Three Valley Road Lexington, MA 02421 Phone +1 781-861-7373 Email: lisa@acm.org
Lisa Neal is Editor-in-Chief of ACM eLearn Magazine and an Adjunct Professor in The Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at Tufts Medical School. Lisa consults on e-learning projects with museums and corporate, academic, and government clients. She is a frequent presenter and tutorial instructor at conferences. Lisa was awarded the 2003 U.S. Distance Learning Association (USDLA) Award for Most Outstanding Achievement by an Individual in Corporate/Business. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard University.
What makes learning fun? In the case of Plimoth Plantation's Online Learning Center, we are not spoon-feeding facts but are challenging learners to think like historians. This doesn't replicate the experience of visiting Plimoth Plantation, but it provides a rich learning experience that is deeper in many respects. While we started off trying to find the right balance between learning and fun, we realized instead that we needed to make learning fun. This talk will present how we assessed and validated the needs of stakeholders and learners, how we conveyed information to engage children, teachers, and other learners, and how we made sure that learning really took place.
As e-learning grows in popularity, the quality of online courses and the "learner experience" is declining. Quality in the classroom is well understood, but is less well defined for e-learning. This talk describes some characteristics of high quality - and poor quality - online courses and discusses the importance of context (in particular, the learner, the topic, and the setting) in design and evaluation. It describes experiences applying techniques from human-computer interaction, online communities, storytelling, and knowledge management in a variety of settings to create successful online learner experiences.
Storytelling is one of the most effective techniques for conveying information in a compelling and memorable way. The use of stories is more fun for the presenter and for the students since stories tend to be entertaining and engaging. Good storytelling is an art in the classroom, and is a challenge at a distance. Using synchronous or asynchronous distance learning technologies, the wealth of visual cues and expressiveness from the face-to-face classroom are missing. Some of the most difficult issues with asynchronous technologies are the lack of spontaneity and the tendency to sanitize stories when capturing a story as text, audio, or video. However, it is possible to incorporate stories effectively into e-learning, and to do so in a way that encourages students to tell their own stories, thus enriching their educational experience.