Last month I attended a life sciences learning conference. By far, the most discussed topic was microlearning. Everyone – learners, trainers, management – has jumped on the microlearning bandwagon. We have decided, en masse, that our learners will learn best when they are presented with their learning in short chunks. Vendors, of course, are no … Continue reading Making Microlearning Effective Using Learning Subscriptions
I teach a workshop on “How to Create Fair, Valid and Reliable Tests.” The workshop focuses primarily on classic (usually multiple choice) knowledge-based exams. Since many of our clients use the Intela platform for sales training, most of them deliver two types of assessments: knowledge-based assessments to ensure content mastery and skills-based assessments to test … Continue reading Authentic Assessments
I recently came across an interesting study about the value of answering questions out loud. Victor Boucher of the University of Montreal tested student’s ability to memorize lists of words under four conditions. First, the students studied a list of words on a computer. He then divided the students into four groups and had each … Continue reading Answering Questions Out Loud Helps Your Learners to Remember
Any of our readers who have studied education in college or graduate school may be familiar with the “primacy and recency” effect. This effect was first detected by our old friend Hermann Ebbinghaus who is, of course, most famous for his well-known forgetting curve. Ebbinghaus noticed that in a test of free recall of a … Continue reading What Do We Remember Best? What We Learn First? What We Learn Last? Both? Neither?
As our clients know, the Intela Unified Continuous Learning System is driven by evidence. Before we add a new learning activity we need to have actual research evidence that the learning activity is effective. Learning Subscriptions (microlearning) are our most popular type of learning activity, and videos and podcasts are the most popular forms of … Continue reading Is There an Optimal Length for Microlearning Videos? What Does the Research Tell Us?
I’ve written and reviewed tens of thousands of test questions. To state the obvious to anyone who has ever done it: Writing good test questions is difficult. It’s the reason that serious testing organizations, like those that produce the SATs and the ACTs, spend millions of dollars creating quality questions. Those of us who work … Continue reading How Good Are Your Test Questions? And How Do You Know?
One percent? I’ve seen this number floating around in blogs and articles recently. It’s purported to be the amount of time the average employee has for learning during a typical work week. Is it true? Like lots of so-called “data” in our field I have my doubts. Where does that number come from? I suspect … Continue reading The One Percent Training Problem. What Kind of Training Can You Do in Five Minutes a Day?
For trainers who do remote, unproctored, testing (e.g. testing a distributed sales force) one nagging question is always: “Are my learners cheating?” Usually followed by the question: “If they are, can I tell?” The answers are (in order): maybe and maybe. It turns out there are three ways to detect cheating: one pretty simple, which … Continue reading How Intela Helps You Detect Test Collusion (Part One)
Recently, we announced the addition of confidence-based testing to Intela’s growing list of learning activities. So, what is the purpose of confidence-based testing? Its purpose is NOT to make learners more confident, as many people may think (and some products claim to do). Its purpose is to make learners appropriately confident. Confidence is a personality attribute. By … Continue reading What Most Trainers Get Wrong About Confidence-Based Testing (And How Intela Gets It Right)
Intela has now added confidence-based testing to its ever-growing list of Continuous Learning activities. This means, that in addition to mastery/certification testing, pre-post testing, adaptive questioning and other forms of assessment, you can now use Intela to measure learners’ confidence in their knowledge. For those not familiar with the concept, the idea of confidence-based … Continue reading Intela ™ Adds Confidence-Based Testing
