As a follow-up to my previous inquiry, "learnings from
instructional
design", I am interested in discussing the role of IA
as Educator and hope
others on the list might also offer their thoughts on this
topic.
(To subscribe to the ia-academic list, please visit:
htt
p://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/ia-academic)
In a recent team meeting for design leads at my corporate
employer, we were
invited to brainstorm on the topic, "attributes of
successful project
teams/team leaders." I suggested that the IA/Design
Lead often serves as an
Educator -- whether that involves educating project/business
sponsors about
the design process, or education on the level of team member
skills.
Further reflecting on the practice of information
architecture as a medium
for education, I have been recently interested in the field
of instructional
design and the many lessons to be learned from the
practitioners, thinkers
and writers in this field. Beginning my own research in
this area, I
stumbled upon an article written by Brent Wilson, David
Jonassen and Peggy
Cole of the University of Colorado, Denver from 1993:
Cognitive Approaches
to Instructional Design (htt
p://carbon.cudenver.edu/~bwilson/training.html).
This article offers many salient points for consideration.
I will continue
here with just two, training vs. education and minimalist
training.
" Training versus education
Conventional wisdom says that training is more context- and
job-specific
than education; training is skills-based whereas education
is
knowledge-based. Unfortunately, this distinction has been
used as an excuse
for rote procedural training for many years. We believe that
the distinction
between training and education is not as clear-cut as many
believe; when
learning takes place, both knowledge and skill are acquired.
Indeed, most
training situations call for some degree of meaningful
understanding and
problem-solving capability. Educational institutions, of
course, also tend
to neglect meaningful learning; medical schools, for
example, suffer from a
reputation of inculcating basic science into students'
heads, then expecting
them to successfully transfer that knowledge to clinical
settings later. A
cognitive view of instruction would argue that both training
and educational
systems need a better repertoire of effective strategies to
make material
more meaningful and useful to learners. Thus our discussion
below should
relate to both technical training and educational problems;
in this chapter,
we use the term instruction to denote both training and
education."
Here, it is interesting to note the writers' definitions of
training,
education and instruction which could be helpful in our own
conversations
about IA as a medium for each, and the subtle differences
that each of these
scenarios may suggest. For example, IA as a medium for
training might
facilitate the acquisition of a hard or soft skill, or it
might support a
user's general awareness and knowledge about a topic. The
IA's awareness of
the type of user learning taking place becomes an important
lens through
which s/he begins to see meaningful structures that
facilitate learning
goals. Creating the IA for a "Learn Spanish in 2
weeks" website will likely
be a different experience than creating the IA for a site
that tells a story
about the history of an organization. How might the IA
begin to develop
cognitive approaches, methods and documentation based on the
type of user
learning that will be taking place?
The second point from this article that I would like to
address is that of
minimalist training. This concept would be particularly of
interest to IAs,
developers and business sponsors as project requirements are
discussed
around providing enough education considering time, resource
and budget
constraints.
"Minimalist training
Instruction or training of any kind involves a paradox.
Learners don't
understand instruction unless they're somewhat acquainted
with the thing
they are learning about. However, they are not prepared for
the real thing
until they've had some preliminary training. In graphic
terms, trainers
often must decide: "Shall I simplify the problem and
lead students by the
nose, or shall I throw them headfirst into the whirlpool of
new information
and try and hold them up as they gasp for air?" There
is a continuing
tension in all training between simplification and control
versus
exploration and exposure to real-world complexity. In-house
we call this the
"spoon-feeding" problem: To simplify or not to
simplify instruction-that is
the question! Carroll (1990) expresses it in the context of
learning to use
computer applications: "To learn, [users] must
interact meaningfully with
the system, but to interact with the system, they must first
learn" (p.77).
To address this paradox, Carroll (1987, 1990) has carried on
a line of
research for more than ten years on what he calls
"minimalist training." The
problem can be put: What is the most painless way to get
users up to speed
using an IBM hardware/software system? Carroll and
colleagues have studied
minimalist training in an impressive array of experimental
studies, showing
clear and consistent advantages over lengthy tutorials.
Three key principles
of minimalist training are:
--Allow learners to start immediately on meaningfully
realistic tasks.
--Reduce the amount of reading and other passive activity.
--Help make errors and error recovery less traumatic and
more pedagogically
productive (Carroll, 1990, p. 7).
Additional principles include:
--Encourage learners to reason about what they are doing.
--Design reading material to be read in different orders.
--Provide strong linkages between the instructional system
and the target
job system.
--Use learners' prior knowledge to advantage.
--Exploit specifics of the problem-solving situation (see
also Nickerson,
1991).
The minimalist training approach is interesting because it
reminds us how
easy it is to say too much when trying to give help.
Speaking in
generalities, working with abstractions, reading about a
task can be as much
an obstacle as a help to the acquisition of new skills.
Staying on the
point, leaving room to reflect, staying out of the way of
learners'
spontaneous learning strategies are some of the relevant
lessons for
training design."
This approach has been successful in television advertising
campaigns and
usability tests in which the primary goal of the ad or
website was to
educate users on the nature of a product to the level that
they would be
comfortable purchasing the product. In some cases, it is
discovered by the
business that the users actually require much more education
than had been
expected. In these cases, a new approach is then required
to accommodate
the goals of user learning and product adoption. In the
creation of a new
approach the following questions might be asked:
How much education is needed?
How can we accomplish this learning piece in a minimalist
way?
Approaching learning in a minimalist way (through an
exceptionally simple
and intelligent IA focused on user learning), particularly
in the case of
product-oriented websites, could offer users and businesses
a welcome
relief.
-Mary
--------------
Mary MacDonald
www.mmacdesign.com
www.marymacdonald.us/blog
To subscribe to the ia-academic list, please visit:
htt
p://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/ia-academic
_______________________________________________
Ia-academic mailing list
Ia-academic asis.org
htt
p://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/ia-academic
|