Why multiple-choice questions are (too often) problematic

Research shows that too many multiple-choice questions are written poorly and therefore create bad assessments. A few of the common issues with multiple-choice questions are, according to research, is that they too often

• are unclear or otherwise poorly written.
• are too easy to guess.
• only test recall of content.
• don't measure what they intend to measure.
• become a test of something other than whether the test taker knows the content.

What's wrong with the following multiple-choice question?

Which of the following is not a good way to put out a grease fire in a pan on the stove? (Select the best answer.)

1. Smother the fire with a metal lid.
2. Smother the fire with water. 
3. Smother the fire with baking soda or salt.
4. Smother the fire with Class B dry chemical fire extinguisher contents.

The correct answer is 2. But research shows that many people who know the answer will get the question wrong anyway. That's because negatively-worded questions are harder to understand and easier to mess up. Answers 1, 3, and 4 are acceptable ways to put out a grease fire in a pan on the stove. And since they are correct, people are likely to select them and get the question wrong.

These and other problems (such as the problems in the list above) lead to invalid questions and assessments. Validity is the most important criteria for a good test. Validity refers to whether the test measures what it claims to measure. If it doesn't measure what it claims to measure, the test answers provide little (or inaccurate) information about what people know or can do. Those tests waste time and resources. If the test is used to make decisions (proceed to next course, prove competence, etc.), poorly written tests are a legal battle waiting to happen.

To make assessments more valid, there must be a very clear match between learning objectives and assessment items. Research shows that this is way too often not the case.

Instructional writing, as I discuss in my book, Write and Organize for Deeper Learning, is different than other kinds of writing. Writing multiple-choice questions is specialized instructional writing. Clarity and readability are critical. But here's something that multiple-choice questions also must do. They must be written so that participant's answers show who knows the content and who doesn't.

In the multiple-choice question at the beginning of this post, the negatively-worded question made it harder to understand. As a result, it was harder to answer correctly. Which makes the answer harder to interpret. If someone selects the wrong answer to the question at the beginning of this post, how sure are we that they didn't know the correct answer? We aren't sure.

Luckily, research also offers clear and actionable tactics for making questions clearer and a better match to learning objectives. I used to do multiple-choice questions writing workshops for companies and higher education staff development. I loved teaching them. But one day wasn't usually long enough to gain the needed skills and I feel a great need to help people gain real skills. 

So I decided to build my first hands-on skills course on assessments and writing multiple-choice questions. It's a critical skill and it's rarely taught. You can learn more (a LOT more) and register. Or ask me to deliver this course for your team. 

Can I ask you to do me a favor? Please tell others about my Write Learning Assessments course and send them the link (bit.ly/DLAW0001). I am building a set of instructional writing courses and this is the first. 

References

Chiavaroli, N. (2017). Negatively-worded multiple choice questions: An avoidable threat to validity, Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation, 22(3), 1-14.

Haladyna, T. M., & Downing, S. M. (1989). A taxonomy of multiple-choice item-writing rules. Applied Measurement in Education, 2(1), 37-50.

Haladyna, T. M., & Downing, S. M. (1989). Validity of a taxonomy of multiple-choice item-writing rules. Applied Measurement in Education, 2(1), 51-78.

Hopkins, K.D. (1998). Educational and psychological measurement and evaluation. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. 

Marsh, E. J., Roediger, H. L., Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (2007). The memorial consequences of multiple choice testing. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 194-199.

Marsh, E. J. & Cantor, A. D. (2014). Chapter 02: Learning from the test: Dos and don’ts for using multiple-choice tests, in McDaniel, M. A., Frey, R. F., Fitzpatrick, S. M., & Roediger, H. L. (Eds.), Integrating Cognitive Science with Innovative Teaching in STEM Disciplines, Washington University, Saint Louis, Missouri.

Roediger, H. L., III, & Marsh, E. J. (2005). The positive and negative consequences of multiple-choice testing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 1155-1159.

Schuwirth, L. W. T. & van der Vleuten, C. P. M. (2004). Different written assessment methods: what can be said about their strengths and weaknesses? Medical Education, 38, 974–979.

Shrock, S. A. & Coscarelli, W. C. C. (1989). Criterion-referenced test development. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

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.

Read the entire article on eLearning Industry.

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.

Read the entire post at eLearning Industry.

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.

See the full post on eLearning Industry. 

Pictures From Berlin (#oeb18)

I just returned from Online Educa Berlin 2018 (#oeb2018), a conference that brings together higher education and workplace learning practitioners from mostly Europe. I’d heard of the conference and knew it was considered one of the best adult learning conferences in the world. So, I was super excited when they asked me to present and knew it’d be a great experience.

The trip to Berlin for the conference began with me leaving my coat in my home airport. (Yep. Extra dumb. Walking around Berlin in the winter without a coat is a bad idea.) When going through security, the TSA took out my coat and some tools from one of my bins. Everything else came right through and I didn’t realize that the coat and tools were missing. I picked up my luggage and purse and walked off. I remembered about 10 minutes before boarding my flight that I didn’t have my coat. Too late to look for it.

The first morning after arriving, I met up with my friend Mirjam Neelen (twitter @MirjamN). We went coat shopping :-) and did some walking around the city. That night Will Thalheimer (twitter @WillWorkLearn) met up with us and we walked around looking for dinner.

The next day, Thursday, I was involved in the OEB Plenary Debate which was about whether all learning should be fun. There were two people debating each side. I debated on the “Against” side with Alex Beard, the Director at Teach for All, UK. The “For” side included Elliott Masie, the head of the Masie Center, USA, and Benjamin Doxtdator, an educator at the International School of Brussels, Belgium.

My answer in a nutshell: Learning can be fun, but deep learning (for skill and expertise) is often a lot of effort and often requires pushing through the not-fun. Here’s a picture from the debate. The room was large and each of us was on camera when we talked. I was nervous (massive understatement). You can watch a video of the debate here.

The following day I did a short workshop on Managing Memory. Here I am at that session with two workplace learning professionals who traveled to the conference from Poland. They asked to take a picture with me and I clearly needed to stand on a chair so I didn’t look child-sized. The picture belongs to Tomasz Jankowski (Twitter: jankowskit), who is on the left. Tomasz wrote a blog post about my session. It’s in Polish but Google Translate does a good job of making it readable in other languages. The person on the right of the picture is Bartlomiej Polakowski (twitter: @b_polakowski), a long-time twitter friend.

Before leaving, I got the chance to meet Donald Clark (Twitter @DonaldClark, blog https://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com) in person, who is one of the best minds in our industry.

Next Button: Yay or Nay? A Research Perspective on a "Pointed" Question

Research offers important clues to difficult and complex questions. (The reason I say clues and not answers is that science is a moving target and some research is not done well or is not applicable to the specific question.) I find that research doesn't always tell me what I expect, however.

When research gives me unexpected or surprising clues, I sometimes have to overcome my biases, including the natural desire to look for and apply solutions that agree with what I personally think is true (confirmation bias).

Can I let you in on a secret? I held some views about learning that research showed me were off base. (Shocking!) It happened regularly when reading and analyzing the research to write Write and Organize for Deeper Learning and Practice and Feedback for Deeper Learning. For example, I learned that instructional feedback has a different purpose than I realized. Although my previous view wasn't wrong, it lacked the big picture. When reading the research on writing for instruction, for example, I learned a lot about readability research and how applying these insights improves comprehension.

The research that I read recently on the next button offered insights that I hadn't considered earlier as well.

Next Button: Force It Down People's Throats. Or Put it In Jail.

I started with a search to see what L&Ders are saying about the next button. And this heading jumped out at me (slightly changed to protect the writer):

Disabling the Next Button Until Learners Finish the Slide.

Whaaaat? Sadly, I thought I knew why (which is why the heading jumped off the page) as I've built many eLearning courses. Stakeholders or clients wanted to disable the next button so people are FORCED to stay on the page. But is this what this article was discussing?

It was exactly what they were discussing (slightly changed):  

You can prevent users from moving forward to make sure people perform specific actions (for example, listening to the entire video or clicking on certain interactions) by...

So one point of view is that we should use the next button to force-feed content. (No!) Another point of view is that the next button is the just awful and we shouldn't use it. Here's a statement made on a L&D blog post (slightly changed):

You shouldn't use the next button for navigation. Have learners choose their own path. 

Except... research does not support this statement (discussed in detail in my eLearning Industry post).

Okay, that's enough for opinions. What does research support?

Next Button: Useful

The next button (and the player controls) are simple interaction tools that help people control pace.

Mayer and Chandler's When Learning is Just a Click Away: Does Simple Interaction Foster Deeper Understanding of Multimedia Messages? researched the learning benefits from simple user interactions, specifically in multimedia explanations. First, some definitions:

• Multimedia explanation means words (for example, text or narration) and pictures (for example diagrams, images, video, or animation) that show how something works. 
• Simple user interactions give users control over the words and pictures they see.

These are both common in eLearning.

Simple user interactions, according to the authors, includes the next button (go to next segment). But they might also include player controls (stop, play, go forward, rewind) as they have a similar purpose. Their conclusion is that these simple types of user interaction have two positive and important impacts on learning. They:

• Reduce the load on working memory 
• Allow people to build understanding a piece at a time.

When multimedia explanations are force-fed at the designer's pace, the flow of words and pictures can move too fast for needed processing. Processing is needed to learn. Working memory processing capacity is limited so force-feeding "instructional stuff" means likely means less processing and confusion. (So the force-feeding view of the next button can actually damage learning). It's harder to make sense of information and mentally integrate it with what we already know (prior knowledge) when multimedia explanations are too long and the user cannot control them.

What we are talking about here is control of the pace. This is one of the learner control issues I discuss in the eLearning Industry article I mentioned earlier in this post. That article offers more information about when learners should have more control and when they shouldn't.

The bottom line is whenever possible, we should let learners chose the pace. Breaking up segments with a next button (or player controls) allows people to continue to the next segment when ready.

When I discuss this with other L&D practitioners, they sometimes tell me that people learn on their own all the time, so why be worried about this? Yes, people do learn on their own, and it's easy to get frustrated when doing so (ask me about learning Tableau, a data visualization tool). My point here is not that we cannot learn on our own. We can. We do. It's this: If we are going to design instruction, it should be done using what we know helps people learn.

So maybe we should stop treating the next button like Clippy and give it some respect. Especially when we use it to control pace.

Comments? I love them.


References:

Chandler, P., & Sweller, J. (1991). Cognitive load theory and the format of

instruction. Cognition and Instruction, 8, 293-332.

Chung, J. & Davies, I. K. (1995). An instructional theory for learner control: Revisited, Proceedings of the 1995 National Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 72-86.

Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia learning. New York: Cambridge Univer­sity Press. 

Mayer, R. E. & Chandler, P. A. (2001). When learning is just a click away. Does simple user interaction foster deeper understanding of multimedia messages?. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93 (2), 390-397.

Shank, P. (February 19, 2018). Microlearning, macrolearning. What does research tell us? eLearning Industry. https://elearningindustry.com/microlearning-macrolearning-research-tell-us 

Shank, P. (April 16, 20) https://elearningindustry.com/learning-participants-control-research-says 18). https://elearningindustry.com/learning-participants-control-research-says

The MOST Important Thing

A few days ago, someone asked me a most interesting question: What is the MOST important thing L&D practitioners can do to improve the instructional content they build?

There are MANY truly critical things (I describe truly critical strategies in Write and Organize for Deeper Learning and Practice and Feedback for Deeper Learning). But there's one thing that makes those other things possible:  Deeply understanding the jobs our content supports. If we don't understand the tasks and outcomes of these jobs, how can we...

• Deliver what people really need?
• Design for relevancy?
• Offer the right content and activities?
• Provide what's needed at the right time?
• Write at the correct level?
• Provide needed support?

Simple. We can't. Building for anyone is the same as building for no one, especially for workplace instruction.

People don't have time or motivation to slog through things that are not relevant to them, especially in today's chaotic and fast-paced workplace. And if it's "compulsory," they will learn only enough to pass whatever barrier we provide (assessments, etc.). This is shallow learning but deep learning (and here) is what's needed for people to be able to use what they learn.

Training research shows relevance is a critical factor for transfer of trained skills to the workplace and to motivation to learn and persevere. Without these, our efforts become busywork for people who already have too much on their plate.

Far too many L&D practitioners think their job is to take content from a content expert and put it into instructional authoring tools and output it to [whatever]. Nonsense. We may do that but that's not our chief responsibility. Our chief responsibility is to use knowledge of jobs and the organization to help people grow skills and performance so that organizations can remain viable. We simply cannot do this without a deep understanding of the work and organizations we support.

Guy Wallace (Twitter@guywwallace), website https://www.eppic.biz) has some great articles about how to understand the job and why a single content expert cannot give you all the information you need for valuable instruction.

For now, I'll leave you with a few ideas to help you better understand what people do and how what WE do connects with their job.

• Understand what your organization does and how it does it. In detail. Find out its major pain points and what gets in the way.
• Spend time in different departments to better understand what they do and how it impacts organizational success.
• Watch how key tasks are done and document the process. Ask good performers to evaluate your documentation for holes and flaws. Ask questions.
• Review tangible work products and see how they are used. 
• Watch workers work. Ask questions about their processes, their work, what doesn't work, and how what you want to teach connects to what they do.
• Ask tons of questions when someone asks for training: What specific results are needed? How do you know there's a problem?  What gets in the way of producing needed results? If they cannot answer, get the answers from people who can answer them.
• Figure out what foundational knowledge and skills are needed to perform the tasks. Do people have it? What happens if they don't?

Understanding your organization, the business they are in, and how jobs support organizational survival isn't nice-to-know. You simply cannot be effective without this understanding. Content development is not enough. Not even nearly.

Reflections on the Learning Technologies Conference (#LT18UK)

First thing: Plan to come to the Learning Technologies conference. Learning from L&D folks from the UK, Europe, and elsewhere gives you a wider view of workplace learning around the world. And having international L&D connections are priceless. How else would I have had the opportunity to meet Lesley Price's cats? And work with the amazing Mirjam Neelen?

Although US learning conferences often have some international presence, most of what we discuss relates to what we do in the US and Canada. Globalization has changed learning and work. It's not enough to know how workplace learning supports organizations where you live. Globalization means understanding work globally and how to support it.

The conference is a great place to meet, discuss, and learn from others. Donald Taylor knows how to put together a terrific conference and personally understands global workplace learning. The Expo is 10+ times larger than any you've been to in the USA. The conference is medium sized and you don't become a small dot in a sea of dots. It's easy to walk up to just about anyone and ask about their work (and it's a great way to learn).

I spent most of my time either talking to people, preparing for our presentation (Mirjam Neelen and I discussed how technology and globalization are changing the workplace and how that changes L&D's role), or answering questions about my work. Here are some impressions from the sessions I was able to attend.

• A LOT of people are investing in microlearning like it's THE ANSWER. I'm writing an evidence-based (research-driven) response and it'll be out soon.
• There is a wide disparity among organizations in the use of learning technologies. Some are just getting started and others are looking at ways to use virtual reality and augmented reality. We need to be very careful to meet organizations where they are.
• There was a terrific session on globalization and women in our field. I saw that globalization has impacted the careers of other women just as has affected and is continuing to impact mine. 
• Connie Malamud, Will Thalheimer, Mirjam Neelan, and I discussed research-driven approaches! Thank you, Don Taylor, for allowing us to put forth our research-driven L&D practices coalition (I just made this term up... it's not a thing. Yet.)

To help you adopt a more global understanding of our field, here are just a few of the L&D peeps I got to meet at Learning Technologies to follow on Twitter:

Jo Cook @LightbulbJo

Kate Graham @kategraham23

Mirjam Neelen @mirjamn

Lesley Price @lesleywprice

Julie Drybrough @fuchsia_blue

Barbara Thompson @CaribThompson

Rob Hubbard @RobHubbard

As usual, the best part of conferences is learning from each other. Learning Technologies is an especially good conference for this!

L&D's fake news

L&D has its own version of fake news: fads, made-up theories (and how to implement) in conflict with what research or science says, and people selling ideas using devious means. I just had the latter happen. Just had an email sent to me that said the following (copied directly from the email):

Hi Patti

Just wanted to let you know we featured you in our recent post: 
Why Employers Should Consider Multiple Learning Styles in Their Training Processes
https://www.bobtheba.com/blog/20171128/why-employers-should-consider-multiple-learning-styles-in-their-training-processes.

Someone used me to push learning styles for training? Noooooooooo.  As you likely know, the research is clear that learning styles aren't "a thing." (See Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence by Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork to learn more.) Like so many ideas in training, it's based on people trying to make money off of the less knowledgeable or made-up insights that have nothing to do with what the research says. In fact, research shows that quite often, what is best for people for learning is the opposite of what they prefer. And this makes sense as isn't what's best for you nutritionally the opposite of what you love to snack on?

I get why they used my name. People are likely to tweet or tell others about articles that include their name. See, I just did! I hope I don't see my name associated with an article about neuroscience and learning.

No, we AREN'T learning a lot from neuroscience that we can use in learning. It's cognitive science, not neuroscience that most of these people are talking about. But calling it Neuroscience or Brain Science gives it the woo-woo factor. Except it's a lie. John Medina, the author of Brain Rules tells us we simply don't know much yet from neuroscience we can use. The research that might help us understand how neurons impact learning (fMRI studies) have been recently have been called into question for having software that creates errors.

What sciences can we count on to tell us what works? Here's a short list to start (there are many others).
Attention science
Cognitive science
Reading comprehension
Education psychology
Behavioral psychology
Information design
Usability

I'm annoyed that L&D practitioners buy the crap that others (including our own practitioners) put out there to part you from your money and gain recognition for their efforts. You must learn to tell truth from lies in order to do what's needed for good training results. But that's a good thing. Thinking for yourself is always a good thing.

I asked the company that sent that email to take me out of the article. Will let you know if that happens.

Evidence-based vs science-based. Is there a difference? (Yep. And it matters.)

As many of you know, I have chronic migraines. Science shows that they aren't headaches. Rather, they're a neurological condition and extreme pain is one (of many) possible symptoms. But most treatments mainly deal with preventing or stopping the debilitating pain. Is that good or bad?

Angela Stanton, PhD, is a science researcher and writer. Her insights about what migraines are, what causes them, and what's needed to live with them are radically different than what we are hearing from most evidence-based medicine. Angela analyzes what science from various fields (neuroscience, nutrition, and others) have to tell us about what could be most helpful going forward.

My own experience with her protocol for migraineurs has been positive and I plan to keep using it. Evidence-based practice for migraine has had little success, according to Angela. I might have to agree. My migraines have gotten worse over time and the treatments are sometimes (almost) as bad as the condition. Evidence-based practice in training, however, has provided great tools for better outcomes. So evidence-based practice is needed when it is effective.

Evidence-based practice is a hallmark of professionalism in any field. It means what you do has been shown to be effective based on well-designed research. No matter what the field, doing what research says is effective typically makes sense.

But there is a gap in evidence-based practice. Science regularly offers new, different-than-expected, and inconclusive insights. There are tons of examples of this in the field of nutrition, for example. Consider the foods and diets we're told are good but are subsequently were found to be problematic. Soy is a good example. Or the foods and diets we're told are bad for us that were subsequently found to be good (eggs, for example). Evidence-based practice is based on what we already know. But science evolves and changes.

Because science is evolving and changing, we need to go beyond evidence-based practice. Science-based practice goes beyond existing evidence to what we are learning from new research and science efforts. Science-based practice is difficult. It means putting together pieces from different studies and making sense of things that don't seem to make sense on their own. It can mean combining cross-domain knowledge (such as learning and usability). It means new theories (based on emerging science) and new things to test (with research).

In my two recent books, Write and Organize for Deeper Learning and Practice and Feedback for Deeper Learning, I selected tactics primarily based on current evidence. There are places, however, where research is not so clear. I analyzed emerging research as well as existing evidence. But since most learning research is not done with a training audience, it took time to find the right research. Schooling and higher education have very different goals than training. Research in these environments doesn't always apply.

Which is better, evidence-based or science-based? We need them both.

Readability and Instructional Writing

Readability Statistics in Microsoft Word

In my book Write and Organize for Deeper Learning, I discuss how to make instructional writing easier for people to understand, remember, and apply. One of the first steps is making sure your content is readable by the people reading or hearing it. We communicate a great deal in instruction through writing. We use the written word to build information, support materials, scripts for audio and video, and more.

But what if how you write actually gets in the way of communicating clearly? The answer to this dilemma is readability. Readability is a score given to text that tells you how easy it is to understand. It's not the end-all of determining clarity but it's a needed first step.

According to usability expert Jakob Nielson: "Users won’t read web content unless the text is clear, the words and sentences are simple, and the information is easy to understand." Instructional content is similar. When people are frustrated, they will skim or ignore what we write.

I write about how to test readability in my book (Microsoft Word will calculate readability for you > Look under Word Options) and the steps needed to make content more readable. Here are two of the steps:

• Use simpler and more understandable words. 
• Break apart long sentences into shorter sentences. 

Recently, I've run across some good readability resources and wanted to share them.

• Nielsen Norman Group Legibility, Readability, and Comprehension: Making Users Read Your Words: A clear discussion of the importance of usability.
• Readability.io: Explains readability, the types of scores, and how to use them. 
• MakeUseOf  8 Readability Web Tools to Test Your Writing Quality: List of online tools you can use to test readability

Knowing your audience, calculating readability scores, and writing for the needs of your audience are ways to make your instruction more learnable, better for remembering, and application.

No! No. Background. Music.

https://www.pattishank.com/videos

<-- I started building a series of explainer videos this week on the most critical concepts in my Make It Learnable series of books. The first one is on learnability and readability in instructional materials and how they impact learning outcomes. I want to help people understand the importance of evidence-based concepts in building good instruction.

I tried out a number of explainer video applications (or applications that could be used for this purpose) and too many had fatal flaws. I wanted to use Camtasia as I have the application and love its ease of use. But I couldn't get the audio to work right. After two days of trying and working through help files (noting that others had similar problems), I gave up. But I'd like to use it again if I can figure out how to get the audio working.

I looked at other tools and tried them, but most had even larger fatal flaws. The one that worked immediately was Powtoon. There is a serious flaw: No ability to input a transcript for those who cannot hear the video. I'm looking for a workaround. (Let me know if you have one.)

When I bought Powtoon, I had to decide which upgrade to purchase. The higher versions had more objects, backgrounds, and background music. But background music should typically NOT be used in instructional video. The reason is easy to understand and quite clear. Added music makes attending to the important messages on the screen more difficult. In other words, it adds extraneous (harmful) cognitive load.

When people are learning, their mind has to select the important messages from what is shown and mix them with what they know to make meaning. This is. Hard. Work. Adding extraneous (extra) messages, images, and music makes this even harder.  We absolutely should not do anything to make understanding harder.

You shouldn't use background music unless your lesson is about background music. If you want to understand cognitive load better, consider reading Write and Organize for Deeper Learning or Practice and Feedback for Deeper Learning.

Reader input.. the story of Bill Sawyer's gift

Bill Sawyer, Director, Global Learning Services at Seal Software, is the kind of person you want helping you evaluate your instructional writing. He’s picky. And when it comes to writing, picky is good. 

As Bill read my first book, he sent me lists of things that were either problematic or things he thought I could do better. For example, he called out a figure and said he didn’t understand it. I looked at it and realized that the editor and I had missed that half of the figure made it into the book. No wonder it didn’t make sense.

I went through each of his lists and updated the manuscript. Sometimes we simply disagreed stylistically. And there were a few things I simply couldn’t figure out how to do. For example, the Kindle translation of my manuscript wasn’t nearly as attractive as the print book. I was embarrassed that I couldn’t make the tables work as well as I liked. Of course, getting tables to reflow and look terrific on anything from a phone to a 10” tablet was obviously a challenge.

When I wrote the second book, Practice and Feedback for Deeper Learning, I found his stylistic suggestions influencing me. And I simply had to back and update the first book so they matched. I told Bill I didn’t like the covers and was going to change the first one to match the second. He said, “I hated the cover but was afraid to tell you!” So, I changed the cover on the first book to match the second.

People think of writing as a solo activity. Nope… anything but. The first step is understanding your audience, just like when building instruction. 

Thank you, Bill Sawyer. I consider you a critical part of my writing team. And cannot wait to meet you in person someday.

I’ll tell you how I fixed my Kindle problem in my next post. So much to learn (and I kind of love that).

Ta-da. Book 2 is out!

Yesterday I uploaded the second book in the Make It Learnable series to Amazon. It's available in print and Kindle and should be available internationally.

I've been writing Practice and Feedback for Deeper learning pretty much nonstop the last few months. I woke up each morning excited to get back to work. Except when I was working on the feedback research and information. I thought I'd never get through it. It's a difficult topic and there are areas where experts don't agree. I wondered how I'd ever write the chapter in a way that was clear and applicable. But I know that if you keep going and use each problem as a way to learn, you'll eventually figure out how to make it through. I'm stubborn like that.  

I learned a lot while writing the book. And one of the best parts of writing them is improving my own knowledge and skills. If you think I know everything there is to know before I write one of these books, well, you'd be wrong. I write to find answers to questions I have and share what I learn (another great part of writing these books).

If you read it, I'd love to know what you think. I really do think the second book is even better than the first because readers offered input that influenced the second book.