E P I C   T H I N K I N G

Issue 19: June2003

This month:

1. New white paper: Games and e-learning
2. White paper update: Evaluation of learning
3. Show report: Coaching and mentoring in e-learning
4. Book reviews: Gee, Prensky, Clark & Mayer
5. Case study: On the frontline with RBS
6. News: US universities give e-learning top marks

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W H I T E  P A P E R

1. Learning points from the Gamer Nation

Violent, mindless exercises for solitary (usually male) geeks, devoid of educational content and promoting an anti-social, culturally insensitive view of the world - this is a commonly-held view of computer games among sections of the learning community.

But is it a true picture? Is the 'twitch generation' really composed entirely of slack-brained, uncaring demons?

It cannot really be said that games have absolutely no instructional value. Self-evidently, they must be good learning experiences - otherwise, who would invest the considerable time and effort required in learning how to play and complete them?

Granted, they may lack explicit learning content; but surely there are valuable lessons to be learned here - at the very least - in the techniques of engaging and sustaining the attention of learners.

Neither is it the case that computer games are all violent shoot-em-ups. A wide range of sub-genres exist, including Sims-style 'God games', driving games, adventure games like Tomb Raider, puzzles… and even historical strategy games such as the best-selling Age of Empires.

In fact, looked at in the historical context, games are an integral part of our heritage and culture. Tracing play and games back through the history of our species in Homo Ludens (1938), Dutch historian Johan Huizinga found this type of activity to be a fundamental feature of almost all cultures.

Surely we cannot afford to ignore so omnipresent a human activity in the context of learning?

In his ground-breaking new white paper, Donald Clark, Epic, strips away the myths and misconceptions surrounding computer games and shows how we can use lessons learned from the self-styled 'Gamer Nation' to produce more effective, engaging online learning experiences.

White Paper: Games and e-learning

To get your free copy contact us

Give your views on the subject

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2. Evaluation: Kirkpatrick, schmerkpatrick

In Techniques for Evaluation Training Programmes (1959) and Evaluating Training Programmes: The Four Levels (1994), Donald Kirkpatrick proposed a standard approach to the evaluation of training that has become the de facto standard in the industry.

But how well has this 44 year-old model stood the test of time?

Some, like Steve Kerr (leadership guru and Chief Learning Officer at Goldman Sachs) would like to see Kirkpatrick junked. In his opinion, Kirkpatrick asks all the wrong questions.

Kerr is one of many who question whether we should evaluate at all, arguing that the task is to create the motivation and context for good learning and knowledge sharing; not to treat learning as an auditable commodity.

In this white paper, originally issued in 2001 and now extensively revised and updated, Donald Clark argues that while Kirkpatrick offers a simple and for the most part sensible schema, serious doubts must now exist about its continued efficacy. In practice, it can prove too costly, disruptive and statistically weak to implement. Following a detailed critique of Kirkpatrick, he outlines alternative strategies for evaluation, based on alignment with business measures rather than formal evaluative techniques.

White Paper: Evaluation of learning

To get your free copy contact us

Give your views on the subject

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S H O W R E P O R T

3. Coaching and mentoring in e-learning London, May 2003

'Everybody's talking about this subject nowadays, but what are people actually doing? This event provided a chance to get tutoring and e-tutoring practitioners in front of an audience of interested e-learning practitioners and find out…'

Mark Harrison, Epic's Head of Consulting, reports from this stimulating conference organised by the E-learning Network. Speakers included an online tutor and someone who runs a range of e-tutoring programmes for BT, sharing and comparing their experiences with two speakers with backgrounds in face-to-face executive coaching.

Key learning points:

• Online demolishes geographical boundaries, breaks down deference and coaxes introverts out of their shells
• The proliferation of media that can be used for coaching (video, mobile, etc.) will blur the offline/online distinction and lead to greater individual choice in the means by which the learner is coached/mentored/tutored/whatever…
• Nomenclature in this area is still an evolving science!

Read the whole report
Introduction to coaching and e-coaching
Case study: E-coaching as part of blended solution in a retail bank
Case study: BT Ethnic Minority Network

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R E V I E W

• What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (Gee)
• Digital Game-Based Learning (Prensky)
• E-learning and the Science of Instruction (Clark & Mayer)

4a. What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy

Palgrave Macmillan, April 2003

Author: James Paul Gee

Review by Donald Clark

Gee is very much an academic, and this book, although largely readable, can be tough going in patches. He's a fan of computer games and the book extracts 36 learning principles from game playing to show us that games have much to teach us about learning. In this he succeeds, although a good third of his principles are debatable.

I warn you now; Gee is a disciple of the semiotic movement. This is the theoretical grounding for many of his 36 principles. However, if you're not a follower of 'semiotic domains' or 'text-internal relationships' you can cluster this stuff under 'media literacy'. Much is made of a new type of visual literacy in the form of symbols, images, video and so on. This is valid to a degree, but falls down somewhat when applied to the business of acquiring the skills of reading or writing, which have standard practices that must be learned in order to function in most professions and, indeed, in everyday life. However, even if you disagree with the sociological theorising, there is still much to gain from this book, as many of his principles stand alone from his semiotic theory. Gee is at least open and honest about his underpinning theory, pointing out that in three major areas 'many disagree with each one and, indeed, all three.'

The opening chapter is an excellent read as he takes the high ground on games, showing us their virtues, but few of their vices. It dips somewhat as the semiotic analysis takes hold, but if you persevere, the book is excellent in uncovering those key ingredients of computer games that have made them so successful - producing an industry that now makes more money than the film industry.

Again, like Prensky in Digital Game-Based Learning (see review below) he's light on counter-arguments. Games may be wonderful, but are still unsuitable for many types of calm, reflective learning. He's also a little short on real recommendations about how games can be practically used in learning, making this a highly theoretical book with not much real, practical advice.

One thing I particularly liked, however, was the way he describes his experiences in learning how to play these games. As a digital immigrant (entered their world), rather than digital native (brought up in their world), he duly acknowledges that he finds games difficult; but his joy in mastering Deux Ex or Half Life is evident, and this voyage of discovery is accompanied by insightful reflections on their worth as learning experiences.

Another strength of the book is his observations on collaboration in games. People who do not play computer games often misunderstand this. They will never have used cheats, walkthroughs, read the magazines and visited game sites. Kids play games together online with people they have never met and engage in a rich community of practice (Gee prefers the term 'affinity group').

He handily lists his 36 principles in an appendix at the back, which is useful, and I'd recommend reading these first to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of the book. By abstracting out key principles he allows us to see how each can be applied in learning without committing to the full-on 3D virtual environment game. These principles cover learning to learn how to play games, lots of principles around success through failure, as well as exploding the myth that game playing is a solitary, anti-social affair.

This is an excellent, although altogether different, text from David Prensky's Digital Game Based Learning. It is essential reading along with Trigger Happy and Joystick Nation for those who are convinced, or need convincing, that games have much to offer education and training.

James Paul Gee is a Professor in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin.

Give your views on the subject

4b. Digital Game-Based Learning

McGraw-Hill, December 2000

Author: Marc Prensky

Review by Donald Clark

To accompany the release of his white paper on games and e-learning, Donald Clark has revised and extended his review of Marc Prensky's book, which he describes as 'the vanguard text in this fascinating debate', originally published in Epic Thinking Issue 17, April 2003.

Read the review

Give your views on the subject

4c. E-learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning

Wiley 2003

Authors: Ruth Colvin Clark, Richard E. Mayer

Review by Dr Matthew Fox, Epic.

What does it take to make a successful e-learning programme? How should you evaluate the e-learning you have commissioned when it is delivered? How can you be confident that good learning, and therefore performance improvement, will be the result? These are key questions for e-learning practitioners, which have been addressed with some success in Clark and Mayer's new book on e-learning design.

What marks this work out from others on the subject is that the authors have backed up their assertions with empirical evidence from research projects. For example; they illustrate a point about leaving out extraneous or distracting graphics in media with an experiment conducted by Harp and Mayer (1997) in which students were given a text to read on lightning strikes. Students who read the passage accompanied by elaborate colour photos with additional captions - as opposed to the text with simple graphics - showed 73% less retention of knowledge and 52% fewer solutions on a transfer test. This sort of illustration with practical examples is welcome (even if the examples used do tend to favour the US industry rather heavily!).

The book is strong in this area of exploring how media can be used effectively. The best use of learning tasks (practice, application of knowledge) are also evaluated and explained with, again, plenty of evidence from learning research. The backbone of the book is provided by seven design principles; multimedia, contiguity, modality, redundancy, coherence, personalisation, and practice opportunities. Clear explanations are given about the risks of ignoring these principles - with support from worked examples and case study challenges.

However, while developers and buyers of e-learning alike will welcome the copious empirical evidence supplied by this work, they will find little that is new in the practices and techniques it covers. Issues of cognitive overload, memory processing, retention and transfer have been well enough documented elsewhere. And the book has, to my mind, one fairly glaring ommission.

Clark and Mayer provide no explanation or evidence for the structuring of learning events in effective sequences based on the psychological models they describe.

This is an important issue, and one that gets no discussion at all here. Learning is not just about the effective use of media and learning tasks. It is also about building learning through effective sequencing. This is a significant gap in a book which I would other wise commend wholeheartedly for its clarity of message and a compelling body of supporting evidence.

Carping aside, there is much to applaud in this volume. Many aspects of e-learning design have been inherited from the CBT world and classroom training design, and it is only relatively recently that a language and science of design for e-learning have begun to emerge. Clark and Mayer are to be commended for having undertaken a systematic review of findings from many areas of learning design and assembled them to make a practical and highly readable guide.

The result is a good practical reference that opens up the core issues of good design for maximising learning, which I would recommend to anyone getting to grips with the fundamentals of designing for e-learning.

Give your views on the subject

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C A S E S T U D Y

5. The Royal Bank of Scotland: CBFM Fontline Processes

In 2001 The Royal Bank of Scotland Group (the RBS group) acquired the National Westminster (NW) Bank. As a result of this acquisition the everyday processes used by staff needed to be integrated. NW staff were required to learn how to follow the RBS group processes. The factors that led to the choice of e-learning for this project were:

• Dispersed workforce
• The need for consistency of delivery
• Very tight timescale for roll-out

Read how Epic tackled these challenges successfully, leading to a successfully implementation in the workplace.

Case study: The Royal Bank of Scotland: CBFM Fontline Processes

Read more...

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N E W S

6. Forget blended, are you ready for buffet learning?

The Observatory of Borderless Higher Education represents 122 higher education institutions in the UK, including all the UK universities. It tracks developments in private and corporate education, developing markets, international collaboration and e-learning.

Its recent conference on 'Using ICT to Redesign Teaching and Learning' was commended by John Harris, Epic's Director of Education Services for 'its mix of speaker input, unstructured discussion and organised debate - a mix that organisers of such events rarely seem to get quite right.

'Keynote was by Dr Diana Laurillard, Head of e-Learning strategy at the DfES, who presented a vision of cradle-to-grave e-learning that would take us from nursery, through school, college and adult life, into the workplace and beyond (we eagerly await the DfES e-learning strategy to be published in July).

'Main course for the event, however, was a presentation by Dr Carol Twigg, from the US Centre for Academic Transformation based at Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York State, of findings from a $6.8M program to help universities make best use of e-learning. Among other tasty nuggets, this presentation introduced us to the concept of 'Buffet Learning'.

'The serious aim of the programme was to discover whether e-learning can deliver higher education at lower cost, while replicating (and perhaps exceeding) the quality of the face-to-face experience.

'Thirty Universities were selected for the study according to "readiness criteria" that included understanding of learning theory, systems in place for measuring learning outcomes and willingness to incorporate existing e-learning materials into the course redesign. Perhaps most significantly, the institutions had to manifest a desire to control costs and increase academic productivity. The prize for scoring highly against the criteria was a grant of $200,000 and guidance on how to go about redesigning the courses to balance quality, access and cost.

'The choice of courses to redesign was necessarily influenced by the size of enrolments, as cost savings would be multiplied by high student numbers. This was often a simple choice to make: in one community college, 25 courses out of a total of 2,000 were responsible for 51% of total enrolments. Much of the redesign work was around instructional task analysis and financial planning. That is, finding out the true cost of developing and running a course, in order to identify cost saving through e-learning.

'There was little uniformity in the design approaches adapted by the colleges, but analysis identified five basic models:

• Supplemental: adding e-learning to the current existing course
• Replacement: blending face-to-face activities with online activities
• Emporium: moving all classes to the computer lab
• Fully online: conducting (almost) all activities online
• Buffet: mixing and matching online and offline components, depending on the students' preferences

'The Buffet approach was probably the one that created most interest. However, this could be an ideal worth moving towards rather than a practical reality at present: it was easy to see the logistical difficulties in creating learning experiences to suit every situation and learning style.

'Over all, the results of the study were impressive. Costs were reduced by using less staff and having larger student numbers: at the same time, retention and exam results also improved. One of the major benefits brought by e-learning was increased flexibility. In the case of a Spanish course, the use of e-learning for core elements of the course freed up more time for conversation practice in face-to-face session, leading to a significant improvement in oral skills, while maintaining the level of results in other aspects of language proficiency.

'Given the all-to-common stories about the failure of e-learning, the message here was refreshingly upbeat. And with the requirement for UK universities to increase student numbers, widen access and maintain and improve learning quality, the event provided a great deal of food for thought for its audience of HEIs, education agencies and civil servants.

'The University of Surrey has now taken on a similar study for the UK. The results of that will be fascinating to see!'

Other Epic news this month…

Change in non-executive directorships

E V E N T S S P E C I A L

Look out for Steve Kerr (see item 2 above) speaking in London later this year.

Human Capital Strategies for Efficient & Proactive Organisations
30 September 2003, Central London

'There are three people in the world I would pay money to hear ... CK Prahalad on business strategy, my minister for religious instruction, and Steve Kerr.' Dave Ulrich

'It was refreshing to hear (him) sweep away the abstract theory to concentrate on actual practice…' Donald Clark

F O R E T H O U G H T

In next month's edition of Epic Thinking:

• New white paper: Blended Learning II
• Show report: E-learning in Financial Services
• Epic Think Tank report: Leadership for the top team
• Reviews
• News

If you have any questions that you would like to see our delegates address at future Epic Think Tanks, or suggestions for further sessions, mail them now to:
thinktank@epic.co.uk

Catch up on past think tanks…

The learner's experience: moving from push to pull
Blended learning and knowledge management
Leading Change and e-learning
Blended - or Blanded?
Leadership and e-learning
Health and e-learning
Collaboration and e-learning
Corporate universities and e-learning

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R E T U R N  O F  P O S T

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