15 - Practice Principle #1: Add Sufficient Practice Interactions to e-Learning to Achieve the Objective

Brief Definition

Practice makes perfect! According to Clark and Mayer (2011), in e-learning, achieving the right balance between instruction and practice is challenging. Some practice is effective; however, research shows that getting into the realm of “over-learning,” which is different for different content, does not increase learning.

An Artifact

GrammarMonster.com offers some excellent basic grammar e-courses. They are segmented by topic. This is in the “Easily Confused Words” category and is called Accept and Except. There are some excellent components in this lesson. For example, notice the graphic in the first image below. The images are perfect pictorial explanations of the difference between the two words. However, as shown in the second image, the all-text lesson continues beyond the images to more in-depth written explanations of the words. There is even additional information in text boxes. And then after the user has explored all of the information and read the examples, the top right corner of the screen offers practice through an “interactive test.” If all other principles had been appropriately applied in this lesson and, therefore, some knowledge transferred, then the practice problems/sentences would be an effective application of Practice Principle 1.

References

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2011). E-learning and the science of instruction: Proven guidelines for consumers and designers of multimedia learning. San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.