Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter
April/May 2009
| Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter April/May 2009 |
The March meeting is on Wednesday, May 20, 2009, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Elephant & Castle in San Francisco's financial district. For details about the location and instructions for purchasing tickets, visit www.stc-sf.org/stc-meetings.htm.
This presentation goes into the cognitive and emotional underpinnings behind the traditional instructional design components: introduction, concept, example, practice, summary.
Too much of eLearning is following instructional design principles by rote instead of with a real understanding of the way the brain functions and the role the instructional elements play. The evidence is clear, it’s too easy to find eLearning with a rote knowledge focus, verbose writing, boring introductions, fact recitation, useless examples, meaningless practice, and a consequent rapid atrophy of the experience. What we want is meaningful outcomes, and what we get is a painful experience to be avoided. What’s a designer to do? In this session, the instructional design elements are taken apart and connected to an understanding of how the brain works and what really works for learning. We’ll bring in the ‘emotional’ elements to paint a picture of what meaningful learning really is and how to produce it. We’ll then turn it around to produce an understanding of learning design that leads to meaningful outcomes.