Tinkering with the spreadsheets seems to be a reasonable approach to working with a new problem, in line with generating and testing alternative strategies to find a solution. In other words, learning.&nbsp; Women who tinkered with the spreadsheets seemed to be doing just that, and, for them, tinkering predicted more effective problem solving. &nbsp;Counter-intuitively, though, when men tinkered with the spreadsheet, they were <i>less</i> effective in correcting the errors.&nbsp; The opposite results seem attributable to the fact that women paused before trying something else, long enough to process the information.

In the final experiment, researchers provided a different kind of tutorial — one that emphasized a strategic, rather than a feature-by-feature approach to the problem.

Women who participated in this condition were almost as likely to use the new features as the men in the same study, and were able to solve more problems more quickly than women who didn’t use the new features.&nbsp; Men in this condition were not significantly helped or hindered, which means that it’s possible to prevent a bias against women without introducing a bias against men.

The goal of the research was to compare learning efficiency and effectiveness from a narrative game to a slide presentation of the content. Students who played the Crystal Island game learned less and rated the lesson more difficult than students who viewed a slide presentation without any game narrative or hands on activities. Results were similar with the Cache 17 game. The authors conclude that their findings “show that the two well-designed narrative discovery games…were less effective than corresponding slideshows in promoting learning outcomes based on transfer and retention of the games’ academic content” (p. 246).

Often the features of a game are at counter-purposes to the learning objectives. For example, many games incorporate an onscreen clock requiring the learner to achieve the goal in seconds or minutes. For learning outcomes that are based on understanding and critical thinking, games with time goals that reinforce fast responses are a poor match.

Despite the uncontested popularity of commercial games and a lot of hype in the training community, the reality is that there is scarce credible evidence on how and when to best use games to improve instructional outcomes and motivation. At this stage, I recommend games to implement drill and practice exercises for tasks that require immediate and accurate responses.

Instructional games seem to foster higher-order thinking such as planning and reasoning more than factual or verbal knowledge.

Specifically, learning from simulation games was maximized when trainees actively rather than passively learned work-related competencies during game play, trainees could choose to play as many times as desired, and simulation games were embedded in an instructional program rather than serving as stand-alone instruction.

Challenge, interactivity and continual feedback can be applied to a classroom exercises, a paper and pencil activity or used online. The design is universal while the delivery vehicle can change. It is not technology that makes a game a game—it’s the design, the inclusion of a challenge and interactivity that make a game a game.

The optimal video length is 6 minutes or shorter -- students watched most of the way through these short videos. In fact, the average engagement time of any video maxes out at 6 minutes, regardless of its length. And engagement times decrease as videos lengthen: For instance, on average students spent around 3 minutes on videos that are longer than 12 minutes, which means that they engaged with less than a quarter of the content.

<p>When you’re a domain expert in your field, it’s difficult to step back and remember what it was like to be a beginner. Once we have knowledge, it’s very hard to remember what life was like without it.</p> <p>Instead of placing the burden of training on a subject-matter expert, it’s often more effective to establish a collaboration between subject-matter experts and trainers who are experts in breaking down information, recognizing the critical elements, and putting it back together in a way that’s digestible for people who aren’t experts. </p>

<p>The MCPL literature suggests that for an FI to directly improve learning, rather than motivate learning, it has to help the recipient to <em>reject erroneous hypotheses.</em> Whereas correcting errors is a feature of some types of FI messages, most types of FI messages do not contain such information and therefore should not improve learning—a claim consistent with CAI research.</p> <p>Moreover, even in learning situations where performance seems to benefit from FIs, learning through <em>FIs may be inferior to learning through discovery</em> (learning based on feedback from the task, rather than on feedback from an external agent). Task feedback may force the participant to learn task rules and recognize errors (e.g., Frese &amp; Zapf, 1994), whereas FI may lead the participant to learn how to use the FI as a crutch, while shortcutting the need for task learning (cf. J. R. Anderson, 1987). </p>

In the MCPL literature, several reviewers doubt whether FIs have any learning value (Balzer et al., 1989; Brehmer, 1980) and suggest alternatives to FI for increasing learning, such as providing the learner with more task information (Balzer et al., 1989). Another alternative to an FI is designing work or learning<br> environments that encourage trial and error, thus maximizing learning from task feedback without a direct intervention (Frese &amp; Zapf, 1994).

<p>“The results we saw at Ctrip blew me away. Ctrip was thinking that it could save money on space and furniture if people worked from home and that the savings would outweigh the productivity hit it would take when employees left the discipline of the office environment.</p> <p>“Instead, we found that people working from home completed 13.5% more calls than the staff in the office did—meaning that Ctrip got almost an extra workday a week out of them. They also quit at half the rate of people in the office—way beyond what we anticipated. And predictably, at-home workers reported much higher job satisfaction.”</p>

<p>One other fascinating insight from the interview: Bloom notes that those who liked the work-at-home option most were people:</p> <p>” . . . who have established social lives—older workers, married workers, parents. We found that the younger workers whose social lives are more connected to the office tend to not want to work from home as much.</p>

We work in organizations that believe harmful myths. We’re pressured to work as if the myths are true, and we can’t or don’t take the time we need to keep our knowledge up to date and combat the myths.

In a controlled experiment, participants listened to videotaped instruction presented in either narrative or expository form and presented at<br> either a normal or a moderately compressed rate. Results indicate a relationship between organization<br> and retention such that audience members retain more information when it is presented in a<br> narrative style and when it is presented at a normal presentation rate. Practically, the results suggest advantages for narrative form in the everyday practice of instructional communication.