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Hello, everyone. I’m Tom Tobin. In this OneHE course, Tech Tools and How to Use Them Inclusively, we’re examining how to reduce the cognitive load for learners by providing them with a narrow set of technology tools. I want to demonstrate how each of a core of four set of technology tools helps to reduce cognitive load for learners.
First, personal storage space. When our organizations do not provide personal file space for everyone, this creates risks and barriers. We force learners to find their own space for their learning materials, which may be widely divergent for laptop/desktop computer users versus learners on mobile devices. We also risk virus and malware transmission from unknown storage locations.
By offering everyone a space where they can upload and store materials, we help our learners to be able to share their work with colleagues, instructors, and the wider world. Making storage a core supported feature of our technology-mediated learning environments also frees instructors and designers to create broader options for learners to show what they know. A common storage solution reduces cognitive load through a learn once, use always system.
Second, calendars. The challenge with calendar tools is not that they are ineffective. It’s that there are so many of them. I have a calendar feature in my learning management system (LMS), in my university’s user portal system, in my work email system, and in my personal email system. The majority of my colleagues use the calendar tool supported by my work email system, so I use that as my master calendar (actually, my real master calendar is this paper calendar, but we’re talking about tech-mediated tools, here). Turn off the calendar feature wherever you can and standardize one place to look for all your to-do list tasks.
Third, collaboration software. I am one of the last generations to do the majority of my formal study and training before the Internet became ubiquitous. When I wanted to study with colleagues or ask my instructors questions outside of formal learning interactions, I had to meet them in person, or at least telephone them when they were available. Today, technology allows us to connect in real time and have affordances like video signals, collaborative white-boards, and screen sharing even for people using mobile devices. By providing everyone with collaborative-communication accounts, we signal trust and give people the opportunity to connect and study.
Finally, mobile versioning. This can be as simple as training. This can be as simple as training instructors and designers to craft learning experiences that rely on text, images, audio, and video formats that can be consumed via mobile devices. For instance, I might post a writing sample for my writing-composition students to use as they draft an activity. But if that sample is a word-processing file, my students have to have that software installed on their devices in order to get access to it. Better to make the file a PDF, or, even better, a web page. The same is true for interactive specialised software that we use: record the screen and make a video of how you use the software, so learners don’t need to have it installed in order to benefit from seeing how to use it later on.
A key take-away for this course is a bit of a paradox. Our goal is to offer and support the fewest possible tools that provide the functions that our learners, instructors, and organizations need to interact well. This does not mean prohibiting the use of other tools just that designers and instructors should adopt new apps, software, and technology systems because they provide a meaningful function that supported tools do not.
For instance, advanced mathematics learners need ways to express complex notation, graphing, and nested-logic operations. None of the four core tool sets offer such functions, so it is entirely appropriate to ask learners to figure out specialized software, in mathematics and other fields. The question to ask is for the learning interactions needed in this activity, does this tool make things easier, provide necessary functions, or do something that other tools do not?