Blog

Seeing Avatar brought to mind how rapidly 3D technology is evolving and how it might be used effectively in training.   Take a look at the new book: Learning in 3D by Karl Kapp and Tony O’Driscol.  I have not read the book but attended a great webinar by Karl on use of virtual worlds for training.  As with all new technologies, we will use and abuse virtual worlds until we figure out where it really makes sense.  A lot of research on visuals suggests that less is more and I suspect that many virtual world applications can add mental load for no good learning advantage.

Are you using virtual worlds?  How’s it going?

My colleague Chopeta Lyons and I are just finishing up the second edition of Graphics for Learning.  One of our goals was to update the research on visuals.  The biggest single category of new research turned out to be evidence on animations.  Here’s the bottom line:

1) To teach how things work – what I call process knowledge a series of still visuals is as good or better than animations

2) To demonstration how to perform tasks involving motion – animations are better than stills

3) Limited evidence on how to demonstrate social skills favors video or animation over text narratives.  I’d love to see a comparison of still visuals versus video versus animation. 

How do you use still versus dynamic visuals in your training products?

Everything I know about blogs I learned from Julia and Julia.  But for a long time I wanted to find a way to communicate research in a more timely and interactive manner than articles or books.

Here are my own blog guidelines: 1) keep it short 2) keep it focused on research of relevance to workplace learning professionals.

I hope this monologue will become a discussion so we can all learn from one another.   What research questions are of interest to you?