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Learning Strategies You Can Use

One of my favorite topics of all times since I got into the profession. I'd love to share all I have on my mind relating to this topic and from all perspectives I've seen it apply. I remember once when I was working on a course, a certain part of it was more like paper work and some planning activity to be done before beginning the project and come up with a list of resources needed. The product enabled the user to use these resources and flesh out a complete process that interacted with real-time systems to deliver a service, say a shipping or billing service. But the planning activity was a critical and essential step.

The process of planning and building up the working model of the service using the product was what I had to teach the learner. After analysis, my solution was to transform this planning activity into a scenario and have the learner work through it in three parts with some questions on decisions, drag and drop and multiple select. It finally turned out to be quite interesting when the graphic designers took a jab at the layout and came up with some cool interactivities to depict what I had in mind.

So what are Learning Strategies?
Learning strategies, as the name suggests are direct or indirect strategies employed by instructional designers to help learners easily understand learning content. By using a strategy, the instructional designer eliminates the need for a learner to learn just by memorizing information provided in a course. The strategy justifies the benefit of the learning content and indicates how the learner can use and benefit from it.

At a high level learning/instructional strategies can be at a macro-level or micro-level. So what does macro and micro-level strategy mean?

A Macro-level strategy is designed at a course or curriculum level. It would be more in the lines of providing a learning solution that works for a certain audience when we consider the tasks they need to learn. The macro-level strategy governs the overall direction of the learning solution. I've written about one such strategy in a previous post on Pure Courseware vs Reference Hybrids. You should use this as an example only, and remember that you can come up with several such strategies based on certain criteria that you gather in your research and analysis phase.

Micro-level strategies are more low-level strategies that you use to teach the different information types (fact, concept, process, procedure and principle). Lets look at few examples here.

Strategy 1: The derivative approach
Usually good for teaching facts. Rather than just stating facts, its nice to start with an example of a task a learner needs to do and then conclude to the fact. In this way, you would have stated the benefit of having a certain feature in a product, and how it will be useful to the learner. You could teach concepts similarly. For example, the fact is that youtube is an excellent tool for sharing videos online. Assuming tools like youtube have just arrived, you could present this as: you have bought a really cool camcorder, went on a long ride with friends and recorded some nice videos. You now want to share these videos with other friends and family. To conclude, you introduce youtube as the tool that can make this experience possible.

Strategy 2: The questioning approach
Good to teach concepts and principles. You can start the section by introducing questions into the learners mind. This triggers the learner's thought process and makes the learner make the right connections and build up a concept. For example, the learner is learning Newton's 3rd Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. How about asking the learner, when you throw a ball it bounces back with nearly the same force. Why does this happen? Once you raise the question the next thing you do is briefly explain why that happens, or drop a few hints and ask a few more questions about a similar scenario, before bringing out the principle behind why this is happening.

Strategy 3: Learning from mistakes/experiential learning
This strategy can be used to teach multiple types of information. Allow the learner to run through a set of quizzes or play a game with certain rules. Here even a decision tree is an appropriate strategy. All through the exercise, make sure you give the learner sufficient facts to make decisions, along with hints and guidance at the right places. At the end, have them review their actions and analyze what they could have done differently in the quiz or the game. Make them realize what differences their choices made to the situation. By the end of it the learner will figure out the facts, build connections and understand the underlying concept or principle being taught.

Strategy 4: Demos and recordings
Works best for procedural topics. Create short recordings of procedures that the learner should know, containing audio and instructions in the form of callouts, with the procedure that needs to be learned. This should be preceded by some introduction to concepts and facts in previous screens. For example, create a new PowerPoint file and insert a new slide.

Strategy 5: Practices and hands on
Again useful for teaching procedures, but especially those which are really big and complex. This should usually be preceded by a demo, so the learner has already seen the procedure taking place. This strategy requires very detailed instructions to be given to the learner starting from where to begin a task and where to end it. The instructions should be simple and step by step, give the location of the area of expected action and have really short sentences, so that a learner can perform the procedure independently.

Strategy 6: The scenario approach
The scenario approach works very well with many complex products to teach the learner a task they need to perform on their job. The scenario works well with generating relevance as the learner can immediately relate to something that they do on a day to day basis. Based on time constraints and business requirements, one could choose one of the following ways to deal with a complex concept or procedure to be taught:
  • Use a scenario and create a series of quizzes with simple drag and drop, click the relevant area and multiple-choice interactivities, all focused at making the learner use his knowledge and take decisions. This causes the learner to think through a situation and make connections. This strategy is simpler and requires less time and expertise on tools.
  • Use a scenario and come up with a game to help the learner achieve the objectives. This approach probably takes more time and requires some technical programming skills. This is also an area I haven't explored myself.
Overall, one may argue that there are many ways to combine and use each strategy to teach different kinds of information. My answer to that is yes you are right! You could build a complete game and employ a different strategy to teach different skills, all in one big scenario. I would also like to emphasize that strategies should not be used for the sake of having one. It is extremely essential for an instructional designer to measure what is absolutely essential and what is excess flab. A strategy used to create a better learning experience and aid the learning process is valuable. This is where one needs to be practical and remain focused on the learning goals. Ask yourself these questions:
  • Will the strategy actually make it easier for the learner to grasp the concept?
  • Given the audience level, the learner is an advanced learner. So would it be better to list the basic concepts and focus on using strategies for the really complex ones?
  • Is this strategy becoming too redundant in the course? Then I should probably change strategies and try something new.
  • Is the example I used a strong enough case or should I change it?
  • Does this information need a complete scenario or a small example?
  • Is the procedure simple enough that one can just learn it by seeing a demo, or, is it so complex that it is better to design some hands-on after the demo?

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