Ruth Colvin Clark's Blog

First, this is an opinion piece – I have not seen systematic research on the value of corporate universities.  But a recent client experience reinforced something I said in the first edition of Building Expertise: Corporate Universities are often a STEP BACKWARD.

Of course there are many different implementations of Corporate Universities.  But just the name signals an emphasis on education rather than organizational performance improvement.  Education has it's place – but often the residue...

New research from Richard Mayer and Cheryl Johnson compared two versions of a "Circuit Game" designed to teach how circuits work. A basic game version was comapred to three other versions: with self-explanation response requirements, with explanatory feedback, and with both. Learning during the game and after the game was improved by self explanations or feedback. The goal of the research is to define game conditions that lead to learning. Journal of Educational Computing Research V 42, ...

In my new book, Evidence-based Training Methods (ASTD Press), I conclude my review of research on learning styles with the hope that if readers do nothing else, they abandon time and resources devoted to learning styles in favor of other instructional methods which have much more evidence to support them.  In other words, it's time to drop the learning styles myth.    What do you think about learning styles?  What makes the learning style idea so compelling? 

I'll devote some future posts to t...

Huk and Ludwigs (2008) reported best learning of economic principles from lessons that added both goals (a coffee shop scenario) and reflection exercises to a lesson on supply and demand that included a knowledge section and a business simulation compared to a baseline lesson that omitted the goal orientation and the reflection exercise.  Interestingly, lessons with ONLY the goal or ONLY the reflection exercises did not improve learning.  But the combination of both resulted in a 39...

You may have taken one of my workshops on scenario-based learning.  I want to keep you updated on the latest research on this topic.  In my last scenario-based e-learning ASTD class, some participants mentioned that their learners LOVED scneario-based learning while others just wanted the content – and resented the extra resources they had to spend on the scenarios.    Research has shown that overall, scenario-based learning is popular with medical students.  But this popularity may not...

Just back from Training 2010 where I heard Tony O'Driscoll speak and also bought the book! (Learning in 3D from Pfeiffer)  Here's my first thoughts.  The book is definitely worth the investment – we all need to keep up on the affordances of new technology.  An excellent story leads off  Chapter 2 – I won't be a spoiler – take a look.   See Brian's reply to my previous  post for good ideas on how to use virtual worlds in training.

Some bones to pick.  I think a technocentric approach to...

Seeing Avatar brought to mind how rapidly 3D technology is evolving and how it might be used effectively in training.   Take a look at the new book: Learning in 3D by Karl Kapp and Tony O'Driscol.  I have not read the book but attended a great webinar by Karl on use of virtual worlds for training.  As with all new technologies, we will use and abuse virtual worlds until we figure out where it really makes sense.  A lot of research on visuals suggests that less is more and I suspect that many ...

My colleague Chopeta Lyons and I are just finishing up the second edition of Graphics for Learning.  One of our goals was to update the research on visuals.  The biggest single category of new research turned out to be evidence on animations.  Here's the bottom line:

1) To teach how things work – what I call process knowledge a series of still visuals is as good or better than animations

2) To demonstration how to perform tasks involving motion – animations are better than stills

3) Limited...

Everything I know about blogs I learned from Julia and Julia.  But for a long time I wanted to find a way to communicate research in a more timely and interactive manner than articles or books.

Here are my own blog guidelines: 1) keep it short 2) keep it focused on research of relevance to workplace learning professionals.

I hope this monologue will become a discussion so we can all learn from one another.   What research questions are of interest to you?