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Showing posts from April, 2017

Interactivity and Gamification

Today I had a meeting with a prospective client regarding the development of some eLearning resources. During the meeting, the client mentioned that they wanted the resources to be interactive and asked me if I would be able to incorporate some gamification in them. Two simple requirements but at the opposite ends, from a functional perspective. I asked the client what was their idea of interactivity. Their response was that I should add in "some kind of tabs that the learners would need to click or some other things which would make the learner interact with the course". Now, granted, click on tabs would technically qualify as interactivity but is this really the sort of interactivity that actually leads to learning and retention? My view is that this type of interactivity would hinder rather than aid learning and is no better than courses that put the  next  button at the bottom of every slide. The end result being that the learner, instead of focussing on the learning

Learning pyramid and teaching others

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The learning pyramid, also known as the cone of learning shows the different instructional methods and how much learning is retained by learners when employing those instructional methods. The development of learning pyramid is credited to Edgar dale. The top four instructional methods in the learning pyramid are described as passive methods and the bottom three are described as active methods. Also, I am not quite sure if group discussions should come under active methods, as I have sat through many group discussions just sitting there and listening to others and then promptly forgetting what was discussed in a matter of hours. A lot of interpretations of the learning pyramid can be found online. These interpretations accord a percentage weight to the level of learning retention that is facilitated by each different instructional method. There is some criticism of the learning pyramid around the order of instructional methods as well as the percentages as