heidi kirby
Account Education Manager, also for L&D professionals
Host of the BLOC (Building Learning and Organizing Culture) podcast.
Picture this: it's your first day of starting a new job, and you're attending a four-hour virtual meeting to learn everything you need to know about your new organization. You have pen and paper (as you like to take notes) and are ready to listen and learn. Facilitator Bailey is sharing some information about the company's core values: what respect means to the company, how different employees empathize, and what everyone can do to help customers, regardless of their role.
Bailey then began to share the story of a client she had helped at another agency – she could hear the client's dog barking the entire time she was playing **. She then started talking about her family dog, and then told a story about a dog she saw on social **. You look down at your notebook and you see that you haven't written anything in 30 minutes. Bailey's stories are interesting, but you don't feel like they're going to help you in this new job.
In this case, Bailey's story is"Deceptive information".。In education and training, disorienting information includes any element that is interesting but does not directly contribute to the purpose or objective of the learning experience.
When it comes to disorienting information, there are two schools of thought. Some people believe that they interfere with or distract the learner's ability to process information and are therefore detrimental to cognition, memory, and performance. It has also been argued that adding confusing information to training will attract learners' attention and motivate them to be motivated and engaged.
Disorienting information is not only present in training, but also in personal life. For example, an A-list celebrity who endorses a certain brand of toothpaste might share how toothpaste has helped them get ready to be on camera. You most likely won't be using toothpaste in the same conditions, so their story is none of your business. However, their story may tempt you to buy that toothpaste, although it can also be a distraction – you may remember the star but not the toothpaste brand they endorsed.
Studies have looked at two perspectives – that confusing information is a negative distraction, or that it is a positive way to motivate learners – but most studies have concluded that it is wise to avoid confusing information as much as possible when designing and developing learning experiences.
What's the problem with confusing information?
There is a fine line between "information that motivates the learner" and "information that distracts the learner." There are several factors that contribute to the negative impact of confusing information on learners.
Increases cognitive load. Have you ever had a headache? This is because humans have a limited ability to process and remember information. It's calledCognitive load。In the 80s of the 20th century, psychologist John Sweller began to study cognitive load, and believed that good instructional design would reduce cognitive load, and cognitive load was divided into three parts:
The intrinsic cognitive load is related to the content itself and its difficulty (this is often influenced by the learner's prior knowledge).
The associated cognitive load includes elements that aid in information processing and help individuals create mental models of information.
Extrinsic cognitive load includes the way information is presented and does not directly affect the learning experience. Extrinsic cognitive load is the foothold of sexual information.
Let's use the opening scenario to break down where the cognitive load is generated:
Learning new process terminology for a new company creates an intrinsic cognitive load.
Joting down what your facilitator says to help you organize the information and keep it in your head creates a relevant cognitive load.
Listening to the facilitator tell stories that are not related to the induction course activates the extrinsic cognitive load.
As an instructional designer, you should minimize extrinsic cognitive load when creating learning solutions. For example, if each e-learning course your team produces has a different navigation menu, with the ** button in the bottom left corner in one course, the bottom right corner in another, and the middle in the third lesson, adapting to the new navigation will increase the extrinsic cognitive load.
In addition, subject matter experts may ask you to provide specific examples that are more special and non-routine. For example, when you're creating a micro-learning overview of "how to use a new billing system" for a customer service rep, an SMB might suggest that you include the following: What to do if a customer asks to change their address in the system (this is self-service and is rarely done through **). Including examples where only one in every 100 occurs, this not only takes up time, but also wrongly leads learners to identify it as an important scenario they should be learning. The fewer irrelevant details you include, such as special use cases, "funny" facts, editorial comments, or jokes, the lower the cognitive load.
Confusing information can affect learners' memory and distract them from important points. When you add confusing information to your learning experience, learners may not understand which concepts, topics, or facts are most important.
For example, I took an e-learning compliance course with a ridiculous, exaggerated character whose sole purpose was to make people laugh. He always makes rude comments to his colleagues and reminds them of policies in an exaggerated way. I remember my teammates and others in the organization talking openly about this interesting role, but I bet none of them remember the training. When learners are constantly distracted by some irrelevant content, it can be difficult to remember what is important. Similarly, when faced with too much information, it can be difficult for learners to prioritize.
Perhaps a learner is reading a technical document on how to operate a forklift. If the guide presents a shocking scenario or is designed to scare people into complying – such as horrific stories of people who have lost limbs or become disabled – for example, learners may remember these stories rather than the steps to operate the forklift correctly. You should avoid distracting learners at all costs and keep them focused on the outcome, especially when the outcome is to get a job done safely.
Confusing information is a waste of time. Time is precious to employees. There never seems to be enough time in a day, and as you probably know, it's hard to get employees to take a break from their normal tasks to complete training. It may seem like a good idea to include interesting facts in your lessons, such as data on lightning strikes and tornado damage records in your safety and evacuation lessons, but it's not worth the time if they don't relate to the learning objective of the lesson (in this case, keeping people safe).
At best, making a training session longer by adding confusing information will only waste everyone's time. For example, you might spend a few extra hours adding extraneous visuals to your work aids to balance the text, such as adding a calendar icon behind an important date or adding a decorative tree to the background to make it more aesthetically pleasing.
However, in the worst-case scenario, employees may realize that this information is not relevant and may decide that the learning experience is not worth their time. If it's not related to their job, they won't appreciate what you've spent time doing pretty or funny.
How to avoid confusing information?
When designing and developing learning experiences, there are ways to avoid confusing information.
Put the results first. During the design and development process, put the learning goals or objectives you want to achieve in places that you can refer to often. Doing so will help you stay focused on what's important.
When asking for feedback, focus on your goals. Ask targeted feedback questions, such as "Comment on learning objectives that you think are too detailed or too far ahead." Also, don't forget to provide learning objectives to reviewers at each feedback stage.
Complete multiple reviews. It's always good to review your work multiple times. Doing multiple targeted reviews (e.g., visual review, spelling and grammar review, and content review) can help you look at your work from different angles and identify things you may have missed.
There are also steps you can take to help identify confusing information during user testing (or during a pilot with selected learners). You can ask learners to tell you what they think the main points of the experience are. This way, you can make sure that you don't distract from the focus with irrelevant information. You can also come back to the learner after a while and ask them what their impression of the course is. Did they remember something that aligned with the intended goals and objectives, or did they remember an inconsequential joke, fact, or character from the lesson? Direct feedback from learners helps you focus your content on the goal and further improve the overall experience.
When do the details matter?
When designers carefully incorporate details that are well thought out, studies have found that these details can improve learners' learning. However, it can be difficult to decide which details are confusing or irrelevant and which are beneficial to the learning objectives. There is no quick and easy answer to when it is appropriate to provide details; But here are some questions you can ask yourself to determine when the details matter.
Do these details provide significant context in the story or scene? In a sub-scenario about customer service, it's a good idea to include some details about the disgruntled customer, such as some of the reasons why they might be so upset, to help the learner better determine how to solve the customer's problem.
Do these details help illustrate the main points? In a ** on how to evacuate an office building in the event of a fire, it may be helpful to include a detailed story about a person making decisions in the building and choosing the right course of action. It's not extraneous or confusing, as it helps to further illustrate the main points (how to leave the building safely) and helps people imagine the steps, imagining the characters in the story. The goal is for learners to remember the story when faced with a similar situation.
Do these details help learners intuitively understand a complex concept? In a lesson on identifying workplace safety hazards in warehouses, it may be more beneficial to start with a simple example that everyone can think of (e.g., a warehouse leak) than with a more complex safety hazard (e.g., what to do if someone is injured and bleeding). In this case, the leaked details will help build a more complex scenario.
Details:
Not all details are bad, but they are exactly themConnections to goals that make them valuable to the learning experience。If you really want to motivate and engage your learners, the learning experience needs to be simple and useful. Share the most important information in the most useful way and in the shortest time possible. Add details where it makes sense to provide context, provide examples, or illustrate key points. Doing so will help learners get the most out of their learning experience.
Convince your colleagues to weed out the confusing information
What if you agree with everything in this article, but your teammates continue to add confusing information to their study regimen? Or what if you have subject matter experts or stakeholders who have big ideas, but don't have anything to do with the outcome?
The first thing you can do is constantly remind the team and reviewers of the learning objectives. Encourage your team and stakeholders to pilot test the solution to get direct feedback from learners to see what they think the gist is. Explain the relationship between costs and benefits to SMEs – If 500 learners have to spend an extra 5 minutes learning the backstory of a character that is not related but which the SME finds interesting, explain to them that 5 minutes of time multiplied by 500 learners will unnecessarily waste more than 40 hours.
Ask your teammates or SMEs or stakeholders to explain why certain things are important. Let them show you how their ideas fit into their goals. They may show you what you're missing, or you can show them the subjectivity of their ideas. Open your mind to the conversation, but be sure to get back to learning goals and outcomes.
This article ***pixabay
This article is an excerpt from the TD Magazine article "Fight the Allure of Seductive Details".ATD Learning Account MemberAvailable directlyATD Online Resource CenterView the full text for free.