April Meeting Review

by Benjamin Cape

A fire drill at the Tivoli delayed the start of the April meeting, but once settled in featured speaker Patti Shank presented her program “What’s it Good For? Exploiting the Natural Characteristics of Instructional Technologies and Strategies to Improve Instruction.” Shank is president of Learning Perks, a Denver-based information and instructional design firm that has worked with private businesses and public organizations. She is also the editor of The Online Learning Idea Book: 95 Proven Ways to Enhance Technology-Based and Blended Learning.

Shank began her presentation with Aesop’s tale of the fox who was walking through an orchard and came upon a tree from which dangled bunches of grapes. The fox tried to get the grapes, but they were out of reach. Frustrated, the fox gave up, and said the grapes were probably sour anyway—hence the phrase “sour grapes.”

The story illustrates a point that most people will learn despite what writers and educators do to reach an audience. We evolved to learn. We have to learn. “We are learning machines,” she said.

All technical communicators should realize the difference between what a tool can actually offer and the hype about that tool, Shank said. The usability characteristics of media and strategies, or “affordances,” should be considered soberly when approaching a project. It may be comforting to believe one tool or method can do everything faster, better, and for less money than everything else on the market, but there is no such thing.

She listed 10 media strategies that can be used to educate an audience. Each can be useful, and no single strategy is best in all circumstances. The list included:

• Live in-person or online presentation with little or no interaction with presenter or audience
• Online interaction with content (questions, drag and drop, simulations, etc.)
• Reading materials (book, articles, PDFs)
• Video
• Live interactions with presenter/instructor (classroom, phone, online meeting)
• Practice problems/scenarios (with solutions)
• Live interactions with learners (classroom, phone, online meeting)
• Realistic practice
• Podcasts
• Instant messaging

Shank pointed out that while video can reach a large and captive audience, there is no interaction with the audience, who have a passive role and can’t ask questions. Podcasts may be thought of a just a way to explain a simple process, but they have been used to teach everything up to flying lessons (which made travelers in the audience a little nervous). Sometimes, the hands-on affordance of an interactive Web site (like the example she showed that mapped out music notes on a keyboard) is the best way to teach an audience. Instant messaging, which began as a way to facilitate basic chat, can also be a powerful learning tool.

Shank ended her presentation by having the audience break into groups that investigated each of the 10 strategies. Each group then presented the pros, cons, and best uses of the strategy, and realized that no one strategy could be everything all the time, and that any organization that doesn’t allow itself to exploit the affordances of the other strategies will limit its reach.