The debate between Direct Instruction vs Discovery Learning is not new. It has been around. However, the amazing part is, it still rages on. Should we let the trainers and designers take control of the learning process or should we transfer the steering wheels to the learners? There is no easy answer.Direct Instruction vs Discovery LearningAccording to Jean Piaget, the father of discovery learning, interfering with discovery blocks complete understanding. Therefore, discovery learning should be the preferred way to learn.A. Faye Borthick and Donald R. Jones emphasized the advantage of collaboration in discovery learning and the sense of community that results from it.  They opined that, "In discovery learning, participants learn to recognize a problem, characterize what a solution would look like, search for relevant information, develop a solution strategy, and execute the chosen strategy. In collaborative discovery learning, participants, immersed in a community of practice, solve problems together."On the other hand, experts like Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller and Richard E. Clark are strongly in favor of Direct Instruction. According to them, "learners should be provided with direct instructional guidance on the concepts and procedures required by a particular discipline and should not be left to discover those procedures by themselves."Personally, I prefer Discovery Learning but I also acknowledge that there are situations where Direct Instruction is the better approach.How Do We Provide Information and Still Make Learning a Discovery Rather than Telling the Learner?Tita Beal who is an Instructional Designer with the American Management Association posed this challenge, "How then can we guide learners toward a skill model, conceptual framework, correct procedure or other "answers" while still providing opportunities to discover, use inductive reasoning and give a sense of ownership over - and therefore more commitment to apply - the learning? In short, how and when do we provide the information and still make learning a discovery lesson rather than telling the learner?"According to Beal, this is an example of direct instruction: "stop and think before responding to identify the stage of the change process -- denial, resistance, acceptance even if grudging orfull commitment?I believe a third option is in order:I usually use the embedded model. This means that in a Story-Based eLearning lesson, I design an event so that the learners need to access a reference guide to find the answers to the problem they are solving in the event.      An example event might be: Compare that to Beal's "stop and think before responding to identify the stage of the change process - denial, resistance, acceptance even if grudging or full commitment?We keep on creating events to help learners discover the content in real life.   You can always provide a link to show learners the key ideas. My suggestion would be to rewrite the content in a way that relates to your scenario.For example: (as an Insight)Why does Gigi suspect Joe's views? What are the consequences if Gigi continues to deny, resist and not accept her tasks/role/etc. as demanded by the situation? On the other hand what would be the benefits if Gigi opens her mind to accept and commit?Observe, that your content is still integrated within the insight. But it is in a story form and related to the decisions that your learners can relate to.ConclusionWhile the debate between Direct Instruction and Discovery Learning rages on, I believe we can come up with a third option where we provide instructions to the learners while keeping the learning process as a discovery scenario. Embedding insight into the content designed in a form of a story, makes it natural for the learners to relate to.References A. Faye Borthick and Donald R. Jones. The Motivation for Collaborative Discovery Learning  Online and Its Application in an Information Systems Assurance Course. Georgia State  University.    Paul A. Kirschner , John Sweller & Richard E. Clark. Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based,Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching. Educational Psychologist.   William W. Cobern, et.al. Experimental Comparison of Inquiry and Direct Instruction in Science.   Jean Piaget, Wikipedia  Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

In my previous tip, I mentioned that learners struggle to focus because there's just too much stimuli that competes to grab their attention. The solution is to make our content or story snappy, relevant and cholesterol-free. In short, cut the crap!!!Top Reasons to Simplify ContentLearner/User Experience - As I previously mentioned, varied stimuli tug at learners' attention. Whether you're writing a story or just plain learning content, if it does not stand out, forget about getting an audience. When designing content, you have to make it grab the learners' attention upon eye contact.Business/Corporate Reasons - Simplifying your content makes you polish your message. This means saying only what is relevant to your learner and avoiding unnecessary repetition. Being less verbose conveys the message that you mean business because you don't waste your word and consequently, your learner's time. Extra Benefits - The added benefit of snappy story creation is that there are less chances of making mistakes. Reducing your content/story to what only matters to your learners means you edit less.Cutting the Crap out of Your Story-based e-Learning ContentWriting a snappy story means the removal of what is gratuitously present in it. It means cutting out what is there for no reason at all. When doing it, ask yourself these questions:Will my story stand without this part? If the answer to this question is yes, then that part of your story has to go. In the words of scriptwriter Paul Peditto, "Look to the dialogue you wrote in the first rough draft. Look at it with an unflinching eye. What can be cut? Cut it. Does the scene still make sense? If the answer is yes, it stays cut. If you've left something out that has to go back in, then in it goes. That's the true measure of what's necessary: Does the scene make sense without it?" Should I include this part? Often times it's not a question of whether you could include a thing or not. It's more a question of should it be included? Stuffing your content to convolution just to make it look meaty only adds to confusion. You don't need to prove that you have a lot of things to say, just get to the point.  What will the learners think? Considering what the learners will think of your content/story will make you design it from their perspective. Always remember that you are not there to prove that you're "deep" but to connect with the learners.In his article SCRIPT GODS MUST DIE: Writing Dialogue - The Cut Instinct, Paul Peditto gives an excellent example of how to cut the crap out of your story. I believe the same principle is applicable when designing plain content. Take a look at the dialogue excerpt and observe how he simplified it.He reduced it to this: Did you notice how the dialogue became snappy, relevant and cholesterol-free? Conclusion Simplifying your content is a conscious design choice. It means getting into the shoes of your learners and including only what you have thoroughly assessed and determined they really need. What's not  necessary is dropped and what is retained are only the stuff that matters. I'm not a martial arts artist, but the words of Bruce Lee resonates when he said "absorb what is useful, reject what is useless." References Speider Schneider. The Secrets Of Successful Website Content. March 7, 2014.   Richa Jain. When Less is More - Why Minimalism STILL Rules the Web. June 29, 2015   Paul Peditto. SCRIPT GODS MUST DIE: Writing Dialogue - The Cut Instinct. July 1, 2015.  Ray Jimenez. Minimalist Story-Based eLearning Lesson Grabs Learner.   Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

People can never be better at computing than computers. We cannot become more efficient than machines. All we can do is be more curious, more creative, more empathetic. The fact that automation is taking away jobs once designed for people means that it is time we focus on what is really important: our humanity. Service delivery will gradually improve as machines take it over. Accidents will diminish with self-driving cars. Errors will be reduced with robotic surgeries. Many human jobs will fade away. Just as few people do work that requires pure physical labour today, soon few of us will do routine, procedural, standardized knowledge work. As DeepMind beat the world Go champion in their first three games this week, we should take a serious look at what this means for the long term. Machines that can teach themselves may be better teachers for humans as well. "Could teaching be trumped by a learning machine? Are we beginning to glimpse the possibility of machines that teach themselves to teach? They learn what works, what doesn’t and deliver ever better performance. We see the embryonic evidence for this in adaptive learning systems, that are truly algorithmic, and do use machine learning, to improve as they deliver. The more students they teach, the better they get. They even tech themselves. This is not science fiction. This is real AI, in real software, delivering real courses, in real institutions." - Donald Clark Getting people to be more efficient is a mug’s game, but it’s a game that many of our institutions continue to play. But the machines will beat us at this game - every time. We are on the cusp of being a digitally networked and computer-driven society and it seems we are throwing away the only thing that will enable people to have a valued role in it. Common core education standards are useless for this world of work. So are standard academic disciplines, as well as standard job competencies. These are all for machines, not humans. The future of human work is complex, creative, and unique. I have focused this past decade on helping people find ways to break out of the standardization mindset. My PKM workshop is designed so that each participant creates their own ‘personal’ path to ‘knowledge mastery. Many of the activities are centered on people, communities, and human networks. There is no shortage of tools to help us make collaborate and communicate, and the list keeps growing. But managing our connections with people is what really matters. We are only as good as our human networks. My social learning workshop is focused on people, skills, and finally tools. It provides a map to get away from standardized learning outcomes and information dissemination. For both workshops, people take the journey as a social cohort, learning with each other as well. Many times friendships are made which continue for long after. Learning in complex, creative, and unique work environments is all about people. Work is learning, and learning is the work. For our own humanity, that learning has to prepare us for a new world of work. The machines are getting much better at the old world of work than we can ever be. Further Reading Beyond the Reach of Automation Automation is Coming for a Job Near You

Some global organizations have large scale innovation initiatives; their aim is to involve employees in grass-roots innovation activities, driving them to identify questions that require innovation, identify possible solutions and try them, iterating as needed. We’ve written in the past about gamification for innovation, but I wanted to show how these high-level concepts can be broken down into a real use case at a large enterprise. The core idea behind corporate innovation initiatives is that innovation can be driven from below and not by management edict. These programs begin by establishing an innovation "body" - a loosely coupled group of innovators spread throughout the organization - and embedding it in the organization. The core challenge is to build a culture of sustainable innovation, with people at its core. How do you launch and foster an entrepreneurial mindset in large organizations? Here are some ideas: Training One of the core requirements of innovation programs is training. Yes, this may sound odd - don’t great ideas just drop out of the blue? But in reality, the goal of these programs is to drive innovation by providing learning materials - to get people exposed to ideas, challenges and to socialize them by organizing events. eLearning gamification can be great this, and combined with many gamification elements that track performance. You can read more here. Social proof Everything that is innovation-centric or that is about contributing to a community as a whole is driven by social proof and karma.  That’s how we humans are built. That’s why any innovation project has to have a healthy dose of social proof and karma points. You want to show off your good deeds, your innovation peers in another country/division also want to show them off. This is where good old badges (as well as kudos, one of our favorite game mechanics, and a social feed) come into play: Internal bragging Many badges per type of contribution /activity/ geography / role etc Show mastery Communicate expertise to others Social proof Can be communicated externally to demonstrate achievement outside the innovation group Instead of tracking performance, tracking karma Yes, karma points are lovely. Use karma to reward for contributions to others (like "karma" in Reddit) Drive collaboration by attaching karma points Using karma points for "Kudos" Encourage working with champions through karma mechanisms Karma can also be used as game "levels". Here’s a way to think about it: Create "levels" to show progress as an innovation champion Levels can also be adjusted by contribution /activity/ role/ geography etc Competition too Although we typically discourage outright competition, some competition between innovation champions in a large corporation can be nice sometimes. Use it like this: Leaderboard of contribution across several innovation areas/ competition Visibility across network/geographies Track core innovation group KPIs to communicate and show activity to managers/ rest of The ability to segment by function/geography for different rewards, measurements, etc Don’t forget knowledge contribution We believe that knowledge creation is great for gamification. Here’s a case study In the innovation story, here’s how to use it: Sharing and knowledge creation as core KPI Badges Levels Gamification communication features for innovation "story" dissemination across divisions and geographies Gamification of DTT learning activities

In any profession knowledge is power and the best way to keep your knowledge up to date is by staying in the know with the latest trends, updates and news. This is especially true for the fast paced and ever changing industry of training and development. We have pulled together a list of our top 5 resources to share some of the best out there at the moment.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of February 29-March 13 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). We have four trends that we discuss: two major trends and two emerging trends. Virtual Reality continues to be a trend. The focus for the past two weeks with VR has […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  0 (Zero), Be the first to leave a reply!Copyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 59 Trends for February 29-March 13 The Language of VR, OER, and Digital Literacy], All Right Reserved. 2016.

We want our students to think critically about the sites on the internet. We want them to think critically about the information shared online, and make sure that the information is bias free. Particularly when conducting research. This is where Critical Literacy comes into play. It is important to make sure that in our digital age, […]

JISC’s Annual Digifest offers a fantastic opportunity to connect with colleagues across FE and HE and share some great practice around Educational and Information Technologies. 2016’s event took place across on 2nd-3rd March at Birmingham’s ICC and was formed of keynotes, workshops, seminars and hands-on technology displays. I attended on behalf of Falmouth University alongside a colleague from FXPlus, the University’s Shared Service Provider. The theme of this year’s festival was to celebrate the ‘Power Of Digital’ to address challenges faced by institutions; such as keeping up with increasing demand on infrastructure and that technology adoption and understanding by students is moving at a faster pace than HEI’s are able to keep up with.   Plenary Day 1   As part of the Plenary session on day 1, Andrew Harrison talked about transforming learning spaces through technology and rather than silo-ing off activity, having spaces that celebrate inter-disciplinarity (co-incidentally a theme for the week’s #LTHEchat). Harrison promoted virtual and physical spaces that are complementary, that have technology fully integrated and that facilitate experimentation, suggesting that we want less gaffa tape holding up projector leads. He identified the challenge that HE’s face of losing real estate as learning evolves a from didactic to active models, providing flexible learning spaces means a loss of real estate. Melbourne learning lab was cited as an interesting example of a tiered learning space hacked out of an old lecture theatre and that a successful learning space will consider realms of Space , Place, Process & Experience. Donna Lanclos continued with a series of provocations to educators and challenged delegates to develop pedagogies that work "whether the power comes on or not" and, in a similar fashion to Harrison, suggested a focus shift to Place and Presence as opposed to Tools and Practice stating "our role is to help people explore, not hand them a tool and tell them how to use it". Lanclos talked about the intensification of presence through digital devices, in that we can be in virtual and physical space at the same time and that staff need to feel supported in these areas. An audience member asked if Digital can make better teachers and the simple response was No, but in discussion the plenary panel agreed that technology has changed what teaching can be and it can be a motivator to improve one’s practice. #digifest16 @TheContentMine No one really talked about the potential to change the "learn"-"teach" balance. for me digital changes democracy   Understanding your Institution’s Digital Practice   This mapping workshop built up on JISC’s work in the area of Digital Capability and used an extension of the Visitors and Residents model to map digital practice at an organisational level. James Clay presented some real world examples of the V&R spectrum talking about people who buy from amazon.com as visitors and those who buy and leave reviews as moving towards a resident mode. Equally on Twitter we may have retweeted/posted something today, but in resident mode we might @reply to someone or comment on a retweet. Lawrie Phipps also noted that we may not leave a "social trace" even if we have an account with a service and that the V&R spectrum is not static and that technologies and practices are ever evolving. Image courtesy of Lawrie Phipps The mapping activity asked us to visualise practice within our own institutions and is designed to help staff discover where and how technology is being used and the level of anticipated or actual engagement. The mapping template is free to use and would be a brilliant exercise to undertake across organisational departments. I can already see how this activity would be useful for our Falmouth ICT and FXPlus IT teams to compare our own perceptions of Digital Practice.   FELTAG   This session focused on progress made since the last update to FELTAG report published by the department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The panel considered how the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group has enabled institutions to argue a case for new technology rather than a common argument for efficiency being getting rid of teaching staff. Poor implementation of technology creates workload. Warwickshire College Group and South Staffordshire College cited a move to Google Apps and more specifically Google Classroom has enabled learning to happen anywhere, on any device. Deployment of Chromebooks has improved energy efficiency and reduced maintenance costs. Highbury college involved all staff and students in their Digital Futures Strategy, creating a sense of collaboration and ownership. Key to all of this, and an emergent theme from the conference, was fostering a Culture of Innovation within the organisation above a Culture of Compliance. Concentrating on people and wellbeing, and having supportive leaders who are prepared to take risks, were common links between panel members, one adding that "culture eats strategy for breakfast". It was also noted that statistics are often the enemy of innovation and slow the pace of change. Echoing the morning keynote, the panel talked about the danger of putting students in a linear environment that isn’t open, social and collaborative like they are used to and that traditional classroom teaching does not replicate life. Students in one college described letters as "things that dead people did", SMS as "aggressive" but mobile apps as "friendly" and that we need to consider this when making use of technology to support learning. We need to ask questions of our institutional systems such as "How does the VLE support learning?", "do we just need better ways to communicate?". Concerns were expressed from the audience that FELTAG was being used as a stick with which to punish those not complying with 10% online provision as set out in the recommendation. I think this may be true where organisations are not prepared to shift ingrained paradigms, but what FELTAG does is enable a conversation to happen around appropriate use of Technology Enhanced Learning and certainly in FE it seems to be supporting improvements.   Plenary Day 2   The Plenary session on day 2 focused on The Power of Digital in Learning & Teaching. JISC’s Sarah Davies led the session and added the broader picture of current and future work across the sector. Heather McDonald talked about the effect that technology will have on hollowing out middle economy jobs and that the future will see leading educators beamed into classrooms and an extension of Self Organised Learning Environments, as popularised by Sugatra Mitra. I feel that there there may be an element of social learning missing in this prediction and that it presents a future in which the didactic model of teaching hasn’t evolved. McDonald did however, go on to say that in the light of the TEF and with reference to OFSTED that we should own and define what excellent teaching is in the future and this not be in the hands of Government. John Traxler asked "What killed the mobile learning dream?" And answered by saying that ‘Mobile Learning’ was a product of its time and arose from the aspirations of research into anytime, anywhere learning. He continued by saying that Mobile Learning initiatives were often driven by Institutes with access to devices, but now the technology is cheap, robust, easy to use, and social. This changes the dynamic of mobile learning to an "outside in rather than inwards, top down approach". Traxler suggested that we now need to address the challenges of an abundance of devices. Ian Dolphin opened by drawing attention to the Educause Next Generation Digital Learning Environment Initiative which argues that the VLE should move from a teacher centred model to one that supports collaboration, analytics for advice, personalisation and accessibility. Dolphin also noted that the expanding field of learner analytics raises more ‘non digital’ questions, around things such as ‘informed consent’. This view is consistent with feedback from the Open University at last year’s DigiFest, who noted that increasingly students are asking about what is being done with the vast amounts of data being collected and held about them Chrissi Nerantzi’s talk, Wondering while Wandering addressed the rise of playfulness in Learning and Teaching, but that people are quickly discouraged from playing and innovating if the culture doesn’t support it. Also that technology shouldn’t drive learning and teaching, but in reference to the Enhance, Empower, Extend framework, we can play with it if we are empowered. Balloons were released into the audience throughout the talk and as we played Sarah Davies concluded the session by asking how do you enable play within an organisation? How would senior managers allow this? Nerantzi responded by changing terminology, saying experimentation is play and teaching staff experiment within their subject disciplines so why not in teaching. Also from experience, when academics become ‘students’, their practice develops and failures may produce many forms of ritual learning. Davies added that developing a model of students as partners, allows a shared understanding of learning and experimentation. I wasn’t able to attend further sessions on day two, but again an enjoyable #Digifest16 with some great speakers and fellow delegates. Having been for the last 3 years, the format continues to improve and it’s great to see such great practice within organisations that are empowering their staff and students to do more with technology to support learning.