Learning Styles
Learning and User Experience: Good UX=Good LX
Dec 30th
Steven Bell (who writes often and well on the topic of usability and customer experience over at the Designing Better Libraries blog) recently turned me on to an thought-provoking video of Jesse James Garrett discussing his ideas on User Experience at the Adaptive Path UX Week 2009 Conference. (Jump to the bottom of this post to see the video)
Garrett’s ideas are simple to understand and elegantly presented. Since watching the video, I find myself increasingly seeing the world through UX (user experience) eyes. It’s occurred to me that Garrett’s ideas on user experience also lay out a simple roadmap for engaging learners. In fact, many teachers and trainers probably already use UX principles effectively, whether they do so consciously or not.
FOUR WAYS TO ENGAGE LEARNERS
Garrett suggests that there are four primary ways that we can engage users:
- Perception (Senses): Engaging through sight, sound, smell, etc.
- Action (body/kinesthetic): Engaging through movement and physical action.
- Cognition (mind): Engaging through thought, reflection, logic, imagination.
- Emotion (heart): Engaging through emotion, feelings.
Four Ways to Engage Learners
You’ll notice that two types of engagement (perception/action) involve direct engagement with the external world, while the other two types (cognition/emotion) are internal engagements.
Reflecting on my own experiences I realized that the most successful, effective trainings I’ve been involved with, as both a learner and a trainer, offered a balanced engagement in all four areas.
I think there is an opportunity for trainers and teachers to bring their lessons to the next level by consciously designing learning experiences (LX) that engage learners in all four areas. In other words, I believe that Good UX=Good LX.
USER EXPERIENCE: PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
One example of what it looks like when it all comes together (i.e. when people are engaged, internally through emotion and cognition, as externally through their actions, and perceptions) is illustrated beautifully in this video, The Fun Theory in which researchers replace regular stairs with “piano key” stairs. What do you think happens? Click play to find out…
So how were the people in this video being engaged? I observed:
- Perception (sound, music, visual stimulation of piano key stairs)
- Action (jumping, stepping, climbing)
- Cognition (curiosity, decision-making; choosing between stairs/escalator; processing the cause/effect of walking on the stairs)
- Emotion (fun, fun, fun! Joy of the unexpected. Joy of seeing others having fun. Sense of community, and sharing in a novel experience.)
Did you observe any other types of engagement?
Thinking about your own experiences, can you recall ways in which you’ve successfully engaged your learners or been engaged as a learner? Share your suggestions and experiences in the comments section. And if you find these concepts useful in designing future learning experiences please drop a line and let us know!
(see the complete Garrett video on user experience–well worth a watch–below)
Jesse James Garrett on The State of User Experience, UX Week 2009
All images used through Creative Commons license as follows:
- Eye: cc Attribution 2.0 Generic
- Mouse Click: cc Attribution 2.0 Generic
- Thinker: cc Attribution 2.0 Generic
- Hand Smile: cc Attribution Share-alike 2.0 Generic
Looking for creative commons images? Try Sprixi!
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Loading ...The Fun Theory
Oct 12th
Volkswagen has a very cool site up and running. It’s called The Fun Theory and the site states:
This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.
One of their videos proves this point with no question:
There are more videos on the site and they are currently running a contest. As a technology trainer, teaching mostly on software applications and having very limited time to cover the material, there isn’t a lot of room for fun. So I try to make it fun with my humor and poking fun at myself when I make a mistake. Or easing stress by sharing stories of there ALWAYS being someone slower than you think you are at picking up information. I keep a laid back attitude too which trainees seem to appreciate.
How do you build fun into your training? Has the thought even crossed your mind?
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...How Youth Want To Learn
Aug 25th
I was pointed to an enlightening video today in Training magazine’s weekly newsletter, Training Tech Talk. It shows all of us involved in learning that the old methods are not going to work with the generation coming into the workforce. Larry Edelman from the University of Colorado Denver produced this video titled “Youth, Technology, and Learning: Opportunities for Educators and Future Employers”. “On the video, high-school students discuss how they use technology for communication, problems they have with traditional education, and how they would best learn a new job,” explains Edelman.
Most of the training I do for my Library System involves hands-on use of technology. I’m grateful that I have a training lab where we can actually do the work on the various software programs. However, I do have to do demos where everyone is just sitting and watching me show the software when I go outside of our building and there is no training lab setup. I’ve known for awhile that the old sit and watch method doesn’t work as well, but as the newer, younger library workers come into my classes it’s becoming even more apparent. After watching this video, I feel a new fire underneath of me to ge cracking on new ways of teaching. These highschool freshmen explain very well what it’s like to try and learn all day in school using the old methods when the rest of their world involves an entirely different way of interacting and communicating. What a disconnect. Go ahead, watch for yourself and please leave some comments with suggestions to help build the fire!
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...Tufte the Magnificent
Apr 30th
I finally seized the opportunity to see Edward Tufte deliver his one-day workshop Presenting Data and Information. Due to his rockstar reputation, I had some overblown expectations—something more theatrical, with flashy graphics, head stands, perhaps a light show? I spent the first two hours feeling a bit let down until I realized how antipodal his message is to the marketing flash of someone like Seth Godin. Tufte’s presentation is all about delivering substantive content that is cognitively engaging—an approach that he modeled expertly, sans bells and whistles. While I had overestimated Tufte’s histrionics, he did not underestimate my (his audience’s) intelligence.
The workshop is directed more toward those in the business world who need to present data and information to address engineering problems, inform budget decisions, and the like. However, I found a couple of take-aways for trainer-facilitators.
1. The Super Graphic (or Return of the Handout)
There is a tendency (especially in online learning) to reduce data and information to a minimal amount per screen, or to stretch data sets out over a series of screens. This is driven necessarily by the compact pixel real estate of the computer monitor, but the outcome is to shrink information toward meaninglessness or to confound the viewer’s cognitive ability to make comparisons and draw conclusions by scattering the inputs and forcing super-human acts of memorizing.
Enter the SUPER GRAPHIC! This is a printed, efficiently annotated graphic, dense with data, legal size or larger, that allows the learner to scan the entirety of an information set, make comparisons from proximal visual, numerical and textual information, and derive informed, self-propelled conclusions. This kind of information presentation could/should accompany most online training. Many courses include downloadable handouts of resources as more of an addendum than an integral part of the learning. Why not design a course around a super graphic, using the online portion to direct the learner’s attention, inject probing questions, and allow interactions to demonstrate the successful intake of knowledge?
2. Give the learner time to think
Several times during the workshop, Tufte asked the audience to study a data set or super graphic in one of his books, which we all had stacked in front of us. And then he stopped talking. Attention was not focused on the stage but on the pages of our books. There were some low murmurs of people sharing observations but the room of 400+ was otherwise quiet. This went on for five minutes—an eternity of “dead air” in broadcast parlance.
This was an aha! moment for me. Not only is it okay to give learners some studying-thinking time during instruction, it empowers them to absorb, reflect, and contribute to the formation of knowledge. It allows real learning to take place. Isn’t that more important than filling up every second of audio space?
Do I recommend going to see Tufte’s presentation next time he’s in your neighborhood? Sure! Yes, you can buy all the books for approximately half the price of the workshop, but you would miss the directed tour through the material and you would miss Tufte’s modeling of effective delivery.
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...PicLens –wish I had this yesterday
Mar 21st
My learning style is about as visual as they come. Which means I like to load up my PowerPoint presentations and online instruction modules with images. Just yesterday, I spent a lot of time in Google Images and Flickr searching for the just right photo or graphic to illustrate an upcoming presentation. I’m sure you know how tedious it is to scroll down each page of results, click to the next page, scroll down, click, …until eye and mouse fatigue set in.
Now there’s PicLens! It wasn’t until this morning that I found Jenny Levine’s recommendation for this very cool tool. Tedium transforms to levitation. There is a sense of flying past the 3D image wall, hovering over sections, zooming in and out for near and far perspectives—a dragonfly view of the online image world. Using the same Google Image search that I had performed yesterday sans PicLens, pictures that I hadn’t noticed before jumped out at me. I could scroll the length of the few hundred results with fluid ease instead of giving up after 3 or 4 pages. You’ve just got to try it to appreciate the experience.
Downloads are available for Firefox, IE, and Safari. It only works on certain sites like Google Images, Flickr, Facebook. I found it pretty intuitive to use, but tutorials are available just in case.
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