Social Media as Reinforcement Training

HASC's mission is to train contractors to stay as safe as possible while working in petrochemical and oil refining facilities. Due to the large number of contractors who enter this workforce every year, HASC provides a six-hour introductory class on safety in the industry called Basic Orientation Plus (BOP). 

Although a good model for new field technician training, BOP could be more effective for learners by using more innovative tools, especially those that emphasize spaced practice. In 2020 HASC performed a study on the use of spaced practice opportunities for learners in BOP utilizing a text messaging delivery. This study will focus on a similar study performed in 2021 focused on providing spaced practice using Instagram as the delivery method for BOP learners. 

Rationale for the Study

HASC hosts two BOP classes a day with up to 150 learners in each class. These small communities of learners work to pass the BOP exam, a qualifying exam for working within the petrochemical and oil refining industry. These learners spend between six and eight hours in BOP and are allowed to work together during class, reflect together during breaks, and collaborate with the instructor. In essence, they become an organization of learners within the HASC organization for the duration of the training. HASC is working to create a stronger community of learners and on providing an open system within the organization similar to what Morgan (2006) discusses regarding subsystems that spring up within systems and are a smaller part of the whole. Following some of the precepts of Morgan's (2006) writing on organizations as open systems analogy, HASC is hoping to inspire learner's within these learning group subsystems to provide creative content, work together, understand broader concepts, and "influence the nature of their environment" (p. 63). The expected results from providing spaced practice opportunities, and inspiring greater confidence among the learners through an open system, is that learners will have a better opportunity to pass the BOP final exam. Additionally, Morgan (2006) discusses the organizational ecology and the creation of a shared future. In the short term, BOP learners share a common future of finishing the class and passing the final exam. A tool that allows them a more engaging and effective learning technique like spaced practice could help the learners all realize that shared future. 

Research Questions and Theoretical Perspective

The 2021 HASC study on spaced practice and Instagram will focus on the use of cognitivism and behaviorism (Kauffeld and Lehmann-Willenbrockand, 2010; Arghode et al. 2017) as a bridge application (Ertmer & Newby, 2013) that will allow for a more open organization among the class community.  This will be completed using a mixed qualitative and quantitative research design to answer three primary questions:

1) Do social media interactions for spaced learning provide better opportunities for reflective learning than text-delivered chatbots for BOP learners? 

2) Does using Instagram for reflective spaced practice provide a better understanding of BOP concepts than instruction without Instagram practice sessions? 

3) Do learners create a more open system within the class by engaging with and creating content via Instagram?

 Literature Review

There is ample research on the effectiveness of spaced practice on learning. Dempster and Farris (1990) state that it is "ubiquitous in scope" (p. 97) and note that it is a standard within the learning community as a successful tool to impart learning (Dempster & Farris, 1990, and Dempster 1989). Carpenter et al. (2012) state that "any form of spacing – whether it is fixed or expanding -  appeared to promote learning" (p. 5) and "in order to promote long-term retention of knowledge, students should receive spaced re-exposure to previously-learned information" (p. 5). Space practice encourages engagement among the class and includes active processing of information, a key, according to Arghode et al. (2017) to cognitivism. 

Social media is becoming more universal and natural for workers entering into the petroleum and petrochemical refining industry and more likely to be used for information sharing among this learning cohort (Tran, 2018). According to Hortigüela-Alcalá et al. (2019), these social media platforms allow learners to play an active role in their learning and provides "more collaborative-based methodologies" for learners. Hortigüela-Alcalá et al. (2019) also found that learners who utilized social media as a part of learning not only learned more effectively but were also more motivated to learn. Kunka (2020) found similar greater engagement levels with students who utilized social media as a part of their learning. Al-Bahrani and Patel (2015) reported on many studies that have found positive results for social media in classes but also found evidence that this tool provided opportunities for shy students to interact more. These are all key features of an open and engaging classroom that HASC is trying to promote. According to Arghode et al. (2017) behaviorism's uniqueness lies in "its belief in how learning is achieved based on external stimuli and subsequent response" (p. 595). By applying an external stimuli to our BOP class subsystem HASC hope to change the behavior of the learner, from passive learner to active and engaged.

Many different researchers have studied and analyzed merging social media for engagement and more effective learning with spaced practice. Avila (2021), working with a theoretical design of digital agency, hoped to find evidence that learners would gain confidence working within the class by using a tool they were familiar with. Using a qualitative ethnographic study, Serpagli and Mensah (2021) stated that learners found "Instagram as a classroom tool was "casual" to the students because they were already using it in their daily lives" (p. 295). Swanepoel and Bruwer (2020) found that learners thought Instagram provided greater motivation to accompany lectures, while Nagel et al. (2018) discovered positive results for social media to enhance classroom activities. 

These studies show not just the benefits of spaced practice, but also the benefits of Instagram for delivery of this reinforcement tool. In fact, many of the studies selected as a part of this review focused on how social media use could provide more open forms of communication like wikis, story-telling, feedback texts, images with captions for more explanation and the promotion of a more collaborative learning environment (Nagel et al. 2018; Serpagli & Mensah, 2021; Swanepoel & Bruwer, 2020;). As part of HASC's goal is to promote a more open organization/ subsystem where learners can create content, collaborate in class, and develop a richer understanding of the concepts and learning objectives, having tools that promote this type of interaction would help the BOP learners create that type of dynamic.

Research Design

For this Instagram study, HASC followed the model established in 2020 with the text delivery spaced practice study. HASC used the same questions that were used in 2020 and ran the test with a similar number of classes. HASC also utilized an open question survey to glean reactions from learners who utilized the tool. This design followed many of the best practices found in similar studies such as the Serpagli and Mensah (2021) study which used a qualitative ethnographic methodology and used a similar sampling method that found that Instagram brought "science into the daily lives of digital natives" (p. 288). Making BOP a part of the learners daily lives and actions is a goal of this study. The study on using Instagram to promote blended learning by Swanepoel & Bruwer (2020) was also used as a paradigm for the HASC study as their mixed qualitative and quantitative design found that an "always-on leaner, who thinks about the module outside of the lecture" is a similar goal for promoting the open organization with HASC's BOP classes. 

Results and Analysis

In 2020, when HASC delivered spaced practice through text message, 170 learners started the spaced practice test, and 99 learners completed all four modules.  Over the course of the study, 205 learners took BOP and had the opportunity to use the spaced practice via text capability. In 2020, 83% of the BOP learners started the spaced practice exercise, and 48% completed the exercises completely. 

In 2021, when HASC delivered spaced practice through Instagram, 73 learners started and completed the spaced practice exercises. Over the course of the Instagram test, 534 learners took BOP and had the opportunity to utilize  the tool via Instagram. Only 14% of the total learners who took BOP took advantage of the spaced practice exercises. 

In a departure from the 2020 study, for the Instagram study there was the addition of several survey questions asked to volunteers after the class. Five learners were interviewed as a part of this study. The interview consisted of both open-ended and multiple-choice questions. Based on the results of the multiple-choice questions, all of the learners surveyed were not new to the Instagram platform, and each of them indicated that they enjoyed the opportunity to answer BOP relevant questions via the application. Additionally, in the open-ended questions, one learner wrote, "it made me learn something that I thought was right but helped me understand better." Another learner wrote, "it helped me study and review information, so if I got it wrong, I could look at it again." Both of these answers tend to reinforce the importance of spaced practice to learning.

In terms of Instagram being easier to utilize because it was provided using a platform the learners were already familiar with, one learner wrote that they liked that it was "user friendly," however another learner wrote, "it would be easier to access if it was provided via text." One of the multiple-choice questions addressed this same questions regarding text delivery vs. Instagram delivery, and the responses were mixed in that 60% of the respondents would have taken the quiz had it been sent via text. To the question of whether or not other social media platforms should be employed, 80% of respondents responded with "yes." The fact that a majority of respondents wanted more social media usage implies that there is a desire among BOP learners for this level of engagement and therefore for more collaboration among learners.  

Conclusion

This study found that compared to the text-delivered spaced practice exercises, learners in the BOP course did not utilize the opportunity for spaced practice as much when it was offered on Instagram. Secondly, the overall completion rate, whether via text delivery or Instagram, was lower than might be expected based on the studies used for the literature review. There are several reasons that this might be the case. 

When introducing the Instagram exercises, the instructional designer would ask how many people in the class used Instagram regularly. The number of students who self-identified as Instagram users in class was usually about 10% to 20% of the total class population. Based on these rough estimates from the instructional designer, the use of Instagram among BOP learners is not as high as the use of Instagram among the overall population of the US that uses Instagram (Mediakix, 2016). Although it could be that learners were hesitant to self-report their use of Instagram during class, the reason for this under-reporting could also be that the use of Instagram among the primarily working-class laborer that HASC supports is lower than the US average. Further study will have to be completed to answer this specific question. 

Additionally, Instagram is a free application. There is no sign-up fee nor ongoing usage fee. Any BOP learner who did not use or have Instagram on their smartphone could have downloaded the application for free to take the spaced practice exercises. One failure of this research design was not asking the learners when we introduced the application how many learners did not have smartphones, which would have been worthwhile to use as a gauge of technological adoption among the BOP learning cohort.

Most of the studies selected as a part of the literature review included subjects who were active students, either in high school or in college. The learners in HASC's BOP classes are, in most cases, not college-educated and are no longer in high school. The motivation that BOP students have is extrinsic rather than intrinsic. Contractors do not attend BOP because they enjoy learning; instead, they attend BOP so that they can work in the industry. The learners' usage of the spaced practice exercises; whether via Instagram or text, was not as high as expected based on the expected rates from the studies included in the literature review. This implies that learners were not overwhelmingly concerned or inspired to take the spaced practice exercises. Again, more study will need to be performed to determine if spaced practice alone is seen as a benefit to the BOP learners.

As to the third research question regarding user created content; there were no BOP learners who interacted, created content, nor posted replies as a part of this Instagram study. Finding ways to encourage more open conversation and exchange of information, both from the HASC instructor to the learners and between learners, is a worthwhile endeavor to help improve collaboration and provide greater reinforcement of learning objectives. 

Spaced practice has a deep history of success in assisting learners in retaining learning objectives (Dempster & Farris, 1990; Dempster, 1989; Hintzman, 1974). A platform like Instagram, which has been shown to increase engagement and provide an outlet for collaboration (Prasetyawati & Ardi, 2020; Serpagli & Mensah, 2021; Swanepoel & Bruwer, 2020), combined with spaced practice should lead to both greater engagement and communication between all of the learners and instructors. Using Instagram should have provided a lower barrier to entry and fewer challenges for the learners to use the tool. According to the quantitative data, this did not occur. 

Based on the qualitative interviews, those using the spaced practice Instagram tool found it worthwhile and effective. One feature that might help adoption would be if the spaced practice tool was platform agnostic, to ensure that no matter the social media application the BOP learner could use the application they were most comfortable using. As Deed et al. (2014) state in the conclusion of their study on student agency, the "extent of student agency was dependent on their capacity to take responsibility for their own learning" (p. 74). Providing greater student agency through Instagram or other social media tools would provide for greater ownership by the student and a more open subsystem for the BOP class.

Additionally, more tools that use social media should be utilized within BOP and in other training classes that HASC offers. A significant challenge with this research could have been the limited exposure that HASC learners have with using social media for training at HASC. Finding ways to make innovative training tools more ubiquitous, easy to access, a part of the learners' daily lives, a natural behavior to reinforce learning across all courses, will help strengthen HASC's impact on the contractor learning community, and help foster a stronger, open organizations and subsystems among the learners. 

 

References

Al-Bahrani, A., & Patel, D. (2015). Incorporating twitter, Instagram, and Facebook in economics classrooms. The Journal of Economic Education, 46(1), 56–67.

Arghode, V., Brieger, E. W., & McLean, G. N. (2017). Adult learning theories: implications for online instruction. European Journal of Training and Development, 41(7), 593–609.

Ávila, J. (2021). #MultimediaResponse: Instagram as a reading activity in a university English class. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy: A Journal from the International Reading Association, 64(5), 531–541.

Carpenter, S. K., Cepeda, N. J., Rohrer, D., Kang, S. H. K., & Pashler, H. (2012). Using spacing to enhance diverse forms of learning: Review of recent research and implications for instruction. Educational Psychology Review, 24(3), 369–378.

Deed, C., Cox, P., Dorman, J., Edwards, D., Farrelly, C., Keeffe, M., Lovejoy, V., Mow, L., Sellings, P., Prain, V., Waldrip, B., & Yager, Z. (2014). Personalised learning in the open classroom: The mutuality of teacher and student agency. International Journal of Pedagogies and Learning, 9(1), 66–75.

Dempster, F. N., & Farris, R. (1990). The spacing effect: Research and practice. Journal of Research & Development in Education, 23(2), 97–101.

Dempster, F. N. (1989). Spacing Effects and Their Implications for Theory and Practice. Educational Psychology Review, 1(4), 309–330. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23359223

Ertmer, P. A., & Newby, T. J. (2013). Behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism: Comparing critical features from an instructional design perspective. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 26(2), 43–71.

Hintzman, D. L. (1974). Theoretical implications of the spacing effect. In R. L. Solso (Ed.), Theories in cognitive psychology: The Loyola Symposium. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hortigüela-Alcalá, D., Sánchez-Santamaría, J., Pérez-Pueyo, Á., & Abella-García, V. (2019). Social networks to promote motivation and learning in higher education from the students’ perspective. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 56(4), 412–422.

Kauffeld, S., & Lehmann-Willenbrock, N. (2010). Sales training: effects of spaced practice on training transfer. Journal of European Industrial Training, 34(1), 23–37.

Kunka, B. A. (2020). Twitter in higher education: increasing student engagement. Educational Media International, 57(4), 316–331.

Mediakix. (2016). Instagram demographics: 13 impressive statistics about Instagram users. https://mediakix.com/blog/13-impressive-instagram-demographics-user-statistics-to-see/

Nagel, T. W. S., Remillard, C., Aucoin, R., & Takenishi, A. (2018). Findings on student use of social media at the collegiate, undergraduate, and graduate levels: Implications for post-secondary educators. Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice, 15(1). http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1173809.pdf

Prasetyawati, O. A., & Ardi, P. (2020). Integrating Instagram into EFL writing to foster student engagement. Teaching English with Technology, 20(3), 40–62.

Serpagli, L. P., & Mensah, F. M. (2021). Keeping up with the digital natives: Using social media in an all‐girls science classroom. School Science and Mathematics, 121(5), 288–298.

Swanepoel, G. P., & Bruwer, A. (2020). Educating the always-on generation in an instant(gram) #blendedlearning. Perspectives in Education, 38(1), 16–29.

Tran, K. (2018, March 5). Social platforms are most popular among 18- to 29-year-olds. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/social-platforms-are-most-popular-among-18-to-29-year-olds-2018-3

Spaced Practice for Conceptual Understanding

I've attacked and studied spaced practice throughout my work and my classes. I've blogged about it many times (see here). I was asked to review a journal article on the effects of spaced practice on understanding concepts and functions. I was not impressed, and it was mostly with the writing capabilities of the authors.

The journal article "Effects of Spaced Versus Massed Training in Function Learning" offers a confusing and difficult to understand look into whether or not spaced learning is as effective in learning concepts as it is with non-linked information. 

McDaniel et al. (2013) describe the rationale for the experiment as a "focus on training of a particular conceptual entity within one training session using repeated training stimuli" (p. 1417). The authors state that their focus is on concept understanding and function learning rather than memorization of verbal paradigms, as has often been studied (McDaniel et al., 2013). Although the authors provide compelling reasons when expressing the need for this study, and they do an excellent job of citing other relevant studies and works and discussing the differences between spaced practice, massed learning, and interleaving and how these will be used in their research, they fail to communicate clearly the experiment design or results in a manner that makes sense for the reader.   

McDaniel et al. (2013) begin their article by describing the principles behind long-term memory development compared to working memory and even include discussions of functional relationships, which they intend to study. McDaniel et al. (2013) provide examples of these functional relationships as predictions of one thing based on the relationship to another, such as "predictions of harvest yields based on the amount of rainfall" (p. 1418) or stock market yields and P/E ratio. The author's discussion of understanding abstractions and concepts are understandable and builds the reader's frame of reference for their research design. The purpose of the experiment is quite valid in that being able to determine if a more effective learning delivery systems like spaced learning can provide the same benefits to function and conceptual understanding would be a worthwhile undertaking. However, McDaniel et al. (2013) become far too ambiguous and quickly lose the reader when discussing the methods and results of their experiments. The description of the experiments could have been more fully understood by providing some examples of test questions and actual results from individual test subjects. Instead, McDaniel et al. (2013) lose the reader in their data and results analysis to the point that their intentions to measure concept understanding are cluttered and confusing. The difficulty of measuring both spaced and massed learning against extrapolation, interpolation, against random verse strategic delivery comprises a multitude of components to analyze that never tend to come together for the reader nor become clear. The authors would have benefitted from showing a table of their overall results to help the reader track the variables and research design. 

Other studies have been completed that focus on similar aspects of spaced practice and do so in an easier to understand manner. For example, articles such as Karpicke's (2016) wherein the author found that "on the concept map assessments, practicing retrieval during learning produced the best performance, even better than studying the material by making concept maps" (p. 5).  Another example is in the work by Vlach and Sandhofer (2013) and their description of experiments with spaced practice for generalization in children. Their results were positive, and they surmised in their General Discussion section that in spaced practice, "perceptual features are likely to be forgotten, whereas the underlying abstract structure is likely to be remembered to a greater degree" (Vlach and Sandhofer, 2013, p. 7). These studies focused on the same research, measuring concept understanding through spaced practice delivery, yet their methods, design, and results are far easier to digest and comprehend for readers.

In terms of their experiment results, McDaniel et al. (2013) continue to be confusing and say in the Practical Applications section that repeated massed learning of random sequences "does not support good learning" (p. 1431), then state "function learning is effective with massed experiences that are strategically (rather than randomly) selected," (p. 1431), but then continue and write that cued presentation of input-output pairs yielded better results for spaced learning.  The reader is left wondering what the experiments were designed to prove and the results.  Compared to both Karpicke (2016) and Vlach and Sandhofer (2013), the ability to relate this information in an easy-to-understand and well-laid-out manner is sorely missing in this journal article. 

References

Karpicke, J. (2016). A powerful way to improve learning and memory; Practicing retrieval enhances long-term, meaningful learning. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2016/06/learning-memory

McDaniel, M. A., Fadler, C. L., & Pashler, H. (2013). Effects of spaced versus massed training in function learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39(5), 1417–1432. 

Vlach, H. A., & Sandhofer, C. M. (2012). Distributing learning over time: the spacing effect in children’s acquisition and generalization of science concepts: Spacing and generalization. Child Development, 83(4), 1137–1144. 

Twitter for Spaced Practice

Yesterday I wrote about an article I reviewed on spaced practice. This next article review is about using a social media tool like Twitter for delivering and for developing spaced practice content. 

The journal article "Utilizing Twitter for Concept Learning " offers a clear and concise overview of a study of whether or not Twitter can be used as a spaced learning reinforcement tool for college-level classes.

Buzzelli et al. (2016) describe the rationale for the experiment as a "focus on training of a particular conceptual entity within one training session using repeated training stimuli" (p. 1417). Concept understanding via spaced practice rather than blocked learning is a common study, as shown by studies like McDaniel et al. (2013). The authors state that their focus is to determine if sending tweets with examples and non-examples related to predetermined major concepts would assist students in effectively learning concepts through distributed practice" (p. 65). The research design and description are easy to follow and understand by the layperson. The Buzzelli et al. (2016) study shows that Twitter practice is not superior to more traditional methods.

A few of the features that Buzzelli et al. (2016) identify within their study that make Twitter ideal for spaced practice include Twitter's ubiquitousness among the students in the study, the fact that there is the ability for the user "to create a succinct, 140-character or word string" (p. 66), a closed environment for testing and the ability to use hashtags for categorizing content. In addition, learners and teachers were able to create content. Teachers distributed their content "three times per day per concept" (Buzzelli et al., 2016, p. 67). Buzzelli et al. (2016) tested Twitter subjects versus traditional subjects, then switched groups to test again.

The study results show that using Twitter for spaced practice was equal to traditional review methods used as a comparison; a review worksheet. In addition, means on tests provided to both the control group who used traditional study methods and the experimental group, who used spaced practice via Twitter, were close to equal. The less than favorable results for Twitter practice Buzzelli et al. (2016) admit could be because so few students were involved in the study and the fact that when asked how often The study subjects used Twitter, the results showed that the majority of the study subjects Tweeted via Twitter only once monthly or never. 

Using spaced practice to help learners understand concepts, especially via user-initiated spaced practice sessions, is novel, but utilizing technology that is easy for learners to use and access has historical antecedents in several studies in adult education, including Brown's (1932) work where he discusses the need for adult learning content to be taken during off-hours and "be somewhat continuous and consecutive" (p. 465). Utilizing Twitter allows learners to create their own spaced practice tests at times of their convenience and access the content via hashtags that meet the standards of Brown's principles. Additionally, allowing students to create class test questions and interact with other classmates enables them to establish and forward their learning and develop and forward their zone of proximal development (ZPD). This ZPD, according to Boettcher and Conrad (2016), is "the space between what students can do independently and what they can do successful with the help or guides of a person who might be an expert or simple a more capable peer" (p. 36). 

The study followed a mixed-methods paradigm using both qualitative and qualitative data to yield results. In terms of the qualitative data, ensuring that the data is trustworthy and credible are two of the characteristics that Freeman et al. (2007) provide as a critical part of the validity of qualitative inquiry. In the Discussion section, Buzzelli et al. (2016) provide this validity by admitting that the sample size for both groups was not large enough to provide more relevant results. This admission offers a level of validity and honesty to the study and provides a framework for further studies. 

References

Boettcher, J. V., & Conrad, R.-M. (2016). The online teaching survival guide: Simple and practical pedagogical tips (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.

Brown, F. J. (1932). Basic principles underlying adult education. The Journal of Educational Sociology, 5(8), 463–470.

Buzzelli, A., Holdan, E. G., Rota, D., & McCarthy, J. (2016). Utilizing Twitter for concept learning. International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education: An Official Publication of the Information Resources Management Association, 12(1), 64–76. 

Freeman, M., deMarrais, K., Preissle, J., Roulston, K., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2007). Standards of evidence in qualitative research: An incitement to discourse. Educational Researcher, 36(1), 25-32.  

McDaniel, M. A., Fadler, C. L., & Pashler, H. (2013). Effects of spaced versus massed training in function learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39(5), 1417–1432. 

Spaced Learning

 I was surprised by a tidbit of information about retention and the short time it takes to move information from working memory to long term memory. At my work as well we created a spaced learning chat bot (see here, here and here) to test our users a week after their initial block learning event. Like you I wonder now if we had to wait a week.

What’s even more confusing, is that having read further this week, into Sousa’s there is an incredibly intriguing chart about spaced learning and practice weeks after the initial event. As the text cites mulitple studies that prove how effective spaced practice is in general and over time for helping with long term memory development and retention.

In those links above, I looked at several articles on space practice and finding the best interval for spaced practice to encourage learning. In that research I was surprised by the "latency" period they proposed as it was always around 24 hours with the longest I believe being 48 hours. Here I was expecting that weeks would be the best answer. Below are the links to those two papers on spaced retrieval practice (see here and here).

What I find incredible is that the idea of spaced practice is not seemingly in doubt as a valid technique for long term memory development, yet whenever I try to pitch the idea of using tools like our chat bot platform or microlearning platform to create this type of learning environment, ie one that has blocked learning followed by spaced practice, none of our members are at all compelled to provide this to their employees. It's frustrating to have the technology and the proof of effectiveness at our hands yet our industry is so locked in on block or massed learning as the delivery method that moving them to a more effective technique is difficult to the point of impossible. I think there needs to be more focus by teachers, facilitators, and trainers about the importance and effectiveness of spaced practice in long term memory to help learners and those who invest in learning, understand the important role in plays in retention. 

One thing that I look forward to trying is using our chat bot to test if learners remember more or less one day after the massed learning or one week after. It should be an interesting experiment if I can fine tune it and make it valid. Regardless, I was as surprised by that facet of spaced learning as you were.

Reference:

Sousa, D.A. (2016). How the brain learns, (5th Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Working Memory Resource Depletion and Spaced Learning

The journal article "Extending Cognitive Load Theory to Incorporate Working Memory Resource Depletion: Evidence from the Spacing Effect" provides an intriguing look into long-term memory development and effective learning principles via spaced practice and cognitive load theory. Chen et al. (2017) describe their experiments as an attempt to explain how "cognitive load theory can be substantially extended by including working memory resource depletion" (p. 484) and how that can affect massed learning and spaced learning successes. Chen et al. (2017) express many times throughout the paper the superiority of spaced learning over massed learning, but admit that there is minimal theoretical basis or research into why the spacing effect is superior. This article and the experiments the authors describe are designed to help fill that gap regarding why the spacing effect is superior to massed learning.   

Chen et al. (2017) begin their article by describing the principles behind long-term memory development compared to working memory. The foundation they build through discussion on cognitive load theory and memory is well written and helps the reader understand their experiments. However, the information becomes muddled regarding intrinsic cognitive load and extraneous cognitive load, and the authors do not tie those two concepts into either the spacing effect or memory capacity (Chen et al., 2017).

 During the description of experiments 1 and 2, Chen et al. (2017) provide a clearly written breakdown of the principles they hope to prove through a detailed account of their investigation. Figure 3 illustrates their design for experiment 1 that gives the reader an easy-to-understand overview of the experimental design they followed. Their description of experiment 2 is also clear and detailed with easy to process illustrations that highlight the nature of how and why conditions were changed between the two experiments and how the authors hoped those changes would add greater validity and clarity to their expected results. 

Chen et al. (2017) provide examples of where their experimental design failed both in terms of delivery and in results. In both cases, the authors are able to impart to the reader a greater degree of honesty to their reporting and experiment design by describing these errors and how they corrected for those errors. First, when describing the first experiment, the authors admit that several test subjects wrote notes that would not have allowed for the correct test of their working memory. Secondly, the authors acknowledge that their experiment does not explain if "working memory depletion is the sole cause of resource depletion or whether there are other possible causes" (Chen et al., 2017, p. 498). In effect, the experiments determine if working memory resource depletion makes massed learning inferior to spaced learning rather than focusing on how or why spaced practice is more effective. 

A weakness of the article that is not addressed is whether or not the testing effect could affect the results of the experiments. Other research has "showed that after 24 h, the average test performance in the study-test condition was better than in the repeated-study condition. This finding suggests that a relatively long retention interval is required before the memory benefit of intermediate testing over restudying emerges" (Delaney et al., 2010, p. 116). The description of the design of the experiments does not exclude the testing effect as having an impact on the results. 

 Chen et al. (2017) state that their results show the benefits of the spacing effect over massed learning, but rather the design provides a "causal explanation of the spacing effect" (p. 497). Additionally, the authors iterate that their experiments help to show that cognitive resource depletion is better classified as working memory depletion in some circumstances. However, again, the experiment regarding working memory resource depletion does not necessarily prove the effectiveness of spacing so much that it shows how memory resource depletion negatively affects massed learning. Although the authors provide a compelling article that demonstrates a case built of incrementally more complex experiments, instead of showing that working memory resource depletion "provides a strong candidate explanation for at least some versions of the spacing effect" (Chen et al., 2017, p. 488), their experiments prove the ineffectiveness of massed learning over spaced learning.

 

References

Chen, O., Castro-Alonso, J. C., Paas, F., & Sweller, J. (2018). Extending cognitive load theory to incorporate working memory resource depletion: Evidence from the spacing effect. Educational Psychology Review, 30(2), 483–501. 

Delaney, P. F., Verkoeijen, P. P. J. L., & Spirgel, A. (2010). Spacing and testing effects. Psychology of Learning and Motivation (Vol. 53, pp. 63–147). Elsevier.

Research Elevator Pitch

Every now and then we have to provide a summation of some of our work and research for my classes. In my class on Organization and Administration of Adult Education Progrms, Dr. Z is asking us to change our theoretical lens, or philosophical perspective, and determine how research in our area of expertise can be seen differently. 

The research I've decided to do is on using a social media platform for spaced practice in a classroom. My goal is to determine if using an established social media platform like Instagram provides more easily over-comable barriers to entry, greater engagement, and a better understanding of the class concepts.

Additionally, when thinking about the metaphor of Organizations as Open Systems, using the Instagram platform allows our learner's and our learning community to provide their own content and context.

Spaced practice and the testing effect have proven to have good results for learners in terms of developing lasting and resilient memories, yet this style of learning isn't utilized nor promoted in any of the classes that we offer, primarily due to the high cost. By leveraging a free platform my organization hopes to get the benefits of spaced learning, a low threshold or learning curve for the learner, and the ability to keep the training cost effective since it's already on a social media platform being used by the learner. 

The two questions I hope to answer are: 

1) Do social media interactions for spaced learning provide better opportunities for reflective learning for BOP learners than text-delivered chatbots? 

2) Does using Instagram for reflective spaced practice provide a better understanding of BOP concepts than instruction without Instagram practice sessions? 

3) Will users feel empowered to create content in the application to further theirs and other learner's understanding.

Melissa is running the experiment as we speak. I predict that the result will be the same as last year. We will have to see if this prediction is better than my last! (see HERE)

Microlearning Apps Follow Up

I got two emails from readers asking about microlearning and what some great microleanring apps are. I wrote a paper on this and ran across some terrific articles that I've listed below. The first two I have posted below give quick overviews, and many of the others are quite worthwhile, but one resource that I really like is the book Make it Stick by Brown, Roediger,  & McDaniel. Make it Stick is a worthwhile read for anyone trying to find ways to make learning more effective and is generally worth re-reading as well. 

One of the best representative examples of this spaced iterative learning that I have run into would be the language learning app "Duolingo." I began taking a Duolingo course to learn Spanish and I was surprised by how Duolingo: 

1) broke down large classes into small bits (micro-learning) 

2) delivered and reminded the user to take the small bits over multiple days and weeks (spaced learning) and 

3) never really "taught" anything, but rather only quizzed the user (iterative learning), similar to flashcards where the user learns through failure.  

I've challenged my eLearning development team to begin trying to present material to our trainees in this style at times. Imagine that instead of telling a trainee the rules and regulations about knife safety then quizzing them on it, which is what we do now, we quiz them over and over until they get it right themselves. It would hopefully yield some variety and challenge the trainees more than the passive style of training they are used to.

Karpicke, J. (2016). A Powerful Way to Improve Learning and Memory; Practicing Retrieval Enhances Long-Term, Meaningful Learning. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2016/06/learning-memory (Links to an external site.)

Karpicke, J. & Roediger, H. (2007). Expanding Retrieval Practice Promotes Short-Term Retention, but Equally Spaced Retrieval Enhances Long-Term Retention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 2007, Vol 33, No 4, pp. 704-719.

Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L. III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Larsen, D. (2014). Picking the Right Does: The Challenges of Applying Spaced Testing to Education. Journal of Graduate Medical Education. DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-14-00170.1 (Links to an external site.)

Logan, J. & Balota, D. (2008). Expanded vs. Equal Interval Spaced Retrieval Practice: Exploring Different Schedules of Spacing and Retention Interval in Younger and Older Adults. Psychology Press. DOI: 10.1080/13825580701322171

Maddox, G. & Balota, D. (2015). Retrieval Practice and Spacing Effects in Young and Older Adults: An Examination of the Benefits of Desirable Difficulty. Mem Cognit. 2015 July; 43 (5): pp. 760-774. DOI: 10.3758/s13421-014-0499-6

Our Homeschool Innovation Project

For our last project, we had to pretend to be a private consulting firm and provide a digital transformation or innovation to a company. So, we decided as a group that we were hired by a smaller Home School Service Organization to offer them a solution that will help them remain competitive, versatile, and adaptable in today’s technologically driven world.

Our plan is to offer our client a multi-level solution. 

This solution will include having an online integrated platform via the homeschool site and a phone app that can be downloaded by parents and children that can provide a multitude of functions such as:

• Allow for community discussions, etc. that allow families to find easy answers to homeschool questions.
• Allow for a kid’s space for kids to discuss and interact with other homeschool kids of the same age and with the same interests.
• Provide a “spaced practice” or quizzing opportunity for homeschool parents to design, leverage quizzes from other parents, and deliver to their kid’s smartphones for reinforcement and practice of course material they just reviewed, etc.
• Provide a schedule and course management tool to track progress along the years.

This in our opinion and based on data and research findings would appeal to homeschoolers because there has been an increase in homeschooling numbers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 Homeschooling organizations may not have this level of support and innovation that is needed to keep up with the growing community. In addition, this service can provide a better quality of homeschooling by gaining more socialization from other homeschoolers using the app and providing another reinforcement mechanism such as smartphone-delivered micro-learning quizzes to homeschoolers beyond just standard quizzes and tests.

Homeschooler parents are generally more independent than most and might love the idea of being able to create their own quizzes for their kids and being able to share what they have created with other parents, in part or in whole. There is an impression that homeschooled kids do not get the social interactions that traditional school kids get because they are not taking part in traditional educational settings. The platform and app will allow for chat and discussion between homeschool kids to overcome the lack of socialization which is important for development.

• Spaced Practice Sample 1 see HERE
• Spaced Practice Sample 2 see HERE

Larger homeschool organizations may already have something like this however, our role as consultants is to target these services to smaller homeschool organizations to gain a competitive advantage by helping them keep up with the larger organizations, in addition to opening up several pricing models designed to allow for non-regular subscribers to enjoy the same community aspects and spaced practice of the platform at a lower cost. 

In addition to our document, we have created a presentation of our proposal which includes additional resources on what our consulting firm, DAEA Consulting  Download DAEA Consulting can do for quizzes for our homeschooling clients. 

References 

Agarwal, P. K., Henry, L., Mark, A., & Kathleen, B. (n.d.). How to use retrieval practice to improve learning. Retrievalpractice.Org. Retrieved May 19, 2022

Duvall, S., 17, N., & Tags: News Research November 17. (n.d.). New research shows homeschool growth across all races, and income categories. HSLDA. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://hslda.org/post/new-research-shows-homeschool-growth-across-all-race-income-categories

Goossens, N. A. M. C., Camp, G., Verkoeijen, P. P. J. L., & Tabbers, H. K. (2014). The effect of retrieval practice in primary school vocabulary learning. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 28(1), 135-142. doi:https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.2956

McDaniel, M. A., Agarwal, P. K., Huelser, B. J., McDermott, K. B., & Roediger,Henry L., I.,II. (2011). Test-enhanced learning in a middle school science classroom: The effects of quiz frequency and placement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(2), 399-414. doi:https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021782

NHES. National Household Education Surveys Program (NHES). (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://nces.ed.gov/nhes/

Nonpublic & Home Schools. SOM - State of Michigan. (n.d.). Retrieved June 12, 2022, from      https://www.michigan.gov/mde/services/flexible-learning/options/nonpub-home

Retrieval Practice: A Power Tool for Lasting Learning. (2020). Educational Leadership : Journal of the Department of Supervision and Curriculum Development, N.E.A., 77(8).

Storm, B. C., Bjork, R. A., & Storm, J. C. (2010). Optimizing retrieval as a learning event: When and why expanding retrieval practice enhances long-term retention. Memory & Cognition, 38(2), 244-253. doi:https://doi.org/10.3758/MC.38.2.24

My Dissertation Question

Lately I've been working more and more on my dissertation question and starting to write the dissertation itself. Just like writing a novel, it's tough to get started. 

The image here shows a model of what I'm hoping to investigate in my dissertation. To put it into a sentence or a research question it would be:

What technology aid/tool is most beneficial to our learning community when applied to the standard CBT offering, virtual reality (VR) exercises, interactive games, or spaced practice.

One of the features I wanted to be sure to include in my dissertation is a focus on our learning community. We have a typically underserved learning group. Field technicians for industrial work do not typically have the most cutting edge training in our society. For example, when I was working for a contracting company I developed and wrote a series of manuals for working with our large heavy machinery. One of the tools that I used to help develop this program was McDonald's training manuals. 

McDonald's has a series of training manuals that are extremely well developed and effective. This is for their line workers and fry cooks. I'm not saying they shouldn't have great training, or that ours should have been as good as theirs, but what concerned me was that our training was for vacuuming up gasoline and flammable products in refineries while theirs was for flipping hamburgers effectively. Our training was far from the level it needed to be at. Think about it, a "whopper-flopper" was potentially getting more advanced and more effective training than a technician who was working with hazardous and flammable liquids and materials. 

My dissertation (at this point) will be focused on not completely remaking our training dynamic. We have a library of over 5000 courses and a delivery mechanism that is extremely robust. If we are going to tweak that through some different tools, which tool is the best for our learning community. 

Already we've looked into VR (see here). We offer VR exercises as a part of one of our primary courses and are about to include a second. We've already analyzed this against the standard and have seen a greater than 10% better long term memory development for the learners. 

How would gamification work? Would it be better for our technicians or worse? 

Spaced practice reinforcement is usually extremely effective for developing long-term memory, is that true in this case as well?

I look forward to delving into this and finding out more. This is the first in the series of dissertation, so stay tuned for more. 

More on MicroLearning with Bernard

I had an interesting chat with a colleague from class, Bernard, the other day. He mentioned how little time there is in his life for class work and reflection. I know I've written about Microlearning before (see here) and reflective practice (see here) but it's worth bringing up again. 

One of the things I've learned through my classes is the importance of what you brought up, reflective practice. Taking the time for reflection and reflective practice is something that I believe is critical to long term memory development. I've tried to boil down what I've learned to my organization is something that we call the R4 Learning Retention process; Rigor, Relevance, Reinforcement and Reflection. Reflection is the hardest I believe to instill. We can ensure that the courses we create are Rigorous, or challenging enough to engage the learner. We can also provide Relevance through real life scenarios and analysis. Reinforcement is easy to provide through knowledge checks, quizzes and exams, but Reflection is tough. How can we ensure that our learners are thinking about training after they get back to their jobs and families. 

I know that when I am done with courses taking time to write about things, reading from others and applying what I know to their own discussion posts, and just generally taking the time to think about the courses, offers a terrific opportunity for reflection. However we usually only have our learners for a few hours to a day. Rarely do we have a chance to interact with our learners for more than a day. 

Last week I had the opportunity to be a part of a panel discussion on microlearning/spaced learning and chatbots. I think more than any other tool the opportunity that these microlearning/spaced learning or chatbots provide offer us the best chance to engage learners after the fact and perhaps activate that reflective moment for them. I've been stunned by how critical reflection is in learning and long-term memory development and how little it is focus on as a part of my organization's overall learning paradigm. 

Memory and Sleep

I was curious about what many of my classmates wrote regarding their struggles with understanding what gets remembered while we sleep. One of the things I really like about some of my classes is the different media that are part of our homework especially the videos. Videos help me boil down information and understand it before I get into some of the articles. Simply put the act as a primer for me before I get into the deep weeds. I found this one ... linked below ... that discusses a study about sleep and memory but also delves into reinforcement during sleep to help make the memory stronger.

My organization is doing a lot of work with spaced reinforcement to help understand the benefits of the technique and the limitations. Running across this video where they were doing reinforcement and sleep was something I had not considered.Sadly it doesn't go into enough detail for me to provide any insight into the struggles you're having with understanding sleep in memory but I did think it was pretty interesting. Maybe it will provide you a starting point to find out more.

I also really like this second video that our professor provided that discusses how memory consolidation occurs during sleep. I thought the best part was about 4:45 minutes in when the narrator discusses when would be the best time to go to sleep to remember a procedural memory verse is the best time to go to sleep to remember declarative memories.

By following the links in the video to find out more I ran a crossed this article that titled System consolidation of memory during sleep by Jan Born and Ines Wilhelm. In it they write: "In subsequent periods of consolidation, the newly encoded memory traces are repeatedly reactivated and thereby become gradually reorganized such that the representations in the slow-learning long-term store are strengthened" (p. 193) and "Because both stores are used also for encoding of information, this encoding could interfere and disturb the proper consolidation process. Therefore, to prevent such interference, the reactivation and redistribution of memories during consolidation take place in offline periods, i.e. during sleep when there are no encoding demands" (p. 193). There is far more of the article that is worthwhile to read but I found those two sentences very intriguing. 

Additionally the article continues and the authors write: "events experienced during wakefulness are initially encoded in parallel in neocortical networks and in the hippocampus including, adjacent medial temporal lobe structures. Encoding in hippocampal networks is probably restricted to certain aspects, for example, episodic features of an event. During subsequent periods of sleep and, here mainly during slow wave sleep (SWS), the newly acquired memory traces are repeatedly reactivated and thereby become gradually redistributed such that  synaptic connections within the neocortex are strengthened forming more persistent memory representations" (p. 193). Having only today found this I'm still reading it to try and figure out exactly what it's trying to tell me but it certainly is worth a glance to try and help you understand the encoding of information into long-term memory.

As a side note the article continues with a discussion of hoe odors presented at the time of learning then again during different periods of sleep helped with consolidation during sleep (p. 195). Very similar to the spaced reinforcement I mentioned above.

References:

Born, J., Wilhelm, I. System consolidation of memory during sleep. Psychological Research 76, 192–203 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-011-0335-6

More Homeschooling Reviews

Elizabeth got a chance to review the homeschool project I delivered with my team the other day (see HERE). It was the application or website that helped homeschool parents be better homeschool parents and helped kiddos too. 

She brought up a great point in her first paragraph about how time demands make it challenging for parents and for students to invest the time and attention that is needed in homeschooling to make it truly successful. 

One foundational element of this proposal is the spaced practice capability. This is a technology and innovation that we use at our organization to help overcome the same challenges you bring up about time and the ability to study. I think the same challenges we face with our adult learners, homeschool parents will have similar challenges and therefore can make use of the same technology and innovation.

The spaced practice capability that we envision and that we have provided prototypes for with the hyperlinks in our powerpoints would allow homeschool families to concentrate on the core study material when they have time and focus, then reinforce those lessons when time is more convenient for them to do so. This reinforcement can come via their smartphone or computer and can be utilized when they are ready to study rather than at inconvenient times. 

I don't think right now that homeschool parents are provided many opportunities or innovations to help them make the best use of their time. It seems like a bit of a sink or swim after being pushed into the deep end of the pool. That was one of the things we were trying to help address in the market. 

There is a varying degree to which different groups will utilize and trust our technology. One thing we discussed in our group project meetings was that for the most part home school parents are more individual and relish the independence that homeschooling provides over traditional schooling options. 

Additionally, there has been a re-focus on school and a change in the overall number of people accepting and utilizing homeschool as an option. With this influx of new homeschool users there is bound to be people with more questions, greater demands and expectations, and a need for greater innovation. That is the hole we are trying to fill. Those users who want to interact and have a place to ask questions of other users and provide them a platform to find those answers and ask those questions. What we aren't doing is finding ways to market to new users, and that is an area where we could potentially grow. Those folks who "wonder" about homeschooling. We are focused on those who are already homeschooling, not those who are questioning. 

Homeschool Digital Helper

I'm grouped up with a couple of my classmates for a class project. We need to consult on a digital transformation for a business and give them guidance on navigating the change. 

So, we have decided to be a private consulting firm that was hired by a smaller Home School Service Organization to offer them a solution that will help them remain competitive, versatile, and adaptable in today’s technologically driven world.

Our plan is to offer our client a multi-level solution. One that includes having an online integrated platform via the homeschool site and a phone app that can be downloaded by parents and children that can provide a multitude of functions such as:

• Allow for community discussions, etc. that allow families to find easy answers to homeschool questions.
• Allow for a kid’s space for kids to discuss and interact with other homeschool kids of the same age and with the same interests.
• Provide a “spaced practice” or quizzing opportunity for homeschool parents to design, leverage quizzes from other parents, and deliver to their kid’s smartphones for reinforcement and practice of course material they just reviewed, etc.

Provide a schedule and course management tool to track progress along the years. 

This is our opinion and data based on potential research findings would appeal to homeschoolers because there has been an increase in homeschooling numbers sense covid and homeschooling organizations may not have this level of support and innovation that is needed to keep up with the growing community. In addition, this service can provide a better quality of homeschooling by gaining more socialization from other homeschoolers using the app and providing another reinforcement mechanism such as smartphone-delivered micro-learning quizzes to homeschoolers beyond just standard quizzes and tests.

Homeschooler parents are generally more independent than most and might love the idea of being able to create their own quizzes for their kids and being able to share what they have created with other parents, in part or in whole. There is an impression that homeschooled kids do not get the social interactions that traditional school kids get because they are not taking part in traditional educational settings. The platform and app will allow for chat and discussion between homeschool kids to overcome the lack of socialization which is important for development.

Larger homeschool organizations may already have something like this, so our role as consultants is to provide a platform that gives smaller homeschool organizations a competitive advantage by helping them keep up with the larger organizations, and opening this up with pricing models designed to allow for non-regular subscribers to enjoy the same community aspects and spaced practice/long term memory development aspects of the platform/app.

Experimenting in my Organization

I was intrigued by the chapter on test subjects in the book I'm currently reading, The Dissertation Journey. My organization allows me to practice and develop teaching techniques on our adult learners who visit us each day. We get over 1000 field workers from the refining industry come through our doors each day. We train them on safety and skills that are necessary to keep them safe at their jobs. My role is to improve the level of our instruction both through computer based training (CBT) and our instructor-led training classes.

Naturally, if I'm asked to improve our level of instruction, it's necessary to try things out on groups of learners and get feedback. If we have a control group and an experimental group, and if what I've proposed works, then there is a chance that the experimental group will get more and better training than the control group. This in turn means that the control group is not as well trained.

This could be a real problem when dealing with dangerous equipment, hazardous chemicals, or safety training. For example, we ran a test to see if micro-learning training would be effective for a Basic Refinery training class. Throughout the day we send micro-learning courses to our learner's cell phones, then gauged whether or not they class as a whole performed better on the final exams than those classes without micro-learning reinforcement. The intent was to determine if "spaced practice" events were beneficial to the learner. Again, a major concern was that those other classes that did not get the benefit of the spaced practice might not be as well trained, or as prepared for events in their job lives. 

What we have settled on is to ensure that we never go below the set training standard that is mandated by OSHA or that we have set for ourselves as an organization. In the Army we were taught that we could always do more than an explicit order demanded, but we could never do less. We could add to an order, but never take away from. We are following this same standard with our experiments at my organization. Naturally we want all of our learners to be given the opportunity to train more effectively, but to gauge that effectiveness we have to be able to have a standard and measure against it. Still, it's nice to have the thought experiment that comes about after reading Ch. 5 that makes us re-evaluate our techniques to ensure we are putting the safety of our learners first and foremost in our processes.

Reference:

Roberts, C. & Hyatt, L. (2019). The dissertation journey (3rd edition). Corwin Press.

More on Virtual Classrooms

The other day I wrote about my background in virtual classrooms from early 2010. My classmate Susan and I had a long discussion about this the other night. Her thoughts on a hybrid training approach resonated with me because of my history with zoom classrooms. 

We started a network of 50 zoom classrooms in 2011 using Google Hangout and ran them every day for over three years providing safety and skills training. Each class, every day, lasted 8 hours and we had a new class start each week. It was rigorous to keep up with that much training and in that style. We learned a lot very quickly. We made sure everyone had a participant handbook, we had lockers in each of the 50 training rooms that had real-world implements that the learners could touch and feel and try on as we went over the tools, and we had a variety of media to keep them engaged and entertained; lecture, PowerPoint, videos, case studies, interviews with experts, and we made sure everyone had a tablet or smartphone for intermittent quizzes with immediate feedback. 

In terms of technology, it was this last addition that seemed to have the greatest impact. That ability to utilize a smartphone to take spaced practice quizzes and see immediately how they did and how they performed in terms of the rest of the class, was a game-changer. I think it might have been the blend of being a part of the class and still being in their training room. It helped to break that 5th wall. 

To bring this around to your thoughts on a hybrid approach . . . We started this project with the thought of having an instructor teaching to a group of students in a classroom and working with the networked classrooms at the same time. We thought this would make the best use of the instructor's time and talent AND give the remote, networked classrooms the feeling of being more involved. It quickly became apparent that this was not going to work as we hoped. We abandoned it after a few months of practice and went to two models for new hire training, . . . One that utilized the networked classrooms a with an instructor speaking just to these zoom roomed students, and live classes were instructed by one live instructor. 

Since that time, and having had a bit more experience, and a few more opportunities to try networking in zoom classrooms, I have not changed my mind about this possibility. We were on the cusp of trying it again for a series of classes and during rehearsals, we saw more and more of the same issues that stalled our efforts in the early 2010s still cropping up. 

Despite the problems, I still think it’s a worthy goal and I hope that this class takes me a step closer to realizing how to achieve it. 

The 4th Industrial Revolution at HASC

I work for a non-profit, adult learning organization that focuses on training contractors who work in and support the energy industry. HASC has been providing training of this type, to improve safety and craft skills among the contractor community for over 30 years. Over that time the training standards and the expectations of the learners have become staid, stale, and less effective in terms of stimulating learner engagement and recall. Our goal lately is to find new ways to provide training to the learners in a manner that makes it more engaging, and interesting and will resonate with the learners in such a way that the theories and capabilities that they learn will be used and applied to their worksites and in their fieldwork. 

HASC has been working with many technologies to try and improve learner retention and the learner's opportunity to apply their knowledge outside of the learning site. Among these are: (a) virtual reality (VR) exercises that are appended to the traditional computer-based training (CBT) delivery, (b) microlearning modules and chatbots that are delivered directly to the learner through their smartphones, (c) changes to our typical CBT design capabilities to include more animations, videos, interactive slides, and (d) a live online proctoring system to allow learners to take courses at their own time and allow their organization to have the confidence of the integrity of our ID checking and proctoring system that they have in our training site. 

Many of these technologies are perceived as positive by the companies that are HASC's members. The opportunity to provide the same training to their employees wherever they might be and at any time without sacrificing the peace of mind that they will pay attention and not cheat by being proctored has been in high demand for years. VR technologies are also seen by contracting companies as a potential advantage to the typical CBT training. Several contracting agencies and refinery owners have expressed interest in having HASC develop custom VR experiences for their organizations. Microlearning is seen as an interesting and novel idea but has not been embraced by any contracting companies.

The learners however are not embracing the technology as avidly as their contracting organizations. For the most part, our learners do not embrace technological innovation and even those that are designed to work seamlessly with their work and home life are not utilized to even a minor extent. Typically our learners do not want to utilize their personal smartphones, phone numbers, or email addresses for business needs as there is no compensation for their time or effort or for utilizing their equipment. VR exercises, with the mixture of using audio and VR headsets, are tough for them to manage and the joysticks used in the immersive learning environment, and VR storylines are tough for them to understand and negotiate without help.

Spaced practice and microlearning, although not as avidly anticipated, HASC believes has the best opportunity to transform our learning organization and the application of learning in the field by the learners. Transfer of learning takes place when what is taught is used and applied in the field. So often it seems as though our learners leave what they learned at the exit doors. Training takes place at HASC, work is done on the worksite. We are eager to find ways to keep training continuously. As Deloitte (2018) states; executives are focusing not so much on the transformation of current educational institutions but on disruption in the approach to learning - that is, it is no longer about formal education, but about an ongoing process of continually acquiring new skills and knowledge" (p. 13). Our live online proctoring system which allows learners to take courses outside of our brick and mortar building is a sea-change in not only the way that HASC has historically done business but for the entire safety council industry. As Schwab (2016) states, the fourth industrial revolution is "forcing companies to re-examine the way they do business" (p. 5). The challenge for HASC is that our primary differentiator from other training organizations is the integrity of the process. Our developers pressed the boundaries of our technological capabilities to model the live online proctoring system on the established, accepted, process that we've fostered for so many years.

All this being said, HASC has seen that our learners are coming to expect more opportunities for technology to be used as a natural part of their training environments. Digital natives, those who are more adept at working in digital arenas, come to our council and expect more than the standard CBT offering. They demand a higher standard and quality of their learning design and expect more in terms of using technological innovations. We are early adopters of many of these innovations compared to our competitors and it will be interesting to see if the learner's embracing of this technology catches up with their organization's eagerness to see it adopted. 

References

Deloitte. (2018). The fourth industrial revolution is here; Are you ready?  New York: Deloitte

Schwab, K. (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution: What it means and how to respond. World Economic Forum. Retrieved May 4, 2022, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/

More with Micah

 As a part of my budgeting presentation (see here) I included a micro-learning spaced reinforcement exercise (see here, here and here for ore on that learning technique). But I had the chance to discuss this with Micah in another in my series of conversations with Micah (see more here and here).

It’s a fun tool. It’s not ideal in that it’s only text. The last micro-learning tool I used we were able to develop in Articulate Rise. That gave it a far sleeker look.

Text alone isn’t the best and is very limiting in terms of transfer of learning. The best model would be a hybrid model that delivers to the trainee via text or via micro-learning app so that they are reinforcing between the two. Haven't quite figured out how to make that happen yet, but it’s still early. Something will come up.

At work we use it to augment and reinforce learning objectives for our eLearning, our instructor-led classes and our virtual classes. It's just one more thing that helps get the message across and sticks in the learner's mind. We use "Mobile Coach" to create them. We hope to have our own system built and set up to use soon. 

At the moment, the most effective way we use the tool, is in using it to gauge how well our Virtual Reality training is doing (see here). We test the learner directly after the training then again a week later to determine if their memory after virtual is more resilient than the memory after traditional training. 

Great to be able to provide a tool to augment even the most simple presentations that I have. 

Reading, Reading and More Reading

We are doing alot of reading and critical reading for class lately. Although there are no specific outside texts that I use when I think about critical reading and critical analysis, but I took to heart something that our professor said at the beginning of the class. 

Prior to taking this class I was being very specific and targeted in my approach to reading texts that might provide support for my area of interest, Virtual Reality and Spaced Practice for Refinery Technicians. Earlier in the class our professional mentioned that we as students might read a dozen articles that might not have much meaning to us specifically, but will most likely lead to other texts and other articles that will be more meaningful. 

A Podcast that Sticks

I was a part of another podcast (see HERE). This one I'm not as proud of. This one I was determined NOT to go down the same road of VR, spaced practice and adaptive learning. Guess what? I did. Anyone who wants to hear it . . . check it out HERE or the others HERE.

It wasn't my fault! The host, Mark, wanted and almost forced me to talk about these things. I don't blame him. VR, because of Meta and Covid and other industry drivers are making VR a bigger and bigger part of the world. So, here I am, writing a dissertation on the effectiveness of VR, so what else do you talk about?

Truth, I wanted to talk about the uniqueness of our learning community. Contractors have not gotten great training in the past. Our job is to fix that. But, when I read studies about adult learning, I see that most of the participants of the studies are female and college-educated. I wonder to what degree the studies and what they find and conclude actually represent what our adult-learning community needs and wants.

The other issue, Mark sounds so smart. I sound stupid! I think it's the British vs Texas accent. Still, it was fun to meet Mark, I hope I get a sequel. 

eLearning Opportunities

When I worked for a former company we had a 40-hour hazwoper training mandate (a full week of training before a new employee could go into the field), and over 50 locations across the nation. Prior to this Virtual Classroom being set up we had safety managers flying around training people in small groups, taking up their valuable time, and some were not great trainers. By creating a virtual network of classrooms we improved consistency, sped up the onboarding time significantly, and saved tens of thousands. Still, quality compared to a live trainer was lacking. 

To counter this 1) we recycled iPhones and set up quizzes (retrieval practice events) throughout the training, 2) provided videos and required the class to provide safety analysis regarding mistakes made in the videos, 3) created hands-on training lockers that allowed the class to try on and use the equipment during the training in a controlled environment, 4) created an interactive workbook that kept the trainees engaged during the training, and 5) set up spaced retrieval practice and reinforcement to follow and begin each day. At the time the project ended we were on the cusp of sending mobile coaching directly to the trainee's phones via text during their off-hours and after training. 

The purpose of all of these accouterments to the primary training deliverable was to engage the trainees in a variety of ways and constantly keep them active. We won several best in class safety and training awards for our work and it was a terrific standard to keep within the industry. Sadly, it was not scalable. A class of 20 was our virtual limit, while classes of 50 were standard with a live trainer. 

All this being said, I wonder how universities will be able to justify their class price tags when they increase their virtual classroom offering. Will parents who were content to pay 20K to 50K a semester in tuition want to pay that same amount for classes that are primarily online? I think it goes back to what we found. How many other reinforcement tools and engagement devices can they integrate into the training to make the class more effective and justify the price? 

Since we found that our limit was reached quickly, that our quality suffered when we had too many students, I wonder if this new COVID era of teaching might allow smaller colleges and universities to flourish? 

And as an aside, I provided training via the virtual classroom many times from my office, my home office, from hotels on the road and from my parent's house during the Christmas holidays once. The flexibility can't be beat.