The other night, I had a brainstorm.
It was for a new kind of authoring system to create a new kind of gamified training experience based on brain science that would be useful for a wide range of content.
The simple idea is that the way the brain naturally learns, starting at birth, is by guessing and verifying. When our guesses consistently bring positive results, we feel like we "know" that thing and we stop guessing about it until the response changes, and even then the new information is hard to "believe" and adapt to.
The logical way to apply this to training is to let learner's guess and verify their guesses, rather than spoon feeding content and the testing retention (usually via multiple choice questions, which don't really test retention, but recognition). For instance, you could shoot factoids at them which they quickly have to confirm or deny, which would be a challenge because half of them would be wrong.
This suits the Knowledge level of Bloom, and the method could be adapted for each step up the taxonomy, advancing automatically from one level to the next ("level up"), with different types of interactions appearing at each level (e.g., simulations at Application level, games at Analysis, etc.).
I told my idea to an old friend who teaches Computer Science at a community college, and he said he thought he had heard of something that does that already: Anki.
It was for a new kind of authoring system to create a new kind of gamified training experience based on brain science that would be useful for a wide range of content.
The simple idea is that the way the brain naturally learns, starting at birth, is by guessing and verifying. When our guesses consistently bring positive results, we feel like we "know" that thing and we stop guessing about it until the response changes, and even then the new information is hard to "believe" and adapt to.
The logical way to apply this to training is to let learner's guess and verify their guesses, rather than spoon feeding content and the testing retention (usually via multiple choice questions, which don't really test retention, but recognition). For instance, you could shoot factoids at them which they quickly have to confirm or deny, which would be a challenge because half of them would be wrong.
This suits the Knowledge level of Bloom, and the method could be adapted for each step up the taxonomy, advancing automatically from one level to the next ("level up"), with different types of interactions appearing at each level (e.g., simulations at Application level, games at Analysis, etc.).
I told my idea to an old friend who teaches Computer Science at a community college, and he said he thought he had heard of something that does that already: Anki.
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Anki is a neat little app aimed at college students that is a digital version of a flashcard deck (aka drill). There some others as well, such as Quizlet, compared in this video.
Some of these apps differentiate themselves by saying they are supported by brain science, which says that studying is more effective when you apply the technique of "spaced repetition." |
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The apps apply this in a simple way be re-introducing questions on a timed basis, based on a combination of your correct answer plus your confidence that you got it correct.
The question I had to answer was clear: had Anki and its ilk beat me to the punch?
The answer: No (I guess). The difference is that flashcards only present correct information. The key to learning is being able to discern between correct and incorrect. Multiple choice addresses this a bit, but it takes too long to read three or four answers. A rapid fire yes/no dynamic based on true and false statements, repeated until you are getting 80% right on an ongoing basis, would be something I'd like to see a study on.
Mitch
The question I had to answer was clear: had Anki and its ilk beat me to the punch?
The answer: No (I guess). The difference is that flashcards only present correct information. The key to learning is being able to discern between correct and incorrect. Multiple choice addresses this a bit, but it takes too long to read three or four answers. A rapid fire yes/no dynamic based on true and false statements, repeated until you are getting 80% right on an ongoing basis, would be something I'd like to see a study on.
Mitch
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