Size does matter. Snack Learning

I recently read an article describing the tendency toward Snack TV. Entertainment is changing very rapidly and it seems like there is a tendency to reduce the size of the "entertainment packages". The longer a show is, the more difficult is for a viewer to stick watching it for the entire duration.

I think this tendency is partially due to the amount of information that is surrounding us. There is so much to see and so interesting, that spending a significant amount of time viewing one single piece of entertainment seems like a waste, because we are missing so many others...

I"ll push a bit the analogy here. A similar situation is happening with learning, at least in the area of technology (which is the one I maintain a daily contact). There used to be a time in which the concepts, techniques, theories a student needed to know, that courses would cover them with no problem. Today, the story is very different. For example, there are so many programming languages, tools for designing circuits, simulators, emulators, etc. that instead of going for a complete coverage, educational institutions need to prepare students to deal with an ever increasing body of knowledge.

An alternative approach could be to provide small content educational bits. Very focussed in one single concept, explain it straight to the point. Craft a clever example that exposes the concept clearly. I recently came to produce a couple of this (shall I call it) learning resources and I feel they are more likely to capture the attention of the learner then conventional slides, notes and text book chapters.

The piece was a simple screen capture explaining the behavior of some strange programming language construction. It lasts less than five minutes, it shows a window with an editor and a set of commands and lines that are manipulated to expose the resulting behavior of this construct. I have no quantitative evidence, but watching the screen cast, I think the average student would get the concept quickly.

In their paper Re-Learning e-Learning, Reggie Van Lee and colleagues seem to suggest that this tendency can be deduced from the evolution of the e-learning industry in the last years. They argue that the e-learning consumer is practical and task-focused. The so called "single-serve" education provides resources that are targeted to one single concept.

This tendency should make us teachers carefully think about what is the best way to organize concepts to be understood by our students. My guess is that teachers are willing to try new ideas if they significantly increase the effectiveness of their classes, and this type of material could be one additional dimension to explore.