingly YouTube assists in the process as well, offering statistics on usage and attention.

One of Khan’s own revelations about his method is telling: it’s so simple and effective that he does not see why anyone needs to give live lectures anymore.

Although he does not refer to it by name, Khan points to (and his method directly parallels) the use of what is commonly called the Inverted Classroom. In an inverted classroom recorded presentations impart new information prior to class while class time is taken up with teachers and peers solving problems (or “doing homework”) quite in reverse to what is traditionally done in schools and training centers.

The results of this method have so far been compelling. Both teachers and students benefit. Teachers benefit because more of their time is spent in directed remediation (particularly if they use Khan’s monitoring software), problem solving and exploration of the material. Students like the inverted classroom because it potentially transforms class time into something useful and interesting. In Khan’s case the testimonials from parents, teachers and students are hard to ignore. His academy and tutorials do work.

More needs to be seen to ascertain whether the Khan Academy represents the future of education as some claim. But what is clear is that it stands as a forceful reminder of what can be done to improve the instruction of certain skills and particular subjects while simultaneously improving the classroom experience for everyone.

References.

Bill Gates’ Favorite Teacher

Salman Khan on Future Talk

YouTube Teaching as Guerrilla Public Service

Yes, the Khan Academy IS the Future of Education (video; singularityhub.com)

Yes, the Khan Academy is the Future of Education

Khan Academy Exercise Software

Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos

The Khan academy is Not that Good

We are Khan Academy, You Will Be Assimilated!

Can the Khan Academy flip a classroom?

“We know from existing research on human interaction that we like people who are like us. We wanted to see whether that held true for these training agents.” – Dr. Lori Foster Thompson

Measurements of enjoyment, engagement and effectiveness of the training suggest that each element has a different cause. Subjects reported being more engaged in the program when the avatar matched their race and gender. Learning, on the other hand, was enhanced when the online helper employed feedback and teaching styles more akin to that of the student. Whether this predisposition is strong enough to constitute an outright learning style remains to be seen. According the researcher Thompson:

“We found that people liked the helper more, were more engaged and viewed the program more favorably when they perceived the helper agent as having a feedback style similar to their own – regardless of whether that was actually true.”

Interestingly researchers found no link between enjoyment or overall success of educational outcome based on gender or race. Matching teaching style did, however, have a pronounced effect on performance on quizzes. What might come as the greatest surprise concerns the dominant factor affecting participants’ ratings of overall effectiveness and enjoyment. As it turns out the “perceived” similarity of the avatar is more important than the reality underlying its design.

“We found that people liked the helper more, were more engaged and viewed the program more favorably when they perceived the helper agent as having a feedback style similar to their own – regardless of whether that was actually true.” – Lori F. Thompson

What the study suggests is that perception might be more important than reality where avatar design and success of online training are concerned. In essence, if a learner believes that a particular online helper has been designed “specifically for people like you,” its effects will likely be beneficial to the outcome of the training. Regrettably from the point of view of the instructional designer and developer of the training, one-size-fits-all might be out the window:

“It is important that the people who design online training programs understand that one size does not fit all. Efforts to program helper agents that may be tailored to individuals can yield very positive results for the people taking the training.” – Lori F. Thompson

References.

Tara S. Behrend, Lori Foster Thompson, Similarity effects in online training: Effects with computerized trainer agents, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 27, Issue 3, Group Awareness in CSCL Environments, May 2011, Pages 1201-1206, ISSN 0747-5632, DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2010.12.016. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6VDC-5230FHR-1/2/0510a5a803281cf536a0b381dcd2052d)

Participation in Pedagogical Agent Design: Effects on Training Outcomes, Tara S. Behrend, A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of North Carolina State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Psychology, Raleigh, North Carolina, 2009.

Many classroom instructors and and instructional designers assume that clearer, easier to read, media reduce the “friction” of learning and act to promote and accelerate the transmission of new ideas and skills. Not so, say Connor Diemand-Yauman, Daniel Oppenhiemer and Erikka Vaughan who penned the study soon to be published in the journal Cognition. In some cases, they assert, making material harder to learn actually improves long-term memory. What’s worse, they have the control group data to prove it.

“Many educators believe that their ability to teach effectively relies on instinct and experience. However, research has shown that instinct can be deceiving and lead to educational strategies that are detrimental to learners.” – Diemand-Yauman, et al.

Two studies were undertaken to test the hypothesis that “desirable difficulties” can lead to enhanced learning. In the first, twenty-eight participants ranging in age from 18 to 40 were asked to learn fictional taxonomic data similar to that found in biology classes. The disfluent media presented the material in 12-point Comic Sans rendered in 60% grayscale or 12-point Bodoni MT also in 60% grayscale. The fluent media used 16-point Arial rendered in plain black. (It should be noted that the author knows more than one professional designer who considers Arial to be at least as disfluent as Comic Sans, grayscale notwithstanding.)

Participants were given 90 seconds to memorize their fictional taxonomic data. For example:

The norgletti

• Two feet tall
• Eats flower petals and pollen
• Has brown eyes

Each data set like the above was composed of three species of aliens, each with seven features, for a total of 21 items to be learned. After 90 seconds of study the participants were distracted for 15 minutes with another task after which their recall was tested (“What is the diet of the norgletti?”).

The results? Fluent learners successfully recalled 72.8% of their data. Disfluent learners scored higher: 86.5%! What’s more, differences between the two disfluent fonts were not found (probably because ugly is ugly).

“Similarly, many education researchers and practitioners believe that reducing extraneous cognitive load is always beneficial for the learner. In other words, if a student has a relatively easy time learning a new lesson or concept, both the student and instructor are likely to label the session as successful even if the student is unable to retrieve the information at a later time.” – Diemand-Yauman, et al.

Not wishing to hastily generalize their preliminary results to classroom conditions, Diemand-Yauman, Oppenhiemer and Vaughan arranged a study with 222 Ohio high school students (ages 15-18). In the high school study teacher-prepared instructional content (Powerpoint and worksheets) were reformatted (but not edited) using disfluent fonts or left unchanged. Different sections of the classes were randomly assigned to a disfluent or control group. Teachers were told that the study focused on the effects of different fonts in presentations to counteract the Pygmalion Effect. After the classes were presented in normal fashion exams were given along with a survey to assess whether disfluency affects motivation.

The results? Once again the disfluent group scored higher (m=0.164, sd=1.03; m=-0.295, sd=1.03; using Z-scores) and there was no difference between ugly fonts. Further, the survey revealed no motivational differences between fluent and disfluent presentations.

The authors warn that interpretation of the results and their subsequent application in the classroom be cautiously undertaken. First, the novelty and distinctiveness of the disfluent fonts might be a factor enhancing their “desirable difficulty.” Another issue is that the point at which a typeface changes from “desirably difficult” to “illegible” is not known.

The authors concede that there is a point at which “disfluent” pushed to its extreme becomes “impossible,” hindering learning altogether.

At present it seems as though the tonic effects of disfluency probably follow a U-shaped curve and that the exact parameters that affect the shape have to be teased out through further experiment.

Another question is whether this disfluent effect will be seen with other media as well. The authors of this study only considered typographic media, but one has to wonder if it is possible to obtain similar results with audio and video.

References.

Diemand-Yauman, C., et al. Fortune favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition (2010), doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.012

McDaniel, M. A., Hines, R., & Guynn, M. (2000). When text difficulty benefits less-skilled readers. Journal of Memory and Language, 46(3), 544–561.

McNamara, D. S., Kintsch, E., Butler-Songer, N., & Kintsch, W. (1996). Are good texts always better? Text coherence, background knowledge, and levels of understanding in learning from text. Cognition and Instruction, 14, 1–43.

Oppenheimer, D. M. (2008). The secret life of fluency. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(6), 237–241.

Sweller, J., & Chandler, P. (1994). Why some material is difficult to learn. Cognition and Instruction, 12(3), 185–233.