Minimalism is an action- and task-oriented approach to instruction and documentation that emphasizes the importance of realistic activities and experiences for effective learning and information seeking. Since 1990, when the approach was defined in John Carroll's The Nurnberg Funnel, much work has been done to apply, refine, and broaden the minimalist approach to technical communication. This volume presents fourteen major contributions to the current theory and practice of minimalism.Contributors evaluate the development of minimalism up to now, analyze the acceptance of minimalism by the mainstream technical communications community, report on specific innovations and investigations, and discuss future challenges and directions. The book also includes an appendix containing a bibliography of published research and development work on minimalism since 1990. Contributors Tricia Anson, R. John Brockmann, John M. Carroll, Steve Draper, David K. Farkas, JoAnn T. Hackos, Robert R. Johnson, Greg Kearsley, Barbara Mirel, Janice (Ginny) Redish, Stephanie Rosenbaum, Karl L. Smart, Hans van der Meij. Published in association with the Society for Technical Communication.

How do people acquire beginning competence at using new technology? The legendary Funnel of Nurnberg was said to make people wise very quickly when the right knowledge was poured in; it is an approach that designers continue to apply in trying to make instruction more efficient. This book describes a quite different instructional paradigm that uses what learners do spontaneously to find meaning in the activities of learning. It presents the "minimalist" approach to instructional design - its origins in the study of people's learning problems with computer systems, its foundations in the psychology of learning and problem solving, and its application in a variety of case studies. Carroll demonstrates that the minimalist approach outperforms the standard "systems approach" in every relevant way - the learner, not the system determines the model and the methods of instruction. It supports the rapid achievement of realistic projects right from the start of training, instead of relying on drill and practice techniques, and designing for error recognition and recovery as basic instructional events, instead of seeing error as failure. The book's many examples - including a brief discussion of recent commercial applications - will help researchers and practitioners apply and develop this new instructional technology. The Nurnberg Funnel inaugurates the Technical Communications series, edited by Ed Barrett. Author John M. Carroll has participated for a number of years as a leader in the interdisciplinary field of human-computer interactions. He has been: Manager of User Interface Theory and Design at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center (1976-1994); a professor in Computer Science at Virginia Tech (through 2003); and is currently (2018) Distinguished Professor and co-Director of the College of Information Sciences and Technology's Laboratory for Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning at Pennsylvania State University. He is also the Director of the university's Center for Human-Computer Interaction. He has received numerous awards, especially for his contributions to Information Technology and its relationship with humans. ~Compiled from MIT Press and Penn State University: https://jcarroll.ist.psu.edu/ (Retrieved 2018, September 7.)

Easy-to-apply, scientifically-based approaches for engaging students in the classroom Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham focuses his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning. His book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn. It reveals-the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences. Nine, easy-to-understand principles with clear applications for the classroom Includes surprising findings, such as that intelligence is malleable, and that you cannot develop "thinking skills" without facts How an understanding of the brain's workings can help teachers hone their teaching skills "Mr. Willingham's answers apply just as well outside the classroom. Corporate trainers, marketers and, not least, parents -anyone who cares about how we learn-should find his book valuable reading." —Wall Street Journal

This handy resource describes and illustrates the concepts underlying the “First Principles of Instruction” and illustrates First Principles and their application in a wide variety of instructional products. The book introduces the e3 Course Critique Checklist that can be used to evaluate existing instructional product. It also provides directions for applying this checklist and illustrates its use for a variety of different kinds of courses. The Author has also developed a Pebble-in-the-Pond instructional design model with an accompanying e3 ID Checklist. This checklist enables instructional designers to design and develop instructional products that more adequately implement First Principles of Instruction.

Motivated by the conviction that ICT should be used as an effective tool, this book shows how it can support teaching and learning in the classroom and in the virtual world of school intranet, websites and learning platforms. Practical tasks and teaching tips demonstrate how imaginative use of technology can promote creative and enthusiastic teaching, as well as enable new approaches to teaching and learning. It includes descriptions of new technologies and systems and how they can be used, as well as guidance on the software, and activities to engage pupils in their own learning.

Emerging technologies have enhanced the learning capabilities and opportunities in modern school systems. To continue the effective development of such innovations, the intended users must be taken into account. End-User Considerations in Educational Technology Design is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on usability testing techniques and user-centered design methodologies in the development of technological tools for learning environments. Highlighting a range of pertinent topics such as multimedia learning, human-computer interaction, and online learning, this book is ideally designed for academics, researchers, school administrators, professionals, and practitioners interested in the design of optimized educational technologies.

John Carroll shows how a pervasive but underused element of design practice, the scenario, can transform information systems design. Difficult to learn and awkward to use, today's information systems often change our activities in ways that we do not need or want. The problem lies in the software development process. In this book John Carroll shows how a pervasive but underused element of design practice, the scenario, can transform information systems design. Traditional textbook approaches manage the complexity of the design process via abstraction, treating design problems as if they were composites of puzzles. Scenario-based design uses concretization. A scenario is a concrete story about use. For example: "A person turned on a computer; the screen displayed a button labeled Start; the person used the mouse to select the button." Scenarios are a vocabulary for coordinating the central tasks of system development—understanding people's needs, envisioning new activities and technologies, designing effective systems and software, and drawing general lessons from systems as they are developed and used. Instead of designing software by listing requirements, functions, and code modules, the designer focuses first on the activities that need to be supported and then allows descriptions of those activities to drive everything else. In addition to a comprehensive discussion of the principles of scenario-based design, the book includes in-depth examples of its application.