Comments on: Complex learning (coffee on the side)

By: Better health (less mass) as performance improvement | Dave's Whiteboard

Better health (less mass) as performance improvement | Dave's Whiteboard — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:08:09 +0000

[...] I’ve been studying Weight Watchers as one multifaceted approach to losing weight, whether as an end in itself or as part of an overall goal of good health. I see a cluster of “health skills” that are like constituent skills from Ten Steps to Complex Learning: [...]

By: Dave’s Whiteboard » Blog Archive » Learning, conflation, and the right of way

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:41:11 +0000

[...] is a good example of a complex skill (the kind van Merrienboër and Kirschner grappled with in Ten Steps to Complex Learning). We tend to think we know what the outcome of the education or training will be: a good [...]

By: Dave

Dave — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 19:36:04 +0000

Tom: regarding the difficulty of the book, I’ve never before had to insert my own commas into printed text in order to make sense of a ludicrously long sentence. (That’s not the only problem, but it’s a silly one to have to grapple with.)

As you’ll see with the third post in the series, I need to make those examples; they’re my own “imitation task.”

(My pace is pretty slow and unlikely to pick up. I have to accept that it’s the pace I have. When I asked someone about post length, she encouraged me to break longer ones in two if it made sense. I’m also not going to try to keep to a schedule for the schedule’s sake.)

I think Ten Steps is a healthy counter to the myth that there’s no place for design in learning. I also think it’s a reminder that complex stuff is complex. You can simplify some things but you can’t make them simple.

By: Tom Gram

Tom Gram — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:34:17 +0000

Dave;
I like the twofold challenge you’ve taken on. First, to read van Merrienboer (no small task in itself!) and then to demystify him. I’m a big fan of his approach but he doesn’t make it easy on the reader. Thanks for the examples (the book could use a few more of those) The example task running through the book (literature search) was a little light, but i do return to the overview in the appendix often. Separating procedural and supportive information and designing around whole tasks are the best takeaways for me

btw… my CSTD Canadian Learning Journal cam ein the mail today. Nice article. Thanks for the nod!