Blog Week 5: Book Chapter Review Blog

Chapter 13 of the Clark and Mayer text is called Does Practice Make Perfect?  This chapter’s focus is the five principles of practice.  The five principles of practice are: 1) Add sufficient practice interactions to e-learning to achieve the objective.  2) Mirror the job.  3) Provide effective feedback.  4) Distribute and mix practice among learning events.  5) Apply multimedia principles.

Adding sufficient practice interactions to achieve the objective is imperative to any training.  Not all practice types are of good use for certain jobs.  A nurse would get more out of real life scenarios on mannequins than he or she would practicing what was learned with a multiple choice test.  Practice may not make perfect, but the more you do it the better the chance of expertise.

Mirroring the job is necessary to acquire skills to successfully complete the task.  There is no better way to know what to do than to do it!  Studies show that students feel more comfortable solo when they have mirrored the job at hand.  It is complicated when students have only practiced with multiple-choice and fill-in-the-black practice test and then set free to physically complete a job.

Effective feedback is imperative to learning. Effective feedback also explains to students where they went wrong and how to get the answer correct the next time. Explanatory feedback is the most effective feedback, but it is laborious.  Teachers have many students and to be explanatory on every answer for every student is time-consuming.  This is the reason many teachers turn away from this type of feedback.

Distributing mix practice among learning events assists students in recalling information.  There was a study done were students where taught how to complete three types of math problems.  When it was time to practice, all similar questions were grouped together.  Other students were given mixed practice questions and scored better on their practice test.

Applying multimedia principles are important when planning sufficient practice.  Trainers do not want to add too many different types of multimedia because it can cause cognitive overload to trainees.  An example would be not to use too much audio and text when answering practice questions.  The trainer wants to keep the focus on the information and not the extra pictures and sound.

This chapter is important because practice plays a huge role in not only e-learning but also learning period.  This chapter did not change my view or ideas about educational technology or distant education or instructional design. All three require some form of practice to master.  The point is relevant to my ISD project because my group is focusing on Google classroom.  I have never used Google classroom, so I have to practice to be able to keep up with my teammates when we are working together weekly.  Without learning how to use Google Classroom I will not be able to teach others.  Practice is relevant to me and to what I plan on doing after graduation. I will incorporate Google Classroom in my online teaching.  I also plan on giving my students sufficient practice designed to assist them in specific areas.

Reference:

 Clark, R.C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning (3^rded.). San Francisco, CA: Wiley & Sons.  ISBN: 9780470874301.