Category: Uncategorized

Every now and again, when we think it’s really worth it, we post blogs or articles from others.

This time, we would like to share an article by Karl Kapp, who is Professor of Instructional Technology and Director of the Institute for Interactive Technologies at Bloomsberg University. He’s also the founder of L&D Learning Academy and co-founder of Enterprise Game Stack.

Recently (on 23 Feb, 2023, to be precise), he posted a great evidence-informed article on the (lack of) value of interactivity in eLearning, titled ‘Is there such a thing as “Too Much Interactivity”​ in eLearning?’

Spoiler alert: The answer is YES.

In eLearning, striving for “more interactivity” [Read: swiping, clicking, dragging & dropping] or trying to eliminate “this looks boring” because it’s not “interactive enough” often sacrifices the ability of the learner to actually…learn.

Someone on LinkedIn (forgive us, we no longer can find the comment, so can’t…

This brief post is for the dedicated teacher.

The teacher who is highly committed in both professional and personal life.

The teacher who places at a premium helping others:

Pretend that I am in front of you, with one hand on either cheek in order to direct your well-intended-yet-distracted attention to looking me in the eyes as I speak:

You must say “no” to some worthwhile, enticing commitments.

You must curtail your involvement in others

As you think of adding “it,” whatever “it” is, you must say “no.”

You must build rest into your schedule, and Otherwise, the time will get away from you, chipped away minute by minute in unrestful activity that appears noble and good in the short term but in the long term is paving the road to a future heart attack.

It is possible for the mind to be so committed to efficiency and task competion…

Mirjam Neelen & Paul A. Kirschner

In the first blog, we attempted to demystify what Robert and Elizabeth Bjork meant by desirable difficulties (and later also many others!), hoping that we can stick to their definition and call the ‘other things’… other things. Today, in blog 2, we discuss two ‘other things’ that are often mistaken for or confused with desirable difficulties.

There are two general misconceptions (maybe more, but these are the ones that we’ve run into repeatedly) where people refer to desirable difficulties incorrectly. First, when they talk about Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development and second, when they discuss the idea that errors support learning.

Desirable difficulties are NOT challenges and efforts caused by the difficulty of the task

Desirable difficulties are often explained in the context of Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development[1]. This ‘zone’ refers to the difference between what a child can do…