Melanie Knight’s Post

Here’s my visual summary of chapter 4 of ‘Design for How People Learn’ by Julie Dirksen. She emphasises in this chapter the importance of learning through real tasks, as close to the real-life environment as possible. Some of what I am reading is making me question both the way that we teach children in schools and much of the training that I have done as an adult. For example, I have had to sit through annual online health and safety training, where I watch a video and then complete a multiple choice quiz, including questions that are purely ‘recognise’ or ‘recall’ based with no practical application, for example, “What percentage of workplace injuries happen when working from height?” This makes assessment of the course easier to administer, but does not aid me in applying my learning to my everyday tasks at work. In Julie Dirksen’s shelf analogy, this becomes, at best, facts that are temporarily stored on a single shelf labelled ‘Things I have just learnt’, and is unlikely to be encoded effectively into long term memory or to impact my day-to-day practice. Indeed, I know there is much information that I have remembered for just long enough to get through a test, and then promptly forgotten again. A better way to apply learning about topics such as health and safety, using the principles of this chapter, would be to complete my own risk assessment of tasks that I do regularly which involve, for example, working at height. This would anchor the learning to the actual environment where it would be applied and provide a self-created job aid that could be referred to to reduce the need for recall. It would also personalise the learning and make it feel more relevant to my actual role and tasks, rather than a generic role. However, formal assessment of this task would require it to be judged by a person, rather than a computer, so it would be more costly to assess. This chapter also illustrates why just reading about soft skills such as managing conflict is unlikely to be particularly useful, as the skills are encoded in a calm environment that is very different to the high-pressure environment where they will need to be retrieved. She again emphasises the need for role play as a way to apply these skills in a context that is closer to the real-life environment. Other chapters: Chapter 1 https://lnkd.in/eYdEw3cs Chapter 2 https://lnkd.in/e2S9QRuE Chapter 3 https://lnkd.in/eDjxaF5x Chapter 4 https://lnkd.in/eY99EV3m Chapter 5 https://lnkd.in/evmPy5j3 #sketchnotes #designforhowpeoplelearn #instructionaldesign #memory