[Sigia-l] Forcing practice

[Jason Pryslak]

> Peter VanDijck Wrote:
> My question: what form should that learning process take, and how can we
> ensure they actually learnt something and didn't just click through the
> popup?

First things first:
- Determine who the users are and what their current level of understanding
is.
- Determine what types of errant information could most adversly afect the
app.
- Considering the fact that, unless the training could be downloaded into
the users brain directly, the errors would never be 100% eliminated. So it
must be determined what the acceptable level of errors would be. The pop-up
training information could then be prioritized to best meet the needs of the
users who are associated with the "highest-risk" information.

Things to consider:
That broad audience will be approaching this tool with many different
learning styles and the challenge will be trying to allow each user to
develop an understanding of the app beyond the information given. Generally
speaking, the users have the best chance of retaining the information if
they are an active participant and they have some sort of existing construct
with which to associate the material (slight nod to J. Bruner's
constructivist approach). A good start to making the learners active
participants is to understand their needs (or weaknesses) and present them
with targeted information choices as apposed to simply feeding them
information. It would also have to be engaging enough, from a visual and
information standpoint, to encourage the users to even bother. perhaps a
java applet of a 3-D, spinning sentence could help to get that special
sticky factor (joking about the java, ha ha).

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that's all for now,

Jason Pryslak