Terminology Tuesday

I was inspired to write about style guides after seeing a very beautiful one for a current client. As dorky as it might sound, I get incredibly excited about style guides!

Style guides?!

Style guides are typically client-generated; however, I have worked for organizations where various departments (e.g. Instructional Design, Programming, Multimedia) contribute to the development of a client’s style guide. They are documented explanations and illustrations of stylistic options that are available for the product in development.

These stylistic options typically include approved logos and branding, colours (and corresponding hex values), appropriate fonts and sizes, and can even be so specific as to dictate the pixel width a highlight box must be or the screen resolution the product must adhere to.

Basically, the style guide dictates how your product should look/feel and is typically developed by the client in an effort to stay ‘on brand’.  Other elements can even include the tone of voice used (active vs passive) or grammar preferences.

But why should I be interested in these?

Now, I’m not saying you need to get giddy about a beautifully crafted style guide like I do, but what I am saying is that you probably should inquire as to whether your client has one. Why? Because doing so can save a lot of time and effort spent revising a developed product to adhere to the company’s branding standards. It can be very tedious changing fonts and sizes for large projects…

Another great thing about style guides is that they ensure that all team members (if there are more than just yourself) have the same information and are adhering to the client’s aesthetic requirements. This can yield an incredible cost savings when you consider the effort involved in reprogramming interactive pieces or re-developing multimedia assets.

Style guides also save you tons of time and guess work! The projects I’ve worked on that had prescribed style guides had a lot less back and forth stylistic revisions than those without. While designing different layouts and using different typography may be your jam, clients may feel like you failed to read their mind with regarding to determining their brand’s vibe. No one wants you to miss the mark!

Here are some handy resources:

• Style Guides for E-Learning Courses
• Brand Guidelines 
• Creating a Yearbook Style Guide
• Style Guide: How relevant is it in an e-Learning course?

Argh! I swear I hit ‘schedule’ on this post, but I’ll go ahead now and apologize for the 24 hour delay…whoops!

Today I’m going to be chatting a bit about two types of evaluation: formative and summative. Now, I had heard these terms thrown around here and there working within my first corporate gig; however, it wasn’t until I began my graduate studies that these terms creeped up more frequently. I’m not sure if they’re traditionally education-specific, but if that’s true, they really should change that! Evaluation is a critical part of each course/product/project, and both formative and summative evaluations are essential to a comprehensive evaluation. Why? Well, just hold on to your horses and I’ll tell you!

Formative and Summative Evaluation Explained

Formative evaluation occurs when a program is rolled out to a small group of people (testers) and is sometimes referred to as a ‘soft launch’. Essentially, this allows the developer to obtain information regarding potential revisions prior to committing to a full launch. Formative evaluation is essential, especially when you’re a one-person show, because it’s really invaluable to have a second (or third or fourth) set of eyes look at something you’ve spent all of your time working on, as these sets of eyes will often times pick up small issues you may have missed in your quality assurance check. Additionally, these reviewers may also provide great insight into modifications that may enhance user experience. Sometimes it can be too late to incorporate these revisions, but often times it’s easy to make a compromise and include some of the smaller revisions while holding out on the larger revisions for a version 2 of the project.

Summative evaluation occurs after the program has been formally rolled out and are meant to assess the effectiveness of the program as a whole. This type of evaluation is important as it allows the developer to revise the program accordingly to achieve maximum effectiveness. In this situation, effectiveness is measured by how well the training program meets the requirements and allows learners to achieve the learning outcomes.

But who has time to evaluate each program?

Great question! Most folks barely have enough time in the day to get all of their work done (come on – Beyonce has a large team of folks helping her out, and it’s just little ol’ me over here), but even if a formal evaluation isn’t in the cards (which is an unfortunate reality for many of the programs I’ve worked on), you should still evaluate each project (internal) and stay on top of client feedback (external) as it will help you grow as a developer. You’ll be able to consult a list (or memory even) of lessons learned and these lessons learned may help to streamline your process in the long run…making you more efficient and getting you closer to success (which often means fewer revisions)!

Still confused? Here are some great resources:

• Types of Evaluation in Instructional Design
• What’s the difference between formative and summative evaluations?
• Formative & Summative Assessment: An Explanation
• Introduction to Evaluation
• Measurement and Evaluation in Human Performance

Some of my first freelance roles were writing assessment items for various training materials. Namely, I wrote new driver training tests for each and every single state. This was a very profitable endeavour, and assessment item writing comes pretty easy to me, but you multiple each state by 100 (or more) and tell me how sore your fingers are after typing out all of those assessment items…that being said, I do still hold a place in my heart for assessment item writing.

What is this ‘assessment item’ you speak of?

Well. An assessment item is any item, able to be measured, which tests what (or whether) your learner has learned the material you have presented to them. Basically, each question in a quiz/test/exam/knowledge check, etc.

Most of us distinctly remember hand-writing detailed responses to long answer essay questions in high school…or filling out bubble sheet upon bubble sheet upon bubble sheet in our undergraduate degrees (at least if you majored in Psychology). Multiple choice, true/false, drag and drop, essays, long answer, short answer, fill-in-the-blanks – these are all types of assessment items (but certainly not the whole gamut).

Assessment items have different bits.

Assessment items consist of several variables: The stem (question) and the answer (either provided or needing to be written out) – in the case of multiple choice questions, there are also distractors .

In writing the new driver tests, I considered an assessment item to be the Stem, the Answer, and three Distractors. The stem would be the question (e.g. You arrive at a flashing red light. What does this mean?), the answer (e.g. you must come to a complete stop before proceeding when it is safe to do so), and three distractors (e.g. you must come to a complete stop and wait for the light to turn green before proceeding, you may proceed – slowly, you may only make a left hand turn).

There is much to consider when writing assessment items.

In the case of the new driver tests, the only real consideration was to be cognizant of the target audience (14-22 year olds) and write in a language for which they would understand, and to develop assessment items based on the individual state driver’s handbook.

However, I also have experience developing assessment items for college-level text books. For these items, I had to consider the content (the relevant chapter of the textbook) and write meaningful assessment items to test the learner, but I also had to consider the learning objectives for that chapter (to ensure I was assessing the learner in order to meet the learning objectives) and I had to consider Bloom levels. I previously wrote about Bloom’s Taxonomy here, and in relation to assessment item writing, there was typically a requirement to test to higher-levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. No good college-level assessment is comprised entirely of recall (in my honest opinion).

But…how do I know I’m writing high-quality assessment items? Don’t panic – Here are some resources:

20+ Tips for Writing Great Quiz Questions and Response Options

Improving your Quizzes with Immediate Feedback

Constructing a Bloom’s Taxonomy Assessment

Assessment and Bloom’s Taxonomy

Best Practices: 30 Tips for Creating Quiz Questions

The Anatomy of Great e-Learning Quiz Questions

This week’s term was prompted by a thread I read recently about acronyms. Don’t see the connection? I’ll explain it to you in a few – don’t worry!

Target Audience

Your target audience is anyone who will be participating in the e-learning program you are developing. This is a very small detail, usually discussed in a client’s Statement of Work or a Design Document (or sometimes not at all), but it makes a huge impact on the development of your training materials.

For example, the training materials you develop for a group of 18-21 year old students will likely be different than those developed for a group of 50-60 year old women. For the 18-21 year olds, you might use a more colloquial manner of text or you might use a more interactive, game-based interface. For the 50-60 year old women, you would likely recognize their prior learning experiences and explain the content in a more professional manner.

It is essential to understand and consider your target audience in order to create effective learning experiences!

I’m a huge supporter of conducting an instructional analysis, and while not all clients will see the benefits of paying for anything indicative of an ‘analysis’ phase (many clients may feel as though they’ve conducted this portion), it’s still important as an Instructional Designer to ensure you’re conducting a brief instructional analysis – even if it’s just in your head. If the target audience hasn’t been defined by the client, ASK!

Alright. So how does this connect with acronyms?

Regardless of your target audience  you need to avoid use of industry jargon whenever possible. You need to take yourself outside of your industry body and put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Do they know what TNA means? Because to you, it’s a Training Needs Analysis, but to them it could be an offensive term used to describe several body parts or a popular retail store.

When using acronyms, ensure you are spelling out the first instance of each acronym; this will ensure that your target audience does not become lost in a sea of acronyms, leaving the training more confused than anything. Another suggestion, in acronym or jargon heavy training materials, would be to include a glossary of acronyms or terms; this will provide your target audience with a resource to consult if ever they find themselves confused.

I first came across the concept of adaptive learning when working at my last corporate gig. Someone had a pie-in-the-sky type of idea for moving into adjacent markets, and adaptive learning would give us a HUGE competitive edge. I say pie-in-the-sky because, at the time, the organization could certainly not fund something so new to us. This past weekend, I came across the term again – this time in the context of its increasing popularity. If it’s becoming more popular, I figured we should probably talk about and get to know the term a little bit more.

What is Adaptive Learning?

Adaptive learning is an educational approach which uses technology to create individualized learning experiences. Computer programs, which work diligently to collect data, adapt the material presented based on the user’s learning needs (which are dictated by their responses and interactions with the computer program).

Sounds creepy? Yeah, a little. I sort of liken adaptive learning to the way in which advertisements on websites are adapted based on your browsing history. While it might be creepy, it’s also really cool!

Why is Adaptive Learning Cool?

Adaptive learning is pretty neat, in my opinion, because it allows students to step outside of the traditional face-to-face classroom environments, where teachers are often times over-saturated with the amount of students per class, leading to very generalized teaching (in most cases). Teachers have it tough! And it can be incredibly difficult for them to veer from traditional teaching methods to make learning an individualized experience for each and every student.

Many teacher friends of mine who have taught in the K-12 school system are incredibly frustrated; because of the ‘no child left behind’ concept, kids are being pushed through, regardless of which grade level they’re functioning at. This results in lower-level learners struggling further with the curriculum. Another problem is that it’s getting to the point where teachers are becoming responsible for developing Individualized Education Plans for more than half of their students per class – Doing this is understandable in that the education system wants to cater (as much as possible) to student’s needs, but it also takes a lot of time on the individual teacher’s side of things, which may lead to increased rate of teacher burn-out. Frustrating, no?!

Adaptive learning may be a solution to such a problem, saving teacher resources and frustration!

The only questionable aspect of adaptive learning that I have found is that implementation may be incredibly costly, so institutions really need to recognize the need and the ultimate cost savings on human resources (and ultimately increase in return on investment), before it will ever gain mainstream traction.

Examples, please!

There’s really only one key example that I want to share – Knewton is a technological platform designed to personalize “digital courses so every student is engaged and no one slips through the cracks.” Using analytics, learning gaps are predicted and the presentation of educational materials are adapted to satisfy these learning gaps. HOW COOL IS THAT?!

A more rudimentary example could be a choose your own adventure book; while not necessarily ‘learned’, the outcome is dependent  on (or predicted by) the reader’s choices. Who didn’t enjoy a good choose your own adventure book? Come on!

This week is one of the first wherein Terminology Tuesday hasn’t been prompted by a specific event or discussion the previous week. Instead, I considered some of the challenges new faculty member struggle with when attempting to convert their traditional face-to-face courses to distance or blended learning.

A primary challenge is how to ditch the concept of chalk-and-talk and allow students ample opportunity to interact with one another and construct knowledge together, in close facilitation with the faculty member. Because not everyone is well-versed in learning technologies, this can seem like a daunting task. Some faculty members struggle with understanding that their students don’t need to be in the same physical location to participate in group work or to collaborate with one another (and/or the faculty member), but once they see their distance course in action, they have context with which to change their tune. You can teach an old (or young) dog new tricks!

Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning is an instructional approach that requires students to work closely with one another, often participating in group work. The educator is responsible for providing the information to the students, but the students must work collaboratively to apply the learned information when completing activities, assignments, or projects. The educator will monitor the students to ensure that the learned information is being applied correctly, but they typically act as an observer within a collaborative learning environment and less of an enforcer.

When you think about it, collaborative learning feeds on the concept of constructivism in that multiple individuals are pooling their experiences and ‘resources’ (e.g. prior learning) to learn the subject matter together.

If you really want to get specific, collaborative learning is deep-seated in Lev Vygotsky’s concept of ‘zone of proximal development’, which indicates that individuals will learn information from one another (in Vygotsky’s case, he was specifically talking about children modelling their behaviours after adults) simply by learning like information near one another.

With the emergence of Web 2.0 (more on that in another week), education is bursting at the seams with technologies that enhance collaborative approaches (e.g. wikis, blogs, social media, etc.), and this doesn’t apply to just the education sector.

Technology examples, please!

Off the top of my head, I can think of several technologies that are used to enhance learning: Blackboard Collaborate (used for real-time VOIP classes), Twitter, Adobe Connect.

As for examples that don’t specifically pertain to the education sector (but which can also be used), I’m drawn to technologies such as: Google Hangouts, Google Drive, Dropbox, and any Webinar application.

Resources

Still confused? Aching for more information? Perhaps you want to write your thesis on Collaborative Learning. Here you go:

– What is Collaborative Learning and Why is it Important?

– Collaborative Learning 

– Group Work and Collaborative Learning (Ryerson University)

– 20 Collaborative Learning Tips and Strategies for Teachers

– Zone of Proximal Development

– Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding in the Classroom