Over-teaching experts and under-teaching novices

No two learners are the same. There are seven billion people in the world each with their own unique life experiences, which have in turn shaped their aspirations, their personality, their attitudes, their preferences and their capabilities. It goes without saying that one of the greatest mistakes we can make as designers of learning experiences is to treat them all as if they were the same. The most common manifestation of this, in my experience, is to provide the same solution for those with a great deal of prior knowledge as for those who are relative beginners. The outcome of this is typically that we over-teach the experts and under-teach the novices.

Experts have the benefit of elaborate mental schemas, which have developed over time and enable them to see the important patterns and make sense of all the cause and effect relationships that relate to their areas of speciality. We all have aspects of our life that we understand really well, whether or not we could explain our understanding to someone else. We may be an expert in molecular biology, photography, accounting, office politics, bringing up children or the tactics of football. Because we have these elaborate schemas, we can pretty well cope with any new information relating to our specialisms. We are very hard to overwhelm or overload, because we can easily relate new information to what we already know, to sort out the credible from the spurious, the important from the trivial. The expert can cope with a long lecture, a densely-written text book, a forum with thousands of postings, or a whole heap of links returned in response to a search query.

The novice, on the other hand, does not have the luxury of a well-formed understanding of their new area of interest. They have to pay attention to all new information, because they have no idea whether it is important or not. They struggle with new concepts and principles because the patterns have yet to reveal themselves. They need lots of examples, stories, metaphors and similes to help them relate new information to their other life experiences. The novice craves a well-structured and supported learning experience, which allows plenty of time for them to process new information and to make sense of this in the context of practical application. They need reassurance and encouragement to help them through the difficulties they will inevitably encounter.

These are the extremes. Of course there are many gradations of expertise and only a minority of learners are complete novices or acknowledged experts. But it is easy to see how, if we are not careful, we end up providing an 'average' learning experience which satisfies no-one.

We can over-teach the relative experts:

• We patronise them with over-simplified metaphors, examples and case studies.
• We frustrate them by holding back important information which we then proceed to reveal on a careful step-by-step basis.  
• We insult them by forcing them to undergo unnecessary assessments.
• We waste their time by forcing them to participate in collaborative activities with those who know much less than them.

And we can under-teach the relative novices:

• We bombard them with information which they cannot hope to process, providing nowhere near enough time for consolidation.
• We provide insufficient examples and case studies to help them relate new information to their past experience.
• We are not always there when they get stuck or have questions.
• We do not go far enough in providing practical activities which will help the learner to turn interesting ideas into usable skills.

It may seem that I am suggesting you double your workload by providing two versions of each learning experience, but it doesn't work like that. The relative experts need resources not courses and, of the two, resources are much easier to assemble. Many times you can just point the expert at the information and let them get on with it. And by doing this, you've reduced the population that requires a more  formal learning experience considerably. You can start to give the novices the attention they deserve.

Learning videos - anyone can do them, but that doesn't make them easy

Last week I explained why video trumps e-learning, at least in certain situations. A lot has been said about why video has become so much more accessible in recent years:

• Video cameras have dropped in price like a stone. In fact, you don't really need a specialist video camera, when you can record in HD on a mobile phone, a compact camera or a DSLR. Some of these cameras work really well in low light, removing or at least reducing the need for professional lighting.
• Post-production of video, if you're bothered with that at all, can be carried out on a tablet or with free or low-cost computer software.

I remember clearly 30 years ago when I joined a specialist corporate video production company. At that time, a shoot always required a director and a three-person crew (camera, sound and lights). Post-production took place in two phases: a preliminary edit was carried out on 3/4" tape machines, with a final edit on 2" tape at a London facilities house. If you wanted graphics and effects that also meant a trip to London and a hefty bill.

So have we really got to the point at which just about anyone can produce a watchable learning video for next to nothing? Unfortunately, not really. Yes, the barriers to entry have been considerably removed, at least in terms of cost. But, as we've found over the years with desktop publishing and e-learning authoring tools, having the right hardware and software is only the start; there is still a lot to learn.

I'd say there were three main areas in which people underestimate the need for care and attention with a learning video:

1. Sound: The microphones built-in to cameras are omni-directional (they record sound coming from every direction) and very poor quality. Most learning videos involve speech and you simply cannot record speech to a satisfactory quality with a built-in mic. If your camera does not allow you to hook up an external microphone, ideally a shotgun (directional) mic or a lavalier (lapel) mic, then your viewers will have to put up with awful sound. That may just be acceptable for a home video shared on YouTube, but not in the workplace.
2. Light: As I've said, modern cameras do a remarkable job in low light, but that doesn't mean you'll get a great-looking picture. Obviously the main point of lighting is to make your subject visible, but it has an important secondary function, which is to make the subject stand out against the background. That takes care, either with available light, or with some simple specialist lighting. There are LED lights now which can be hand-held, stand or camera-mounted. You might find these a good investment, alongside a quick induction into three-point photographic/videographic lighting.
3. Flow: There's a grammar to video which just about everyone in the world who watches TV is familiar with, even if they can't articulate it. People may not know why something looks right, but they certainly notice when it looks wrong. Applying this grammar to your own videos is not intuitive, it has to be learned. A good starting point is to take a much more critical look at the programmes you watch on TV to see what shots have been used and in what sequence.  

Don't get me wrong - I am certainly not trying to discourage anyone from having a go at making their own learning videos. Far from it. I just feel it's important to emphasise that there is a learning curve, albeit much less steep than on my first encounter.