Category Archives: Learning Theory To Practice

Aug 05

ASTD President Bingham Posts Intellectually Impoverished, Embarrasing Article on Learning Part II

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In Part I of this series we looked at the first part of Tony Bingham’s post on “Learning Socially” and pointed out that so far in the article, nothing the President of ASTD mentioned is relevant or telling regarding the need or movement towards “social learning. Let’s look further at Bingham’s article to see if there is any substance or valid data in it. We’ll continue with an attempt to deal with what has to be one of the silliest fad terms to hit the training world — informal learning.

Bingham says: Continue reading →

Aug 03

Why Technology Never Has The Expected Positive Impact on Learning and Teaching

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One thing that happens as you age, and provided you’ve been paying attention, is that patterns seem to emerge. You hear some people talking, and you can quickly determine what is going on, hostile, friendly, business, personal, whatever, from the patterns exhibited. Many things start to look familiar.

And you get the feeling you’ve seen most things before. Because you have.

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Jul 27

Task Analysis Strategies and Practices, Practice Application Brief

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Task Analysis Strategies and Practices, Practice Application Brief, by Bettina Lankard Brown 1998

This project has been funded at least in part with Federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under Contract No. ED-99-CO-0013. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. ERIC/ACVE publications may be freely reproduced.

Worker-oriented, job-oriented, and cognitive task analyses have all been used as tools for closing the gap between what curriculum teaches and what workers do. Although they share a commonality of purpose, the focus, cost, and practicality of task analysis techniques vary. This Practice Application Brief presents information on current practices and examples of the various types of task analyses, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses and detailing how they can be used in diverse settings to promote knowledge and skill development.
Task Analysis Models

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Jul 25

Evaluating Adult and Continuing Education – Research Based Discussion For Practitioners

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Evaluating Adult and Continuing Education Information Series No. 375  by Alan B. Knox  Order No. IN 375, Price $7.00  Ordering Information  Full text available online

Planning and conducting effective educational programs for adults entail contributions by various stakeholders including participants, instructors, coordinators, policy makers, and funders. They each make informal evaluative judgments. Sometimes reliance on such informal evaluation is insufficient because judgments may be based on inadequate information and are not shared with people who might use them to plan, improve, or justify the programs.

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Jul 23

Teaching Style vs. Learning Style Myths and Realities 26 Research #astd #trdev

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Teaching Style vs. Learning Style Myths and Realities 26, by Bettina Lankard Brown, 2003 PDF Available

This project has been funded at least in part with Federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education under Contract No. ED-99-CO-0013. The content of this publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. ERIC/ACVE publications may be freely reproduced.

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Jul 23

Teaching Adults: Is It Different? Research on The Topic #astd #trdev

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Teaching Adults: Is It Different? Myths and Realities 21, by Sandra Kerka, 2002 PDF Available

To be considered a distinct profession with a unique knowledge base (Merriam 2001), the field of adult education advances the idea that teaching adults is different than teaching children. The subject of much debate, this issue has generated assumptions, opinions, and research. This publication takes a look at all three in discerning myths and realities associated with the teaching of adults.
Adults and Children as Learners

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Jul 20

A Well Deserved Poke At Adult Learning Principles and Styles

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It is no secret that I believe adult learning principles and styles are essentially vague and useless in terms of instructing “adults” versus “non-adults” and that the work of many popular adult learning “experts” is terrible, and that includes Knowles. I’m not alone in that respect.

So I was browsing around and came across a well written article entitled How to Use Adult Learning Principles and Styles in Your Next Course, which I believe is typical of the thinking in that field. Despite the fact that it is well written, and clear, it’s nonsense, and it doesn’t even take much thought to realize it IS nonsense. Why many people can’t see the lack of clothing on this particular emperor is beyond me.

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