The Structure and Development of Our Learning On Demand Classes
The Structure and Development of our Learning On Demand Classes
For this week’s installment on Lifelong Learning, our Founder, Ron Slee, is taking you on a walkthrough of the process that goes into the structure and development of our Learning On Demand classes.
Over our time in providing classroom teaching at Universities, High Schools, Business related Management Training, Webinars and most recently internet-based learning paths we have changed and adapted to the reality of the research provided to educators worldwide.
Research continues and learning results continue to improve for most. But it is indeed a challenge to both keep up and continue to be on the leading edge of internet based adult learning and the requirement of schools worldwide. One of our major advances in the past two years has been to develop segmented learning. We use slides with audio tracks and film clips in our learning videos. The students can go back and forth as often as they like. These segments happen in the range of ten to fifteen minutes of learning. At the end of each segment, we insert a “quiz” to evaluate both the student’s ability to understand our content as well as our presentation methods.
Not surprisingly we have seen a significant change on how the student results have changed. The first time a student takes one of our classes the first segment the successful results might be about 50%. The send segment the success rate goes to 75% and from that point on the success stays above 90%. This is proof positive, in my mind, that the student pays more attention when they know there will be a “check” of their understanding of the material. It truly works and our results prove it rather conclusively.
Similarly, we added reading materials before the video learning segments. These reading assignments have an audio track with them so that we are ADA compliant but that also gives us a time check. We provide ninety to one hundred and ten minutes of audio with each subject specific class. Then we have three multiple choice quizzes for each reading assignment. This puts the reading portion in the range of two hours or more for each class. Again, research has shown that “scanning” reading material in a learning environment helps in the retention and understanding of the material involved. We are noticing the same thing when we have students taking more than one subject specific class as the scores are noticeably higher.
Recently, in the past two months we have added Homework to our classes. We provide more than five hundred pages of reference books for the student to read. With each of our reference books we again have what is called a “Check for Understanding.” Contrary to most education institutions we verify that the student has in fact done the homework. That is the purpose of our Check for Understanding. The homework with the reference books amounts to thirteen hours of time. This is in line with the Department of Education need statement that for each face-to-face hour of learning there needs to be two hours of homework. Each of our subject specific classes now consist of six and a half hours of face-to-face learning and thirteen hours of homework.
That allows us to comply with the academic requirements of most states. Two of our learning on demand classes offered in vocational and technical schools, junior colleges as well as public and private universities offer one academic credit to students. This is what we offer through our Centers of Excellence across Noth America. For adult education, in the workforce development business of schools, we still have the shorter class options. However, we also offer a path for the students should they wish to follow the academic credit path.
I have to admit that it is a lot of work to stay current with educational changes. Research continues to push educators to get better at delivering learning to students. That is our goal and purpose at Learning Without Scars.
The Time is Now.