Pascale Swanson

Category: Instructional design

My instructional design goals for 2023
Now that I’ve gotten back into blogging, I’ve decided to release another post on my annual goals for instructional design. Keeping these goals public helps keep me on task.

Like last time, I am aiming for quality over quantity when it comes to my goal setting. I am continuing to split my goals into categories, but this time into only two: Design and Development. I want to be realistic as possible this year. After the chaos of covid-ravaged 2020, 2021, and 2022, I want to ensure my goals are achievable regardless of external forces.

Design

I will focus on promising areas of design:
- Microlearning
- Simulations
- Scenarios and stories
Development

I will focus on development directly related to my job, not simply areas that interest me in general:
- 3D modelling (going beyond basics) plus 360-degree images and videos
- Video-based learning using more advanced features of tools I am already familiar with (such as green screens, PremierePro, AfterEffects, etc.)
- JavaScript (going beyond basics)
Conclusion

Here’s to 2023 and let’s hope it will be a much better year than the past few.

Good luck to all of you with your own goals!
January 1, 2023
Designing Learning?

The Debate

There is still quite a bit of debate over the term ‘learning experience designer’ (LXD). The intent of the term was to distinguish L&D professionals who design by considering the entire learning experience rather than focusing only on the content (Read Connie Malamed’s article, for more details about the term). However, some have taken to criticize the term by stating ‘it is impossible to design an experience.’

While this statement is somewhat valid, no one intended for the term to be taken so literally. Its just that ‘learning experience designer’ is a much catchier term than ‘instructional designer who plans for all aspects of learning, including research-based inclusive human-centered user experiences and real-world metrics, rather than just content.’ The latter is just a little bit wordy.

Now, I can’t be inside your brain and force you to think, remember, or feel certain things, and I also can’t force you to learn in exactly the way I want you to; however, I can help design the learning in a way that will guide your experience.

Exhibit A

I was slated to give a talk about the use of video-based eLearning at a conference a couple years ago (cancelled due to COVID-19) and one part of my talk I was going to use the following example about bringing about certain emotions in your audience:

Watch the three videos.

(Note: I was also going to use these same videos to emphasize the importance of lighting… so unfortunately, you’ll just have to imagine the ending yourself)

Conclusion

How did you feel during each video? They were identical aside from the music. Yet the emotions you felt were likely different.

Learning experience design takes this idea but considers all aspects of learning in order to design a course, lesson, job aid, video, etc. that will have the greatest positive impact on learning.

November 5, 2022
Interaction Cost

I recently read an article that Patti Shank wrote back in 2020 about ways to reduce the challenges that learners face when learning from smaller screens. The entire article was fascinating, but for me there was a single section that stood out the most: interaction cost.

The reason this topic stood out for me was not actually related to screen size, but rather due to an argument I’d had a few years ago. It turns out that I might have easily won the argument had I used Patti’s research-based information. Let’s start with the argument and then jump into how Patti’s article is relevant

The argument

I was once told that every single slide of every single eLearning course must have some sort of clicking interaction. This was ostensibly because the learners would get bored otherwise.

At the time my main argument against this was that the specific learners and the specific content should drive the format of the slide (i.e., slide design is not based on designer/developer desires). If clicking interactions made sense for that particular content, that’s fine. However, if those types of interactions didn’t make sense, they should be excluded.

I also tried to argue that information interaction is far more important than interface interaction and that our focus should be there. For more on this topic, see one of my very first posts. Briefly, interface interaction is the clicking, dragging, swiping, etc. used to get more content from a single slide. On the other hand, information interaction is the way that learners intellectually engage with the information and process it. For example, reflecting, connecting with prior knowledge, practicing concept attainment/inductive learning, engaging with scenarios, etc.

The research-based solution

What I didn’t know at that time, was the concept of interaction cost. Interaction cost is the effort (both mental and physical) required for make the course progress. We’ve all experienced the frustration of dealing with screens that seem to scroll forever, multiple clicks to get to a single section, and needless dials and sliders, but we may not have thought about the increased mental effort required to deal these as well.

Decreasing cognitive load is the key driving force for many of Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning. By requiring learners to click, scroll, drag, etc., we are increasing the cognitive load required to complete the course. This is likely not our goal. And all these additional interactions can backfire when cognitive overload occurs, and learners’ brains become overwhelmed. While interface interaction can be exciting and flashy, it isn’t necessarily the best way to present content.

Conclusion

I always have and always will keep cognitive load on the top of my mind when designing slides, to help determine whether interface interaction is adding or subtracting from the slide. If it impedes learning, I will always seek to eliminate those flashy clicks, drags, and swipes.

References

Shank, P. (2020, Jan). Minimizing Challenges Of Learning From Smaller Screens. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/minimizing-challenges-of-learning-from-smaller-screens

October 9, 2022
My Instructional Design Goals for 2020
Unlike last year, I am aiming for quality over quantity when it comes to my instructional design goal setting. I also am choosing a new format. Rather than A-to-Z goals, I am splitting my goals into categories: Research, Design, Development, and Community. In each category, I will keep my goals to a minimum with the hope that this will give me the time to fully succeed in these areas.

Research

Lifelong learning is not just the basis of my career, it is also my passion. I hope to get my own learning back on track this year with some solid research.
- Last year
  I struggled to keep up with the blogs of my most trusted sources. This year I will
  get back to using my blog aggregator (if I can remember my password!) and check
  out the new articles at least every other day.
- For the
  entirety of 2019 the alumni library at the university where I got my most
  recent Master’s degree has been under construction. I had hoped to keep up with
  the accurate theories of and strategies in learning (based on scientific
  research). If the library doesn’t open up within the first quarter of 2020,
  I’ll look to getting my research elsewhere.
Design

I have many great ideas for ways to improve the instructional design at my job. Unfortunately, these ideas aren’t always implemented. However, this year I hope to have a greater influence in the design process. My goal is to have a greater focus in promising areas of design that I have been prototyping:
- Inductive
  learning (aka concept attainment)
- Microlearning
- Simulations
Development

This year I whittled down my list of tools to just three:
- Blender
- Illustrator
  (the only Creative Cloud product that strikes fear into my heart)
- AfterEffects
  (I already can do quite a bit, but I’m looking to reach a more advanced level)
Community

I believe that a strong professional learning community can help a learning experience designer flourish. Last year I lay the groundwork and this year I hope to build upon that.
- I
  re-invented my Twitter account last year. This year I hope to check it at least
  every other day and to contribute at least once per week.
- I’ve been
  mostly ignoring the ID community (particularly the Articulate community),
  except when I need to solve a problem. That is just terrible in my eyes. This
  year I’d like to be more active in helping other solve their problems. I will
  also aim to write a new blog post at least twice per month.
Conclusion

The year 2020 seems promising to me, and I’m hoping it will be my greatest year yet when it comes to achieving my L&D goals. Good luck to all of you with your own goals.
January 4, 2020
Report Card: My A-to-Z Instructional Design Goals for 2019

At the start of the year I wrote myself a list of instructional design goals for 2019. I was feeling particularly ambitious and I created a goal for each letter of the alphabet.

This year has been filled with many ups and downs and I haven’t been able to spend as much time achieving my goals as I would have liked. Hopefully next year I can take the approach that there’s no such thing as “I don’t have enough time” because you can always make time for your goals.

But as for this year, it’s time to write my report card to evaluate my success in achieving my 2019 goals. I’ll split the list into three sections: exciting successes, mediocre attempts, and embarrassing failures.

Exciting successes

D – Design (visual design)

F – Feedback (develop highly personalized feedback strategies)

J – Join ID communities

M – Meetings (attend 2-3, including online summits w eLearning guild)

T – Talk (present a talk at a conference)

I’ll focus only on the most important items here. Primarily joining instructional design communities (at meetings, on Twitter, and on LinkedIn) and presenting at a conference. This second one was only a Show and Share at the Canadian eLearning Conference, but I still say it counts. It has also given me the courage to apply to present full presentations at conferences this year.

Mediocre attempts

B – Blogging

G – Gamification (learn more about it and see if it’s for me)

H – Heroes (continue doing eLearning heroes challenges)

N – Negative space (make better use of it)

O – Objectives (improve construction of objectives)

P – Photoshop

Q – Quality over quantity (despite manager’s desires)

S – SME wrangling (develop skills to get the most out of my SMEs)

U – UI/UX

V – Variety (stretch my capabilities of design and development)

Z – Zapworks

The most important items here are my attempts at blogging (hopefully I will be more consistent next year) and my return to working on eLearning Heroes Challenges. I have yet to actually submit one, but even doing them for myself brings me great joy.

Embarrassing failures

A – Adapt (rapid eLearning tool)

C – Character Animator

E – Evolve (rapid eLearning tool)

I – Illustrator

K – Keynote summaries (post summaries of keynotes from conferences)

L – Lectora

R – Research (continue to research in the field of ID)

W – Writing (improve specific aspects – for example using contractions)

X – Xerox (“steal” from other professions, e.g., marketing – AIDA, WIIFM, etc.)

Y – YouTube (update my channel)

The most important item here is my lack of work on my YouTube channel. I would have loved to call this one a success this year since I reach 500,000 views this summer, but unfortunately I haven’t spent any time updating old videos. Another significant disappointment is that I didn’t continue to research scientific papers in the field of instructional design. However, in my defense, the alumni library has been under construction for the entire year (!)

Conclusion

While I have had some exciting successes this year, overall I haven’t achieved as much as I set out to do. This coming year I will public post my goals again (with the hope that this will encourage me to meet these goals), but I will try to be less ambitious. I’d hate to set myself up for failure.

Happy New Year to all of you, and good luck crafting and achieving your own goals for 2020.

December 31, 2019
Inductive Learning (aka Concept Attainment)
A couple weeks ago I was fortunate enough to be interviewed for a magazine article (for OHS Canada). I had a wonderful conversation with Marcel Vander Wier about education and training in occupational health and safety.

Although we discussed many topics, the most noteworthy topic was inductive learning (also known as concept attainment). I have recently realized, through conversations with many learning and development professionals, that this is still a relatively uncommon instructional design strategy despite its many benefits.

This post scratches the surface of inductive learning. Hopefully, I will delve more deeply into the topic in a future post.

What is inductive learning?

Inductive learning involves the learner using their prior knowledge to discover new ideas, skills, concepts, or information.

How do inductive learning strategies differ from traditional learning strategies?

Courses that use traditional learning strategies simply present ideas to passive learners, often without any attempt to bridge the gap between their prior knowledge and the new information. This traditional design strategy typically involves content being forced onto the learner and then assessing ‘learning’ (even though the learner will promptly forget the information presented).

Inductive learning stands in stark contrast to traditional learning design. Inductive learning flips learning design on its head. The basis of this strategy involves encouraging learners to activate their prior knowledge. Learners then use this to interpret the new information that the course was designed to deliver. If the learner struggles to successfully acquire the new information, support is given. In some cases, this support may fall in line with a more traditional learning design strategy; however, this is a last resort.

Why is inductive learning effective?

Learning doesn’t happen in isolation. To incorporate new information into our long-term memory, we must be able to link this new information to memories that already exist.

Traditional learning design often misses this experience. It requires the learner to make their own connections, which they wouldn’t know to do without prompting. Ultimately, the new information doesn’t root deeply into the learner’s memory.

Inductive learning, on the other hand, requires activation of prior knowledge as a prerequisite for learning. Learners who experience inductive learning activities retain a significantly higher percentage of information long after the course concludes.

This occurs for three reasons. First, learners can more easily link the new information to their prior knowledge, thereby integrating the new information into long-term memory. Second, by having to discover the new information on their own, they are more likely to engage in metacognition. Third, the continuous feedback afforded by inductive learning promotes competence and confidence.

When is inductive learning appropriate?

As with any instructional design strategy, inductive learning is not a ‘one size fits all’ strategy. It works exceptionally well in some cases and is ineffective in others. Typically, inductive learning is an appropriate strategy under any of the following conditions:
- When learners have a
  significant amount of prior knowledge
- When the new information has
  significant similarities to the learners’ prior knowledge
- When relatively safe skills are
  being developed (e.g., I wouldn’t recommend using inductive learning to teach
  someone how to use a forklift for the first time, unless the learning is occurring
  on a simulator)
- When continuous feedback is
  required
- When learners need an
  opportunity to fail in order to learn
What is an example of an inductive learning activity?

Compare the experience of learning through traditional learning and inductive learning with the two examples below. They teach similar concepts but with vastly different styles.

It is worth noting that the course built using inductive learning resulted in a 3-fold higher post-activity assessment score compared to the traditional course. Furthermore, long-term learning retention was 91% in the inductive learning course, compared to only 33% for the traditional learning course.

Traditional learning course

Inductive learning course

Conclusion

Inductive learning is wildly successful when used in the right conditions. It promotes long-term memory integration, metacognition, and active learning. Gone are the days when traditional learning was the singular strategy in the learning and development toolbox. Inductive learning is the new kid in town, and it is taking instructional design by storm.
December 22, 2019