Study: Podcasts enhance learning?

Study: class podcasts can lead to better grades - Ars Technica:

Jacqui Cheng examines a study performed by State University of New York (SUNY) Fredonia psychologist Dani McKinney. The study suggests that students who download a podcast version of a university lecture tend to perform better academically, than those who don't.

There are a few problems with the study, the first of which is the small sample size. Only 64 students in a single class were studied. I'm not sure how any conclusions can be drawn from such a small sample.

However, Cheng points out something that perhaps has more bearing. She notes that the podcast group was being compared with a group that attended a live lecture and received printed slides :

"I know from experience that many students think that printed slides are merely notes in prepackaged form."

So, even if we accept the findings, it may not be the podcast per se, but rather the style of note-taking it engenders that enhances learning:

"McKinney acknowledged that the students who downloaded the podcast simply seemed to do better with taking notes and paying closer attention to what was being said, as they were able to go back and repeat parts of the lecture they had trouble understanding. 'It isn't so much that you have a podcast, it's what you do with it,' she told New Scientist."

Effective note taking is a form of gaining ownership of the content. It is a way of personalizing and integrating new knowledge into our personal frame of reference. If a podcast can enhance a student's ability to make effective notes, it is little wonder that it's use may see an increase in test scores.

Note Taking and Learning: A Summary of Research by Françoise Boch, Stendhal University, and Annie Piolat, University of Provence is an interesting read in relevance to this. It also contains a useful reference section pointing to further studies.

A SCORM By Any Other Name...

LETSI Blog - Name the Next SCORM:

LETSI, the group that was formed to steward the next generation of ADL's SCORM interoperability model, has decided to abandon the SCORM name, in favor of something more fitting the new challenges faced.

"We are going to leave SCORM’s constraints behind and change the name of LETSI’s interoperability framework."

So SCORM 2.0 won't be SCORM... but something new. And you can be the one to name it! Check out the linked article and submit your ideas to LETSI. Not sure if there is a prize for the winning name, however (there should be, if there isn't!), but you will guarantee your fame in the eLearning community... at least until the next, next generation...

Also, check out the SCORM 2.0 Assumption document that helps to explain what the new "thing" is intended to be.

Enterprise 2.0 Packages reviewed

Jive, Lotus Connections and Socialtext | Jon Mell - Web 2.0 ideas and strategy:

Jon Mell looks at three social software platforms being marketed to the corporate world.

Here are the conclusions, but check the article for more detail:

"Jive - strongest discussion feature, the most depth in terms of customisation, the most “rounded” in terms of general use, has “Community” offering for public-facing projects. Subscription based pricing.

Connections - strongest profile features, excellent at finding expertise. One-off perpetual license model. Significant improvements coming in the Summer release. Can be used as a social operating system to power other applications

Socialtext - strongest wiki and status features, has offline capability and Sharepoint integration. Available as an appliance. Desktop client could have a dramatic impact on adoption"

The Future of Corporate Training : Karrer on Cross

Corporate Training : eLearning Technology

Tony Karrer makes some excellent points in a commentary on Jay Cross's "eLearning is not the Answer".

In terms of Push versus Pull Learning, Karrer notes that, while learning professionals may wish it were otherwise,

80%+ of what everyone experiences is a continuous stream of requests for push learning with little to no opportunity to do something else.

E.Learning Age 2009 Awards Launched

E.Learning Age Magazine's 2009 E-Learning Awards

The UK's e.learning age Magazine is seeking entries for its 2009 E-Learning Awards.

Last year's awards were announced in November and can be found here.

The ‘Least Assistance’ Principle

Learnlets : The ‘Least Assistance’ Principle:

Clark Quinn makes some points about the role of rapid elearning and social learning tools. Similar to yesterday's post about "half designed" courses, he brings up the concept of "least assistance". What is the least assistance we can provide that will still help learners meet their goals?

Part of the key to both the "least assistance" principle and the "imperfect" design ideas of yesterday's post is that the system must support the learner's goals... not the training department's goals.

"we shouldn’t give people what they don’t need, instead we need to focus on what the ‘least assistance’ we can give them is.

In many cases, the least assistance we can give is self-help, which is why I believe social learning tools are one of the best investments that can be made. The answer may well be ‘out there’, and rather than for learning designers to try to track it down and capture it, the learner can send out the need and there’s a good chance an answer will come back!"

Over-designed, heavy courses may meet the desires and goals of the training department, but they may not always meet the true needs of the learners or the organization as a whole.

The Beauty of the Imperfect

Why Doing Things Half Right Gives You the Best Results - HarvardBusiness.org

Donald Clark (Big Dog, Little Dog) points to an article on HarvardBusiness.org that talks about the importance of "half design". For the perfectionists among us, this might be a hard concept to grasp, but I feel it has some validity.

When designing systems for elearning (or software in general), designers often strive for as close to perfect as they can get. When Peter Bregman, the author of the article, was in the midst of design cycle, he came to a realization that:

1. My perfect is not [the user's] perfect.
2. They don't have a perfect. In fact, there is no they. There are [...] individuals, each of whom wants something a little different.
3. The more perfect I think it is, the less willing I'll be to let anyone change it.
4. The only way to make it useful to everyone is to allow each person to change it to suit him or herself.
5. The only way people will use it is if they do change it in some way.
6. The only way I will encourage them to change it and make it their own is if I make it imperfect.

I'm not sure I completely buy point 5... I've used, and even liked, systems that I was unable to change or alter in any way. However, there is no doubt that the feelings of ownership and empowerment that come with making a system your own is an excellent motivator.

In his training, Bregman asked his participants the critical question:

Why won't this work for you?

And then, regardless of what they said, followed up with:

That's a good point. So how can you change it to make it work?

So, how can you leave your training unfinished? Do you dare to ask: "Why won't this work for you"? How can you allow your learners to take ownership and fill in the blanks themselves?

Practice, Practice, Practice!

Clark Aldrich's Style Guide for Serious Games and Simulations: Commentary: On Practice:

My Dad used to say that there were three ways to get good at something: "practice, practice, practice". And, of course, he was right (though I'll admit, I didn't like hearing it at the time. It was usually preface to me doing something I didn't want to do ... namely, work hard. My father's other favorite phrase was: "hard work's nae easy").

Clark Aldrich, the guru of simulation, has an article exploring the importance of practice in learning:

"Concepts that seem simple, narrow, and isolated when written are deep, complex, and extendable when modeled in simulations."

"Simple theories take practice to use successfully, and the simplest rules when applied intuitively are more powerful than the broadest database or the most complex process. This inverts entire curricula."

It's one thing to teach a concept, it's quite another to provide the tools and the support that allow someone to truly master a skill.

Clark also points to an excellent article in Fortune magazine called "Secrets of Greatness" (hint: there are three ways to become great at something...).

Whatever You Do... Don't Choke

How to Avoid Choking under Pressure: Scientific American:

Scientific American points to recent studies in performance and "choking" under pressure. It has interesting implications for those involved in learning and training. The studies indicate that if we engage our critical mindset while attempting to perform a high-pressure task, we are more likely to fail.

"The idea that too much self-monitoring hinders performance aligns with the well-established theory of how the brain learns to perform complex motor skills—anything from speaking to typing to cradling a lacrosse ball. The part of our brain that is most involved in learning a new task is the cerebral cortex, which controls higher-order, conscious thought and is adaptable to novel situations. But as we play a piece of music or practice a speech over and over again, we gradually transfer the control of that activity from the cerebral cortex to another area of the brain, the cerebellum, which orchestrates the lightning-fast motor activation needed to perform complex actions"

This is well-known in sports training ("muscle memory"), but not always considered with knowledge work.

In a study of golfers, it was found that those individuals who focused on a holistic single-word cue (e.g. "smooth" or "forceful") performed best (as opposed to those who tried to focus on multiple concepts or those who focused on random words).

In a separate study, it was found that those who practiced under high-pressure conditions (perhaps unsurprisingly), performed best under pressure.

These results indicate that turning up the heat from the very first day of practice may be one of the most effective ways to immunize yourself against blowing it. “Performers train and train, but it’s not that common to specifically train under these kinds of psychological constraints,” Oudejans says. “They’re trained in how to play their game, but they don’t train under pressure, so they fail.”

So, how can you ratchet up the pressure during training... particularly during online training?

28 Web Conference Training Tips

28 Web Conference Training Tips

Syberworks, an LMS and web conferencing solution provider, has posted an article listing 28 tips for web conference training. Most of them are well-known and obvious, but there are still some good thoughts worth reviewing, even for seasoned veterans.

Here are some highlights:

2. When developing PowerPoint slides to use in web conference training, follow these guidelines:

• Simplify content.
• Use a large, bold, simple font like Arial.
• Have no more than 6 to 8 lines of text per page (fewer are better).
• Make no more than 4 to 5 training points per page (fewer are better).
• Use plain backgrounds that contrast well with the text without clashing.
• If possible, avoid complex animations (i.e. no spinning text, etc.)

5. Test all aspects of your presentation ahead of time. (Enlist the help of an online facilitator or a student for these tests.)

12. Limit each session to 60 - 90 minutes. Longer sessions are not productive.

13. Limit your audience. When possible, keep the number of people attending small. (No more than six people are best.)

14. You might want to ask your technical people to set up a dual monitor configuration on your PC (or laptops) for you, so that your presentation appears on one display (as others are seeing it), while your delivery screens and notes appear on the other.

19. Have more than one Web Conference option ready to use. Then, if some participants can’t connect, you can create a new conference on the spot, with different conference tools.

27. Follow up with your learners after their web-conference training. This could be by email or perhaps even through a test to gauge their understanding of the material.

28. Keep a log of all training and notes. It can help improve your future training.

Skimming the New York Times

The New York Times has released a new tool, which is currently being called Article Skimmer.

The idea is to recreate the experience of spreading out and scanning the Sunday New York Times. The form factor of the newspaper (particularly one as weighty as the Sunday Times), has many inherent benefits. The tactile nature of the experience is one thing that, to date, the Internet cannot match. However, NYT's Article Skimmer tries to capture the essence of skimming or scanning through the sections of the Times in order to spot articles of interest (that we might never find through the NYT's standard interface).

I like the clean no-nonsense look of the Skimmer. The skimmer seems a much "quieter" experience when compared to the main page, where screen real estate seems to be used to compete for my attention. I also like how new articles in the skimmer are presented on a white background while older articles are gradually faded with gray backgrounds. The keyboard shortcuts are also a nice touch.

In all, a pleasant reading experience... we'll see how long it lasts.

Is the Relational Database Doomed?

Is the Relational Database Doomed? - ReadWriteWeb:

ReadWriteWeb has a well-written article on the new contender to challenge the long-standing dominance of the Relational database. As an old-school database developer from back in the day, I've seen a lot of reports about the death of the relational model.

"Relational databases have been around for over 30 years. During this time, several so-called revolutions flared up briefly, all of which were supposed to spell the end of the relational database. All of those revolutions fizzled out, of course, and none even made a dent in the dominance of relational databases."

But with the rising trend of cloud computing, Key/Value databases that thrive in the cloud are gaining ground. Though unlikely to unseat the RDBMS, key/value databases have some definite strengths.

The article analyzes some popular cloud-service contenders: SimpleDB, Google AppEngine Datastore, and SQL Data Services, as well as some non-cloud contenders such as CouchDB, Project Voldemort, Mongo, and Drizzle.

Can you spot what's wrong? The Quality Content Question

Content Quality : eLearning Technology:

Tony Karrer makes a great point about one of the fears people have about Learning 2.0 style tools.

When people consider installing tools that are "freeform", a worry often arises that "bad" content will be posted and seen by users. In this case "bad" could be something untrue, damaging to the company, or just poorly written, confusing or misleading.

Karrer counters this by stating that the individual who posted the "bad" content, is probably already distributing their ideas via email, conversations with associates, etc. Web 2.0 tools have the ability to "shine light" on mistaken concepts by putting mistakes out in the open where they can be corrected.

If your system is to be truly successful, you want your user population to do the correcting themselves.

Karrer points out:

People (especially employees) enjoy the opportunity to find things that are wrong, tell you why its are wrong, and maybe correct them.

It's a natural instinct to correct each other, the challenge is to make it easy and safe to do so.

But is it Enterprise 2.0?

As business struggle to implement "2.0" tool-sets within their organizations, The question of precisely what "2.0" means in the context of tools for business is becoming increasingly important. Long-held assumptions and conventions within the corporate world can make the shift a difficult one.

Andrew McAfee (Associate Professor in the Technology and Operations Management area at Harvard Business School and coiner of the term “Enterprise 2.0”) outlines what, in his mind, defines an “Enterprise 2.0” application (a web 2.0 application for business use).

I Know It When I See It

Here are his criteria for 2.0:

• Is it freeform?
• How frictionless is contribution?
• And is it emergent?

Freeform means “that the technology does not in any meaningful way impose, hardwire, or make and enforce assumptions about
- Workflows
- Roles
- Privileges
- Content
- Decision right allocations
Instead, people come together as equals within the environment created by technology, and do pretty much whatever they want.”

Frictionless means “that users perceive it to be easy to participate in the platform, and can do so with very little time or effort.”

Emergent (in this context) means “the appearance over time within a system of higher-level patterns or structure arising from large numbers of unplanned and undirected low-level interactions […] activities that help patterns and structure appear, and that let the cream of the content rise to the top for all platform members, no matter how they define what the cream is.”

“Too many corporate collaboration environments that I’ve observed, in contrast, come up short on the frictionless and freeform criteria. They make it far too difficult for prospective users to contribute, and they persist in slotting people into pre-assigned roles based largely on the formal org chart. In many cases they also impede emergence by having many small and mutually inaccessible environments, instead of one big one.”

Lovely Charts - Online diagramming tool

Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day: Lovely Charts:

Jane Hart points out a cute online tool called "Lovely Charts".

Lovely Charts is an online diagramming application that allows you to create professional looking diagrams of all kinds, such as flowcharts, sitemaps, organisational charts, wireframes, and many more - for free.

while it may not have all the feature of Visio, the charts and diagrams it creates a attractive and the tool is easy to use. Great for including in presentations.

Locking E-Learning Course Navigation

The Rapid eLearning Blog has a nicely written article arguing against "navigation locking":

Does President Obama Support Locking Your e-Learning Content?

The gist of the article is that “locking” navigation, or forcing users to view all content, is needlessly constraining and unproductive.

Part of the hurdle, I feel, in gaining adoption of this concept is that course owners invest a great deal of time and effort in the development of content... it seems counter-intuitive to allow users not to view all of it.

Here are some quotes from the article:

Unlock access to information. Think of your course content like a supermarket. The shelves are filled with all sorts of items. Give the learners a shopping list (performance expectations) and let them do the shopping.

If you send them to the store and they come back in 10 minutes (because they already knew where everything was located) or an hour later (because they needed to orient themselves) it makes no difference. You’re not assessing them on how they shopped. You’re assessing them on buying the right products on the list.

Let the learners prove what they understand. Whether the learner looks at a screen or not is irrelevant. What’s relevant is that they know the information well enough to demonstrate understanding.

Don’t make your course linear. […]By using a linear approach you hinder your options and possibly make the course less effective.

Tom suggests using a scenario-based approach by placing the learning in situations where they need to make decisions relevant to the goals of the course. Although he cautions:

This doesn’t need to be a complex design process with elaborate scenarios. It could be simple problem solving questions that guide them through the information.

Hard to argue with this!

Adobe Captivate's SCORM Packager

The Adobe Captivate Blog: SCORM Packager:
Auromita Bhadra on Adobe's Captivate Blog, states:

"A new addition to Captivate 4 is a separate application called SCORM Packager. It can be used to combine multiple Captivate SCOs, Flash Created swfs, Presenter quiz, Course builder quizzes into a single multi-sco SCORM package (zip). It extends Captivate’s capability of creating a SCORM enabled package by allowing user to combine these packages. This application will be useful when SCORM complaint courses created by different users have to be clubbed together into a single package."

The tool can export in SCORM 1.2 or SCORM 2004 formats.

Usability testing on the cheap

elearningpost : Usability testing on the cheap

Elearningpost has some great tips for economical usability testing. The UserFly site is particularly interesting:

A friend of mine asked me about doing usability testing on the cheap. Thought I'd share some apps and websites I have bookmarked.

* Userfly - This is a new service and could become the next big thing. It captures user sessions on video and overlays it with screen interactions.
* Silverback - Mac only app that uses the video cam on the mac to record user reactions and screen interactions. I use this frequently.
* Ethnio - Online recruitment for conducting usability studies, focus groups and surveys.
* Usertesting - Low cost usability testing. Captures user sessions on video.

Flash on the iPhone - Apple and Adobe collaborate

Bloomberg.com: News:

Adobe Systems Inc. faces a challenge in creating a version of its Flash video software for Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said.

“It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” Narayen said today in a Bloomberg Television interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”

Last year, Steve Jobs said that Flash was too slow for the iPhone, and that "Flash Lite" wasn't capable enough. Apple wants Adobe to write a new version of Flash specifically for the iPhone.

It's unclear how successful this collaboration will be, or when/if Flash will ever come to the iPhone. One should never discount Apple, I suppose, but it seems ridiculous to put significant effort into tooling an application for a single handset, even one as popular as the iPhone.

Hopefully the "new" version of Flash will be useful for more than just iPhone.