Last week’s class was an interesting case study in how an e-learning project can get up and running, and the work that goes into designing an effective and successful one.

Edison Learning started with an idea on how an underserved population could better benefit with the use of technology – so right off the bat, they started with a problem in search of an answer. From there, it became clear that they’d need to make it flexible, and so the content was designed to be modular, which helped them to break into new markets with relatively little work. Finally, they found opportunities in the technology to change the way the information was presented, and even more importantly, how the students were evaluated on their learning. The evaluation process seemed as important as the content itself.

All of that made me think a lot about what my project for this class will be, and I’m still struggling a bit. I would like to stay with the idea of serving the homeless population with job training, and my biggest challenge is the “Condition” step of the ABCDs. Homeless people rarely own a computer to access the content, and their access to computers can be quite limited. However, setting up a specialized center with computers (as they did at the iSchool at UW in Seattle, WA) is costly (both in terms of money and time) and small-scale. I have considered access at libraries or other public resources, but many of those require an address, something that homeless people do not have by definition. I tried to contact the library about exceptions, but they have been unavailable, so that will be something that I follow up on.

After hearing about Edison’s program that uses state funds already set aside for their program and the materials that the student needs, I thought this may be an option (given enough funding) for my program too. However, these people may not have a place to safely store their computer, or even keep it from getting wet/damaged. For that matter, it may be the case that the computer is sold or traded, instead of used for the learning.

Additionally, because these people will be working independently, and learning is often done better as a collaborative process (as demonstrated through multiple examples, including the Edison Learning example), I will need to find a way to incorporate collaboration in the system itself.

Finally, I will need to make my program modular and adaptable to multiple skill levels. Some people may be entirely illiterate, while others may just need help on how to write a good resume. This is probably the biggest challenge, since it effects the fundamental way that content can be delivered effectively.

Finally, getting people onboard to use the system may be harder then simply making it free of cost from the participant. Many of the homeless people that I’ve seen videos of from my research are largely concerned with being hungry and cold – you can’t very well expect someone to want to learn to read or write a resume when those basic needs are not yet met. I may need to take this into consideration as part of my design, and provide some kind of environment that is more conducive to learning. At the very least, I would need to very effectively show how this can quickly and greatly benefit them in the search for a job and a life off of the street.

I am a bit concerned that I won’t be able to do this project justice in the short time frame that we have, but given these considerations, I will do my best.

Last week’s presentation of Digital Artifact number one was very interesting, and I thought it showed a good example of some of the work already going on to help underserved communities through technology.

My project was on the use of technology to help homeless adults become recognized and assisted with food and housing and, subsequently, assist them in gaining the skills to get a job. I had identified two services that help with visibility, and two that help with job training.

I was definitely most impressed by two presentations: the one of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, and the presentation on ADD/ADHD.

The presentation on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict was a video, well done and narrated by Jacob Klein. He covered some of the technologies used to facilitate communication between the two sides of the conflict, including a site that positions two videos side by side, to make each side’s position easily comparable to the other.

The second technology though, a game on how to solve the conflict, was even more intriguing. The game insisted that a two-state solution was the only acceptable option, and it was intended to get past a lot of the propaganda that had interrupted the process of peace for so long. The company even handed out free copies through the newspaper in the two countries.

The presentation on ADD/ADHD was a PowerPoint with narrated dialogue, and it used the idea of a journey through the daily life of a person with ADD/ADHD as a method to present the technological innovations that people of that community can use. Most surprising was that there was a belt that was intended to resolve some of the affects of the disorder because it corrected the physiological aspects that happen when ADD/ADHD take effect.

Overall, the presentations were both entertaining and informative, and I look forward to the 2^nd round in a couple weeks, when we’re designing our own.

Day 3, Fundamentaler

This week’s class covered some more systematic ways to look at designing technology for education, including the ADDIE method for design and evaluation and Bloom’s taxonomy.

The ADDIE method is a complement to the ABCD(E) method we’d learned earlier, as it covers the process of creating the instructional element itself. It goes as follows:

Assessment: You must assess the needs and the conditions – this is largely covered in the ABCD(E)s.
Design: The actual design of the product, as a result of your assessment.
Development: The production of your material.
Implementation: Putting your material into practice
Evaluation: Compile the results and determine the effectiveness of your material.

It’s very basic, but it’s a great outline to follow during the process of creating these things. I’ve done some of this in the past, I just didn’t know I was following these steps (and, sometimes, I wasn’t following all of them). In my HCI class this quarter, I will likely fall back on these steps when we’re producing our iPhone app, since that will follow the same lines, even though it’s not specifically for education.

Bloom’s taxonomy is largely helpful in the last step, the evaluation of the effectiveness in educating the participants of the training. Bloom split the dimensions of learning into three categories:

Cognitive: being able to reason with the material, knowing the concepts (ie I know that 2+2=4)
Effective: emotional learning, the attitude that a participant possesses about the material or the subject (I am good at math!)
Psycho-motor: the physical/motor skills that a participant has following the training. (I was so good at math that I became a pilot and I can land a plane)

Professor Kim argued that a fourth, Social Learning, could be added to talk about their ability to pass on the information to another person.

When a piece of training is evaluated on these concepts, rather than simply the stated objectives (which may, or may not, follow the same lines), you get a better idea on the entirety of it’s effectiveness. If a student is learning the psycho-motor and cognitive skills, but has little self-efficacy in the effective dimension, then the training may still not produce the desired result.

Using these, and the things we’ve talked about so far, we met in four groups to design and propose a learning solution for a given situation. I thought the activity was a bit sudden and I wasn’t entirely sure on what we were expected to do – whether he wanted just an ABCD analysis of the situation, or he wanted an actual product design, or even how much time we had to finish it. In the end, however, I think the activity was still helpful, as it allowed an application of these concepts while they were fresh.

We have our first artifact due in a couple days, so I am current researching and compiling resources and organizations that work with homeless adults to provide job skill training, and I look forward to presenting that to the class on Wednesday.

Day 2, fundamentals

Class today was a bit more on fundamental principles of web-based learning environments, but the concepts seemed to apply to practically any learning environment. Professor Kim suggested that successful learning environments take into account and excel in four primary categories:

1. Audience: You must understand, in detail, who it is that you’re designing for. This should be as specific as possible in order to make the material effective. Without a clear audience in mind, the material could wander off base, or more likely, simply not properly take into account the people for whom it is meant to effect in the first place.

2. Behaviour: What kind of behaviours are you looking to change, and specifically how. These could be formed as “’Audience’ will be able to…” statements in order to show what behavioural outcomes are expected as a result of the learning environment or material.

3. Condition: What physical, technological, and social conditions will your material be used it? For example, will there be electricity readily available? How fast will the internet connections be, if at all? What is the local view of technology, and what are the local uses of it already? All of these things could take a very well-designed piece of material and make it completely unusable if not taken into consideration.

4. Degree: This one hinges largely on the behaviours listed in step 2, but now it is time to add some quantified metrics to those in order to measure success. If the behaviour change desired was that the audience should be able to complete a rubik’s cube, then the metric applied in this step may be the amount of time it takes to complete that puzzle.

These are the ABCDs (clever, right?) of educational design, and I really appreciate the succinct clarity they have over basic design functions. I’m a bit frustrated at the seeming fluidity between some of them, because it seems like a certain statement could be classified as practically any of these four given different context. I think a good portion of that is just my mind, as it is learning, trying to conceptualize through putting everything in it’s own neat little box.

The other important part that I found out of lecture on Wednesday was the evaluation methods – cognitive, meta-cognitive, and attitudinal. When looking at how successful a program was, it is often the case that you can’t simply look at the raw material learned (cognitive), but that you must also evaluate the learner’s perception of their learning (meta-cognitive) and how they felt about the experience (attitudinal). The three together provide a much more complete picture of the effect that a piece of educational material had on one’s life, and a better platform for revisions to the program for future participants.

Here’s to week 3!