Why do people continue to believe in debunked learning styles? Let’s look at why the belief is appealing and how we can respond to the believers on our team. Learn more.
How to be a learning mythbuster
7 January 2015 By
Do your stakeholders insist on believing in myths like learning styles? Here’s how to bust some myths. Learn more.
Learning styles: Worth our time?
21 September 2010 By
We’re wasting our time talking about appealing to learning styles when research has identified far more powerful techniques. This post summarizes two meta-analyses about learning styles and readers sound off in more than 70 comments. Read more
Do we really need narration?
7 September 2010 By
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?” That’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 […]
Could animations hurt learning?
15 June 2009 By
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 […]
Less text, more learning
26 January 2009 By
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 […]
Why you do not want to sound like a robot
19 January 2009 By
“We shouldn’t use contractions because…” Let’s debunk all that.
Should we narrate on-screen text?
30 July 2007 By
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 […]
