Stressing the obvious

Here is another statement from a list in Brain-Based Learning: Possible Implications for Online Instruction Stephanie A. Clemons http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_05/article03.htm

8. Threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness impairs learning.

Well, yes. This was probably known long before there were psychologist. Even psychologists have known it for about 100 years. It is called the Yerkes-Dodson law. It applies to performance on any task. Low levels of threat or anxiety improve performance. With increasing levels, performance improves, reaches a maximum, then declines. The location of the optimum level depends on familiarity with the task. Well-practiced tasks can benefit from higher levels of threat or anxiety, especially if they require speed, strength, or quick reactions.

Learning, by definition, is not a well-practiced task and so will require a low level of threat or anxiety.

Now that we’ve figured that out, what do we do about it? In general, instructional design aims to produce small increments in performance and arrange for any “failures” to be unthreatening. That’s why you learn to fly a plane in a simulator first. The objective is manage the stress level. I don’t think any instructional designer sets out to create “threat, high anxiety, and a sense of helplessness.”

If some students experience these feelings, the condition probably results from a mismatch between the instructional design and the student. Presumably, online instruction can offer a wider range of instructional practice. But I don’t know of any systematic way to match students to instructional practice. There may be a market for a matchmaking service in this area.

I can see it now. Amazon.edu. “Students who liked the instructional style of this course also liked…” For the most part, the content of education in the US is the same at least up through the sophomore year of college. There will be some variation in grade level at which specific content is presented. I remember my high-school biology teacher explaining to that the demonstration manikins were not anatomically correct in high-school, but would be in college. We students would not have been disappointed by a more advanced level of instruction.

Another entrepreneurial call. Actually, three. First, design different instructional materials suitable for different learner types. “Algebra for Dummies” This already exists as a book, but I don’t know whether it would be an adequate preparation for the requirements of a high-school algebra course.

That uncertainty brings us to the second entrepreneurial call. Develop a way to certify instructional units as appropriate for equivalency at some grade level. That would require some kind of demonstration that people who complete the unit can pass advanced placement tests in the unit.

The third entrepreneurial challenge is to find a way to match student characteristics to instructional design characteristics.

Any of these would be difficult. To which I give the entrepreneurial retort. Of course, it’s difficult. If it were easy, it would have already been done.

For this solution, we will have to wait for the entrepreneurs. My next post will deal with the Godot question: “What shall we do while waiting?”