Lisa – Lisa Tymoski

October 16, 2020October 18, 2020

Teaching Philosophy

I like to share knowledge with people. Whether it is how to use your phone or document a code in the shock trauma suite, I want you to have the skills to do your job. I just don’t have to see you face-to-face to accomplish this. I rarely teach in a classroom; my job is to create online learning modules. Once you finish one my courses you will not be an expert in the software, but you will have taken a step towards proficiency.

I want everyone around me to have the tools to do the job. I am a registered nurse and while I no longer provide direct patient care, I always remember the mantra that it’s about the kid in the bed. I train clinicians on the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). I sometimes train computer analysts on other software, but all software is just a tool to accomplish a task. My focus is how to make you a proficient user of that tool.

I mostly align with cognitivism. I think people chunk information together and learn by linking new concepts to something they know (Kelly, 2012). In my online modules, I give users a scenario and show them how to chart the elements of that example. I am taking something they know (a clinical situation) and linking it to something new (how to use the software).

My role as a software trainer is to guide the learner through the learning process. I am more of a facilitator to the learner. Some software programs are easy to learn. You basically are memorizing where to click. Others are more complicated, and the user will struggle to put all the concepts together to be able to demonstrate proficiency. My goal is to teach both how to run the software, trouble-shoot basic issues and know where to go if you need help.

Learning is messy and non-linear. Some students get very frustrated when they don’t understand what they are doing or why. Others, such as ICU and Emergency nurses are comfortable with many unknowns. They will figure it out when the time comes. When you are going live with a new software package there are many questions you won’t be able to answer, and as a trainer you must be comfortable with that. The workflows have often not been identified yet. The users will normally be the ones to discover how their job fits into the software. It is a process that they are very much a part of. If I am in a classroom, I facilitate that by asking a lot of questions about their role and how they think it will fit into the flow of the software. I am part cheerleader and part mentor. With more established software, I start with an overview of the product and then move down to the specifics by role. I encourage the learner to practice their pathway with real-life examples to work through.

I work with adults. Their learning styles are already ingrained. They bring a lifetime of learning experience with them and it has not always been a positive journey. Learning disorders follow you into adulthood, so I must be aware that I am working with a very heterogeneous group of people. Work roles also play a part in how they want to gather information. Busy clinicians have little patience for slow progress or long courses. They want to know very clearly what you are asking of them and how to accomplish it. They like examples but the information must be correct. They are easily distracted by a lab value that is off or orders that are wrong for a specific diagnosis. Computer analysts want to know how this all works together. What will the workflow be? What’s the solution to any kind of issue that may come up? They want lessons to be planned and orderly. You must know your audience to be effective.

Assessing a student’s learning can be difficult in this situation. I add testing throughout an online module or at the end of a course. I provide practice exercises for the user to complete in the training environment of the software if the course is long. The general measure of success though is usually measured in the number of calls to the help desk that are associated with training and not errors in the software.

As a learner my goal is to increase my knowledge of the topic at hand and understand how it fits into the greater picture. I want to be familiar with resources that will help me become proficient. As a trainer, I use technology to reach my users. Hospitals are staffed around-the-clock and online courses fit into the learner’s schedule. Other software applications can be used on phones or tablets to facilitate communication or education when needed and not on a specific schedule.

I use both my experience as a clinician and a trainer to teach concepts important to the end users so they can focus on the job of taking care of the patient. I use online courses as my teaching modality. This is the way I share knowledge.

References

Kelly, J. (2012, September). Learning Theories. Retrieved from http://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/learning/theories/

Originally posted on my CMU blog on September 14, 2019.

March 1, 2020October 18, 2020

Multimedia Instruction in the Classroom

blackboard, desk, apple, laptop and globe

My Sutori link is here.

This semester has been filled with different types of multimedia methods. Some of them, such as working with images, creating videos and online assessments were not new to me. Other methods were novel, and I got to learn a lot about what’s available in educational technology. I’ve put a lot of time into creating the assignments, and I really enjoyed the whole course. I have degrees in industrial management and nursing, and I can’t say that I found them fun. But I’ve looked forward to each project every week and am enjoying the whole graduate school program.

My thinking about technology use has broadened. I am not a classroom teacher and while I sometimes recommend blending technology into a classroom, my job is to create multimedia. I have always tried to encourage my fellow trainers to adopt more usage, but I have only relied on one tool. This course has made me think about how I could use things like infographics, augmented reality, memes and Sutori to transfer knowledge to my end users.

I found that Mayer’s Overview of Multimedia Instruction captured what you really need to know when you are creating online content. I have done my job for 15 years and the 12 principles are reflected in my experiences. The most important principle is coherence. It all comes down to this. Remove the extraneous and focus the core meaning of what you are trying to train. It’s hard to be concise, but it is so important in training. Clinical workers especially just want to know the core elements.

I enjoyed all the topics and felt they were all helpful. It was a nice mix. The readings were also helpful, but a few stood out. I liked the overview of multimedia in week one. It summarized the what, why and how of multimedia. The Padlet on copyright had very helpful resources on how to use other people’s media and how to attribute it. Copyright is hard to understand, and this combination of information helped. Is Augmented Learning In Your Future was a helpful summary of the topic as was The Multiple Uses of Augmented Reality in Education. I probably knew the least about augmented reality.

I especially liked the augmented reality assignment. It was very easy to use, and I could quickly create something fun. The infographic was something different for me and I found concentrating my message into something that small a challenge. I learned how to use variables in a different way in the assessment assignment and will use that in my tests at work. The coding assignment helped me start to learn HTML, something that I have wanted to do for a while and had not gotten around to.

I think this course will make me try different modalities when creating multimedia projects. I have learned more of what is available and concrete ways to use them. This reflection assignment has been helpful as well. My workload is extremely high. I don’t really reflect on anything anymore and this is a good reminder to stop and re-evaluate what I am doing, why I do it and how to make it better.

February 13, 2020October 18, 2020

Augmented Reality

This week I learned about Augmented Reality using an application called Metaverse. These are links to my experiences:

My First Experience

Learn About the Planets

A Quiz About Planets

Using AR in Training

Augmented Reality could have a radical impact on healthcare training. My first thought when I read this reflection question about using AR in training was for Durable Medical Equipment (DME) such as pumps. Nurses use a pump to infuse intravenous fluids and medications at the rate the provider ordered. Incorrect programming of the pump could have serious safety consequences for a patient. Pumps have gotten smarter over time. They now have medication profiles and other guardrails to prevent safety mishaps. With this complexity has come training challenges and using AR to overlay steps to operate the pump brings the training to the bedside where it is needed.

Once I started doing some research, I found more exciting possibilities for AR, including overlaying radiological studies (MRI, CT, x-ray) over a patient prior to surgery to provide landmarks of the patient’s internal anatomy for the surgeon (Augmented Reality in Healthcare). Another possibility uses AR to train nurses to respond to a medical emergency or trauma. Simulation mannequins can cost as much as $100,000, so AR could increase access to a simulated situation at a much lower cost (Producing Better Nurses with Augmented Reality). Another promising use of AR involves using lasers as an overlay on a patient’s skin to map subcutaneous blood vessels, allowing the nurse to find a vein to start an IV (Six Ways Augmented Reality is Transforming the Future of Healthcare). I haven’t been an emergency nurse for 21 years, but I still have dreams about having to start an IV on someone or that I’m being called into the Trauma Room. Nursing is a stressful job and more access to quality training really does have an impact on patient outcomes.

I got an email at work today about using AR in Lectora (the eLearning software I use). I signed up for the online discussion so perhaps I will learn some more ways to use AR with the tools I have.

Ease of Use

I found Metaverse to be easy to learn and use. There was some instability when I published it on my phone. The experience disappeared easily and was distorted when I used the AR background, but was visible with the standard background. The text in the text bubble often sheared in half so it was unreadable. I don’t know if it was my phone that was the issue but using this with various devices could be problematic. Building the experiences was a true joy. I liked the smaller scale of it and the ease of moving pieces of it around.

Some of my coworkers could easily use this software to create engaging experiences. Others would struggle without support. When I teach my coworkers how to use eLearning software, branching is one of the hardest concepts for them to master, so building more complex experiences could be challenging. But it would be easy for them to use experiences that were built for them.

Next Tutorial

Next, I would view the Metaverse tutorial Add A GPS Location. I would use this functionality to build a scavenger hunt for new orientees to the hospital. Our hospital has multiple locations and even on the main campus there are buildings spread out over several miles that are accessed by a shuttle system. A scavenger hunt would be a fun way to learn how to get around. A GPS location experience could also be used for general wayfinding when someone is new.

February 8, 2020October 18, 2020

Evaluating a Found Video

My work audience includes adults in a healthcare setting. I chose a video that would apply to nursing students. I have about 1,500 nursing students a year that take my online courses. I am unable to show any software content due to vendor restrictions, so I chose a topic that is something nursing students in a pediatric hospital need exposure to. Many illnesses in pediatrics have a respiratory origin so familiarity with common lung sounds is important. Students have liberal access to YouTube through our intranet and could also easily view this video on their phones. Guest internet access is provided by the hospital so students would not have to use cell service.

The video I chose is called Lung sounds (respiratory auscultation sounds). The most important reasons I chose this video over ones I viewed that talked about pediatric breath sounds was its brevity, clarity and accuracy. While it showed an adult patient, the range of sounds cover pediatric breath sounds nicely. A nursing student is more likely to view this video since it excels at the coherence principle of multimedia – it is right to the point. I can understand that the creators are a group called Geeky Medics because this is exactly how I would expect a group of medics to train. No extraneous information. Cut it into consumable chunks. No superfluous designs. It also matches the 10 factors described in our readings. It is appropriate for the topic, student and accessibility. It flows well and listening to sample breath sounds is the best way to learn what you will find in a patient. The authors also have a list of other videos students would find helpful.

References

Geeky Medics. (2018, March 7). Lung sounds (respiratory auscultation sounds) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NvBk61ngDY

February 1, 2020October 18, 2020

Digital Images

Use in the Classroom or Educational Setting

Lesson Plan Idea:
Incorporating elements of last week’s lesson, I will teach my coworkers how to use multimedia artifacts to support training content. They will use both last week’s job aid template and images to teach a specific task.

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this learning event, the learner will develop a job aid on hand-washing using provided images. The learner will put the steps in order and write descriptive instructions for each step. The learner will add captions under each image that describe the image so that applications for readers with low vision will adequately describe the image.

The addition of captions will help users who cannot view the images in the job aid. Captions will also act as another reminder to perform hand-washing regularly. Non-compliance is a barrier to infection control, so captioning performs a dual role in increasing access as well as compliance.

Application

Multimedia design principles applied to my lesson idea in that text and images are combined to facilitate understanding. Using clearly worded steps with images allows the user to learn the skill on their own without extraneous material getting in the way. Some of the specific principles include coherence (limit the job aid to the steps required to do the task), signaling (number the tasks so the order is clear), contiguity (images and steps appear together to promote understanding) and segmenting (breaking the task up into steps).

Digital image technologies in general followed the same path, but coherence stood out in this week’s tasks. All four tasks had a limited canvas to use. It was hard to clutter these types of multimedia with extraneous information. A meme or gif doesn’t work if you are not very concise and on point. An infographic is the distillation of a larger concept. If a job aid is meant to take a complex topic and make it simple, an infographic is even more so.

Reflection

I normally don’t use memes, gifs or infographics in my work since I am focused on online courses. This week has piqued my interest in these forms of multimedia. I can see helping my fellow classroom trainers develop these types of artifacts.
I grew up with a group of blind friends and have an interest in access issues. I have attended conference sessions on how to enable more access in eLearning. I do try to incorporate these concepts, but my workload often limits my ability to make my courses wholly accessible. I will try to increase tagging and keyboard shortcuts in my courses instead of just adding captions to my videos to increase access to users with more types of disabilities.
All the tasks this week stood out for me. I regularly modify images in some way, but not in a creative way like this week. I enjoyed that. I really enjoyed the meme. I redid the infographic multiple times until it felt right, which is my process so I think I will use that more as well. I worked with it enough to feel it is now part of my toolkit. As far as growth, I am spending a lot of time on areas that I don’t do at work. I have to sit with the content longer before an idea comes to me than I do with a work assignment. I am newer to these tasks and am expanding my skills in related areas which I am fully enjoying.

Artifacts

January 24, 2020October 18, 2020

Padlet Example

Link to my Padlet for Typography

Use in the Classroom or Educational Setting

The above link to Padlet is an introduction to the main concepts of typefaces and fonts. Padlet allows me to pull multiple topics and examples into one space so the learner can interact with the content at their own pace. The learner can concentrate on new concepts or skip familiar topics entirely.

January 18, 2020October 18, 2020

The Power of Multimedia

Multimedia means using and integrating various modalities, such as text, images, audio and motion (video and animation) to enhance learning (Multimedia in the Classroom, n.d.). The readings this week focused on how to design multimedia to strengthen instruction using 12 basic principles (Mayer, 2014).

The supporting readings, for me, described how teaching K-12 and corporate training differ. Multimedia is expected in training. I no longer must justify doing it. Learners, at least in a hospital, do not like to be in a classroom. They want content to come to them. Even if the multimedia is in the form of a presentation, they prefer personal demos as opposed to meetings. The content itself differs as well. It’s very task oriented. I’m showing someone how to do their job and the emphasis is on brevity; the challenge is to reduce complex content into the essentials.

In my experience as an eLearning specialist, Mayer’s 12 principles sum up what you need to know to be successful to convey knowledge and engage users effectively. The basic concepts are that words alone are not as effective as adding graphics, and that people have limitations on how much information they can process. Dual channels allow the learner to use different mechanisms to increase the opportunity for meaningful learning (Mayer, 2014).

The 12 principles fall into three groupings: reducing extraneous processing, managing essential processing and fostering generative processing. The first two groupings talk about dealing with information overload – removing excess material for the first and choosing relevant material for the second. Generative processing speaks to taking the information and integrating it into your thought structure.

Some of the principles are intuitive enough that they need little comment. Locating words and images close together on your timeline as you tell your story are common sense (spatial and temporal contiguity). My experience teaching coworkers how to create multimedia tells me that people interested in design usually know to do this. The same goes for using a human voice (voice principle). There are some limitations with audio. Nurses who view content on the unit cannot have sound or use headphones that would block them from hearing alarms. Creating audio is also a more advanced skill that should not be a barrier to new designers. Other than a few limitations though, audio is preferred by learners.

Obstacles to the concept of coherence seems to fall along four reasons in software training in healthcare. Trainers either don’t know the content well enough to filter out non-essentials, know the content very well and turn the learning situation into a data dump, are non-clinical and think something is important because it is complex, or for whatever reason want to show someone how to do a task three different ways. The Goldilocks space where you train enough information to do the job without overloading can be difficult.

Signaling is an important concept for designers to master. It goes deeper than highlighting the point you want to emphasize. It’s the graphic itself. I find most people want to add context to their teaching point. They grab too large a screen shot so the user can orient themselves to the screen, then shrink it down to fit the media and add an arrow, box or highlight. The result is a blurry graphic that does not add to learning. They don’t really see this as a distraction, but it is. The real skill is to distill the content into easy to digest bites. Signaling is the removing part, segmenting is the targeting part. Learners need the option to discover what they don’t know. This may include skipping parts and your multimedia will be more successful if you share control of the learning with the learner.

Pre-training is an interesting principle. It works both within your multimedia content or the multimedia itself could be the pre-training. When you are using a blended learning approach that will include classroom experience, designing the multimedia to present key concepts then moving to more complex ideas in person is a productive use of time.

The generative processing principles encourage engagement with the learner so they will integrate the content into their workflow. It’s adding the human touch to your multimedia. Using audio helps with personalization. It’s harder for a designer to use passive or overly complicated verbiage if you are talking. But again, there is a balance of connecting with your user versus adding too many human elements that they become a distraction.

If you are new to multimedia design, these 12 principles are a thorough summation of what you need to know to get started. If you are experienced, they are a good reminder of how to make your multimedia effective and engaging.

References

Multimedia in the Classroom. (n.d.) Retrieved from http://fcit.usf.edu/multimedia/overview/overviewa.html

Mayer, R. E. (2014). Research-based principles for designing multimedia instruction. In V. A. Benassi, C. E. Overson, & C. M. Hakala (Eds.), Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum. Retrieved from http://hilt.harvard.edu/files/hilt/files/background_reading.pdf

October 14, 2019October 18, 2020

Leader Resource Evaluation

Lynda.com is an educational website that provides users with videos to help learn new skills, primarily in the area of technology, graphics and business. Some videos come with exercises that you can do along with the video for hands-on experience. You can select different tracks to learn a specific skill or body of knowledge.

I would rate this website a 7 on a 1-10 scale. The lack of interaction with a facilitator and the simplicity of most of the exercises make it hard to really retain most of the information you view. While the instructors are engaging and the videos are well made, the subject matter really does require more practice to become competent. I have taken a number of courses on Lynda.com and they are very helpful when learning a new skill. It’s just hard to remember all the material that is covered.

It’s an excellent option for workforce training since many of the tracks teach how to use common business software. Many companies have licenses for Lynda.com or your local public library may have some available on their eLearning site. The lessons can be completed in a short enough time-frame to be useful on the job site. The learner can view the short course and quickly put that knowledge to use on a project.

Lynda.com meets the ISTE standards for a leader by empowering learners to take charge of their training and create a menu of education based on their needs and interests. The online aspect of the courses allows a diverse audience to choose varied courses and review each video as many times as necessary to gain the desired skill. Lynda.com curates the information for the learner so he or she does not have to comb the internet for resources.

October 4, 2019October 18, 2020

Facilitator Resource Evaluation

Wakelet.com is a website that allows the user to save web content as well as text and images in an easy-to-use and graphically pleasing format. You can save bookmarked websites, videos, tweets and other content in collections. It’s a combination of a browser’s bookmarking feature and a library with the ability to add text and images to tell the story of why you are saving those sites. You can create collections to organize related items. You can keep your collection private or make it public and share it with others to collaborate on your chosen topic.

This site is amazing and I would give it a 10 on a 1-10 scale. It allows you to create a visually pleasing portfolio of information that you can share with a class or coworkers. You could use this instead of practice sheets or anytime you want to collate certain information for users. You can also use it for a productivity tool to keep all of your resources on a topic in one place.

This site aligns with the ISTE standard of facilitator by letting the learner explore content in a non-linear manner and decide what items to view, thus taking ownership of their learning. The users can easily navigate the platform, add web content or use it as a guide for outside problem solving, depending on the content the collection contains. It’s geared toward any school-age or older audience so could be effective both in a school or worksite.

September 23, 2019October 18, 2020

Designer Resource Evaluation

W3Schools.com is an educational website to teach learners web development languages. It has a clean layout with an easy-to-navigate menu and tabs across the top that lead you through learning resources. It has a series of examples for each topic and an area where you can practice the concepts you have learned. You can make changes in the practice area and get real-time feedback. I would give it a 10 on a 1-10 scale.

The best part about the website is how it chunks information into small pieces which are easy to learn. Web development is a daunting task and this website makes it seem possible to learn. If you are just looking to brush up on certain skills, tutorials are easy to find. It’s a good independent training site.

The website moves from easy to more complex concepts within each programming language. The practice area allows the learner to gain mastery over the topic. The breadth of topics covered makes it a well-rounded learning environment. The simple design feels uncluttered and inviting.