"Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe." - Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
I was looking for a metaphor for learning and development and came across this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
And this was the first time that I realised that gyre was a real word (albeit a noun rather than a verb) rather than just nonsense. It's also a pretty good descriptor of the world of learning.
Whilst working at Siemens, I carried out a modest piece of research which rejected the hypothesis that there are such things as 'learning styles': in brief, we differentiated materials according to learning style and mode of representation and found that people actually learned the most from plain text. I’ve spent quite a bit of time since then unraveling exactly why but today, twelve years later, I’m still reading articles announcing that learning styles are mumbo-jumbo.
What is remarkable about learning and development is the slow pace of change. This is probably because the area remains at the 'proto-science' phase of development; characterised by numerous 'gyres' - micro debates, conversational eddies - permitted to circulate because the industry is predominantly opinion-based. Here are some that you may recognise:
- learning styles- NLP
- 70:20:10
- kolb's learning cycle
- blending
- right brain/left brain
- learning by doing
- the role of the line manager
- assessment/evaluation/Kirkpatrick
- the certified learning professional
- games
- mobile learning
These are the things discussed at conferences, in industry publications, and in blogs such as this one. My point, is not that these are all non-sensical, but that most of these debates have remained essentially static for a couple of decades. What little change there is in L&D has come about largely as a consequence of external influences (such as Google or Apple). While circulating in the gentle currents of these gyres is surprisingly soothing - and a temptation to which I frequently succumb - I believe that real change is driven by practice. Progress takes place when people tackle problems with an open mind and an honest appraisal of the results (I think Rob Hubbard tends to make a similar point, but then he is an engineer by nature).
It shouldn't be that way, of course: we don't build bridges on a 'suck it and see' basis, but there was a time when engineering too was a proto-science and that is exactly what people did.
We've been filming a lot of new starters recently, and it got me thinking. To anyone new to online learning I would say that it is an exciting area to work, but don't assume that anything you hear is true - and don't get distracted by the debates lest you too ‘gyre and gimble in the wabe.’
Your "modest piece of research" finding is interesting.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested to know: who were the learners you researched?
I ask because my anecdotal experience and action research indicators both suggest that some learner groups learn best from text but that some equally learn next to nothing from it.
I'm not suggestin that you are wrong; on the contrary, I'm very keen to learn more and integrate what I learn into my professional world view; just explaining why your result surprised me.
Sure. So we took a chunk of information about the solar system, created five different training pieces which varied according to modality - i.e. ranging from plain text, through to flash interactives with video and audio (and combinations in between). Independent measures design: a couple of hundred Nottingham uni students were assigned randomly to groups and given 30 mins with the material. Afterwards we tested recall. Results showed no significant difference, with the text-only averaging slightly better overall. People did, however prefer the more 'entertaining' formats. My interpretation is this: people have preferences for certain formats but in the real world any affects attributable to format are negligible alongside the motivational effects: i.e. people viewed the experimental context as a challenge and a test of their abilities and under those circumstances people are able to learn efficiently from almost any format (indeed, this is what we see in the use of Google). Yes, there are flaws in our design, but we would have expected to see some effects attributable to modalities/styles. And this research is consistent with more thorough research into learning styles.
ReplyDeleteDid you publish the research anywhere, Nick?
ReplyDeleteNo, we didn't publish - the research was written up by a student on work placement. She did a very thorough job but I only ever had a hard copy. I'll see if I can track her down via Facebook in case she still has it.
ReplyDelete