Minimalist Educational Materials for Distance Delivery

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Minimalist Educational Materials for Distance
Delivery

• Ken McKee - BEd, BSc, PTC
• Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
• www.GetToThePoint.ca

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Minimalism / Education

• I hear, I forget
• I see, I remember
• I do, I understand
• Confuscious
• Education should be useful.
• If it is not, what is it?
• Whitehead

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Overview

• Traditional delivery problems
• Distance delivery problems
• How does Learning occur?
• What is Education?
• What is Minimalism?
• Minimalist Solutions

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Traditional Delivery Problems

• Books
• Too thick
• Not directly applicable
• Students
• Very busy with time restraints
• Dont, wont, cant read
• Technology
• More time requirements
• Different platforms

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Problems with Traditional Delivery

• Teachers
• Lecture
• Control concerns
• Class size, ability levels, interest
• Content applicability

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Distant Delivery Problems

• Materials make or break technology solutions
• No teacher in sight
• Technology to overcome
• Texts too thick, where do I look?
• Questions via email can be numerous

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What is Education?

• Education is the acquisition of the art of the
  utilization of knowledge Whitehead
• "Develop the best pedagogy you can. See how well
  you can do. Then analyze the nature of what you
  did that worked."   Jerome Bruner

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Who decides what is usable?

• Students should experience the joy of discovery
  and understand the application here and now in
  the circumstances of his/her life.
  Whitehead
• Appreciation by use
• The external connections of the subject drag
  thought outwards

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• Ideas, which are not utilized, are positively
  harmful (inert) Whitehead

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• The problem of keeping knowledge alive, of
  preventing it from becoming inert, is the central
  problem of all education. Whitehead

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• Education is the evocation of curiosity, of
  judgment, of the power of mastering a complicated
  tangle of circumstances, the use of theory in
  giving foresight in special cases

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Romance Stage of Education

• First stage of apprehension
• Appreciation of connections
• Education must essentially be a setting in order
  of a ferment already stirring in the mind

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Precision Stage of Education

• Represents an addition to knowledge
• Analyzing the facts, bit by bit

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Generalization Stage of Education

• Return to romanticism with the added advantage of
  classified ideas and relevant technique

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What is Minimalism?

• Brevity of materials
• www.GetToThePoint.ca
• Materials that work and work well
• Self paced
• Applicable

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Minimalist Solutions

• Create the best applied materials you can
• Work as if you were a student
• Test the materials with students
• Questions indicate areas to adjust
• Rework, test materials again
• Could students write an introduction at end of
  chapter?
• Rework, test, rework, test

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Minimalist Strategies

• All learning tasks should be meaningful and self
  contained
• Learners should be given realistic projects ASAP
• Instructions permit self-directed reasoning and
  improvising
• Increase the number of active learning activities

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Minimalist Strategies

• Training materials and activities should provide
  for error recognition and recovery
• Close linkage between the training and the actual
  system (job)
• Minimize instructional materials which obstruct
  learning

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Applying Minimalist Principals

• Action centered tasks
• Focus on what user needs
• Omit long introductions
• Omit repetition and verbiage
• Exploit what user already knows
• Rely on users to think and improvise

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References

• Carroll, J.M. 1990. The Nurnberg Funnel
• Carroll, J.M. 1998. Minimalism Beyond the
  Nurnberg Funnel
• Eiler, M.A. 1997. Minimalism and Documentation
  Downsizing
• Reddish, J. 1999. A Practical Guide to Useability
  Testing
• Reddish, J. 1999. Building usability into your
  documentation, Interfaces and websites
• Whitehead, A.N. 1929. The Aims of Education

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Minimalist Websites and Links

• Minimalism (J. Carroll)http//tip.psychology.org
  /carroll.htmlhttp//dabcc-www.nmsu.edu/bis/comtec
  /RC/carroll/  
• Minimalism and Documentationhttp//english.ttu.e
  du/kairos/3.1/reviews/eiler/minimal.html 
• Cognitive Approaches to Instructional
  Designhttp//carbon.cudenver.edu/bwilson/traini
  ng.html 
• Achieving Minimalism Through Interactive
  Multimediahttp//www.stc.org/51stConf/sessionMat
  erial/dataShow.asp?ID137 
• Technical Writers of India (TWIN)http//www.twin
  -india.org/Minimalism.html
• Usability Testing http//www.usability.gov
  http//stcsig.org/usability