Table of Contents
About This Book
Why Is Building Expertise Important?
What’s New in the Third Edition?
What Can You Achieve with This Book?
How Is This Book Organized?
About Pfeiffer
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Purpose
Audience
Package Components
Glossary
PART ONE - Foundations of Building Expertise
Chapter 1 - Expertise in the Global Economy
The Value of Expertise
What Is an Expert?
Seven Lessons Learned About Experts
Four Ingredients of Instruction
Chapter 2 - Four Ingredients of Instruction
Which Media Are Best for Learning?
Four Components of Learning
Three Views of Learning
Four Instructional Architectures
No Yellow Brick Road
Chapter 3 - No Yellow Brick Road
Instructional Components and Learning: No Yellow Brick Road
Graphics and Learning: A Journey Down the Yellow Brick Road
Factors That Influence Learning
Toward an Evidence-Based Training Profession
About the Numbers
The Psychology of Building Expertise
Chapter 4 - The Psychology of Building Expertise
Two Memories for Learning
The Transformation of Content into Knowledge and Skills
Eight Principles for Instruction
How Working Memory Works
PART TWO - Basic Learning Events Proven to Build Expertise
Chapter 5 - How Working Memory Works
Working Memory: The Center of Learning
New Content Has a Short Shelf Life in Working Memory
Chess, Chunking, and Capacity Limits of Working Memory
What Happens When Working Memory is Overloaded?
Automaticity: A Working Memory Bypass
Visual and Auditory Components in Working Memory
Why Is Working Memory So Limited?
Working Memory and Performance
Managing Cognitive Load
Chapter 6 - Managing Cognitive Load
The Cognitive Load Management Principle
Methods That Bypass Working Memory
Methods That Minimize Content
Methods to Impose Content Gradually
Methods to Minimize Unproductive Mental Work
Methods to Maximize Working Memory Capacity
Managing Attention
Chapter 7 - Managing Attention
The High Price of Attention Failure
The Attention Principle
Instructional Methods to Support Attention
Optimizing Attentional Capacity in the Classroom
Methods to Focus Attention
Methods to Support Selective Attention
What Is Divided Attention?
Methods to Minimize Divided Attention
Leveraging Prior Knowledge
Chapter 8 - Leveraging Prior Knowledge
The Prior Knowledge Principle
Methods to Activate Prior Knowledge
Methods to Compensate for Limited Prior Knowledge
Avoid Activating Inappropriate Prior Knowledge
When to Use Prior Knowledge Methods
Helping Learners Build Mental Models: Implicit Methods
Chapter 9 - Helping Learners Build Mental Models: Implicit Methods
The Building Mental Models Principle
Explicit and Implicit Encoding Methods
Implicit Methods to Build Mental Models
Use Graphics to Build Mental Models
Personalize Your Learning Environment
Include Deep-Level Learning Agent Dialogs
Provide Examples and Encourage Their Processing
Provide Effective Analogies
Include Process Content in Your Instruction
Offer Cognitive Support for Novice Learners
Helping Leaners Build Mental Models: Explicit Methods
Chapter 10 - Helping Learners Build Mental Models: Explicit Methods
Is Active Learning Better? A Tale of Six Lessons
Building Mental Models Principle
Explicit vs. Implicit Methods for Building Mental Models
Maintenance vs. Elaborative Rehearsal
Incorporate Frequent Elaborative Practice Exercises
The Law of Diminishing Returns
Distribute Practice Assignments
Provide Explanatory Feedback
Use Effective Questioning Techniques in the Classroom
Promote Psychological Engagement with Graphics
Promote Explicit Self-Explanations of Content
Incorporate Collaborative Learning Opportunities
Minimize Note-Taking in Instructor-Led Presentations
Who Benefits from Practice?
Learning vs. Performance: The Psychology of Transfer
Chapter 11 - Learning vs. Performance: The Psychology of Transfer
Transfer: The Bridge from Training to Performance
Four Tales of Transfer Failure
Causes of Transfer Failure
The Transfer Challenge
Specific Versus General Theories of Transfer
The Transfer Continuum
Surface Versus Deep Structure and Transfer
Transfer and Intelligence
Teaching for Transfer
Chapter 12 - Teaching for Transfer
Transfer: It’s All About Context
Teaching for Near-Transfer Performance
Learning Aids for Near-Transfer Learning
Teaching for Moderate Transfer
Teaching for Far-Transfer Performance
Learning Aids for Guided-Discovery Simulations
Problem-Centered Instruction
PART THREE - Promoting Adaptive Expertise and Motivation
Chapter 13 - Problem-Centered Instruction
The Revival of Problem-Centered Learning
The Benefits of Problem-Centered Design
Three Problem-Centered Design Models
Model 1: Problem-Based Learning (PBL)
Model 2: 4C/ID
Model 3: Sherlock and Cognitive Apprenticeship
Applying Problem-Centered Design
Issues in Problem-Centered Instruction
Reservations About Problem-Centered Instruction
Metacognition, Self-Regulation, and Adaptive Expertise
Chapter 14 - Metacognition, Self-Regulation, and Adaptive Expertise
Cognition, Metacognition, and Adaptive Expertise
Are Learners Self-Regulated?
Supporting Self-Regulation During Learning
Domain-Specific Metacognitive Skills
Building Domain-Specific Metacognitive Skills
Motivation and Expertise
Chapter 15 - Motivation and Expertise
Motivation for Learning
What Is Motivation?
External vs. Internal Views of Motivation
Beliefs and Learning Choices
Beliefs About Learning Outcomes and Persistence
Goal Setting and Motivation
1. Challenging Specific Goals Lead to Better Performance and Persistence
2. Goals That Focus on Task Techniques Lead to Expertise
3. Mastery Goal Orientations Lead to Deeper Learning Strategies
4. Intrinsic Goals Lead to Greater Voluntary Commitment
Motivating Your Learners
Chapter 16 - Motivating Your Learners
Instructional Environments That Motivate
Evidence for Managing Learner Beliefs
Promote Self-Confidence by Structuring for Success
Encourage Mastery (Progress) Goal Orientations
Exploit Personal and Situational Interest
Techniques to Promote Cognitive Situational Interest
Leverage Personal Interest
Make Values Salient
Practical Applications in Building Expertise
PART FOUR - Building Expertise in Action
Chapter 17 - Practical Applications in Building Expertise
Adopting Evidence-Based Practice
What Is an Excellent Lesson?
Sample 1: A Receptive Presentation
Sample 2: A Directive e-Lesson
Sample 3: A Guided-Discovery Classroom Workshop
Exploratory Architectures for Far-Transfer Learning
A Final Word
REFERENCES
GLOSSARY
NAME INDEX
SUBJECT INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
About This Book
Why Is Building Expertise Important?
This is a book about the psychology of expertise and how instructional professionals can leverage mental processes to grow expertise in the workforce.
Whether you are a class facilitator, course developer, or both, your job is to build expertise. There are many books available on the how’s of training, full of useful tips and techniques. But for the most part, these books don’t explain the why’s behind the how’s. Unlike what’s in these books, I present guidelines based on how people learn and on evidence of what works during learning. What distinguishes a professional from a paraprofessional approach to education and training is a depth of understanding of how learning occurs and how to adapt evidence-based guidelines to unique situations.
What’s New in the Third Edition?
In the 21st Century, the global economy has become a reality. To stay competitive, organizations must increasingly rely on innovation—innovation emerging from expertise that can be adapted to diverse and unpredictable contexts. Throughout this new edition, I draw on evidence about how to build innovative forms of expertise and translate that evidence into useful guidelines for instructional professionals.
I have rewritten all of the chapters that appeared in the second edition. In some cases, I divided chapters to reduce the mental load. In my rewrite, I updated the research on the various techniques discussed throughout the book. Since the second edition, we have seen growth in e-learning with expansions into synchronous as well as asynchronous delivery methods. I have incorporated new examples to reflect these changes.
Finally, this is the first time Building Expertise has benefited from a professional production effort. Newly published by Pfeiffer, this edition reflects professional editing and layout.
What Can You Achieve with This Book?
If you are a designer, developer, facilitator, or evaluator of instructional environments for classroom or digital delivery, you can use the guidelines in this book to ensure that your courseware meets human psychological learning requirements. In particular you can learn the best ways to build expertise by:
• Reducing unproductive mental load during learning
• Directing attention
• Leveraging prior knowledge of your learners
• Helping learners build new mental models through implicit and explicit training methods
• Supporting transfer from the instructional environment to the workplace
• Using guided discovery design architectures that build problem-solving skills
• Building mental monitoring and learning management skills
• Motivating learners to invest the effort needed to build expertise
How Is This Book Organized?
From music to chess to programming, psychologists have learned a great deal by studying experts in various domains. Part I includes Chapters 1 through 4, which lay the foundation for the book by summarizing what recent research tells us about expertise—what it is and how it grows. These chapters introduce key concepts relevant to the rest of the book, including the features of expertise, four learning architectures, and an overview of how learning happens.
Part II is the heart of the book, containing eight chapters that focus on the core psychological learning events proven to build expertise. These chapters explain the psychology of each learning event and describe techniques to:
• Minimize unproductive mental load in working memory
• Support early events of instruction, including focus of attention and activation of prior knowledge
• Help learners build mental models through implicit and overt activities
• Create an environment that promotes transfer of learning to the workplace
Figure I.1. The Structure of Building Expertise
In Part III, I shift the focus to adaptive forms of expertise that are the basis for creative and critical thinking skills. In Chapter 13, you will learn about problem-centered learning environments that lead to adaptive expertise. In Chapter 14, I focus on how to build mental monitoring skills called metacognition. Finally, motivation fuels the engine that drives the effort required to build expertise. In Chapters 15 and 16, I look at recent research findings on instructional strategies you can use to promote optimal motivation.
The final chapter integrates the ideas of the book by describing instructional programs I have designed based on three of the instructional architectures introduced in Chapter 2 and summarizes guidelines for building adaptive forms of expertise through exploratory learning environments that encourage critical and creative thinking.
About Pfeiffer
Pfeiffer serves the professional development and hands-on resource needs of training and human resource practitioners and gives them products to do their jobs better. We deliver proven ideas and solutions from experts in HR development and HR management, and we offer effective and customizable tools to improve workplace performance. From novice to seasoned professional, Pfeiffer is the source you can trust to make yourself and your organization more successful.
Essential Knowledge Pfeiffer produces insightful, practical, and comprehensive materials on topics that matter the most to training and HR professionals. Our Essential Knowledge resources translate the expertise of seasoned professionals into practical, how-to guidance on critical workplace issues and problems. These resources are supported by case studies, worksheets, and job aids and are frequently supplemented with CD-ROMs, websites, and other means of making the content easier to read, understand, and use.
Essential Tools Pfeiffer’s Essential Tools resources save time and expense by offering proven, ready-to-use materials—including exercises, activities, games, instruments, and assessments—for use during a training or team-learning event. These resources are frequently offered in looseleaf or CD-ROM format to facilitate copying and customization of the material.
Pfeiffer also recognizes the remarkable power of new technologies in expanding the reach and effectiveness of training. While e-hype has often created whizbang solutions in search of a problem, we are dedicated to bringing convenience and enhancements to proven training solutions. All our e-tools comply with rigorous functionality standards. The most appropriate technology wrapped around essential content yields the perfect solution for today’s on-the-go trainers and human resource professionals.
Essential resources for training and HR professionals
Introduction to the Third Edition
GETTING THE MOST FROM THIS RESOURCE
Purpose
Building expertise is the central challenge of all instructional practitioners. Yet few know the psychology or the evidence underlying training methods that lead to expertise. The training field is evolving from a craft based primarily on fads and folk wisdom to a profession that integrates evidence into the design and development of its products. A professional knows not only what to do but why she is doing it and how she might adjust techniques to accommodate different learners or diverse learning outcomes. Professionals can summarize the research behind their recommendations to their stakeholders. Because everyone who has gone to school considers him- or herself a learning expert, instructional practitioners face a unique challenge to establish themselves as professionals to their clients and their learners. In this book you will learn techniques to build expertise. But just as important, you will learn the psychological reasons and the evidence for those techniques.
Audience
If you are a facilitator, designer, developer, evaluator, or consumer of training, you can use the guidelines in this book to identify learning environments that accelerate expertise. Although most of my examples are drawn from workforce learning, I believe that educational professionals can also benefit from these guidelines.
Package Components
The heart of the book is the seventeen chapters summarized in Figure I.1. Most chapters are organized around a pivotal psychological event involved in learning. These chapters summarize the psychology and illustrate training techniques that support each learning process. You will not only read about the techniques, but review evidence for them as well as application examples. At the end of each chapter you will find some references that offer more in-depth or technical information on the chapter topic.
Glossary
A glossary provides definitions of technical terms that appear throughout the book.
PART ONE
Foundations of Building Expertise
HOW HAS the 21st Century global economy driven the need for adaptive forms of expertise that are the basis for innovation? What has recent research on experts from sports to medicine told us about how to efficiently grow expertise?
In Chapters 1 through 4 I lay the foundation for Building Expertise by summarizing recent research on expertise as well as describing the key ingredients and psychological events essential to any instructional program that supports expertise.
CHAPTER 1 TOPICS
The Value of Expertise
The Challenge of Global Expertise
What Is an Expert?
Seven Lessons Learned About Experts
1. Expertise Requires Extensive Practice
2. Expertise Is Domain Speciffic
3. Expertise Requires Deliberate Practice
4. Experts See with Different Eyes
5. Experts CAN Get Stuck
6. Expertise Grows From Two Intelligences
7. Challenging Problems Require Diverse Expertise
1
Expertise in the Global Economy
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field
WHAT IS AN EXPERT? How do people become experts? Is expertise a matter of talent or learning? What types of expertise Are most Needed in the New global economy? How can instructional professionals make use of what we know About experts to build more effective learning environments? This chapter sets the stage For the book by summarizing what we know About expert performance and why effective training programs Are critical to organizations facing the competitive pressures of A growing global pool of expertise.
The Value of Expertise
If you have taken an airplane trip, consulted a medical professional, used computer systems, or attended a professional ball game or a concert, you have benefited from expertise! In fact, few of us would get through a normal week were it not for the varied expertise that provides the infrastructure for our many daily activities. This is a book about expertise—specifically how to grow and deploy expertise most effectively to achieve organizational goals.
There is a large untapped reservoir of knowledge about how novices become experts and how that transition can be facilitated through training and other workplace solutions. In fact, as I write this third edition of Building Expertise, the research on expertise has grown sufficiently to warrant a new forty-two-chapter book: Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, published in 2006! Knowledge about expertise is untapped in part because much of the recent research on human learning and expertise is buried in academic resources such as the Cambridge Handbook not routinely accessed by practitioners.
Instructional professionals like you who are responsible for the growth of expertise in your organization can benefit from this research. In other words, you need expertise on expertise. My objective in this book is to summarize the research and psychology about what we currently know about growing and leveraging expertise in organizational settings.
The Challenge of Global Expertise
Workers in developed countries face increasing global competition for expertise. Uhalde and Strohl (2006) estimate as many as forty million American jobs, equivalent to nearly a third of the U.S. labor force are theoretically vulnerable to off shoring. The expanding global pool for the type of higher level skills that have historically been the province of developed nations comes from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) supply chain. Since the turn of the century, 1.5 billion people from China, India and countries from the former Soviet bloc have joined the global labor force. Data from a 2005 McKinsey report summarized in Figure 1.1 show young professionals from low-wage countries, including engineers, finance analysts and accountants, and
Figure 1.1. Young Professionals in the Global Talent Pool, 2005 From McKinsey, 2005
generalists with university degrees make up the largest segment in the global talent pool. And foreign skilled professionals will continue to be inexpensive for several decades to come making some forms of expertise in Western workforces less competitive.
An organization’s ability to innovate becomes the competitive edge in a global economy. “The need to innovate is growing stronger as innovation comes closer to being the sole means to survive and prosper in highly competitive and globalised economies” (David & Foray, 2003, p. 22). Therefore a recurrent theme in this book is the psychology of expertise—especially adaptive expertise that is the basis for creative and critical thinking.
What Is an Expert?
According to Wikipedia (2007), an expert is “someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by the public or their peers. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability in a particular area of study”. Wikipedia, one of a growing cadre of open-access software, did not exist at the writing of the second edition of this book and illustrates one way that expertise can be deployed through the Web 2.0.
Of course, expertise is not all or nothing. As one begins to learn a new set of skills, one evolves from novice through various skill levels up to expert or master performer. Table 1.1 summarizes the common labels and attributes associated with stages of expertise. As training professionals we encounter diverse levels of expertise in the course of our work. We may interview subject-matter experts who are, as the name implies, experts or even
Table 1.1. Levels of Expertise
master performers. Our learners are often at the novice or apprentice stages. Our training goals are often relatively modest in scope, perhaps to bring a novice closer to an apprentice level, or perhaps to teach a journeyman a new set of specialized skills or knowledge. As instructional professionals however, we are collectively responsible for the investment of close to $60 billion a year in the United States alone devoted to the growth of the specialized expertise that makes our organizations competitive (Industry Report, 2007).
Seven Lessons Learned About Experts
Psychologists have studied experts in a variety of domains, including sports, medicine, programming, music, and chess to see how they are different from less-skilled individuals. Here are the main lessons learned from that research:
1. Expertise Requires Extensive Practice
As you can see in Table 1.2 world-class experts start early in life and pursue their vocations through many years of prolonged and
Table 1.2. Years of Practice to Achieve World-Class Performance
concentrated practice. While an acceptable level of performance in many tasks such as typing or tennis can be reached in a matter of a few weeks or months, high levels of expertise demand years of practice. Some of the first research focused on master-level chess players. About ten years of sustained chess practice is needed to reach master levels. In fact, from sports to music to programmers, the ten-year rule has proved pretty consistent. “Until most individuals recognize that sustained training and effort is a prerequisite for reaching expert levels of performance, they will continue to misattribute lesser achievement to the lack of natural gifts, and will thus fail to reach their own potential” (Ericsson, 2006, p. 699). In other words, while innate ability is one factor that contributes to expertise, most of us do not invest the level of practice needed to fully exploit the talents we have.
While most practice takes place on the job, as a trainer or instructional designer, you can leverage what we have learned about accelerating expertise through appropriate practice during training. For example, after twenty-five hours of study with a computer training simulator called Sherlock, learners with about two years of experience achieved a level of expertise that matched technicians with ten years of experience (Gott & Lesgold, 2000)! Acceleration of expertise can be achieved when training is designed on the basis of human psychological learning processes.
2. Expertise Is Domain Specific
Because someone is an expert chess player, will he or she be better prepared to solve a problem in physics? In general, the answer is no! Fields of expertise are very narrow. That’s because expertise relies on a large body of specific knowledge accumulated over time in memory. Master-level chess players, for example, store over 50,000 chess plays in memory (Simon & Gilmartin, 1973). These play patterns were acquired gradually over a ten-year period. Successful programmers solve new programming problems by drawing on specific programming strategies that have worked for them in the past.
Studies of expert performers show that concrete and specific knowledge stored in memory is the basis for expertise. Each job domain will require a unique knowledge base and a specialized educational and developmental program to build it. When it comes to high levels of expertise, there are no generic or quick fixes!
3. Expertise Requires Deliberate Practice
Although a long period of practice is needed, not everyone who invests a great deal of practice time will achieve high proficiency levels. We are all familiar with the recreational golfer who spends many hours playing, but never really moves beyond a plateau of acceptable performance. Ericsson (2006) distinguishes between routine practice and deliberate practice. For example, he found that all expert violinists spent over fifty hours a week on music activities. But the best violinists spent more time per week on activities that had been specifically tailored to improve their performance. Typically, their teachers identified specific areas of need and set up practice sessions for them. “The core assumption of deliberate practice is that expert performance is acquired gradually and that effective improvement of performance requires the opportunity to find suitable training tasks that the performer can master sequentially. . . . typically monitored by a teacher or coach” (Ericsson, 2006, p. 692). Deliberate practice requires good performers to concentrate on specific skills that are just beyond their current proficiency levels.
4. Experts See with Different Eyes
A profession that relies on visual discrimination such as radiology provides a salient example of seeing with different eyes. Even experienced physicians rely on the unique expertise of the radiologist to review various forms of medical imagery and provide interpretations However, experts from all domains “see” the problems they face in their domains with different eyes than those with less experience. A programmer looking at code, a chess player viewing a mid-play board, or an orchestral conductor scanning the musical notation and hearing the symphony—all take in relevant data and represent it in ways that are unique to their expertise. As a result of their unique representations, they can choose the most appropriate strategies to solve problems or improve performance. Part of building expertise is to train the brain to “see” problems through the eyes of an expert; in other words, to build the ability to represent problems in ways that lead to effective solutions.
5. Experts Can Get Stuck
While expert performance is very powerful, expertise has its down sides. For example, based on their extensive experience, experts can be inflexible; they can have trouble adapting to new problems—problems that will not be solved by the expert’s well-formed mental models. Bias is a facet of inflexibility. In presenting hematology cases or cardiology cases to medical specialists such as hematologists, cardiologists, and infectious disease specialists, Chi (2006) reports that specialists tended to generate hypotheses that corresponded to their field of expertise whether warranted or not.“This tendency to generate diagnoses about which they have more knowledge clearly can cause greater errors” (p. 27).
An advantage of any organization competing in a global talent pool is innovative and creative expertise. Uhalde and Strohl (2006) point to thinking and reasoning competencies including critical thinking, originality, innovation, inductive and deductive reasoning, and complex problem solving as critical to the new economy. Therefore, seeking ways to build flexible expertise that is the source of innovation is an increasingly important goal.
6. Expertise Grows from Two Intelligences
Bransford and his colleagues (2006) distinguish between routine expertise and adaptive expertise. Routine experts are very effective solving problems that are representative of problems in their domain. They are adept at “seeing” and efficiently solving the problem based on their domain-specific mental models. The medical experts mentioned in the previous paragraphs are examples of routine experts. In contrast, adaptive experts evolve their core competencies by venturing into new areas that require them to function as “intelligent novices.”
Cattell’s (1943, 1963) concepts of crystallized and fluid intelligence align well with the distinction between routine and adaptive expertise. Fluid intelligence is the basis for reasoning on novel tasks or within unfamiliar contexts; in other words, it gives rise to adaptive expertise. In contrast, crystallized intelligence is predicated on learned skills such as mathematics and reading and is the basis for routine expertise. “In this view, crystallized abilities are essential in the development of well-organized knowledge structures that lead to expertise, while fluidization requires that learners revise existing problem-solving strategies, assemble new ones, search for new analogies, or new perspectives” (Neitfeld, Finney, Schraw, & McCrudden, 2007, p. 511).
In a test of four dominant theories of intelligence, Nietfeld and his co-authors (2007) found that the crystallized-fluid theory of intelligence best fit their data. Important for our perspective as trainers is that both crystallized and fluid abilities can be developed. The research team suggests that initial lessons should “provide background knowledge in a direct instruction format (crystallized abilities) followed by discovery or inquiry based formats enhanced with cooperative learning projects that emphasize the abstraction, transfer, and application of important classroom concepts (fluid ability)” (p. 511).
An emphasis on innovative or creative thinking as a source of competitive edge suggests the need to encourage adaptive types of expertise or fluid intelligence through education, training and organizational policies and practices. In Part III of this book, I discuss instructional approaches that support adaptive forms of expertise.
7. Challenging Problems Require Diverse Expertise
Because expertise tends to be extremely specific and because most problems that face large organizations are complex enough to require diverse expertise, increasingly, innovation will depend on what psychologists call distributed cognition. One example of distributed cognition is found in work teams. Effective teams made up of multidisciplinary experts are the key to solving many challenging problems. Accomplishments based on teamwork are more the rule than the exception. For example, contrary to the myth of the lonely scientist, most modern scientific findings today are the result of research teams working collaboratively. In the medical arena, health care depends on the effective interaction of the nurse, laboratory technician, radiologist, and primary and specialty physicians.
Distributed expertise suggests that those responsible for expertise in organizations consider not only training but other vehicles for the leveraging of diverse skills. The evolution of the Web-2 with social software such as wikis opens new channels for distributed expertise in organizations. You can deploy valuable expertise throughout your organization with knowledge management techniques that use participative technology. For example, experienced sales professionals post proposal templates and examples on the corporate website. Or experienced technicians contribute to a maintenance wiki that includes troubleshooting decision trees for unusual failures as well as stories—stories indexed to specific equipment failures.
Expertise, both routine and adaptive, is an essential asset to any organization. Training and performance improvement professionals are entrusted with designing work environments that effectively build and distribute expertise in organizations. In Building Expertise you will learn about research-based instructional methods that lead to organizational expertise.
COMING NEXT
Four Ingredients of Instruction
We’ve seen that expertise is the product of mental models that develop over long periods of time, with the highest levels of expertise growing out of deliberate practice. In the next chapter, I present an overview of four key components in any training program: delivery media, communication modes, instructional methods, and design architectures. Your decisions about these components will define the success of your efforts to build expertise in your organization.
Suggested Readings
Chi, M.T.H. (2006). Two approaches to the study of experts’ characteristics. In K.A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P.J. Feltovich, & R.R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ericsson, K.A., Charness, N., Feltovich, P.J., & Hoffman, R.R (Eds.). (2006). The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.
CHAPTER 2 TOPICS
Which Media Are Best for Learning?
Four Components of Learning
What Are Communication Modes?
What Are Instructional Methods?
Instructional Architectures: The DNA of Learning
Three Views of Learning
The Absorption View
The Behavioral View
The Constructive View
Four Instructional Architectures
Receptive Architectures
Directive Architectures
Guided Discovery Architectures
Exploratory Architectures
Architectural Blends
2
Four Ingredients of Instruction
Overwhelming evidence has shown that learning in an online environment can be as effective as that in traditional classrooms
TALLENT-RUNNELS, THOMAS, LAN, COOPER,
AHREN, SHAW, AND LIU, 2006
IN THIS CHAPTER I introduce the four key components of all learning environments: modes, methods, media, and architectures. Communication modes include text, Audio, and graphics. Instructional methods Are techniques such As examples and practice exercises used to deliver content and promote learning. Media Are the devices that deliver training and include instructors, books, and various types of digital technology. Finally, lessons Are framed on the basis of Four design architectures: receptive, directive, guided discovery, and exploratory. Each architecture refflects different Views of learning and has appropriate applications depending on the learners and the training goals.
Over fiFty years of media comparison research concludes that it is instructional modes, methods, and architectures - Not media- that most directly influence learning. However the “best“ modes, methods and architectures will depend on your learner’s background knowledge As well As your learning outcome goals.
Which Media Are Best for Learning?
Which is better for learning: a face-to-face classroom, a textbook, self-study e-learning, or an online virtual classroom? For many years, we’ve wondered about the effectiveness of different instructional delivery media. With each new technology wave, enthusiasts argue that the latest is the best! What research do we have about media effectiveness?
Hall and Cushing conducted one of the first media comparison studies for the U.S. Army in 1947. They believed that film would teach better than classroom instruction (Hall & Cushing, 1947). They presented a lesson on how to calibrate a micrometer to separate groups via film, classroom instructor, or self-study using a workbook. The words and pictures in all three lesson versions were identical except that the film used moving pictures. In other words, the script used in the movie used the same words that the instructor used in the classroom. And the visuals used in the workbook were the same as in the movie, except they were still visuals. All students were tested at the end of the lesson. The results? No differences in learning!
After many years of media comparison research with outcomes similar to the Army study, we realize that the media per se do not determine instructional effectiveness. Bernard, Abrami, Lou, Borokhovski, Wade, Wozney, Wallet, Fishet, & Huang (2004) conducted a meta-analysis that incorporated over 350 experimental comparisons of learning from a face to face classroom with learning from some form of electronic distance learning. They found that, most of the effect sizes fell close to 0, indicating no practical differences in learning. However, in some situations the classroom version resulted in much better learning than the digital version and vice versa. All of us have attended traditional classroom events that were not effective. The same holds true for digitized lessons. Tallent-Runnels, Thomas, Lan, Cooper, Ahren, Shaw, and Liu (2006) conclude: “Learning in an online environment can be as effective as that in traditional classrooms. Second, students’ learning in the online environment is affected by the quality of online instruction. Not surprisingly, students in well-designed and well-implemented online courses learned significantly more, and more effectively than those in online courses where teaching and learning activities were not carefully planned” (p. 116).
Four Components of Learning
What influences learning is not the delivery medium but the way the facilities of the medium are used to promote learning. Regardless of medium, learning effectiveness depends on the best use of the other three components: modes, methods, and architectures . These are the active ingredients of any instructional environment. As a former science teacher, I can’t resist a chemistry metaphor. In Figure 2.1 I illustrate the modes, methods, and architectures with atoms, molecules and DNA.
Figure 2.1. A Chemistry Analogy for Modes, Methods, and Architectures From Clark and Kwinn, 2006
What Are Communication Modes?
No matter what delivery media you use in your training, you will communicate content and training techniques through some combination of text, audio, and graphics—still and animated. I imagine these as the atoms that are the basic building blocks of your lessons. As you present content and prepare practice opportunities, you will use words and visuals as your communication vehicles. As you will see throughout the book, we have quite a bit of research on how best to use text, audio, and visuals to promote learning.
Your selection of communication modes will depend on your delivery medium and on research on how best to use audio and visual elements to teach new knowledge and skills. Some media are limited in the modes they can handle. Books like this one, for example, are generally limited to text and a few still graphics. Computer lessons, however, can include text, audio, and both still and animated visuals. When using media that can handle multiple modes, apply the research I will review in Chapters 6 and 9 to guide your decisions.
What Are Instructional Methods?
Learning requires an active processing of lesson content so that it becomes integrated with existing knowledge already in memory. Instructional methods are techniques such as examples and practice exercises that lead to learning. Well-crafted methods support the psychological processes that mediate the transformation of lesson content into internal knowledge and skills stored in memory. For example, a useful practice exercise will guide the learner to rehearse new information in ways that will encourage its encoding into memory. Use instructional methods that support the learners’ mental processes and avoid methods that disrupt learning processes. Most of the chapters in this book will show you methods to support these processes. I picture methods as the molecules of instruction—the building blocks that deliver your content and promote its active integration into memory.
Instructional Architectures: The DNA of Learning
In my chemistry metaphor, I represent architectures as the DNA of instruction—the design framework that will orchestrate how the modes and methods will be used and combined in any learning event. When instructional professionals construct a training or educational program, they usually will begin with a blueprint that illustrates the content and activities to be included in the final event. For example, they may write an outline, learning objectives, or flow charts. This planning phase is referred to as design and it is during this process that the instructional architecture and instructional methods are specified. Later, the blueprint is transformed into training materials in the form of workbooks, slides, or online screens. This stage is referred to as development and it is here that the architectures and methods are implemented. Let’s take a more detailed look at three learning assumptions and four architectures that reflect those assumptions.
Three Views of Learning
Three views of learning reflect different assumptions that lead to different instructional approaches. The three views are: absorption , behavioral, and constructive.
The Absorption View
From lectures to reading assignments, I believe that the majority of learning environments reflect an absorption view of learning. In this view, learning is about assimilating information and instruction is about providing information to learners. Mayer (2001) calls this perspective a “transmission” view of teaching. Why are transmission-type courses so common? I believe it’s because: (1) they are the fastest and easiest to prepare, (2) they represent a familiar teaching environment that many have adopted from their educational experiences, and (3). many stakeholders and some instructional professionals lack an understanding of the active nature of learning.
The Behavioral View
A popular form of training in the mid part of the 20th Century was programmed instruction. Although the early forms of programmed learning presented in books have virtually disappeared, modern versions are prevalent in many digital training environments. Programmed instruction and its modern counterparts are designed on the assumption that learning is based on the acquisition of mental associations. In this view, learning is about making correct responses to questions, and instruction is about providing small chunks of information followed by questions and corrective feedback. In the course of making many small correct responses, learners build large chains of new knowledge.
The Constructive View
In the last part of the 20th Century, learning was again reconceptualized. In a constructive view, emphasis is on the active processes learners use to build new knowledge. This construction requires an integration of new incoming information from the environment with existing knowledge in memory. In the constructive view, learning is about active construction of new knowledge by engaging with diverse sources including instructors, training materials, and peers, and instruction is about setting up learning environments that mediate constructive activities.
Although the active construction of knowledge is commonly accepted today as the mechanism for learning, that construction can be fostered through diverse instructional environments. I characterize four different approaches to instruction as four architectures . Each architecture reflects different views about learning and makes different prescriptions for the design of effective learning environments. In the next section I introduce the four architectures. As you read, think about educational or training events you have experienced in your career or have designed yourself that reflect each architecture.
Four Instructional Architectures
Each of the four architectures reflects one of the different views of learning summarized above and differ regarding: (1) how lesson content is organized, (2) whether and what kind of practice is included, (3) the amount of guidance offered to learners, and (4) the opportunities for learners to select their instructional resources. I call the four architectures: receptive, directive, guided discovery, and exploratory. The major features of each are summarized in Table 2.1.
Receptive Architectures
Perhaps the oldest and still most prevalent architecture today is the receptive architecture. Often reflecting an absorption view of learning, lessons are built with a receptive architecture emphasize information delivery. The information may be in the form of words and pictures both still and animated. A good metaphor for the receptive architecture is learners as sponges and the instruction as a pitcher of water pouring out knowledge to be absorbed. In some forms of receptive instruction, such as lectures or video lessons, learners have minimal control over the pacing or sequencing of the content. In other situations such as a text assignment, learners control the pace and can select the topics of interest to them. Some examples of a receptive architecture
include a traditional (non-interactive or didactic) lecture, an instructional video, or a reading assignment. e-Learning programs lacking interactivity known as “page turners” also embody this architecture.
Although receptive learning environments do not provide for overt engagement with the content, they can promote learning through instructional methods that support the appropriate learning processes. In Chapters 9 and 10, I will review instructional methods that promote deep learning that do and do not require explicit learner responses.
Directive Architectures
Directive architectures reflect a behavioral view of learning. They assume that learning occurs by the gradual building of skills starting from the most basic and progressing to more advanced levels in a hierarchical manner. The lessons present short topics and provide frequent opportunities for learners to respond to related questions. Immediate corrective feedback to student responses ensures formation of accurate associations. The goal is to minimize the aversive consequences of errors which are believed to lead to incorrect associations.
Directive architectures are based on instructive models of learning in which definitions or steps are followed by specific examples and practice with feedback. Programmed instruction, popular in the 1950s and 1960s, is a prime example of a directive architecture. Such lessons were originally presented in books but soon migrated to computer delivery. In programmed instruction, short content segments are followed by a question and corrective feedback. Many asynchronous e-lessons designed to teach procedures use a directive architecture.
Figure 2.2 illustrates a screen from a course that teaches the use of a new computer system to manage telephone calls. In each lesson the learner views a step-by-step demonstration followed by a
Figure 2.2. A Directive Lesson on Using a Computer System
simulation practice. If the learner makes a mistake during the practice, immediate feedback provides a hint and asks the learner to try again. Typical of directive architectures, the lesson topics present small tasks and the lessons progress from simple to complex tasks.
Guided Discovery Architectures
Guided discovery uses job-realistic problems as a context for learning. After receiving their problem or task assignment, learners typically access various sources of data to resolve problems and along the way instructional support—sometimes called scaffolding—is available to help them. Unlike the directive architecture, guided discovery offers learners opportunities to try alternatives, make mistakes, experience consequences of those mistakes, reflect on their results, and revise their approach.
The goal of guided discovery is to help learners build mental models by experiencing the results of actions taken in the context of solving realistic cases and problems. In some forms of e-learning, simulations are the basis for guided discovery lessons. Guided discovery designs are based on inductive models of learning—that is, learning from experience with specific cases and problems.
A guided discovery e-course shown in Figure 2.3 is a simulation designed to teach bank agents how to analyze creditworthiness of a commercial loan applicant. After getting an assignment to research a new loan applicant, the learner can access many sources of information, including literature on the industry, credit checks, references, and interviews with the client. In the screen shown in Figure 2.3, the learner is requesting a credit
Figure 2.3. A Guided Discovery Lesson on Assessing Loan Applicants With permission From Moody’s Analytics
check on a simulated applicant. Coaching is available from a learning agent who provides tips and advice as needed. At any point, the learners can compare their solution path to that of an expert and make adjustments. The learners continue to collect and record data, following a structured loan approval process. When they have collected sufficient data, learners write up a loan funding recommendation with supporting justification and submit it to a virtual loan committee.
Exploratory Architectures
The exploratory design, also known as open-ended learning, offers the greatest amount of learner control