EDUC 240 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Action Learning, Educational Psychology
27 May 2020
School
Department
Course
Professor
EDU 240: Training and Development
Lecture 30
An important concept in educational psychology is “aptitude-treatment interaction.” Basically,
what is conveyed by this term is the principle that every specific instructional strategy yields
different results, as determined by individual characteristics of the learners. An approach that
yields higher learning outcomes for some individuals may show no better results, or worse, for
another group, in comparison with an alternative method. Some of the key individual differences
are attributes such as experience, prior knowledge, general aptitude, meta-cognitive abilities,
reading comprehension, and motivation. The prevalence of aptitude by treatment interactions
underscores the importance of considering the audience when making decisions concerning
training models, and also of incorporating a variety of strategies, to the extent that this is feasible.
Off-the-Job Training Methods
This lesson presents the advantages and disadvantages of the most common off-the-job training
delivery methods. They are presented in increasing order of trainee involvement.
• Increasing trainer involvement
o Lecture
o Discussion
o Audio-visual methods
o Case study
o Case incident
o Behaviour modeling
o Role play
o Games
o Simulations
o Action learning
Method: Lecture
Trainer organizes content and presents orally; little listener involvement.
Advantages
• Transfer large amounts in short time. Minimal costs to produce.
• Listeners all get same message (consistency in content).
Disadvantages
• Not effective for development of skills/change of attitudes.
• Forced passive learning.
• Does not accommodate differences among participants (experience, ability, role,
interests, motivation, etc.).
• Scheduling (inflexible).
Method: Audio-Visual
Document Summary
An important concept in educational psychology is aptitude-treatment interaction. basically, what is conveyed by this term is the principle that every specific instructional strategy yields different results, as determined by individual characteristics of the learners. An approach that yields higher learning outcomes for some individuals may show no better results, or worse, for another group, in comparison with an alternative method. Some of the key individual differences are attributes such as experience, prior knowledge, general aptitude, meta-cognitive abilities, reading comprehension, and motivation. The prevalence of aptitude by treatment interactions underscores the importance of considering the audience when making decisions concerning training models, and also of incorporating a variety of strategies, to the extent that this is feasible. This lesson presents the advantages and disadvantages of the most common off-the-job training delivery methods. They are presented in increasing order of trainee involvement. Increasing trainer involvement: lecture, discussion, audio-visual methods, case study, case incident, behaviour modeling, role play, games, simulations, action learning.
