Learning styles: Worth our time?

21 September 2010 By 78 Comments

If you had time to evaluate the research on learning styles, what would you conclude?

Here’s what four cognitive psychologists concluded: “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing. If classification of students’ learning styles has practical utility, it remains to be demonstrated.”

Learning styles argumentThat quote is from Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence, an examination of learning style research. Some more quotes from the paper:

  • Studies are weak: “Although the literature on learning styles is enormous, very few studies have even used an experimental methodology capable of testing the validity of learning styles applied to education. Moreover, of those that did use an appropriate method, several found results that flatly contradict the popular meshing hypothesis.” “Meshing” refers to changing your teaching style to match a learning style. (p. 105)

    • [Read more...]

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Do we really need narration?

7 September 2010 By 67 Comments

When should elearning be narrated? I think we should rephrase the question as, “When is it a good idea to force all learners to go at the same pace?”

Man with fingers in earsThat’s what narrated material does. The pace of the narration controls the pace of the material. When you’re learning from narrated material, you can’t easily skim stuff you already know, or slow down and concentrate on the challenging parts, because the voice continues relentlessly at a pace that someone else established.

New studies suggest that learner control + text works better

According to recommendations in books like Elearning and the Science of Instruction, we shouldn’t narrate text that’s displayed on the screen. The redundancy interferes with learners’ ability to digest what they’re being fed. So is it okay to remove the text and use narration alone?

Apparently it is if you’re presenting very short science lessons that are based on graphics, which is what was done in the studies that are often cited. Most of the lessons were no more than 5 minutes long, and the learners couldn’t control the pacing. Those studies suggested that in those situations it’s better to use narration rather than text to explain a graphic.

But what happens if you use narration in material that takes a lot longer to learn, such as an hour? In one study, students who read silent text at their own pace finished more quickly and scored better on both retention and transfer tests than did students who used a narrated version of the materials. [Read more...]

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Could animations hurt learning?

15 June 2009 By 36 Comments

A recent study suggests that the common habit of “building” information on a slide can interfere with learning.

The researchers used Camtasia Studio to create two presentations on information security. The audio narration was the same in both presentations. The visuals were the same, too, except one presentation used an average of 3.4 animations per slide to make bullet points, words, or images enter at different times. The other animation had static slides—the information was simply there.

After viewing the presentation, students answered a multiple-choice quiz. Students who saw the flying-bullet-points presentation scored 71.43%, while students who saw the more static version scored 81.98%, a statistically significant difference.

Bar graph

What does this mean? [Read more...]

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Less text, more learning

26 January 2009 By 30 Comments

Do stakeholders want to add text to your materials? Here’s one study you can use to show how wordiness can hurt learning.

The study compared three lessons about the same weather process. All lessons used the same illustrations but varied in the number of words.

The lesson with the fewest words resulted in the most learning.

Bar graph

Read the original publication (PDF) from the Journal of Educational Psychology, or see the summary on pp. 109-115 of Efficiency in Learning by Ruth Clark, Frank Nguyen, and John Sweller.

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Should we narrate on-screen text?

30 July 2007 By 32 Comments

It’s common to assume that you should have a narrator read text to the learner. However, this could hurt learning in three ways:

  • Increases cognitive load: Learners will read more quickly to themselves than your narrator can read to them. Research suggests that this sets up a distracting echo that interferes with learners’ ability to process the information.
  • Takes control from learners: A narrator can force learners to move at the narrator’s pace. Research shows that learners do best when they control the speed.
  • Weakens motivation: Reading text to adult learners could suggest that you see them as children, not as capable adults. (My opinion only; if you know of any research into this, please let me know.)

Some recommendations:

  • Cut text. Most online courses I’ve seen would benefit from losing at least a third of their text. If you feel you must present a lot of text, consider providing it as a printed job aid.
  • Don’t read text aloud unless you know that your learners have trouble reading to themselves.
  • Narrate complex graphics and don’t include redundant text.

How do we reach audio learners?Research doesn’t appear to support the popular idea that we should cater to different learning styles. However, research does show that reading printed text to learners hurts their performance.

Your safest bet is to let learners read on their own but use audio to describe complex graphics. It’s also good practice to present the same ideas in different ways–just not simultaneously.

To learn more:

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