Dave's Whiteboard

I’m reading e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer.  I’ve admired Clark for years; she energetically and effectively applies research to the problem of learning at work.

One strategy they recommend for elearning (and that you’ll find applies in other situations) is the use of worked examples.

A worked example is a step-by-step demonstration of how to perform a task or solve a problem.

That means that in some cases, a worked example can look a lot like a job aid.  Especially for procedural tasks (those you perform the same way each time), worked examples are natural ways to show specifically how to accomplish some task.

Clark and Mayer offer four guidelines:

• Replace some practice problems with worked examples.
• Apply good practice when using text, audio, and graphics in worked examples.
• Provide diverse, job-realistic worked examples to help build mental models.
• Train learners to self-explain as they use worked examples.

Practice: less can be more

Remember homework?  It’s an attempt to strengthen the use of procedure skills.  Clark and Mayer cite research (as they do throughout the book) to suggest that you can save learning time by replacing some practice with worked examples.

“One [caveat] is that worked examples are only effective if the learner studies them.”  So design some worked examples as completion problems: partly-worked examples that the learner finishes.

Other approaches: make the worked example interactive — like, say, a widget that allows the learner to change one or more factors and see the result.

The authors point out that worked examples seem to benefit novices more than they do people already skilled in a topic.

The media can work

I heard more than an echo of Ten Steps to Complex Learning. (That’s no coincidence; the book cites research by Ten Steps co-author J. J. G  van Merrienboër.)  Clark and Mayer advocate applying sound principles for media use when you create worked examples.  For instance:

• Integrate text with graphics; don’t restrict text to a caption at the edge.
• Use audio to expand on visuals; don’t use it to narrate text on the screen.
• Personalize.  Use conversational tone.  Use virtual agents (like a coach who addresses the learner).

Act like work

It’s almost depressing to think this point needs stressing.  When you create worked examples, make sure they involve realistic tasks that people face on the job.  (All the more reason to involve typical performers in the design, if you ask me.)

And vary the examples.  That’s more than changing the names; change the structure of the example.  Doing so helps you approximate the range of problems that show up on the job, where not everyone comes in asking the same thing.

…When teaching tasks that require judgment and problem-solving–tasks known as far transfer–more than one example will be needed…

Thre is no one right method for performing these tasks, since each job situation will be different.  Solving these far-transfer tasks, whether in highly structured domains such as programming…or in more ill-defined areas such as sales…requires more flexible knowledge in long-term memory.

Interestingly, worked examples help to lower extraneous cognitive load (the mental burden imposed by the course design).  A variety of examples adds to the intrinsic cognitive load, which can improve learning.

The idea is that the learner works at figuring out what the different examples have in common, and thus builds up her own mental model for the skills in question.

Do-it-yourself explaining

“Successful learners can explain worked examples to themselves, and their explanations focus on the principles behind the examples.”

So Clark and Mayer suggest that a virtual coach can demonstrate how to work through a worked example.  In other words, the worked example is an example of explaining a worked example.  From the text:

• (Onscreen text in a quality-control unit)
  Take 4 sequential widgets off the line every hour for 24 hours.  These are your subgroups.
• (Jim, the onscreen virtual coach, in audio:)
  First, I notice that the subgroups are selected on a regular basis–four in a row, every how.

So what?

Here’s what I think is worthwhile about the use of worked examples (and about the book generally):

• It’s based on research, not someone’s preferred way to present.
• It works for both procedural and non-procedural skills.
• It suggests that design does, in fact, matter, so that even an advocate of informal learner can benefit by applying the principles to things meant to foster that learning

Yesterday’s post here about med students who spend time as “patients” in nursing homes brought to mind another example of learning on the job.

It comes from the 1970 management classic, Up the Organization,  by Robert Townsend.

Townsend became CEO of Avis Rent A Car in 1962.  The company had not made a profit in thirteen years.  By 1965, Avis increased its sales 150% and had annual profits of $1 million, $3 million, and $5 million.

I’ve had my copy (see photo) for years; it originally belonged to the General Motors legal staff library.  (Maybe they never read it.)

It wasn’t much work to find this particular passage and the accompanying footnote:

Before you hire a computer specialist, make it a condition that he spend some time in the factory and then sell your shoes to the customers.  A month the first year, two weeks a year thereafter.  This indignity* will separate those who want to use their skills to help your company from those who just want to build their own know-how on your payroll.

* Everybody including the chief executive had to go through the Avis rental-agent training school.  I once saw the Ph.D. who was responsible for all Avis systems panic and run from an O’Hare rental counter at the approach of his first real customer.

Townsend was blunt, wry, and pragmatic.

Probably whenever Sitting Bull, Geronimo, and the other chiefs powwowed, the first topic of conversation was the shortage of Indians.  Certainly today, no meeting of the high and the mighty is complete until someone polishes the conventional wisdom: “Our big trouble today is getting enough good people.”

This is crystal-clear nonsense.  Your people aren’t lazy and incompetent… They’re beaten by all the overlapping and interlocking policies, rules, and systems encrusting your company….

Do you know what they have to go through to hire somebody–or buy something?… It’s your fault they’re rusty from underwork.

From the chapter on Office Hours:

Anyone who makes over $150 a week should be allowed to set his own office hours.  Many will conform to the traditional 9 to 5 but it should be their choice.  A few will set hours that reduce their effectiveness and cost them their jobs.  Overall, it’s worth it.

From Organization Charts: Rigor Mortis

[Organization charts] have uses: for the annual salary review; for educating investors on how the organization works and who does what.  [Otherwise] a chart demoralizes people.  Nobody thinks of himself as below other people.  And in a good company, he isn’t..

In the best organizations people see themselves working in a circles as if around one table.  One of the positions is designated chief executive officer, because somebody has to make all those tactical decisions that enable an organization to keep working… [But tactical] leadership passes from one to another depending on the particular task being attacked…

From People:

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with our country except taht the leaders of all our major organizations…[have] been using the Catholic Church and Caesar’s legions as our patterns for creating organizations.

And until the last forty or fifty years it made sense.  The average church-goer, soldier, and factory worker was uneducated and dependent on orders from above.

That last chapter goes on to summarize another nearly-forgotten classic, Douglas McGregor’s The Human Side of Management. McGregor posited three assumptions he called Theory X:

• People hate work.
• People have to be driven and threatened to get them to work toward organizational objectives.
• They like security, aren’t ambitions, want to be told what to do, and dislike responsibility.

In contrast, McGregor saw (and Townsend recommended) Theory Y:

• People don’t hate work; it’s as natural as rest or play.
• If people commit themselves to mutual objectives, they’ll drive themselves more effectively than you can drive them.
• People commit themselves to the extent they see ways of satisfying their own goals (as well as those of the organization).

And just think… all this before social media.

Townsend, by the way, was the CEO who brought in the legendary We Try Harder advertising campaign.  Before you watch the next episode of Mad Men, take a look at some examples of Avis’s approach at the Sell Sell blog.

How fully do you immerse yourself in new skills?

The University of New England’s program in geriatric medicine gives students a “diagnosis” and places them in nursing homes.  The students spend two weeks living as they would with the symptoms and limitations of their condition.

Here’s 38-year-old Kristin Murphy, who said, “I said I want the full gamut [of treatment].  And I said that completely not knowing what I was getting in to….’Well, do you want a Hoyer lift?’  And I had said, sure.  I did not know what a Hoyer lift was.  I had no idea, none whatsoever.”

(I can’t seem to embed the video; click the image to view it on the New York Times site.)

Here’s the full article, which appeared in the August 24 New York Times.

I think the program is remarkable for what it demands of the medical students.  Doctors generally and specialists in particular are rarely on the receiving end of the full range of treatment that a patient experiences.

The two-week length of the “condition” provides time for a variety of experiences–the daily routine of eating, bathing, using the toilet.  There’s also at least the potential for the spirit-sapping dreariness of nursing home life: your personal space is limited to a bed, a dresser, a closet, a few shelves.  Your roomate, not chosen by you.  A television always on; a call-light signal pinging away endlessly; people younger than your grandchildren calling you by a nickname–or just “honey” or “dear.”

And twenty-four hours, after which the cycle starts again.

I’d like to know what happens when participants return from this experience.  How do they process what doesn’t happen? They don’t (and can’t) experience the full burden of pain and frailty. They don’t (and can’t) experience the full burden of medication.

It’s sobering to read that only 10 students have gone through this program…and more so to see that only about two-thirds of geriatric fellowship slots (required for certification) are filled.

I’ve been browsing through David A. Sousa’s How the Brain Learns.  Sousa aims to connect research about how the brain learns with what teachers and educators do on the job.  The fact that he’s plainly in the formal-teaching mode doesn’t detract from the potential value of the book, either for teachers or for people working in organizational learning.

As one small example, take the notion of primacy/recency.   This is a pair of related ideas: “in a learning episode, we tend to remember best that which comes first, and remember second best taht which comes last.”

Sousa does a couple of things:

• Summarizes research underlying the effect.
• Gives examples of how to apply the research to the classroom.
• Revisits the principles through a recurring “Practitioner’s Corner” feature

For example, there’s chapter 3, Memory, Retention, and Learning. Its 58 pages includes discussion of how memory forms, types of memory, and the difference between learning and retention.

One factor affecting retention is the primacy-recency effect–essentially, the idea that in a “learning episode,” we recall the things that came first (primacy) and the things that came last (recency) better than we recall the things in the middle.  Several of Sousa’s points have value for adult learning:

Teach new material first. This isn’t just stating the obvious.  Sousa gives the example of an English teacher asking a class what onomatopoeia is.  There’s a brief discussion with lots of wrong answers (because the students had no idea).  But the wrong answers appeared on the subsequent test–in part because they occurred in that initial period.

Not that you should never invite learner ideas–but sometimes people just plain don’t know, and you shouldn’t dwell on that not-knowing.

Use the prime time wisely. Here’s Sousa:

Even with the best of intentions, teachers…can do the following:  after getting focus by telling the class the day’s lesson objective, the teacher tkes attendance, distributes the previous day’s homework, collects that days’ homework, requests notes from students who were absent, and reads an announcement aobut a club meeting after school….

as a finale, the teacher tells the students they were so well-behaved during the lesson that they can do anything they want during the last five minutes of class (i.e., during prime-time 2) as long as they are quiet.

How many training sessions have you endured with a similar pattern?

• Today we’re going to learn how to effectively plan sales campaigns.
• To start at the beginning, our company was founded by Zachary Bannockbread, a gifted salesman, in 1883…
• Now let’s here from Clotilda MacAulay, vice-president of North American sales…
• Look at these sales figures from 2005…
• To get started, here’s a Selling Styles Inventory to complete…

Retention varies with length of episode. “As the lesson time lengthens, the percentage of down-time [when retention's at its lowest] increases faster than for the prime -times.”

Shorter (in general) is better.  And varying the type of activity, the instructional method, or even the topic between peak periods is beneficial to learning.

Which doesn’t bode well for the cram-it-in school of thought.

The Washington DC Metrorail’s system has been on Twitter since March, according to a recent Washington Post story.  As the article points out, the tweets (mainly aimed at riders of the subway system) haven’t completely mastered Twitter’s 140-character limit:

• No Line: Beginning this evening at 9:30 pm, Red line trains will not operate between Brookland, Fort Totten, and Takoma stations while Metro
• Blue Line: Due to scheduled track maintenance there is no Blue line train service between Rosslyn & King Street. Shuttle bus service is est
• Red Line: Due to track circuit repairs at Fort Totten, every other Red Line train will offload at New York Avenue station. Customers are en
• No Line: Every evening during the month of August, Red Line trains will share one track, starting at 9:30 p.m., between Fort Totten and Tako

As the article notes, this pattern has inspired complete-the-tweet contests at the Unsuck DC Metro blog.

Metro hasn’t asked for my in-depth analysis, and I don’t have a lot of data to go on.  I do see some areas worth investigating, though:

What’s the point? I think it’s a great idea for a transit system to get instant updates to interested passengers — but is that what Metro wants to do?  And if so, does it also want to hear back from them?  Maybe the answer’s “yes, but not through this account.”  That’s okay, too.  My real point is that you first figure out what you want to accomplish, then choose the tool(s) that will do the job.  I can imagine a little family of Twitter IDs:

• metroupdate for, well, updates from Metro
• metrotalk for sending messages to (and getting them from) Metro; this ID would monitor all the messages sent to metroupdate
• line-specific IDs (the Metro system has color-coded routes: the Red Line, the Orange Line, and so on).  Ironically, I found MetroTweet, an unofficial service that converts Metro’s email alerts into line-specific tweet streams.

Who’s tweeting? Is this a regular assignment?  Something for Colleen to do along with her “real” job?  Or is it a communications Post-It that gets handed to anyone in the office with a little spare time?  Which leads to a related question:

Has the tweeter seen the tweets? Like someone with a bad phone connection, he might assume that since he knows what he meant, so does everyone else.

Who’s following? Commuters tend to have strong opinions about the level of service, and often many ideas about how to improve it.  Is Metro making any use of that source?

I also detect a certain inertia in the text of the message.  Stock phrases troop through the stream like clichés in a sports interview.  Let’s try fixing a few:

• Orange Line: Trains are sharing the same track between Vienna/Fairfax-GMU and West Falls Church due to scheduled track maintenance. Expect d (140 chars)
  • Orange: single track between Vienna & W Falls Church (track maint).  Delay likely both dirs.  (92 chars)
• Red Line: Trains are moving at reduced speeds between Fort Totten and Takoma stations due to track circuit repairs. Expect delays in both di (140)
  • Red: reduced speed both dirs bet Ft Totten & Takoma (circuit repair).  (70)
    Maybe it’s the English teacher in me; I figure if you’ve reduced speed, I’m going to be delayed.

It’s too easy a target to go after the bureaucratic passive voice (“bus service is established”), and you probably can’t completely avoid the local-politics burden of multi-name Metro stations (Archives-Navy Memorial-Penn Quarter is one place, not three).

I’m also thinking about the feedback Metro must be getting on this, some of it likely sarcastic, impatient, or both.  Which brings up another performance challenge: there isn’t a lot of time for that learning curve.  At least not once the act goes on the road (or the rail).

I think Metro’s experience is a good example that “training” isn’t going to automatically fix things, though after the Post article I’m sure board members will call for that.  A little pilot testing could have paid off, and a performance-improvement approach certainly will.

“Plan B” image adapted from a CC-licensed photo by petrr.