Julie Dirksen
Learning Strategist, Usable Learning
Julie Dirksen, a learning strategist with Usable Learning, is a consultant and instructional designer with more than 15 years’ experience creating highly interactive eLearning experiences for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to technology startups to grant-funded research initiatives. She’s interested in using neuroscience, change management, and persuasive technology to promote sustainable long-term learning and behavior change. Her MS degree in instructional systems technology is from Indiana University, and she’s been an adjunct faculty member at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She is the author of Design For How People Learn.
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Research for Practitioners: When It’s Not a Knowledge Problem
As an instructional designer, how do you handle situations where there’s not a knowledge problem? Where people know what to do, but just don’t do it? Here’s a review of a recent research study on the influence of visceral experience on behavior. It will suggest a way that you may want to try when dealing with these cases.
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Research for Practitioners: How to Improve Knowledge Retention
In academic approaches to teaching and learning that focus on knowledge rather than skill, the activities often involve traditional studying that involves repetition of the content. There are other methods that may also support learning. Do you know which one works best? One study attempted to find an answer to that question.
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Research for Practitioners: Social Interaction, Belief, and Learning
Do you learn more by interacting with a live person, or by interacting with a computer? Does the belief that you are interacting with another person (as opposed to a computer) affect learning? In this first installment of our new research review series, a study looks beyond the Turing Test. This article summarizes the findings and offers some implications for instructional design.