Interesting statistics sort of related to learning
I’ve read some interesting posts and web articles lately on topics that are relevant to formal and informal learning.
1) Line length and readability/comprehension online
For years, I abided by the rule that users (aka learners in my setting) liked reading text that was formatted into lines of about 4 inches in length. Longer line lengths reduced comprehension. Well, now I am not so sure. I reviewed a study done on line length and reading comprehension. Turns out a really long line length of 10 inches may be better than the 4 inches I thought was best. People’s eyes have to switch back to the next line less often if the lenght is longer, which decreases the number of momentary losses of concentration as their eyes go from the end of one line to the start of the next. If you go too short, then comprehension really drops. (Keep that in mind when you try to squeeze more and more words in a feedback box that is only 2-inches wide!)
I’m really curious about this so I came up with a rather poorly designed survey (designed in 30 minutes) to see people’s preferences and to see if they comprehend a narrower paragraph better than they do a wider one. Click here if you are willing to take my survey. It’s quick/dirty and not at all scientific, but I think it will be interesting to see what folks say. I’ll post the results next week.
2) Participation in informal learning (wikis, blogs, etc).
Tony Karrer wrote about the 90-9-1 rule in his blog post last week. This rule pretty much mirrors the adage about email or mass marketing efforts, which says you have to send out 100 emails or direct mail pieces to get a single response. With social media, you have 100 subscribers to your blog, wiki, or whatever to get 1 person to regularly contribute. According to Karrer, who bases HIS information on lots of other research that he cites,
- 90 will lurk (read with no active participation)
- 9 will participate in a limited fashion (maybe rate or comment periodically)
- 1 will regularly post content
This has big implications for organizations who tout informal learning as the new means of knowledge managment (remember all the communities of practice of a few years ago…and the lack of people participating in them????). Respondents to Karrer’s post (clearly he has LOTS of people viewing his blog!) had interesting views. One commenter pointed out that the 90-9-1 rule may change with a new generation of digital natives who are more comfortable commenting and participating in social networks than the baby boomers were participating in older forms of knowledge management and sharing.
We shall see! Informal learning will succeed or fail based on the level of participation in it.
In the meantime, I’ll let you know how many participants I get in my very unscientific line length survey. Whether you choose to base your e-learning screen layouts on my information will be up to you!
Tags: 90-9-1 rule, informal learning, line length in learning
April 15th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
Very interesting! I took the survey and I *did* find the longer lines much easier to read.
April 19th, 2009 at 11:49 pm
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