Non-Conscious Aspects Of Learning And Performance

Being on autopilot has a lot of implications for learning and performance. Recently, Guy Wallace (@guywwallace on Twitter) posted about experts having difficulties figuring out what people must learn to perform a task. But experts often unintentionally leave things out. Their performance is highly automated so they no longer have conscious access to exactly what they are doing.

Automated and non-conscious prior knowledge is stored in long-term memory. An expert’s deep prior knowledge makes them far more capable of solving difficult problems in their area of expertise. But because it’s automated and non-conscious, they’re often unaware of exactly what they are doing.

Guy pointed me to Richard Clark’s article, The Impact of Non-Conscious Knowledge on Educational Technology Research and Design. And this article turned out to be a goldmine of important information. Experts, research finds, tend to be conscious of the physical actions they take, as well as the knowledge they use. But they are much more unaware of the mental activities used to perform tasks and solve problems.

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Should We Use Background Music With Instruction? No.

The general rationale for not using background music is that it increases harmful cognitive load. Cognitive load relates to mental processes (like perception, thinking, and organizing) used for thinking, learning, and working. Working memory needs to process new information but it has considerable constraints (in capacity for new material and holding time). John Sweller, a well-known researcher and writer on memory and cognitive load and other aspects of learning, reminds us we must design with how our mental processes work. If we don’t, people can’t learn. And learning quickly is a mandate for current organizational conditions.

There are two types of cognitive load: helpful and harmful. We call the harmful type extraneous cognitive load and, when we don’t reduce this type of cognitive load, we make it harder to learn. Here are some examples of extraneous (harmful) cognitive load:

• Too much content
• Decorative and irrelevant graphics
• Unnecessary explanations
• Unnecessary media

Stop reading for a moment and think about why these items cause harmful cognitive load, given what I told you about working memory (Really! Try to answer the question before going ahead). Then look at my answer below.

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Microlearning, Macrolearning. What Does Research Tell Us?

In the last year I have increasingly hear L&D practitioners talk about microlearning like it’s “the answer.” What is it the answer to, exactly? The response: Nearly everything. But knowing that we must create learning experiences that fit specific needs, I felt doubtful. Still, until I understand what the preponderance of research says, my opinion is just a guess based on what I already know. As a result, I set out to learn more and this article sums up what I learned.

What does research say about microlearning? In this article, I’ll offer some definitions of microlearning that offer clues about important aspects and explain what research and researchers have to say about microlearning. I’ll compare what people say are the benefits of microlearning against what we know from research. And I’ll discuss what micro and macro approaches offer workplace learning and how we might use each.

I can sum up much of this article with a specific insight from Professor Christian Glahn at the Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, who studies learning and work:

Microlearning is not the solution to all workplace learning needs.

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How Well Do We Learn From Experiential Or Inquiry Learning Approaches?

Direct instruction directly teaches the content. People are supplied with content and activities that help them build needed background knowledge. And we make sure that what they know is correct and usable. Indirect approaches use experiential or inquiry methods that prompt discovery of needed information and often simulate and test performance.

Training people to identify hazardous materials in the workplace, for example, would likely have lessons, labs, and tests in a direct approach. In an experiential approach, people would likely work through scenarios or case studies.

Paulo Freire, a learning theorist, disapproves of what he calls the “banking model of education,” where teachers (or trainers or instructors) deposit information into students’ heads. Learning sciences clearly shows that we cannot directly fill people up with knowledge (my new book, Manage Memory for Learning explains how we do learn). People do not “record” what they learn during instruction for playback during application.

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Does Time Matter For Learning? It Does.

Stakeholders who request workplace training and other performance interventions often push for speed over quality. Workers are busy and time to learn is time where people could be accomplishing job tasks. We design primarily for speed as a result. Some of the most important learning tactics, such as adequate and varied practice and practice for remembering, are often left out.

For example, sales training for new mobile phones may include phone specifications, images, and diagrams. Designing training for speed too often doesn’t include practice needed for performance. For example, practice over time remembering key specifications helps people use the specifications on the job. Varied practice helping customers select from the newer models for their needs helps people use the specifications in helping people select the right phone. Research shows these types of practice are among key tactics for making training stick and useable.

Speed is a key part of efficiency. Efficiency is the time, effort, and other resources it takes to do something. Efficiency, however, isn’t an adequate outcome unless it also achieves the needed outcomes.

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What Research Tells Us About Chunking Content

Research by usability experts Nielsen Norman Group tells us that people prefer content that is logically divided or chunked. They define chunking as breaking up content into smaller, distinct units of information (chunks), as shown in the right column of Figure 1. This is as opposed to presenting content in homogeneous blocks like in the left column of Figure 1.

Chunking doesn’t mean simply breaking up text into smaller pieces. It means breaking them up into related, logical, meaningful, and sequential segments.

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Does Video Improve Engagement and Learning?

A Huffington Post article title tells us that Research Confirms Video Improves Learning Results. According to the article, the author asked 500 learning practitioners if they believed that video improves learning outcomes. He measured respondents’ opinions of video. No learning outcomes were measured.

A recent article about why we should use video explains that the brain prefers video because it retains visual content better than text content. We know this because people remember 95% of a video message. At least this has an element of (possible) truth based on the picture superiority effect, a researched phenomenon where pictures and images are more likely to be remembered than words (but this effect is debated). But percentages like these have been debunked by many, including my friend Will Thalheimerand the percentage (95%!) was likely made up or based on made up information found elsewhere.

My point: We need to be skeptical about wild claims about video. Or simulations. Or ice cream. The devil is in the details.

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