cognitive

Analyze, synthesize, use inductive and deductive reasoning, solve problems effectively and creatively.

EDTEC 540: Educational Technology

I've been in Scouting with my son for ten years now. I started as leader of his Tiger Den and followed him up through the ranks into Boy Scouts where I'm now an Assistant Scoutmaster and a Merit Badge Counselor. All of my leadership positions have primarily involved teaching the boys a variety of skills.

The one skill that nearly all of the boys have trouble with is tying knots, even though that is supposed to be the hallmark of Scouting. Every Scout should be able to tie knots, right?

So I wondered if I could come up with something for an EDTEC 540 assignment that would help them tie knots or more to the point, help them remember how to tie knots.

After collecting and analyzing some information, I decided that one of the things they needed was a job aid.

Based on what I had learned in Scouting, at school, and elsewhere, I created a black and white job aid for the bowline, one of the knots the Scouts are supposed to know, and tested it at the next Scout meeting. It was a complete failure. Not one of the Scouts was able to use the job aid to tie the knot.

In order to figure out how I had gone so wrong, I talked with the Scouts about the job aid and the knot. They told me the following:

The layout is too confusing.
The instructions are too difficult to understand.
It’s too difficult to see which part of the rope is on top and which is underneath.

I had tried a counterclockwise layout to emphasize that the knot was tied in a counterclockwise manner. Even when I carefully explained, and pointed out that each picture was numbered, they couldn’t follow the unorthodox layout and tie the knot at the same time; it was like trying to learn two things at once.

Even though they complained that the instructions were too difficult to understand, I knew this wasn’t true. I challenged them and confirmed that they weren’t reading the instructions at all; they were just following the pictures.

The complaint about it being difficult to see if one piece of rope was on top or underneath another made sense to me. I looked at the pictures with this thought in mind and realized that the only reason I could tell was because I had taken the pictures and knew the knot very well.

So, I reconstructed the job aid. I put the steps in a standard order; I de-emphasized the text ( it was only there if a Scout wanted clarification); I gave the pictures a stronger emphasis; and I painted the rope so that it was easy to see which piece of rope was on top and which was underneath.

When I tried the new job aid at the next Scout meeting, all of the Scouts were able to tie a bowline using the job aid after a little coaching.