Training packages - Learner analysis

Before you start any learning or training program the first step is to analyse the learners.

• What are their learning styles?
• What are they expecting to get out of the learning?
• What level of skills will they be called on to use?
• How familiar/confident are they in an online environment?

When Edutech KM starts on a project we like to talk to the people who will be doing the learning. Their feedback shapes the way we present information and design the activities.

Learning styles

You will be aware of the three commonly touted learning styles - Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic - that affects how learners like to receive their information (in pictures, graphs and tables; in audio tracks and lectures; or through 'doing' or touching respectively).

Visual learners are easily catered for in the online environment, auditory and kinesthetic learners are more challenging

Learning researcher Howard Gardner, however, says that these three categories are not broad enough and that there are a wider range of intelligences:

• Visual/Spatial Intelligence
• Verbal/Linguistic Intelligence
• Logical/Mathematical Intelligence
• Bodily/Kinesthetic Intelligence
• Musical/Rhythmic Intelligence
• Interpersonal Intelligence
• Intrapersonal Intelligence

Learners characterised by these different intelligences have different learning styles and, therefore, different preferences for the way training is delivered to them. You can find out more about these learning styles and learning skills at the Learning Disabilities Resource Community.

While there, you can take a test for feedback on your own learning style - which is a great demonstration of online learning and automated feedback!

Online familiarity

The other factor about your decision on how to deliver training will be on how comfortable your learners are with the digital (online) environment. We do not want to put extra pressure on them during learning, if they are not comfortable using a computer. This lack of familiarity may disadvantage digital newcomers, but is not a reason to dismiss online variations of learning.

Ways to help digital newcomers

You can make the start of the program easy to help them get started. Early successes give them confidence to try out new options. Nothing 'falls apart' so they start exploring.

Once they are over their initial fear you may find they just cannot get enough! They become converts, as one grandmother did when she started a training course through one of our clients - Access Homehealth. She put it about that the program was so simple that even a grandmother with no computer knowledge like her could manage it. It was a wonderful form of advertising and got past a lot of resistance in younger staff.

Tricks of the trade

The trick is to start simple and build up the complexity of the activities gradually. During a pilot:

• Take note of their behaviour - their mistakes and successes - and make success more possible
• Ask the pilot learners what they liked best and what tripped them up
• Ask them for ideas on what they would like in the program - sometimes a Help section is there more for reassurance than for actual help!

When these learners approach the online environment they are constantly turning what they see into print. For them a recognisable print button is vital - at the top and the bottom of the page and as an option in the dropdown menu list. After a while they will stop using it, but it is there like a comfort blanket.

Game tricks for newcomers

Games designed for digital newcomers have to give the player time to consider their response. Wrong answers give constructive feedback and encourage the player to make a better choice next time. Total disasters provide reassuring feedback about being able to do it again and wipe out their embarrassing score.

Levels of Skills

About the middle of the last century some research was done about the middle of last century on which skills were developed during different stages of learning. This study, and subsequent ones based on it, has been used as a benchmark in educational research. B. S. Bloom was credited with the work and so it became known as 'Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives'.

Basically, the research showed that as children grow they manage knowledge in progressively different ways until they are able to evaluate, rank and decide on the best use of information.

Testing knowledge retention in an online environment is quite simple; but it takes good educational design to create a program that encourages and tests the development of analysis and evaluation. Bloom's six stages of learning are listed below:

From B.S. Bloom, J.T. Hastings and G.F. Madaus, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals, Handbook 1, Cognitive Domain. New York, McCay, 1956

Level 1: Knowledge:

• Can talk about concept, process, tool or context and can regurgitate definitions or descriptions
• Has some sense of what information is relevant / irrelevant

Level 2: Comprehension:

• Can follow what is being communicated and can use information without seeing its relationship to other material or recognizing greater implications
• Can construct simple mental model regarding new information
• Can process answers to critical inquiry and articulate what is understood as well as what remains confusing

Level 3: Application:

• Can apply and transfer a particular item of knowledge to different situations and contexts
• Can generalize the knowledge and determine ways to apply it, testing boundaries and linkages to other information
• Can recognize situations and skillfully make use of this knowledge in new contexts and situations

Level 4: Analysis:

• Can divide a problem into its component parts in order to clarify the relations among these parts
• Can integrate the knowledge skill with other knowledge skills to produce a generalized solution

Level 5: Synthesis

• Can put pieces of information together to form a whole (such as a researcher would) to develop knowledge to a new level of understanding
• Can use lateral thinking to make new linkages (between) concepts and problem solutions that have not been seen before

Level 6: Evaluation

• Can make judgments about the extent to which a product satisfies stated criteria
• Can compare newly processed information with a rich set of relevant background information to discern its relative contribution and wisely rank and select the best use for the information.

To translate this into the online environment takes a great deal of attention at the educational design end of the project.

• How are questions framed? What do they actually measure?
• Can assessment questions be taken separately to allow for research and reflection?
• How will they be graed and by whom/what system?
• Will feedback be used to encourage further development of skills?

Educational designers at Edutech KM are happy to assist you in your initial educational design if your goal is to translate face-to-face course material into an online program. Remember: you can always consider blended learning as an option.

Edutech KM Ltd

PO Box 25-241, Victoria Street, Christchurch;
phone: 64-3-337-0234
fax: 64-3-337-0235
info@edutechkm.com
Copyright to Edutech KM Ltd 2008 Privacy Statement