Situation Based Learning Design

Situation-Based Learning Design: Research Insights for Enhanced Remembering and Performance
Will Thalheimer, willatworklearning.com

It's just about standing room only in Will's session. Glad I came early and swiped a chair next to a power outlet. These seats are scarce!

It's important to create metaphors that are understandable by "real people".

This session is to share the evolution of the concept of "situation-based learning".

Goal for eLearning designer:

• get learners to act differerntly
• to perform far-reaching tasks
• to retrieve the information they need to apply what was learned

How we Learn / Encode

• an environmental cue can trigger a memory
• our mind searches the information
• from rehearsal, we apply the knowledge
  

If learners don't access the information (application need) soon enough after training, it becomes difficult to impossible to retrieve.

Retrieval = Learning - Forgetting + Spontaneous Remembering.
Don't forget the forgetting factor. Include opportunities for learners to retrieve the information in regular intervals otherwise the learning is lost.

Situation-based learning begins with the magic question: "What do we want out learners to be able to do and in what situations do we want our learners to do those things?"

SEDA - Real-world application process to situation-based learning

1. Situation
2. Evaluation
3. Decide
4. Action

Having a goal by itself is not enough to perform an action. If you have an intention, then the action is more likely to take place.

The problem is presenting concepts without providing practice. This turns into a test of memorization. Or provide decisions with no actions. Or provide inadequate evaluations of situations. Or offer a decision without proving the proper situation to apply. All bad and doesn't provide adequate results.

All steps must be followed through to allow the learner to retrieve the knowedlge at the appropriate time.

We absorb more than just the learning message. It's the learning message and background stimuli (noise, sights, smells, emotions, etc.). When it comes down to retrieving the information, memories of background stimuli can also trigger the retreival event. Multiple cues (triggers) improve the retreival results.

A practical example: you're in the kitchen and remember to get something out of the living room. You go to the living room and forget want you needed. So you go back to the kitchen and remember what you needed in the living room. Your background stimulus (location) triggered the memory.

Move from topic-based to situation-based design. By aligning the situational cues to real-world events, the retrieval is more effective.

Summary

• By aligning contexts, we can create spontaneous remembering
• Start designing differently - based on what learners should DO and not KNOW
• Benefits = more remembering, better results