Even with tools as good as Storyline, something that has been gnawing away at what is left of my brain is whether we actively set out to try and make courses as real as we can. We have a load of tools available to us, but sometimes I think we might do things that actually reduce the "reality" of the course so far as the learner is concerned.
I blogged more thoughts at http://wp.me/p13NYZ-4D , but would really like to get a discussion going around this, because it's something I'm actively trying to find answers for too. We all go on about "scenarios" and "lifelike", and I think in many cases we probably just build them without thinking about how to maximise their effectiveness.
When I muse upon life-like training, I think informal learning opportunities (communities of practice), strong contexts/scenarios, multiple routes to desired performance, and intrinsic feedback. I try to create training that has these components.
I'll admit, I'm not always able to pull it off in every course. Sometimes, I'm to blame (it's just too easy to merely present information), and sometimes the client actually resists these more robust approaches. Change is scary.
Unfortunately many of my SMEs believe that 'real' equates to 'formal' - unless it's presented like a lecture it's not appropriate, in their eyes. I had an SME a few months ago who was chilled out about being formal and let me try to incorporate some 'reality' into the course through the language, interactions etc. After the module was signed off, his (old school) boss got mad because the module was 'demeaning' - all because I'd tried to tone down the formality and increase the 'realism'.
Nevertheless, I'm a firm believer that people learn best when they can contextualise information and make it meaningful for themselves through realistic simulations of their routine physical practices. We are limited somewhat by the screen/mouse/keyboard interface/human, but with tools like Storyline, good graphics, good writing and good ID, I think we can make stuff that gets people very close to the 'real'.
The brain remembers vivid more, this has been evidenced. I would lean more towards creating vivid and memorable than real.
I don't ever remember setting out to build a course that I "real".
I recently saw a brilliant dragons den style scenario, that was not real, but incorporated very real elements.
It is very difficult to build real scenarios, if you give the user three options in a what would you do next, what happens if the user would do none of these? It is also often expensive and time consuming to create real needing the environment to be real, often we are confined by stock imagery and illustrators.
I like the idea of. Silhouette instead of. Character or perhaps build an avatar (something that can b done in SL). I would however strive for memorable over real.
I think the key to something being memorable is that it's contextualised. Working within a familiar context has a number of benefits as far as I can see:
1) If you're pursuing some sort of behavioural conditioning ID methodology then the stimuli used in the course to trigger/reinforce actions have to be present in the real world too, otherwise the conditioning is ineffective.
2) If the course can build on a foundation of 'reality' for the learner, it will bring to the forefront of the mind their existing schemas and representations stored in long term memory. I've been researching 'advanced organisers' recently and there's a wealth of evidence to suggest that if a lesson can begin by contextalising the upcoming information, it's much easier for new information to go through the 'perceive, process, storage' process.
Based on my research, i have to conclude that 'real' has to be the gold standard of course design, though of course I concede that it's hard as nails to pull off. I wonder if in the Dragon's Den style course it's the scenario that's memorable rather than the actual course objectives.
I think as we get older, we've stopped learning life lessons through imaginative means. Gone are the days that we would create a scenario where we would imagine we are HR knight in shining armor fighting against the evil forces of sexual harassment. I think most of us like everything plain, simple, and straight to the point. It's also hard for us to have the decision makers buy off on something like this.
I also don't know how practical it would be if we all became like Mr. Miyagi and be able to teach softskills by having the user "wax on and wax off" during the lesson, and then be enlightened in the end how it all comes together.
I know this grasshopper stills has a lot to learn.
@ Jerson - opening up another thread here....changing eLearning content by age.
"Hello and welcome, please start by choosing which of these 5 age-brackets you fall into..."
20 - 25 leads to 60 interactive slides on "St. Berty Slays the Dragon of Harassment".
55 - 60 leads to 3 slides, 18 bullet points, no messin'
@Phil - I agree that "vivid is good". I once created a course called "Putting the Power Back into PowerPoint" which had an image of a meerkat holding a bunch of balloons. After about 3 months everyone remembered the image, but not the reason it was there :(
So....if "vivid" is better than "real", why do we see so many "2-person-photographic-seanarios" that are patently not real? Do people think they work? That they represent reality? Do people just use them without thinking when perhaps a 1-photgraphic character, or a completely "non-real" character would be better.
I guess I am trying to investigate/encourage discussion on "design laziness and assumptive behaviour about using "stuff" in design tools" in instructional designers.
I think scenarios are helpful when your analysis of the problem has shown that the best solution is for people to practice the needed behavior in a safe setting, learning from realistic consequences. I've seen them used less successfully to deliver information, "entertain" the learner, preach at the learner, and in other directive applications that aren't actually practice.
I usually push for "first-person" scenarios, which in a conversation would mean that I the learner am looking at a photo of a person who is looking directly at me and speaking directly to me. If for some reason that isn't appropriate, then I would vote for "Help Jane deal with the difficult customer" and similar setups in which the learner is an advisor and isn't supposed to become one of the people shown.
I agree that a lot of the available photos look fake. Photos of real staff or high-quality illustrations might be an alternative.
So....in your opinion then...is it more important for us to strive for "realistic scenarios...", or "realistic consequences".
I appreciate that it may seem as though I am splitting hairs here, however, I think that maybe that is something that drives us as IDs forward to being better course builders.
If it's "realistic consequences", then I'm not sure it's something that is stressed enough, (although some do it admirably )
Much appreciated that you chimed in, great perspective on my musings.
Hi Bruce, I vote for both, meaning that the decision required is as similar as possible to a real-life decision, and that realistic consequences are shown or described, preferably without the annoying explanations of the Omniscient One:
When we can finally dig deep enough to find out what the SME wants the learner to DO with their information, then we can weed out a lot of nice to know information. This effort allows us to create situations in which the learner will be asked to perform something using the information they've just learned. We try to be as realistic as possible in creating the situation - given our limitations here - but it's an opportunity for safepractice. The learner makes a decision and gets a realistic consequence. This helps them remember the information - store it away so they can recall it when they find themselves in a similar situation on the job.
Hi Bruce, I vote for both, meaning that the decision required is as similar as possible to a real-life decision, and that realistic consequences are shown or described, preferably without the annoying explanations of the Omniscient One:
Hmmm, please bear with me... this is a bit of a long story, but has a point...
Quite a while ago I was doing a lot of OD workshops focusing on teaming, empowerment, and self-direction. I used a "weird" video entitled: "Joshua in the Box". It's about a silly looking cartoon character who is trapped inside a box and is happy until he finds a little hole and is intrigued by what he sees through it. He eventually wiggles his way through the hole only to want to get back in his box. That doesn't happen and eventually he finds himself in another box.
There was nothing "real" about the cartoon. In fact, Joshua was relatively simple, hand-drawn cartoon character that was more suitable for a Saturday morning TV show. I used the video to great effect and affect with sr managers (very risky) and all the layers below them. I asked participants to tell me what they thought the meaning of the cartoon was. Most of the people asked back: "There's a meaning?" Others saw it as more than the cartoon and that started a discussion about people being trapped and comfort.
The point is that the issue really isn't realism. It's relevance. Nothing was real about that cartoon except for the metaphor. And the relevance of the metaphor made the video a very powerful stimulus for learning. Sometimes, the best training is that which puts a thought into our head that makes us change. Scenarios are one way of doing that... there are many others.
BTW, there's a pretty good discussion going on at the eLearning Guild site on whether it's better to use real images of people or characters.
I try to if I'm developing a skill course. Unfortunately, most of the courses I develop are informational. That said, the skill courses I developed purposely-included real-life scenarios so the learner can practice the skill and receive feedback/coaching for wrong responses. Ultimately, I think context, relevance, and knowing your audience is key.
I agree with everyone's opinion that as adults, that's how we most effectively learn. I also think we are all focused on realistic scenarios because that's what (or what we think) our clients want. If we tried to make a scenario fun and different and "trick" the users into learning something like some game that actually teaches kids math skills, our clients will look at us weird and rethink about ever hiring us again.
I'm not sure if anybody else has seen this, but I've tried something new for a Question & Answer quiz.
This format of a fighting quiz game could be applied to other scenarios. Personally I would love to go through a sexual harassment prevention course where I get to "fight" evil doers.... but will the client agree with this? Probably not.
I'm hoping for a change in this field much like what Google did for the process of hiring. Before companies only looked at which college you graduated from and what degree you have. Then Google came and changed all that. They started focusing on how creative a person is and how they think by asking some off the wall (but purposeful) question. Now a lot more companies are following their example, some very poorly, but still a change.
The attached image is something I started to work up last year. It's the beginning of a lens or frame to drive media decision-making. It's intended to encourage asking the right questions, not necessarily in the order represented below. This is a shot of the planning piece for animation decision enhancement. It's unfinished and doesn't cover all of the considerations that you'd encounter in all situations.
Realism (or palpability) is one of the cross-sections of the decision. When providing access to practice opportunities, is it better to provide a whole task or part of the task? Is it better to provide a concrete 100% real, high fidelity, simulation of the task or is it better to abstract the task into conceptual analogues? It depends on a lot of factors, really. Reallism, versimilitude, etc. are great when they are called for. They are also pretty expensive at high levels of fidelity and can be less effective in some cases. High fidelity, complex situations can cause excess cognitive load for team members at the novice end of the scale. Confusion and overload makes it difficult to master components in some complex tasks. Reallism is also hard to copy faithfully, trying to do so will draw attention to small inconsistencies, causing a distraction. Not always, but this is a risk when pushing for high reallism.
A story - In days long past I used to run a 4-day face-to-face course, totally 'off the job', packed with one crazy team game after and other. Teams would form, storm and norm etc during the 4 days and gradually learn to perform as disciplined units. It was powerful stuff and incredible fun to participate in.
But I could not imagine any internal sponsor agreeing to launch such a program in this day and age, the learning just would not be seen as relevant enough and it would be too much of a stretch to link it to the workplace. Conversely, some team-building work I have done in recent years, in a training-room setting, has been really successful..because people have been actively airing and thinking about live work experiences.
One other example, I also run a classroom program for people in the Pharma industry, that helps them understand how it all works. It has powerpoint, team discussions, online support and a live simulation. It generates terrific feedback, mostly because it is so highly relevant to what people need.
I don't think it matters over much how a course achieves the relevance. Reality is good, but sometimes too much backfires!
@Jerson: Love the nod to Street Fighter II. I bought a SFII: Champion Edition arcade machine for my wedding 9 years ago, and I am currently schooling my 5 year old daughter.
My wife just recently earned her RN license. The licensing exam (NCLEX-RN) is all text based scenarios where many questions are set up with multiple answers which might solve the scenario presented, but isn't the best answer. Granted, reality is achieved through the hours of rotating clinical sessions at actual facilities, but I always thought the NCLEX was an good example of where realism does not have to rely on realistic visual elements.
Even with tools as good as Storyline, something that has been gnawing away at what is left of my brain is whether we actively set out to try and make courses as real as we can. We have a load of tools available to us, but sometimes I think we might do things that actually reduce the "reality" of the course so far as the learner is concerned.
I blogged more thoughts at http://wp.me/p13NYZ-4D , but would really like to get a discussion going around this, because it's something I'm actively trying to find answers for too. We all go on about "scenarios" and "lifelike", and I think in many cases we probably just build them without thinking about how to maximise their effectiveness.
Looking forward to hearing some ideas.
Bruce
A recent project that needed some "reality" injected: I was given a PowerPoint presentation on the topic of stroke and asked to write a course. I was told the audience was experienced nurses. The PowerPoint read like an introductory medical reference book, complete with sentences such as: "The definition of stroke is..." and "There are different types of stroke..."
I met with the stroke expert SME and asked several probing questions about what they needed nurses to DO. In a nutshell: they needed them to get every patient an MRI ASAP and interpret the results quickly before deciding the most appropriate treatment. correct interpretation of the results was critical to deciding course of treatment. How did they interpret results? By reading a report. The course design then was for nurses to read a scenario, access an example patient report, decide how to treat, and receive feedback based on their decision. (I hope they learned more than the definition of stroke.)
I think relevance to an individual's job tasks and what they must do in their job to accomplish a specific outcome is what adults need in a course. I love Kimberly's post about the course for nurses and strokes. She found out what the real problem was in the real world and developed a module to address that problem. I think we try to entertain people too much these days and the learner at times also expects it. I think they also appreciate tightly focused elearning that quickly and succintly gets at what they are to do in a reali-life work situation.
22 Replies
When I muse upon life-like training, I think informal learning opportunities (communities of practice), strong contexts/scenarios, multiple routes to desired performance, and intrinsic feedback. I try to create training that has these components.
I'll admit, I'm not always able to pull it off in every course. Sometimes, I'm to blame (it's just too easy to merely present information), and sometimes the client actually resists these more robust approaches. Change is scary.
Unfortunately many of my SMEs believe that 'real' equates to 'formal' - unless it's presented like a lecture it's not appropriate, in their eyes. I had an SME a few months ago who was chilled out about being formal and let me try to incorporate some 'reality' into the course through the language, interactions etc. After the module was signed off, his (old school) boss got mad because the module was 'demeaning' - all because I'd tried to tone down the formality and increase the 'realism'.
Nevertheless, I'm a firm believer that people learn best when they can contextualise information and make it meaningful for themselves through realistic simulations of their routine physical practices. We are limited somewhat by the screen/mouse/keyboard interface/human, but with tools like Storyline, good graphics, good writing and good ID, I think we can make stuff that gets people very close to the 'real'.
OK - so what do you think about the character images etc. mentioned in Blog?
Bruce
PS - not just trying to get my blog stats up - but feel that is probably the place for more in-depth/longer posts.
The brain remembers vivid more, this has been evidenced. I would lean more towards creating vivid and memorable than real.
I don't ever remember setting out to build a course that I "real".
I recently saw a brilliant dragons den style scenario, that was not real, but incorporated very real elements.
It is very difficult to build real scenarios, if you give the user three options in a what would you do next, what happens if the user would do none of these? It is also often expensive and time consuming to create real needing the environment to be real, often we are confined by stock imagery and illustrators.
I like the idea of. Silhouette instead of. Character or perhaps build an avatar (something that can b done in SL). I would however strive for memorable over real.
I think the key to something being memorable is that it's contextualised. Working within a familiar context has a number of benefits as far as I can see:
1) If you're pursuing some sort of behavioural conditioning ID methodology then the stimuli used in the course to trigger/reinforce actions have to be present in the real world too, otherwise the conditioning is ineffective.
2) If the course can build on a foundation of 'reality' for the learner, it will bring to the forefront of the mind their existing schemas and representations stored in long term memory. I've been researching 'advanced organisers' recently and there's a wealth of evidence to suggest that if a lesson can begin by contextalising the upcoming information, it's much easier for new information to go through the 'perceive, process, storage' process.
Based on my research, i have to conclude that 'real' has to be the gold standard of course design, though of course I concede that it's hard as nails to pull off. I wonder if in the Dragon's Den style course it's the scenario that's memorable rather than the actual course objectives.
I think as we get older, we've stopped learning life lessons through imaginative means. Gone are the days that we would create a scenario where we would imagine we are HR knight in shining armor fighting against the evil forces of sexual harassment. I think most of us like everything plain, simple, and straight to the point. It's also hard for us to have the decision makers buy off on something like this.
I also don't know how practical it would be if we all became like Mr. Miyagi and be able to teach softskills by having the user "wax on and wax off" during the lesson, and then be enlightened in the end how it all comes together.
I know this grasshopper stills has a lot to learn.
@ Jerson - opening up another thread here....changing eLearning content by age.
"Hello and welcome, please start by choosing which of these 5 age-brackets you fall into..."
20 - 25 leads to 60 interactive slides on "St. Berty Slays the Dragon of Harassment".
55 - 60 leads to 3 slides, 18 bullet points, no messin'
@Phil - I agree that "vivid is good". I once created a course called "Putting the Power Back into PowerPoint" which had an image of a meerkat holding a bunch of balloons. After about 3 months everyone remembered the image, but not the reason it was there :(
So....if "vivid" is better than "real", why do we see so many "2-person-photographic-seanarios" that are patently not real? Do people think they work? That they represent reality? Do people just use them without thinking when perhaps a 1-photgraphic character, or a completely "non-real" character would be better.
I guess I am trying to investigate/encourage discussion on "design laziness and assumptive behaviour about using "stuff" in design tools" in instructional designers.
Bruce
@Bruce, I think scenarios are often overused based on the idea that "we always use them, so they must work".
I try and avoid them if I can. Sometimes they are forced on you by a client who has seen it and wants it in their course.
I think scenarios are helpful when your analysis of the problem has shown that the best solution is for people to practice the needed behavior in a safe setting, learning from realistic consequences. I've seen them used less successfully to deliver information, "entertain" the learner, preach at the learner, and in other directive applications that aren't actually practice.
I usually push for "first-person" scenarios, which in a conversation would mean that I the learner am looking at a photo of a person who is looking directly at me and speaking directly to me. If for some reason that isn't appropriate, then I would vote for "Help Jane deal with the difficult customer" and similar setups in which the learner is an advisor and isn't supposed to become one of the people shown.
I agree that a lot of the available photos look fake. Photos of real staff or high-quality illustrations might be an alternative.
Hi Cathy!
So....in your opinion then...is it more important for us to strive for "realistic scenarios...", or "realistic consequences".
I appreciate that it may seem as though I am splitting hairs here, however, I think that maybe that is something that drives us as IDs forward to being better course builders.
If it's "realistic consequences", then I'm not sure it's something that is stressed enough, (although some do it admirably
)
Much appreciated that you chimed in, great perspective on my musings.
Bruce
Hi Bruce, I vote for both, meaning that the decision required is as similar as possible to a real-life decision, and that realistic consequences are shown or described, preferably without the annoying explanations of the Omniscient One:
http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2013/01/feedback-in-scenarios-let-them-think/
I think that in many situations, we can create realistic scenarios with just text.
When we can finally dig deep enough to find out what the SME wants the learner to DO with their information, then we can weed out a lot of nice to know information. This effort allows us to create situations in which the learner will be asked to perform something using the information they've just learned. We try to be as realistic as possible in creating the situation - given our limitations here - but it's an opportunity for safe practice. The learner makes a decision and gets a realistic consequence. This helps them remember the information - store it away so they can recall it when they find themselves in a similar situation on the job.
I much prefer the idea of using Text for scenarios over stock imagery.
This reminds me of the Jellyvisionlabs microsoft example that could be repurposed here to create a scenario
http://demos.jellyvisionlab.com/demo/scout2/index.html?
Hmmm, please bear with me... this is a bit of a long story, but has a point...
Quite a while ago I was doing a lot of OD workshops focusing on teaming, empowerment, and self-direction. I used a "weird" video entitled: "Joshua in the Box". It's about a silly looking cartoon character who is trapped inside a box and is happy until he finds a little hole and is intrigued by what he sees through it. He eventually wiggles his way through the hole only to want to get back in his box. That doesn't happen and eventually he finds himself in another box.
There was nothing "real" about the cartoon. In fact, Joshua was relatively simple, hand-drawn cartoon character that was more suitable for a Saturday morning TV show. I used the video to great effect and affect with sr managers (very risky) and all the layers below them. I asked participants to tell me what they thought the meaning of the cartoon was. Most of the people asked back: "There's a meaning?" Others saw it as more than the cartoon and that started a discussion about people being trapped and comfort.
The point is that the issue really isn't realism. It's relevance. Nothing was real about that cartoon except for the metaphor. And the relevance of the metaphor made the video a very powerful stimulus for learning. Sometimes, the best training is that which puts a thought into our head that makes us change. Scenarios are one way of doing that... there are many others.
BTW, there's a pretty good discussion going on at the eLearning Guild site on whether it's better to use real images of people or characters.
I try to if I'm developing a skill course. Unfortunately, most of the courses I develop are informational. That said, the skill courses I developed purposely-included real-life scenarios so the learner can practice the skill and receive feedback/coaching for wrong responses. Ultimately, I think context, relevance, and knowing your audience is key.
I agree with everyone's opinion that as adults, that's how we most effectively learn. I also think we are all focused on realistic scenarios because that's what (or what we think) our clients want. If we tried to make a scenario fun and different and "trick" the users into learning something like some game that actually teaches kids math skills, our clients will look at us weird and rethink about ever hiring us again.
I'm not sure if anybody else has seen this, but I've tried something new for a Question & Answer quiz.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/76334956/Fighter/story.html
This format of a fighting quiz game could be applied to other scenarios. Personally I would love to go through a sexual harassment prevention course where I get to "fight" evil doers.... but will the client agree with this? Probably not.
I'm hoping for a change in this field much like what Google did for the process of hiring. Before companies only looked at which college you graduated from and what degree you have. Then Google came and changed all that. They started focusing on how creative a person is and how they think by asking some off the wall (but purposeful) question. Now a lot more companies are following their example, some very poorly, but still a change.
The attached image is something I started to work up last year. It's the beginning of a lens or frame to drive media decision-making. It's intended to encourage asking the right questions, not necessarily in the order represented below. This is a shot of the planning piece for animation decision enhancement. It's unfinished and doesn't cover all of the considerations that you'd encounter in all situations.
Realism (or palpability) is one of the cross-sections of the decision. When providing access to practice opportunities, is it better to provide a whole task or part of the task? Is it better to provide a concrete 100% real, high fidelity, simulation of the task or is it better to abstract the task into conceptual analogues? It depends on a lot of factors, really. Reallism, versimilitude, etc. are great when they are called for. They are also pretty expensive at high levels of fidelity and can be less effective in some cases. High fidelity, complex situations can cause excess cognitive load for team members at the novice end of the scale. Confusion and overload makes it difficult to master components in some complex tasks. Reallism is also hard to copy faithfully, trying to do so will draw attention to small inconsistencies, causing a distraction. Not always, but this is a risk when pushing for high reallism.
And this seems relevant for a Tuesday. Cat in a shark suit riding a Roomba and chasing a duck:
I want to add my vote to 'relevance'.
A story - In days long past I used to run a 4-day face-to-face course, totally 'off the job', packed with one crazy team game after and other. Teams would form, storm and norm etc during the 4 days and gradually learn to perform as disciplined units. It was powerful stuff and incredible fun to participate in.
But I could not imagine any internal sponsor agreeing to launch such a program in this day and age, the learning just would not be seen as relevant enough and it would be too much of a stretch to link it to the workplace. Conversely, some team-building work I have done in recent years, in a training-room setting, has been really successful..because people have been actively airing and thinking about live work experiences.
One other example, I also run a classroom program for people in the Pharma industry, that helps them understand how it all works. It has powerpoint, team discussions, online support and a live simulation. It generates terrific feedback, mostly because it is so highly relevant to what people need.
I don't think it matters over much how a course achieves the relevance. Reality is good, but sometimes too much backfires!
@Jerson: Love the nod to Street Fighter II. I bought a SFII: Champion Edition arcade machine for my wedding 9 years ago, and I am currently schooling my 5 year old daughter.
My wife just recently earned her RN license. The licensing exam (NCLEX-RN) is all text based scenarios where many questions are set up with multiple answers which might solve the scenario presented, but isn't the best answer. Granted, reality is achieved through the hours of rotating clinical sessions at actual facilities, but I always thought the NCLEX was an good example of where realism does not have to rely on realistic visual elements.
A recent project that needed some "reality" injected: I was given a PowerPoint presentation on the topic of stroke and asked to write a course. I was told the audience was experienced nurses. The PowerPoint read like an introductory medical reference book, complete with sentences such as: "The definition of stroke is..." and "There are different types of stroke..."
I met with the stroke expert SME and asked several probing questions about what they needed nurses to DO. In a nutshell: they needed them to get every patient an MRI ASAP and interpret the results quickly before deciding the most appropriate treatment. correct interpretation of the results was critical to deciding course of treatment. How did they interpret results? By reading a report. The course design then was for nurses to read a scenario, access an example patient report, decide how to treat, and receive feedback based on their decision. (I hope they learned more than the definition of stroke.)
I think relevance to an individual's job tasks and what they must do in their job to accomplish a specific outcome is what adults need in a course. I love Kimberly's post about the course for nurses and strokes. She found out what the real problem was in the real world and developed a module to address that problem. I think we try to entertain people too much these days and the learner at times also expects it. I think they also appreciate tightly focused elearning that quickly and succintly gets at what they are to do in a reali-life work situation.
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