Designing Online Learning to Actual Human Capabilities

Designing Online Learning to Actual Human Capabilities

Conference Break‐out Session Presentation (long version slideshow)

College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA‐HR), Midwest Regional Conference 2016

November 9 – 10, 2016

Session overview

• In instructional design work, instructional designers (IDs) often focus on the changing technological capabilities (of authoring tools, of learning management systems, and so on)—namely, on enablements / affordances and constraints. What is less often discussed are human capabilities, their affordances and constraints. Human enablements may be broadly conceptualized as the following: (1) perception (five senses and proprioception), (2) cognition, (3) learning, (4) memory, (5) decision‐making, and (6) action‐taking. This presentation summarizes some of the latest research on these areas of human capabilities and some design mitigations to design for these particular aspects of people.

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Two presentation objectives

Participants will learn: 1. The latest findings on human capabilities (perception, cognition, learning,

memory, decision‐making, and action‐taking) 2. How online trainings are most effectively designed to align with knowledge

of human capabilities

• These objectives relate to human resources professionals because they need to know which trainings are most effective for their various constituencies. HR professionals develop and provide trainings, and they also select third‐party developed trainings. Some commission locally developed trainings on campus as well.

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A warm‐up

What do we (in this group) know about the following? How do these various aspects of human capabilities below interact with each other?

(1) perception(2) cognition(3) learning(4) memory(5) decision‐making(6) action‐taking

What are some questions you have about the above areas?

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Should you decide to accept this mission,

Your task… • Jot down some instructional design ideas that arise as we review some features of each of the following aspects of human capabilities: (1) perception, (2) cognition, (3) learning, (4) memory, (5) decision‐making, and (6) action‐taking

• Be ready to share these ideas!

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A Light Review of Human Capabilities

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Selected research sources

• Empirical research from educational and occupational psychology, neuroscience, education, adult learning, and other fields

• Focus on • up‐to‐date research work • findings relevant to this presentation

• Caveat• Not a survey view nor a comprehensive overview of all the main research on the related topics

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Professional training context

• Compliance with policies and laws: safety, security, legal handling of data, proper workplace processes for supervision, due process service on committees, national security, and others

• Regular updates to policies and laws, half‐life of information • Informed by new cases and the world

• Required for the institution of higher education as a matter of business • For employees: (1) awareness and recognition, (2) attitude and stance, (3) professional decision‐making, and (4) workplace behavior

• Transformational learning from critical reflection in order to create meaning and break out of unthinking habits and to see things in a new light; focuses on the thinking as important (and working through epistemic, socio‐cultural, and psychic distortions) and not the doing (Mezirow)

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Some contemporary technological affordances for online teaching and learning

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• Multimedia‐rich contents for multimodal delivery • Variety of authoring tools for interactive digital learning objects (DLOs)

• Digital learning object re‐use and sharing (think SCORM, Tin Can APIprotocols)

• Machine learning applied to human learning• Mapping of optimized learning paths for particular learning contexts

• Data collection and analytics per and across learners (including “big data” analytics)

• Customizable learning (based on learner profiles, based on on‐the‐fly learner behavior during the learning) • Automated (non‐human‐led) training options with rich feedback loops

• Deployment of automated co‐learner ‘bots

Some contemporary technological affordances for online teaching and learning (cont.)

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• Built‐in accessibility features (alt‐texting, timed text integrations with videos, auto‐transcription in online video delivery)

• Auto‐translation of websites across languages (expressed through UTF‐8 charset)

• Machine reading and linguistic analysis of human textual and spoken communications

• Object analysis and sentiment analysis of people’s visual communications

• Web‐scale delivery, MOOC platforms, mobile platform delivery • Across‐systems interoperability (LTIs)

• Persistent online learning contexts and learning over time• Virtual immersive worlds with in‐world physics

• Learning management systems (LMSes)

• Across‐systems badging and credentialing, federated learner performance record‐keeping

Adult learners

• Adult learners will have gaps (not equal access or opportunity during developmental periods, with severe differences in learning opportunities based on class and wealth factors); inconsistent learning opportunities through a life span • Known cognitive developmental “windows” which certain types of learning have to be achieved (and if not, some unbridgeable gaps in terms of percentile rankings, such as in establishing reading skills by age 9) during the life span (Hirsch, 1996, p. 44)

• Different cultural expectations for learning and learning preferences (based on nature and nurture)• Informed by lived life experiences (diverse and different backgrounds)

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Adult learners (cont.)

• Will explore multiple sources for learning • Tend to be time‐constrained • May pursue “just‐in‐time” and “anytime, anywhere” learning at the point‐of‐need (such as through mobile devices)

• Require credentialing options to indicate capabilities and knowledge for professional workplaces

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Andragogy

• Autonomous and self‐directed adult learners

• Require motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic) to learn

• Expect respect for who they are and what they already know

• Expect to have a voice in the learning; need to be heard and to have options

• Goal‐oriented, practical applications

• Desire for relevant and applicable learning, little patience for theory

• Prefer kinesthetic or hands‐on (“learning by doing”) learning

• Prefer connecting new learning to prior knowledge

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Focus: Six Areas of Human Capabilities Related to Learning

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Six sections

1. Perception: human sensing systems in engaging the external and internal environments

2. Cognition: sense‐making from sensory input and experiences 3. Learning: acquisition of knowledge and skills from study and

experience 4. Memory: recall in short‐ and long‐term contexts 5. Decision‐making: selecting from possible actions 6. Action‐taking: following through on a course‐of‐action

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(The above is an copyright‐free image of a robot from Pixabay.)

1 Perception

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(“Normalized response spectra of human cones, to monochromatic spectral stimuli, with wavelength given in nanometers,” by BenRG, 2009, released on Wikipedia)

1 Perception

• Classic: • Near senses: smell, taste, touch• Far senses: sight, hearing • And elicited senses: echolocation • Internal senses / embodiment / proprioception (through muscle spindles and joints), somatosensory inputs (tactual or through touch, through the skin), vestibular system (involving balance, movement, perception of place of the body, and the inner ear and other systems) • interoception (internal senses describing internal physical states)• exteroception (exterior senses sensing stimuli from outside the body)

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ProprioceptionInteroception: sensory signals from internal sources to the body

Exteroception: sensory signals from external sources to the body

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“The cerebellum is largely responsible for coordinating the unconscious aspects of proprioception,” 2013, originally from National Institutes of Health, shared by jkwchui on Wikipedia.

1 Perception (cont.)

• Human senses fairly limited in the world • Limits to what is seeable in the light wave spectrum • Limits to what is hearable in the sound wave spectrum

• Signals come from the environment (externally)…but also from the mind (internally) and body (internally) • Human mind creates perceptual illusions of various types, including optical illusions

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• Human perceptual capabilities evolve and change over time and are affected by • lifestyle, health, aging…and• augmentary technologies…and • attention and focus…and • memory…and • training, and more .

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• There are many augmentations to human perception that enhance the acuity of the natural senses. • Some (eye glasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, binoculars, and others) enable “extended” experiential vision and hearing.

• Other augmentations (chemical “sniffers,” temperature gauges, infra red cameras, light sensors, ultrasound, and other technical tools) enable “sensing” of aspects of the environment beyond the human perceivable spectrum.

• There are “sensory substitution technologies” to enable other human senses to stand‐in for limited sensory capabilities (Smith, Apr. 28, 2014).

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2 Cognition

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(“Major brain areas involved in action selection” by Tamas Madl, Bernard J. Baars, and Stan Franklin, 2011, released on Wikipedia)

2 Cognition

• Cognition refers to the interpretation of the sensory signals from the perception system. • Cognition (the sensemaking of perceptual signals) depends on how actively people pay attention and engage the environment and others and experiences that may contribute to the learning.

• Bandura (1993) cites the importance of self‐efficacy in engaging cognition. • Cognition is affected by a person’s biological “hard wiring” and also by lifestyle effects (including training), but more of the first than the latter.

• Some researchers conceptualize cognitive styles as two dimensions: • Wholist vs. analytic (part) dimension • Verbalizer / imager dimension (Rayner & Riding, 1998, in Cognitive Styles and Learning Strategies: Understanding Style Differences in Learning and Behaviour)

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2 Cognition (cont.)

• Cognition may inform analytical capability, planning, and foresight.• Curiosity is a net positive for human learning and engagement with others and the environment.

• A healthy skepticism is useful to question cognition and what was sensed and interpreted. A “naïve realism,” if unquestioned and untested, can lead to erroneous conclusions.

• In terms of what is seen (visually perceived) by people, 40% comes from visual signals, and the remaining 60% is informed by patterns observed from prior experiences and memory (Catmull, 2014, p. 178).• It helps to know what a person’s tendencies are in terms of interpretations, so that such biasesmay be accounted for and counter‐balanced. History informs, but it can overshadow newer interpretations.

• People with broader cognitive schemas (mental models, conceptual models) may better interpret complex sensory information.

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2 Cognition (cont.)

• Cognition may be explicit (conscious) or implicit (latent, unnoticed by the conscious mind, unconscious). • Latent cognitions may be elicited through various research means.

• Unconscious cognition suggests that people arrive at ideas and decisions without being aware of the reasoning process and apply interpretations of their own actions ex post facto (and there is a fair amount of research that suggests that that is how this happens).

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2 Cognition (cont.)

• There is a dissociation between unconscious and conscious cognition where unconscious cognition is independent and dominant (to conscious processing); unconscious cognition processing is automatic and bottom‐up, covert, and implicit, resulting in procedural and non‐declarative representations (Augusto, 2016, p. 296). • Unconscious cognition engages “parallel” processing while conscious cognition engages “serial” (one item at a time) processing (and is therefore a lot slower and costlier for the brain to engage) (Augusto, 2016, p. 296).

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2 Cognition (cont.)

• “Situated cognition” suggests that knowing occurs from engaging actively in “social, cultural and physical contexts” in an embodied way.

• People make sense of the sensory information based on the context they’re in.

• In new contexts, the accuracy of understanding of the environmental signals may be much lesser than in a familiar context.

• Sometimes, expectations of an environment though make people less capable of seeing change (“change blindness”) or anything unexpected in the context and seeing unexpected information.

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3 Learning

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(“Learning process and quality standards,” by Maria Cruz, Jaime Anstee, and Katy Love, adapted from the Ohio Department of Education, 2015, released on Wikipedia)

3 Learning

• Learning refers to the acquisition of new knowledge through experiences and study (including reflection and thinking).

• In general, learning proceeds developmentally from the simple to the complex, the foundational to the specialized.

• Rote memorization, emulation, and simpler forms of learning may be important to learn some basic factual information.

• At the highest levels of learning is the application of complex knowledge and skills to creatively and effectively solve real‐world problems without causing more problems.

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New Bloom’s Taxonomy (with “Creating” at the Pinnacle)

31(“New Bloom’s Pyramid,” by Andrea Hernandez, shared on Flickr)

Note: “Creating” (innovation) has been added at the apex in this new Bloom’s Pyramid. The older one used to have “Evaluating” at the top.

Bloom’s Taxonomy “Learning in Action”

32(“Bloom’s Taxonomy – Learning in Action” / “Bloom’s Rose,” by K. Ainsqatsi, on Wikipedia, CC By‐SA 3.0)

Note: This visualization ties Bloom’s Taxonomy to lived‐level practices and activities. This serves as a bridge between the theory of the taxonomy and actual practices.

3 Learning (cont.)

Learning at the Unconscious, Subconscious, and Conscious Levels• People can learn consciously, sub‐consciously, and unconsciously.

• Unconscious learning often happens below the level of human consciousness (awareness), and the learned information may affect the person’s thoughts and behaviors below the level of consciousness. People’s perception and learning are not completely filtered by attention.

• There is purposive learning using the subconscious and unconscious, such as during sleep or under hypnosis. • One example is “memory reactivation for language learning during sleep” (Schreiner & Rasch, 2016).

• Conscious learning requires engagement of learner motivation and focused attention. • Conscious learning requires purposive acquisition of knowledge, reflection or mulling and / or practice over the learning to understand, evolution of the mental models to situate the new knowledge, and effort to encode that into long‐term memory.

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3 Learning (cont.)

Different Types of Learning• There are different types of learning:

• instrumental learning (classical conditioning, operant conditioning; learning by reinforcement—such as rewards or punishments),

• procedural learning (motor skills, complex activities), • psychomotor learning (connections between the brain and physical activities, like driving a car, cooking, bike riding, exercising, and others), and others

• perceptual learning (improved or more sensitive perception), • verbal learning (learning through language‐based means, both spoken and written), and

• serial learning (memorizing items in order, recall, often based on rote memorization), and others

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3 Learning (cont.)

Learning Preferences and Learning Modalities• People learn through a variety of modalities. • Based on nature and nurture, people may have different learning preferences.

• The Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is one personality test used to map cognitive learning styles based on the following dimensions: • Extraversion / Introversion • Sensing / Intuition • Thinking / Feeling • Judging / Perceiving

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Cognitive functions related to personality types per the MBTIImage description: “A diagram depicting the cognitive functions of each Myers‐Briggs type. A type’s background color represents its dominant function and its text color represents its auxiliary function.”

(by Jake Beech, 2013, released on Wikipedia)

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MBTI personality types

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(“A chart with descriptions of each Myers‐Briggs personality type as well as instructions for how to determine one’s type,” 2014, by Jake Beech, released on Wikipedia)

3 Learning (cont.)

Minimizing Competition for Attention• Emotional overload / emotional “flooding” can hinder learning.

• Anxiety, whether generalized or specific, may hinder learning, if it is excessive. Having some anxiety, though, can enhance learning.

• Hunger can be distractive and hinder learning, particularly in children. • People cannot effectively multi‐task (but they switch focus swiftly between tasks), so controlling for distractions is important.

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3 Learning (cont.)

No “Unlearning” but Learning Over Prior Learning• People do not “unlearn” something as if it never happened in the first place; rather, they build new learning over old learning. • It helps to get it right the first time. • If the learning is not accurate, new learning should be applied over the prior learning.

• Over time, new paradigms and models will emerge, and there may be competing conceptualizations. • It is possible to hold multiple contradictory conceptualizations simultaneously and not rush to accepting one concept over another.

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3 Learning (cont.)

Habituations• People commit to “keystone habits” which may be difficult to change or to overwrite with new behaviors. • People go through cue‐routine‐reward loops which may be unconscious or subconscious.

• To control and / or revise these cue‐routine‐reward loops, people need to raise these to consciousness and control the exposure to the cues and their responses to the cues (Duhigg, 2012).

• Some research suggests that changes in habits may be fragile…but may be achievable with some 21 days of new practice.

• Reversion to older habits may occur particularly when people are under stress or fatigue.

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3 Learning (cont.)

Overlearning• There is a theory that suggests that “practicing newly acquired skills beyond the point of initial mastery leads to automaticity” (being able to practice the skill in an automatic way, with little cognitive oversight) (“Overlearning,” May 16, 2016)

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4 Memory

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(“Memory as Used in Various Branches of Academia,” 2011, by Bernard Wenzl, released on Wikipedia)

4 Memory

Where is Memory?• Memory involves multiple regions of the brain and in a sense is a “brain‐wide” process. However, the medial temporal lobe is generally the location for both declarative and episodic memory.

• The limbic system is thought to process memory (particularly the hippocampus). (“Neuroanatomy of memory,” July 14, 2015)

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4 Memory (cont.)

Short‐term Memory and Long‐term Memory• People are thought to have

• short‐term “working memory” which can hold up to about 7 discrete objects at a time (and which lasts from a few seconds to a few minutes), and

• long‐term memory, which can hold information well into old age • some suggest that there is also “intermediate long term” memory which lasts days to weeks

• Because of the large amounts of information in people’s environments, the brain has to select from short‐term memory to decide if the information is necessary or sufficiently important or salient to retain.

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4 Memory (cont.)

Short‐term Memory and Long‐term Memory (cont.)• Based on biological and environmental influences, the brain is better at handling some types of information than others. • The human brain remembers threat longer than other types of information because of the inherent need for self preservation. To this end, threats are more salient (noticeable).

• The brain is drawn to and remembers aesthetic beauty in part because of the reproduction imperative. Facial symmetry and youth seen as “beautiful” because these features represent health.

• The brain is not as good at some modern tasks like “mental math” and other complex problem solving without aids.

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4 Memory (cont.)

Memories and Revisions• Memories are constantly being reinterpreted and revised.

• The brain itself is thought to contribute to this memory plasticity (this ability to be shaped or molded) due to synaptic plasticity.

• Memories are susceptible to manipulation and suggestion.

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Conceptualizations of memory

47By Bernhard Wenzl, released on Wikipedia

4 Memory (cont.)

Different Conceptualizations of Memories• There are different types of memories:

• explicit (declarative) memory and • implicit memory (which enables actions to be done by rote memory)

• Autobiographical experiential memories (preserved in episodic memory—or “spatial” and “temporal” memory) are informed by lifelong experiences. • Such individual memories inform self‐identity. People’s own histories are interpreted.

• Collective memories inform collective identities. Histories are interpretive.

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4 Memory (cont.)

Brain Networks and Memory• The “default mode network” (network of frequently interacting regions of the brain) informs memory, intelligence, and overall functioning.

• Keeping the brain active—making and reinforcing network connections—is important for brain functioning over time.

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Functional networks in the brain Image description: “Study showing four functional networks that were found to be highly consistent across subjects. These modules include the visual (yellow), sensory/motor (orange) and basal ganglia (red) cortices as well as the default mode network (posterior cingulate, inferior parietal lobes, and medial frontal gyrus (maroon). Overlap among these modules was present but minimal (white).”

[By Malaak N. Moussa, Matthew R. Steen, Paul J. Laurienti, and Satoru Hayasaka, PLoS One, 2012: 7(8): e44428. Released on Wikipedia]

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4 Memory (cont.)

Factors Affecting Memory Loss / Diminishment• Researchers have observed a “forgetting curve” (downward sloping time‐series curve) or a decrease in memory of learned information over time.

• Brains shrink with age. • The hippocampus (of the limbic system) is important for long‐term memory; it loses its nerve cells with the passing decades, with loss of 20% of its nerve cells by the time a person reaches his / her 80s.

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4 Memory (cont.)

Factors Affecting Memory Loss / Diminishment (cont.)• Illnesses (such as strokes) may affect brain function. • Diseases may affect brain function. • Certain drugs affect brain functioning.• Injuries to particular areas of the brain or the whole brain may affect particular functioning. • Overall brain traumas may affect overall functioning, mood regulation, impulsivity, and other factors.

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5 Decision‐making “intelligence” as an integration of all elements…how a person brings together perception, cognition, learning, memory, decision‐making and action‐taking (acquisition of knowledge and its application) decision‐making

… in an individual context … in a group context

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(“Example of a simple Markov Decision Process with three states and two actions,” 2006, by MistWiz, released on Wikipedia)

Multiple intelligences

• Multiple intelligences per Howard Gardner (1983, Frames of Mind): • logical‐mathematical, • linguistic, • spatial, • musical, • kinesthetic, • interpersonal, • intrapersonal…initially…• and also naturalist and existential intelligences and moral intelligence (later added by Gardner)

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IQ and EQ and EI

• IQ (“intelligence quotient”) and EQ (“emotional quotient”) or EI (“emotional intelligence”) • IQ (1912) a summary metric or score • IQ tests are designed for different age groups • IQ tests (classically) may involve reasoning, analysis, analogical thinking, language use, spatial analysis, cognitive problem‐solving ability, and other factors

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IQ and EQ and EI (cont.)

• Emotional intelligence (EI) as emotional self‐ and other‐awareness (such as reading others’ facial expressions and body language), • ability to be self‐aware and to control one’s own emotions, • ability to moderate the emotions of others (such as through humor and other types of messaging),

• ability to interpret others’ internal emotional states and thoughts, • ability to empathize with others, • high self‐impulse control,

• ability to delay gratification (marshmallow experiment with pre‐schoolers, also with 4‐year‐olds),

• ability to be patient and persistent, • ability to be resilient in the face of challenges, hardships, and surprises ]

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IQ and EQ and EI (cont.)

• EQ (EI) has long‐term benefits for • human well‐being, • human health (lower BMI, for example), • success in interpersonal relationships, and • in job stability (and lifetime earnings), among others

• EQ may be seen in children 4‐years‐old and older

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Fluid reasoning (Gf) and crystalized intelligence (Gc)• “Fluid reasoning” (Gf or “g factor”/”general mental ability”/) refers to both the ability to think creatively and the ability to problem‐solve when faced with a novel challenge or situation (without drawing on past knowledge). • “Fluid reasoning” (Gf) involves a range of types of reasoning: nonverbal reasoning (general logic); sequential (starting with rules and extracting processes and actions; starting with a condition, and moving to a solution), quantitative (application of inductive and deductive logic), categorical reasoning (understanding and extracting types), and so on.

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Fluid reasoning (Gf) and crystalized intelligence (Gc) (cont.)• “Crystalized intelligence” (Gc) refers to acquired / learned knowledge and verbal reasoning skills (which enable the uses of skills, knowledge, and experience)• May be seen in vocabulary and acquired knowledge • Usually acquired through formal learning (“Fluid and crystallized intelligence,” Jan. 9, 2016)

• Ideas were developed by Raymond Cattell (1971) and John L. Horn.

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John B. Carroll’s Three Stratum Theory of Human Intelligence (1993)

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(underlying image by Tim Bates, image released on Wikimedia Commons)

“CHC Periodic Table of Human Abilities”

• Cattell‐Horn‐Carroll (CHC) model of cognitive abilities (late 1990s, 2011) • Domain‐independent capacities (fluid reasoning, short‐term working memory, long‐term retrieval, processing speed, reaction and decision speed, and psychomotor speed)

• Acquired knowledge systems (comprehensive knowledge, domain specific knowledge, reading and writing, and quantitative knowledge)

• Sensory‐motor domain specific abilities (visual processing, auditory processing, tactile abilities, olfactory abilities, kinesthetic abilities, and psychomotor abilities) (from Schneider & McGrew, 2012, and McGrew, LaForte and Schrank, 2014, as cited by McGrew, 2014, Institute for Applied Psychometrics)

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5 Decision‐making

Studies in Human Decision‐making• Human decision‐making has long been studied particularly in the contexts of psychology, microeconomics, game theory, political science, emergency planning, and other fields.

• Decision theory (or theory of choice) is a generalist theory about how people make decisions from a number of choices. Various research contributes to decision‐theory, many of them probability‐based.

• There are other theories like game theory (1944), expectancy theory(1964) and prospect theory (1979)

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5 Decision‐making (cont.)

Rational Decision‐making?• Some core observations have been that people do not often make the observably rational choices.

• People’s psychological needs may trump rational concerns. • Humans have a need to protect their self‐identity and egos (and so will sell stocks that are rising in value to feel like they’ve gained and hold stocks that are losing value).

• They will believe in “hot hands” in gambling even though the prior roll of the dice does not have any statistical effect on the next roll.

• People over‐value whatever they think they have touched or have had an influence on and will over‐price items they’re selling (well against market value). Conversely, they may under‐value something else not based on the inherency of the thing and market pricing but based on irrelevant data.

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Rational Decision‐making? (cont.)

• Unless trained and well disciplined, people do not look at real‐world probabilities when making decisions. • They will often trust intuitions and emotions over probabilities when making judgments.

• People may be unconsciously primed with subtle cues that may influence their attitudes and behavior without their knowledge. In other words, people can be manipulated without their awareness.

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Risk Preferences• Based on personality traits, people have differing appetites for risk, which affect their decision‐making.

• People who are consistent in their risk preference across three domains—work, health, and personal finance—tend to be risk‐averse. People who vary in their risk preference across the three domains tend to combine different aspects of personality and decision‐making factors (Soane & Chmiel, 2005).

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Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 Thinking in Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

System 1: Automatic• “System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 20)• Is the default situation for people• Tends to be “unthinking”

System 2: Effortful • “System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 20)

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Features of System 1 and System 2 thinking

System 1: Suggestive • Associational, links experiences / ideas / memories from the environment that may have no factual relation • Susceptible to priming (differing levels of suggestibility in people)

• Cognitive ease (from “repeated experience, clear display, primed idea, good mood”) leads to ease which leads to illusory feelings of familiarity, true‐ness, good‐ness, and effortlessness (Kahneman, 2011, p. 60)

System 2: Aware, deliberate, and logical• Practices individual agency and self‐direction • Executive application of attention, mental resources, concentration

• Focus on systematic information gathering and applied problem‐solving

• Deliberative and logical

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Features of System 1 and System 2 thinking (cont.)

System 1: Informed by past • Builds on an individual’s existing worldview and pays attention to “surprises” to that view (Kahneman, 2011, p. 71) • Weights information with a confirmation bias (selecting information that aligns with what one already believes / worldview)

• Tends to support belief persistence • Reads patterns of causation where none may exist (Ch. 6)

• WYSIATI (“what you see is all there is”) (p. 85)

System 2: Controls for past influence through systematic analysis • Include team members with a diversity of world views • Enable discomfort and new thinking by the inclusion of a range of different thinkers

• Supports “psychological safety” to enable optimal teaming (Duhigg, Feb. 25, 2016)

• Challenge patterns of causation which may have emerged for validity; entertain a number of interpretations of the same facts

• Constantly strive to capture new information to avoid the WYSIATI fallacy

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Features of System 1 and System 2 thinking(cont.)

System 1: Over‐confident • Tends towards confidence (vs. doubt) or “the illusion of understanding” (Kahneman, 2011, p. 113, Ch. 19)• Hindsight bias or 20/20 hindsight assumptions

• May be manipulated with the anchoring effect (a form of priming) (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 11)• Salespeople putting out a certain number to

anchor a value at the beginning of a negotiation • May be affected by availability bias or what comes to mind easily being mistaken for truth / reality (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 11)

System 2: Questioning and doubting • Applies self‐doubt for initial impressions and has the resolution to follow through on decisions based on objectively arrived facts • Does not jump to a conclusion right away; does not answer right away; does not confuse availability of an idea with truth

• Questions one’s own perceptions • Avoids the manipulation of others’ through their storytelling, priming, use of stereotypes, simplistic solutions, untruths, and so on

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Features of System 1 and System 2 thinking (cont.)

System 1: Makes spurious linkages• Tends towards stereotyping or going with the easy summary (often informed by affect and speed)

• Discounts probabilities • Tends towards causal storytelling and narratives of the past for sensemaking (naïve realism) than actual analysis (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 19); unlimited patterns may be found in data • Creates coherence where none exists in the real (Gestalt theory of visual illusions)

• Assumes a simpler world than there is

System 2: Assesses more accurately based on facts and empirics• Uses a “base rate” to begin a profile or analysis • Understands regression to the mean • Understands probabilities based on statistical analysis

• Avoids the influence of stereotypes • Is aware of but avoids the influences of internal and external narratives

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System 1: Gullible• Applies “halo effects” on people by giving them more credit for something than is reasonable

• Tends towards intuitions (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 18) and more extreme predictions (than would be normative)• Makes large assumptions on little data

• Goes with the “illusion of validity” (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 20)

System 2: Somewhat less gullible • Creates more systematic and empirically based ways to understand complex in‐world phenomena (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 21)

• Expert “intuition” / judgment has to be informed by empirical research, logic, expertise, practice, feedback… (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 22)

• Does not over‐value memories, which are highly malleable and disruptable(such as recorded in planted “false memories” research)

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System 1: Focused on protecting ego• May lead to decisions to protect ego (psychological need) and self‐esteem rather than rational decisions (such as in economic and financial decision‐making) in a “self‐serving bias” • Endowment effect leads to over‐valuating anything that one has touched (instead of using the market as a guide to value) (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 27)

• Tending to like being with other people who make individuals feel better about themselves by comparison

System 2: Strives to avoid the negative influences of ego • Makes decisions based on rational self‐interest (expectancy theory) and facts but without shorting others for their strengths and uniquenesses

• Strives to avoid influence of ego in decision‐making, which may lead to over‐valuing of things related to the self, ego protection, self‐esteem protection, and excessive risk aversion (avoidance of paying a “regret premium” for negative outcomes from decisions) • Have a reasonable assessment of self based on facts and not an excess of self‐love

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System 1: Emotional application of statistical probabilities • Prospect theory finds that people tend toward risk aversion and protectionism in decision‐making in contexts of potential gains and risks (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 26)

• People overestimate probabilities of unlikely or rare events and apply this overweighting in their decision‐making (Kahneman, 2011, p. 324)

• Memories are constantly being created and recreated and are manipulable (Kahneman, 2011, Ch. 36)

System 2: Balances usage of statistical probabilities appropriately • Weighs probability of events based on real‐world statistics and facts • Does not overweight probabilities such as to assume determinism (or falling into “self‐fulfilling prophecy”)

• Can understand surprise “black swan” events for which normal frequency curves and normal probabilities do not apply (Taleb, 2008, 2010)

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“Big 5” personality traits

• Extraversion: Sociability, gregariousness, assertiveness (vs. solitariness, reservedness)• Agreeableness: Altruism, trust, cooperativeness (vs. being analytical, detached)• Openness to experience: Broad interests, abstract thinking, imaginativeness, insightful‐ness (vs. caution, consistency)

• Conscientiousness: Thoughtfulness, self‐control, goal‐directed behaviors (vs. carelessness, easy‐going‐ness)

• Neuroticism: Moodiness, emotional instability, insecurity (vs. confidence, security) Notes

• Model originated from factor analysis, so an emergent set of five (initially unlabeled) clusters.

• Think of each feature as a continuum and people being a combination of varying degrees on the five main core traits. Some research suggests that a majority of people are somewhere in the middle of the continuums, with some closer to one pole or the other.

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Unique Profiles of the “Big 5” Personality Traits

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Two meta‐traits subsuming the “Big 5” character traits

Stability (“alpha”)• Emotional stability • Agreeableness• Conscientiousness…

• Strongly predicts task performance (positively)

Plasticity (“beta”)• Extraversion • Openness…

• Strongly predicts task performance (positively) but a little less powerfully than alpha

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(Zhang & Schutte, 2015)


Groups and Decision‐making• People, as social beings, make different decisions when they are in the company of others. • In the company of others, they may be emboldened to behave in ways that they would not otherwise. This issue has been studied in law enforcement settings, particularly in police‐involved shootings.

• In the company of others, they may be strengthened in their collective skills. This has been studied in air flight.

• Cohorts, overall, tend to be much more judgmental of their peers than those outside a cohort group.

• In couples, there is the “madness of two” or folie à deux, with each contributing to the others’ senses of the world.

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Groups and Decision‐making (cont.)

• In group meetings, there are a number of known risks to decision‐making, including: groupthink, obedience to authority, attraction to charisma, social conformity, Abilene paradox, and others. • To combat such limitations, groups structure the work in different ways so as not to lead to poor decision‐making.

• There are assigned 10th (wo)man and “red cell” approaches. • These individuals or groups are assigned to think the unthinkable, and they provide deeply divergent interpretations of the known facts. Their role is to broaden conceptualizations of the others in the group to prevent the narrowing of understandings (or various forms of “tunnel vision”).

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Groups and Decision‐making (cont.)

• In large‐group contexts, there are risks of “mob” or “herd” mentalities (and large‐group stampedes), or highly decentralized decision‐making, with people just following the mass actions without necessarily thinking.

• With news coverage of people’s behaviors, there may sometimes be copycat phenomena and clusters of emulative behavior. • Emotions are infectious. Behaviors are infectious. • Fandom can be taken to extremes based on extreme emulations.

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Decision‐making in conditions of risk and uncertainty

Decision‐making under Duress• In unexpected and high‐risk emergency conditions, people often dawdle and fail to act in logical self‐preserving ways (Ripley, 2008). • People can be trained to respond more effectively, such as through trainings, simulations, drills, and other methods.

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Decision‐making in conditions of risk and uncertainty (cont.)

Risk and Uncertainty• “Risk” environments have known likelihoods of risk outcomes; “uncertainty” environments have unknown phenomenon, unknown probabilities, and unknown alternatives.

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Risk and Uncertainty (cont.)

• In contexts of possible gain and loss, people tend to focus excessively on potential loss even if there is low probability of loss.

• Men more likely to be risk‐seeking than women. • Individual’s propensity for risk may be assessed in various ways, including through “certainty broadcasts” (communicated verbal and nonverbal cues of “how confident people feel about their current, past, or future state or position” and how much control they feel they have in a context) (Moons, Spoor, Kalomiris, & Rizk, 2013, p. 80)

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Risk and Uncertainty (cont.)

• People with high intuitive thinking style are less risk‐averse (or more careful) than those with low intuitive thinking style; high rational thinking style persons more risk‐averse (or more careful) than those with low rational thinking style.

• High sensation‐seeking style individuals are more risk‐seeking than those with low‐sensation seeking styles (Van Nunen, Reniers, Ponnet, & Cozzani, 2016, p. 242).

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6 Action‐taking

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6 Action‐taking

Emotional Intelligence (EI)• Emotional stability and emotional intelligence are important in proper action‐taking (and in not making a situation worse).• “Reactance” refers to a response people take to reassert control when they feel others are crowding them and their decision‐making.

• Overall emotionality is highly associated with reactance in both genders (Middleton, Buboltz, & Sopon, 2015, p. 542). • Males high in emotional intelligence (particularly scores on well‐being, self‐control, and emotionality) have low behavioral reactance.

• For females, there was “no significant difference between high and low behavioral reactance, and any of the EI subscales.”

• Females with “higher verbal reactance scores have higher EI scores on emotionality and sociability” (p. 542).

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John Boyd’s OODA Loop

86By Patrick Edwin Moran, released on Wikipedia

6 Action‐taking

• Once people have arrived at a decision, they have to follow through with courses of action.

• Practice (such as drills) for taking appropriate actions matter and can result in a more effective response.

• Adaptive decision‐making requires regular taking of assessments and making adjustments to actions as new information arrives (per the fast‐cycled OODA loop / observe orient decide act loop).

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6 Action‐taking (cont.)

Personality and Performance • Which personality type “chokes” under pressure?

• Under pressure, those who tend to rank high on “neuroticism” tend to choke. • Also, those who tend towards agreeableness tend to have poorer performance in a high‐pressure situation.

• Both (those who rank high in neuroticism and those who tend towards agreeableness) may make more rational decisions in less pressured situations (Byrne, Silasi‐Mansat, & Worthy, 2015).

• Traits linked to poorer performance may be anxiety, narcissism, “fear of negative evaluation,” and others, based on “distraction theory” (Byrne, Silasi‐Mansat, & Worthy, 2015, p. 2). • There is a risk in focusing on the wrong thing when a situation requiring action occurs.

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Looking at Trainings through the Human Capabilities Lens

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A Training

Human Capabilities Features of the Training (strengths and weaknesses)

Perception

Cognition

Learning

Memory

Decision‐making

Action‐taking

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Comments? Questions?

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#

Review: Implications for Online Learning Designs (for Instructional Designers)• What human capabilities and features do you want to harness and align with—for proper

learning? • What human capabilities and features do you want to mitigate for—to achieve proper learning?

• What human capabilities and features do you want to augment with teaching methodologies and technologies?

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General (vs. domain‐specific) approaches that enable learning gain• Encourage learner self‐awareness and meta‐perspective on aspects of learning

• Design the learning to human capabilities…• By setting realistic expectations• By providing proper design and development• By being responsive to learner needs • By mitigating for learner weaknesses and gaps

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Designing for…

1 Perception Build to Actual Perception

• Use multimodal methods in the design, development, and delivery of online learning.

• Capture learner attention early on by…• posing a question that will be answered later on • showing the applied relevance of the learning• using color, sound, size, movement, aesthetic beauty, and other sensory‐rich factors to draw attention tactically and strategically (in learning‐relevant ways

• offering emotionally engaging, relevant, and true stories (built on facts and research) based on real people

• using multiple engaging examples • providing experiential learning sequences, and other methods

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Designing for…


Build to Actual Perception (cont.)

• Build to human tendencies in perception on various levels: conscious, sub‐conscious, and unconscious. • Engage perception pre‐attentively and attentively.

• Use layout and spatial relationships that build on trained aspects of human perception (“built spaces”), such as visualizations from top‐to‐bottom, left‐to‐right, in the Western and some other traditions.

• Test for learner perception of the relevant information. • Draw attention to the important parts of the learning through designed attentional devices, such main idea summaries and repetition.

• Also, reinforce the important parts of the learning by addressing the materials in multiple ways.

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Designing for…


Build to Accessibility• Ensure accessible design by adhering to Section 508 accessibility standards, accessibility, and universal design principles. • Make sure that the information is delivered in multiple channels (textual, auditory, visual, and others) and in informationally equivalent ways.

• Make sure video and audio files are captioned accurately. If captioning is not possible, include a transcript.

• Ensure that scans of articles are searchable and machine‐readable. Such scans should not be image files.

• Make sure that color palettes are designed to include those who may be color blind. Use high contrast colors. Use text labels to label visual information.

• Build data tables to be coherent for users using screen readers, and others.

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Designing for…


Build to Accessibility (cont.)• Consider invisible challenges such as symbolic processing ones (innumeracy, reading challenges like dyslexia, and others).

• Continue to evolve the training to ensure broad accessibility. • Build the digital learning objects to align with available technologies in the field like screen readers. • Avoid requiring mouse interactions for accessibility. Enable keyboard shortcuts and accessibility devices for human interaction.

• Enable learners to adjust the parameters for speed of animations, level of sound, speed and replay of video, and so on. • Learner control of speed of transient multimedia information (and intake speed) is paramount.

• Learner agency (such as from growing efficacy) is important (and is linked to learning and risk‐taking in learning).

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Designing for…


Build to Accessibility (cont.)• While offering options for access, avoid excessive redundancy because of cognitive load issues (on both the visual and auditory channels) and risks of distraction (based on Richard Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning) • “Intrinsic” cognitive load is determined by the nature of the learning contents • “Germane” cognitive load is the actual mental effort applied to the learning• “Extraneous” cognitive load is extra effort needed to acquire the learning because of poor instructional design

• Offer options in some of the assessments and assignments • Control for unconscious and sub‐conscious perception by ensuring a clear message (without unintended or negative learning)• Messaging can be quite nuanced, so do ensure that even nuanced messages and possible inferences are

accurate • Offer supports for learners with differing abilities, such as lead‐up learning and lead‐away learning (lead‐up learning to prepare for the main online learning, lead‐away learning to bolster the effect of the online learning), downloadables as reminders (to minimize learning decay), and others

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Designing for…

2 Cognition Build to Known Cognition

• Build to the human tendencies to • feel successful and capable, • remember faces (facial recognition in the fusiform gyrus), • pay attention to perceived threats, • enjoy stories, • play and explore, and • solve puzzles.

• Design learning to maximize human capabilities at processing sensory experiences. • Lessen distractions, so learners may employ their cognition and attend to the learning.

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Designing for…

2 Cognition (cont.)Build to Known Cognition (cont.)

• Treat cognition as a limited resource (cognitive load). • Build credibility and trust in the learning, so cognitive load related to non‐trust is lessened.

• Phase learning contents in a developmental way. Allow various points‐of‐entry for the learning.• Chunk the learning experiences in easy‐to‐manage ways. • Allow different paths through the learning.

• Employ the imagination and spark emotions to attend to “the unconscious meaning‐making processes at work within the human psyche”…and to enable transformative learning (Dirkx, 2006, p. 20).

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Designing for…

2 Cognition (cont.)Lower the Pressure

• Reduce learner anxiety by making the learning experience low‐risk. • Allow plenty of time for the learning. • Enable opportunities for rehearsal. • Explain the learning with clarity at every point. Provide multiple ways to understand the material.

• Lower learner anxiety by enabling “interpersonal help‐seeking” (Wart & Downing, 2000).

• Offer plenty of learner support. 101

Designing for…

2 Cognition (cont.)Lower the Pressure (cont.)

• Create a psychologically safe learning context. • Keep people from emotionally flooding by keeping their moods positive.

• Address any concerns in a timely way to head off misunderstandings. • Elicit learner understandings and sentiments. • Head off counter‐productive attitudes and misunderstandings with finesse and without causing hurt feelings.

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Designing for…

2 Cognition (cont.) Lower the Pressure (cont.)

• Online learning itself may cause anxiety but learner stress may be somewhat mitigated by high time allowance to prepare for online learning; clear and complete course details; supportive (facilitative, collaborative) instructors; a sense of online learning community (Conrad, 2002) • Use a consistent learning design (and templates). Consistency conveys security and trust.

• Use consistent naming protocols for files. • Enable easy referencing by using slide numbers, page numbers, section numbers and headers, and so on.

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Designing for…

2 Cognition (cont.) Watch the Social Dynamics

• Support social cognitive endeavors by encouraging learners expression of their presence in online learning through shared messaging, tasking, and profile information sharing (based on constructivist theory).• Encourage learner persistence and grit (against fragility). • Encourage learner resilience against challenges and stressors.

• Control for negative dynamics such as online harassments, expressions of schadenfreude, rushes to judgment, vengeance‐seeking, and other negatives.

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Designing for…

2 Cognition (cont.)

Encourage Learner Self‐awareness • Help learners become aware of implicit / explicit cognition during the learning process. • Help learners raise implicit cognition insights to a conscious level for improved awareness and performance.

• When learners are “naïve” in a context, it is better for them to own that naïvete instead of assuming inaccurate or guessed‐at knowledge. • Learners need to acknowledge their experiential / exposure limits without the interference of ego.

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Designing for…

2 Cognition (cont.)

Encourage Learner Self‐awareness (cont.)

• Make sure that the content and messaging are correct. • The text and subtext should work in alignment. • Examples should be relevant to the learning objective. • There should be appropriate learning feedback to control against incorrect or negative learning.

• Imagery used in the online learning should contain informational value and should not be merely decorative.

• Source references should be timely and appropriate.

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Designing for…

3 Learning Harness Internal Motivation and Natural Desire to Learn

• Authentically model a learning approach to the world by continuing to learn in an active and constructive way.

• Capture learner attention and engage learner (intrinsic) motivation by showing the importance of the learning. • Reward and reinforce accurate learning.• Do not use excessive extrinsic motivations because too much of the latter can actually be demotivating and mis‐focusing.

• Harness social motivations for learners by encouraging constructive learner interactivity. • Support the building of “communities of practice.”

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Harness Internal Motivation and Natural Desire to Learn (cont.)

• Encourage learners by showing the importance of effort. • Do not communicate that learning depends on nature vs. nurture.

• To assume that one’s capabilities are pre‐written by genetics is not only inaccurate but it shuts down human endeavors.

• Avoid communicating sexist or discriminatory messages about inherent capabilities of learners. • Messaging matters, even highly nuanced ones (such as reminding test takers of their gender just prior to a high‐value assessment, in “stereotype threat” research).

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.) Harness Internal Motivation and Natural Desire to Learn (cont.)

• Motivate learners to learn by enabling “small wins” (Weick, 1984); help learners get beyond the fragility of commitment. • Commitments to learn become much more fragile over time, over difficulty, over frustration, over costs...

• Avoid offense and social embarrassment and such because that will shut people down.

• Increase each learner’s resilience and ability to cope with the rigor of learning.

• Help learners achieve various states of flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). • Harness learners’ own curiosity and interests to help them broaden their learning. Connect learners to your own social networks and resources to enable their growth.

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Structure the Learning

• Define the learning objectives as verb phrases, so learners know what they are focusing on learning.

• Create a developmental sequence which enables learning in a logical step‐by‐step way. • Pace in a way that challenges but does not overly frustrate learners. Aim for that Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD).

• Scaffold the learning to accommodate learners with varying levels of knowledge, differing backgrounds, and differing capabilities. • Enable pre‐learning for learners to warm to the topic and refresh on necessary knowledge. Enable post‐learning for learners to continue their studies beyond this particular learning experience. Support all learners in their explorations.

• Do not label learners because they are (much) more than a simple stereotype.

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Structure the Learning (cont.)

• In assessments, use real‐world distractors to create a nuanced sense of discernment.

• Offer schemas and models and rules to help learners understand interconnections. Help learners identify relevant patterns. Help them understand underlying principles and rules. • Offer mnemonics to enable more accurate memories of such schemas and interrelationships.

• Ensure that the proper language of the domain / field is used in the online learning, to enhance transferability into the field.

• “Situated cognition” is sometimes created using cases, scenarios, as well as full‐sensory experiences in immersive virtual worlds.

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Customize to Unique Learners

• Know the learners. Assess where they are in their learning. Accommodate their learning needs.

• Encourage learner exploration and creativity. • Encourage learner risk‐taking by creating a psychologically safe learning environment.

• Encourage learner question‐asking and hypothesizing where relevant. • Offer opportunities for accurate practice with sufficient feedback.

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Customize to Unique Learners (cont.)

• Ensure that learning is acquired correctly the first time because unlearning is impossible, and learning over a mistake does take extra work but is doable.• Elicit learner “mental models” and compare those against expert “conceptual models”.

• Support individual learner metacognition to enhance their self‐awareness of their learning styles and effective learning strategies and tactics / methods.

• Support collective learner metacognitive moments to understand the collective learning and the collective dynamics.

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.) Design Learning to the Desired Outcomes

• Enable immersive learning in contexts where 360 degrees and 24/7 enhance the learning (such as in intensive language learning).

• If muscle memory learning is important, ensure plenty of practice in real‐world scenarios.

• In complex learning contexts, use scenarios that play out differently based on decision‐making and choices. • Mimic the uncertainty in the real world. • Ensure appropriate prior training before going into scenarios, proper support during, and an effective debriefing for the learning at the end.

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Support Learner Self‐regulation

• Empirical research in student learning compares those who acquire particular learning vs. those who don’t and look at what is effective to the learning.

• Effective learners employ particular methods that enable them to tackle certain types of learning and learning tasks. • Learners do have different preferences for how they learn, with some methods feeling more “natural” to the particular learner.

• Talk‐through protocols are important for some types of learning to enable learner awareness of their thinking through an issue.

• Practice matters. To create expert skill sets, there is a foundational amount of actual hands‐on learning and practice required (some say 10,000 hours).

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Support Learner Self‐regulation (cont.)

• Learning is accumulative, like Velcro. Prior learning is an important basis on which to build future learning. It is important to set a firm and solid foundation at each stage of human development.

• Rote learning (memorization), while not in style, is critical for some types of knowledge acquisition.

• Encouragement is important because learning commitments can be fragile. • Giving unearned credit (kudos and affirmations) to learners to make sure they “pass” is detrimental to the learning and contributes to learner narcissism and hostility.

• Over‐protection of learners can be negative. Some adversities and challenges can strengthen learners’ resilience and adaptivity to the world.

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Deploy Learner Study Skills

• Study skills matter; these include the following: • Knowing the different types of reading (skimming, scanning, and academic) and how to apply the different types for different learning contexts • Increasing comprehension (meaning, tone, voice, genre, relevant patterns, and other aspects)• Increasing efficiency (accuracy with speed)

• Knowing how to take notes (with words, with drawings) for comprehension and memory enhancement

• Knowing and applying test‐taking strategies • Knowing how to write originally and effectively • Applying numeracy effectively • Applying geospatial knowledge effectively

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.)Deploy Learner Study Skills (cont.)

• Study skills include…• Knowing how to conduct effective research and evaluate source information for validity

• Understanding data and data visualizations • Applying logical thinking • Engaging abstractions • Understanding and applying technologies strategically and tactically • Maintaining a healthy lifestyle to enable effective learning, balancing life, work, and study

• Maintaining effective social relationships to enable effective learning, and others • Learners benefit from knowing the particular necessary study skills for their respective fields (and related peripheral domains).

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Designing for…

3 Learning (cont.) Provide Access to Learning Resources

• Expose learners to contexts where they may be supported in the learning on the particular topic beyond the course or training.

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Designing for…

4 MemoryCall Attention

• To move learning from short‐term memory to long‐term memory, encode the learning by calling attention to what learners should remember with…• Callouts, key terms, key concepts, and mnemonics• Visualizations • Simulations• Stories • Characters• Models and schemas • Principles

• Enable learners to “reflect,” so that they can encode the new learning to memory. Avoid interferences that may interrupt the learning.

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(En)coding to different types of memories

Non‐declarative implicit procedural memory• Some memories may be encoded implicitly and latently to the individual. These implicit memories may affect thoughts and behaviors without the person being aware of the influence. • Once learned, bicycle riding is an action taken in an automatic way without need for much conscious thought.

• Such memories may be acquired through practice and muscle memory. To encode that, learners have to go through plenty of practice and develop the embodied approach.

Declarative / explicit memory • Explicit memory is divided into two types: episodic memory (personal experiences) and semantic memory (factual information)

• For conscious declarative memory learning and recollection, the executive function has to be engaged… to code to the explicit memory system.

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(En)coding to different types of memories (cont.)

Work with Multi‐memory Systems• Some learning taps into both non‐declarative and declarative memory systems.

• Humans function with a multi‐memory system. • To tap both systems, enable plenty of (the right kind of) practice to reinforce the learning and the encoding to long‐term memory.

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Designing for…

4 Memory (cont.) Support Memory Systems

• Because short‐term and working memory can hold just a few elements at a time, complex information should be conveyed in an understandable way. Excessive information and complexity may be too overwhelming.

• Make sure that the learning delivered and the learning received is accurate before learners encode to memory.• Elicit learner impressions to improve the designed online learning.

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Designing for…

4 Memory (cont.) Support Memory Systems (cont.)

• Encourage early practice after new learning (usually within three hours after the learning and then again within the first 48 hours after the first learning), so that the information doesn’t get forgotten. • Also, people may get intimidated by the new learning and simply not commit to the work.

• Offer formative assessments and other types of feedback loops to enhance the learning and encoding into memory.

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Designing for…

4 Memory (cont.) Promote Psychological Safety for Learning

• Support people’s self‐awareness of their own memory strengths and weaknesses through the study of meta‐memory. This may help people to more consciously deploy their memory resources.

• Use proper emotional touchpoints to encode important points. Emotional salience enhances encoding to long‐term memory.

• Avoid undue stress / discomfort / distraction in the learning.

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Designing for…

4 Memory (cont.)Consider the Social

• People often prefer to learn socially in a constructivist way. Support the creation of “communities of practice.”

• Given human over‐confidence (often certitude) in their own capabilities and their need for social face‐saving, offer summative assessments as well for clear awareness of actual knowledge and capabilities (vs. social performance of artificial knowledge). • Offer a variety of assessments to capture actual knowledge and capabilities that take into account preferred learning approaches.

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Designing for…

4 Memory (cont.) Work Against Memory Decay

• Encourage learner creation of learning journals and other artifacts that enhance their memory and access to the learning.

• Offer regular trainings and practice so that people stay fresh with the relevant knowledge and skills.

• Help learners stave off memory decay / forgetting through refresher learning resources and downloadables.

• Ensure the availability of continuous practice in order to enhance memory and to slow memory waning.

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐makingBuild to Human Intelligence

• Offer different types of learning that tap into multi‐faceted human intelligence: • Communicating through language, audio, imagery, video, and other elements • Enabling experiential learning (and re‐learning) • Enabling a broad range of review of the knowledge and practice of the skill

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐makingBuild Human Intelligence

• Help learners understand different types of intelligences, what their own intelligence makeup may be, and how to harness the different types of intelligences for their particular work.

• Help learners extend beyond their own known intelligence and develop their capabilities.

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐making (cont.) Engage Learner Self‐awareness and Executive Control

• Support learner development of meta‐cognition, so they know when the default System 1 is at play and when System 2 should be brought into play for assessment and decision‐making. • Learners should also be aware of what it is that they want to believe because that is shown to have an outsized biasing effect in what they perceive and how they act in a context.

• Learners should train to make decisions based on available facts and actual probabilities (such as through Bayesian analysis based on conditional probabilities, built on informed “priors”), not impressions, not emotions, not naïve stereotypes, not uninformed intuitions, and not senses of truth based on availability heuristics (a common cognitive bias). • Probabilities are probabilities, and they should not be seen as deterministic. Assuming “fatedness” is too going too far.

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐making (cont.) Support Learner Adaptivity

• Encourage adaptivity in learners: • Take time to think through decisions. Test ideas particularly those that one deeply wants to be true. Consider counterintuitive concepts.

• Create systems for decision‐making that encapsulate known and relevant facts and enable heightened application of rationality in decision‐making.

• Consider first, second, and third (and other) degrees of effects and intended and unintended consequences.

• Surface assumptions, and explore those assumptions using facts and probabilities.• Objectively evaluate the outcomes of decision‐making. Be ready to reassess, identify and own errors (even at a cost to ego), and come to accurate conclusions.

• Make decisions from a personal place of strength and agency, not mental or emotional depletion.

• Verify before trusting, and trust sparingly. This applies to other people but also the self.

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐making (cont.) Encourage Creativity

• Over a lifetime, there seem to be periods of increased productivity and creativity, but there are also outliers who are able to maintain high creativity over a full lifetime and into old age.

• Historical research in human creativity suggests that childhood to early adulthood crucibles and challenges may enable people to deeply think about particular issues and to develop “creative genius” skill sets that would not be developed otherwise.

• Creativity is linked to practice. It is based on a broad knowledge not only in fields of expertise but also in other fields, for a cross‐fertilization of ideas. • While it is important not to fall into “habits of mind,” creativity has to build on expertise. So thinkers have to learn their fields well but not in a rigid way that constrains their thinking.

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐making (cont.) Encourage Creativity (cont.)

• Socializing in heterophilous ways may benefit creative thinking, such as per Annalee Saxenian’s idea of “regional advantage” • People of various backgrounds being physically or geographically co‐located and being able to share ideas and benefit each other’s work… enhances competitive advantage through technological innovation.

• People tend to socialize homophilously (with others like themselves); expanding that to reach outside of traditional socializing has benefits.

• There may be causal relationships between periods of negative emotions (like sadness) and negative moods and “artistic brilliance” in composers (Borowiecki, as cited in Swanson, July 25, 2016)• Also, “getting a permanent, tenured position and being married or cohabiting were associated with less productivity and less creative output” (ibid)

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐making (cont.) Encourage Creativity (cont.)

• Instructors and trainers should not be off‐put by the unexpected. • Design learning to enable unanticipated outcomes.

• Enable the acceptance of a variety of project‐based learning outcomes even if the methods and outcomes are not anticipated and unforeseen / unforeseeable.

• Build learning incentive structures to reward creativity and innovation. Ensure that the learners who come up with the original ideas and plans are the ones to benefit. (Trainers who piggy‐back on their trainees’ ideas are creating large disincentives for creative thinking and work. Those who are too rigid in terms of expected outcomes will also discourage creative work.)

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Designing for…


Employ Situated Decision‐making• Create learning cases and scenarios where learners may practice decision‐making (as individuals and as parts of groups), and ensure that their decisions have repercussions and outcomes, so learners may visualize the various causes‐and‐effects (and other complexities). • Help learners identify real‐world decision junctures. • Build scenarios with sufficient noise and distractors to emulate the world. • Build in real‐world pressures—such as time, other actors, budgetary constraints, leadership hierarchies, and others.

• Build learning off of real‐world cases for credibility and authenticity.

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐making (cont.)Employ Situated Decision‐making (cont.)

• In terms of decision‐making, learners have to have a sense of the actual context, their own agency and role in the context, and the “choice space” (what decisions are before them that are actionable and reasonable).

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐making (cont.)Provide Clear Rules for Decision‐making

• Support learner awareness of the rules of decision‐making, especially the critical ones. • Provide strategies for appropriate information seeking.• Provide strategies for appropriate intercommunications with others in the problem‐solving environment.

• Share methods for how to work through various decision junctures.• Help learners see the mental boxes they are working within, and help them “think outside the box.”

• Show non‐action as a decision, which leaves the world to continue with other agents and actors.

• Help learners under the principles behind the rules, so they can improvise when there are no rules. (There’s the north star, so…here’s how I’ll navigate.)

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Designing for…

5 Decision‐making (cont.) Focus on Group Dynamics in Decision‐making

• In a group setting, work should be designed to head off cognitive skews, so that the best decision‐making may be applied.

• Selected courses of action should be studied for actual outcomes and ways to improve future performance.

• Heterogeneous groups may benefit decision‐making because of the richness of different types of expertise and domain knowledge.

• Through brainstorming, groups should encourage divergent thinking and approaches and not automatically dismiss ideas.

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Designing for…

6 Action‐takingAssigned Roles in Action‐taking

• Assign clear roles to learners to take on particular roles in a context (to avoid the “bystander effect,” which may lead to a dilution of sense of personal responsibility). • Some individuals should take on the role of the 10th (wo)man and the red cell.

• Cross‐train for a range of decision‐making and action‐taking skills. • Define the expected actions and the triggers for the respective actions.

• Delimit the range of proper actions. Show what makes sense for a particular context, but bound the range of practically allowable actions.

• Support understandings of implications of actions taken and not taken. Help learners assess the efficacy / inefficacy of taking certain actions.

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Designing for…

6 Action‐taking (cont.)Watch for Go‐to Habits in Decision‐making and Action‐taking

• Help learners be aware of their personality‐based tendencies and what that may / may not say about their action‐taking tendencies.

• The idea is to avoid non‐thinking non‐conscious automated decisions and actions. • Support learners to train into the necessary action‐taking. (Personality is not destiny.)

• Help learners understand their “go to” habits in terms of decision‐making and to change their abilities to respond in a constructive way. • The cue‐response‐reward cycle can be trained for appropriate responses to different contexts.

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Designing for…

6 Action‐taking (cont.)Get Real

• Set realistic expectations. • If people tend not to be hyper‐attentive to details (as in software coding), then enable the uses of augmentation tools to enable the proper work or enable revisiting the work iteratively to correct mistakes.

• Some simple tools—pro‐con tables, checklists, decision trees—may enhance human decision‐making many‐fold particularly in complex contexts.

• Design the learning against the real limits. • In the same way that you would not design physical tests against the limits of survival physics, you would not create impossible tasks (except for other purposes).

• Support learners in their learning endeavors.

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Key Takeaways…in three slides…

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Summary: Online learning should be designed to actual human capabilities…• with limited and changing perceptual systems (sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, and proprioception) through which people engage the world; • with sensory signals from the world and from the person’s body and mind;

• with cognition directed by the frontal lobe to what is seen as important but implicit cognition at work even pre‐attentively and unattentively; • with the need for history and context to understand the sensory signals;

• with learning occurring based on different preferences…• and informed by prior knowledge but decaying (forgetting) over time…• and limited by split attention…• and not able to apply unlearning but having to learn over prior learning in some cases…but building new learning over old learning in some cases;

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Summary: Online learning should be designed to actual human capabilities… (cont.)

• with memory that is generally fairly limited in terms of what may be held in the short term; • with built‐in conscious, subconscious, and unconscious decision‐making about what to forget vs. what to encode into long‐term memory;

• with memory that is malleable and reinterpreted over time;

• with decision‐making marred by individual cognitive biases, intuitions, prior beliefs and attitudes; • with the default influence of the automatic and speedy System 1 (which often occurs in an unconscious way);

• with a tendency towards over‐confidence; • with the influence of “noisy” social group dynamics;

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Summary: Online learning should be designed to actual human capabilities… (cont.)• with potential action‐taking affected by unthinking application of go‐to habits…and difficulty adapting to unexpected or surprise events; • with the application of inaccurate and irrational cost‐benefit calculations (skewed by ego); • with not seeking better ways of solving problems by assuming that current methods are best; • with not considering creative solutions “outside the box” from not seeing the proverbial box or buying into erroneous myths about creativity;

• with the lack of self‐efficacy to propose new ideas (even at small risk of embarrassment)

• and so on…

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Summary: New technological affordances enable better designs…to human capabilities

• Authoring tools with built‐in accessibility features (timed text integrations for video and audio, alt‐texting for imagery, digital learning object players to allow user control, screen captures for note‐taking, and others)

• Automated voice‐to‐text transcription of video and audio files (trained on real‐world data but with only about 60% accuracy currently)

• Auto‐translation of web sites between languages; transliteration from pronunciation to spelling on the Web

• Persistent online learning contexts like learning management systems (LMSes), virtual worlds, online labs, smart digital book systems, and others

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Summary: New technological affordances enable better designs…to human capabilities (cont.)

• Smart learning platforms with learner profiling, learner behavioral tracking, and learning customizations• Machine learning algorithms enable the observation of optimized learning sequences for particular domain knowledge

• ‘Bot (robot) co‐learners with natural language capabilities and human‐based personalities

• Badging and credentialing across platforms per individual user • Natural language programming (the uses of plain English to code programs) • High quality online learning resources, information, and references, and others

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Summary: New technological affordances enable better designs…to human capabilities (cont.)

• Learning Management System (LMS) data portals and dashboards • Informatization of online learning

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References

• Augusto, L.M. (2016). Lost in dissociation: The main paradigms in unconscious cognition. Consciousness and Cognition: 42(2016), 293 – 310.

• Byrne, K.A., Silasi‐Mansat, C.D., & Worthy, D.A. (2015). Who chokes under pressure? The Big Five personality traits and decision‐making under pressure. Personality and Individual Differences:74(February 2015), 22 – 28. Retrieved July 1, 2016, from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914005595.

• Catmull, E. (with A. Wallace). (2014). Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. New York: Random House. 178.

• Conrad, D.L. (2002). Engagement, excitement, anxiety, and fear: Learners’ experiences of starting an online course. The American Journal of Distance Education: 16(4), 205 – 226.

• Dirkx, J.M. (2006). Engaging emotions in adult learning: A Jungian perspective on emotion and transformative learning. New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education: 109(Spring 2006), pp. 15 – 26. Wiley Periodicals.

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References (cont.)

• Duhigg, C. (2012). The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. New York: Random House.

• Hirsch, E.D. (1996). The Schools We Need: And Why We Don’t Have Them. New York: First Anchor Books, Random House. 44.

• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. • Mezirow, J. (1990). Fostering critical reflection in adulthood: A guide to transformative and emancipatory learning. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass Publishers.

• Middleton, J., Buboltz, W., & Sopon, B. (2015). The relationship between psychological reactance and emotional intelligence. The Social Science Journal: 52(2015), 542‐549.

• Ripley, A. (2008). The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why. New York: Crown Publishers.

• Schreiner, T. & Rasch, B. (2016). The beneficial role of memory reactivation for language learning during sleep: A review. Brain & Language. In press. 1 – 12.

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References (cont.)

• Scutti, S. (2016, July 20). New brain map identifies 97 previously unknown regions. CNN. Retrieved July 22, 2016 from http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/20/health/new‐brain‐map/?iid=ob_homepage_showcase_pool‐test.

• Swanson, A. (2016, July 25). Wonkblog: The downside of being happy. The Washington Post.Retrieved July 25, 206, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/25/why‐happiness‐might‐be‐getting‐in‐the‐way‐of‐your‐artistic‐brilliance/.

• Van Nunen, K., Reniers, G., Ponnet, K., & Cozzani, V. (2016). Major accident prevention decision‐making: A large‐scale survey‐based analysis. Safety Science: 88(2016), 242‐250.

• Wart, P. & Downing, J. (2000). Learning strategies, learning anxiety and knowledge acquisition. British Journal of Psychology: 91(2000), 311 – 333. Great Britain: The British Psychological Society.

• Zhang, H‐H. & Schutte, N.S. (2015). Personality, emotional intelligence and other‐rated task performance. Personality and Individual Differences: 87(2015), 298 – 301.

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Conclusion and contact

• Dr. Shalin Hai‐Jew • Instructional Designer • 212 Hale / Farrell Library • iTAC, Kansas State University • 785‐532‐5262• shalin@k‐state.edu

• Professional Bio: Dr. Hai‐Jew has been designing online learning since the mid‐1990s. She has designed online learning for Boeing Co., WashingtonOnline (WAOL), and a number of colleges and universities. She has taught at college and university levels for years, including abroad for four years. She has B.A.s in English and psychology and an M.A. in English (U of Washington, Seattle), and an Ed.D. (Seattle University, Seattle, 2005). She researches and publishes broadly and has edited a number of academic texts.

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Conclusion and contact (cont.)

• Slideshow Limitations: This slideshow addresses some of the findings in a summary way only. For every “normal,” there are “outliers”. There is new information all the time…such as the mapping of 97 previously unknown brain regions by a research team, which published in Nature. This slideshow breaks the rules about chunking and complexity because of the scope of the information and the use of this as a digital leave‐behind as a reference.

• Citations and Credits: Virtually all the visuals are from the Wikimedia Commons/Wikipedia, Flickr, or Pixabay, and are released for usage either through Creative Commons licensure or total release in the public domain. The question mark image was found through the Bing search for copyright‐free imagery. Credits have been given where required along with live links to the respective imagery.

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Conclusion and contact (cont.)

• Thanks! I am grateful to the 2016 Kansas CUPA‐HR Conference committee for accepting this proposal. Thanks to Shanna Legleiterand Samantha Roberts, both of K‐State HR, for their feedback on the long draft to enable a way shorter slideshow for actual presentation.

• A Complementary Site: There is a project linked to the F2F presentation (available through the Adobe Spark platform). • Thanks to Dr. Rebecca Gould for suggesting the linked project for some examples of technologies that support instructional designs informed by actual human capabilities.

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