Growth Mindset, AI, and More: ID Links 3/14/23

Curated links on growth mindset, an AI tool for ID, branching scenarios, accessibility, and elearning articles by multiple authors.

As I read online, I bookmark resources I find interesting and useful. I share these links periodically here on my blog. This post includes links on growth mindset, an AI tool for instructional design, branching scenarios, accessibility, and a magazine issue with elearning articles by multiple prominent authors.

Growth mindset

Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Does Developing a Growth Mindset Help Students Learn?

I created some training on growth mindset for one of my clients several years ago. At the time, there wasn’t much critical research on the topic. Now, the pendulum has swung the other way, and I’ve seen some complete dismissals of the theory. Daniel Willingham reviews the theory of growth mindset and the conflicting research to see if there is “any substance behind the hype.” I appreciate the nuance here between “growth mindset can fix everything with tiny interventions” and “growth mindset is completely meaningless.” Willingham concludes that it is worth promoting growth mindset even though the impact may be small.

Is it worth trying to promote a growth mindset in students? Yes. The effect may seem small, but it’s in the range of lots of education effects. We know there aren’t any silver bullets. We have to take many small steps with the expectation that each will make a small contribution to greater student success.

-Daniel Willingham

Willingham also suggests that growth mindset research can help educators talk to students about challenges and setbacks. These suggestions for providing constructive feedback apply just as well to workplace training as they do to classroom environments.

Growth mindset suggests three concrete steps for educators when a student suffers an academic setback:

  1. Encourage students to seek feedback about what went wrong.
  2. Encourage students to analyze these errors and use them as opportunities for learning.
  3. Encourage students to think of ways they might do things differently when they try again.
-Daniel Willingham

AI tool for instructional design

ID-Assist

A Google Doc add-on for using AI and NLP to help with instructional design tasks. This is an interesting concept, and I can see the value for things like summaries or course descriptions based on content provided. However, even their provided example has significant problems (weak objectives, low-level multiple choice questions, a truly terrible scenario). It might be worth playing with it to see where it can be useful, like speeding up the process of first drafts or generating ideas.

Branching scenarios

Designing game-inspired narratives for learning

Conference paper by Miranda Verswijvelen, Ricardo Sosa, and Nataly Martini on what we can learn from how game designers write narratives and apply that to scenario-based learning.

This study turns for guidance to the expertise of narrative designers for games, where storytelling for interactive narrative has a long history of testing, iterating and perfecting. A collection of proven techniques described by game narrative practitioners will inform creative writing efforts to craft prototypes to test the transferability of those techniques to interactive narratives in a healthcare education context.

The Twine® Grimoire, Vol. 1 by Grim Baccaris

Extensive guide on using CSS with Twine, aimed at beginner to intermediate Twine users

Accessibility

The Audio Issue

“Against Access” by John Lee Clark is a very different view of accessibility than you might find in more prominent channels like disability Twitter (and a view that I suspect many accessibility advocates would challenge). The author is DeafBlind, and he talks about how many efforts at accessibility fall short of meaningful experiences. This article is worth reading just for the DeafBlind perspective, which isn’t typically included in most accessibility discussions. For example, how would you make a version of the game UNO usable to DeafBlind players? Not just accessible with Braille that references colors they can’t see–but an enjoyable game, tailored to their experiences? Don’t use this article as an excuse not to provide things like transcripts, as imperfect as they are. But maybe there are ways to go beyond our standard accessibility to create better experiences.

Elearning articles by multiple authors

E-Learning Edition 2023 – Enterprise Viewpoint

Enterprise Viewpoint’s February 2023 issue is focused on elearning. I contributed an article (From “Click Next” to “Choose Your Path”: Elearning with Branching Scenarios). Also, check out the other contributions on a range of topics from Michael Allen, Tom Kuhlmann, Cammy Bean, Allison Rossett, Jean Marrapodi, Richard Goring, and Charles Jennings.

Additional resources

Check out my complete library of links or my previous bookmarks posts.

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