For a long time I've been frustrated at the way the IET, particularly in its On-Site Guide, sets out information. I'll give just one example. In the catchphrase of the Irish comedian Jimmy Cricket, there's more, but one will hopefully suffice. This example is taken from 'Section 10, Guidance on initial testing of installations, Insulation Resistance'. In particular, the OSG's guidance given on the Pre-test checks necessary before carrying out an IR test. This is what it looks like:
(i) Looking not at the information, but at the typographic manner that the information is presented, we can see that the text:
(a) Has a bold heading.(b) Is formed into a list.(c) Is numbered with a lower case Roman numeral.(d) Is indented from the left-side margin.(e) And is further indented and numbered with a lower case letter (a & b) for each check.
The information is easy to identify because it stands out on the page and easy to follow because it’s split up into easily digestible chunks of instructional information. So when an apprentice, who's trying to carry out this test with neither instruction, guidance, nor feedback, needs some assistance; this is both a useful and helpful place to look. The problem with it is that it's incomplete. There are a number of further pre-test checks that need to be done, but these are not included in this list. These are:-
- Located on the following page.
- Tucked away in the section headed "Test".
- Not written in bold.
- Not set out in a list like the previous checks.
- Not numbered.
- And not indented.
This is what it looks like.
And as well as not standing out typographically, this information is located in a section that gives guidance on how to carry out a test on a single phase circuit. If you were testing a three-phase circuit, you probably wouldn't consider looking here. The information presented in the OSG, which an apprentice, or indeed an electrician, might need to prepare a circuit for an IR test, is fragmented and typographically inconsistent. It tacitly acknowledges the need for guidance, then seems to almost go deliberately out of its way to deliver that guidance badly. I've written elsewhere about the way technical/manual work is regarded. This lack of attention to design details hints that at some deeply hidden level of consciousness, the OSG writer thinks that the information isn't worthy of the respect it deserves.
consistency enables people to efficiently transfer knowledge to new contexts, learn new things, and focus attention on the relevant parts of a task (Lidwell)
The Principle of Consistency
The fundamental principle of interactional design that is broken here is that of consistency. Consistency allows us to identify patterns and give them meaning, which in turn enables us to make sense of our experiences, to predict what might come next and to decide what choices to make in order to pursue our goals. William Lidwell, in his book Universal Principles of Design, explains that consistency ‘enables people to efficiently transfer knowledge to new contexts, learn new things, and focus attention on the relevant parts of a task’. More specifically, the design fault in the On-Site Guide is a lack of internal consistency, which, as Lidwell points out, undermines rather than cultivates trust. This lack of internal consistency communicates to the user that the system has not been carefully designed and is more likely to have been “cobbled together”. As a consequence, they lack faith in the book and because they're not sure they've got all the information they need, themselves.
The value of internal consistency for the educator is that it doesn’t just group the aesthetic and the functional together in one consistent whole but makes the aesthetic a feature of the functional and helps teach through design. And that's exactly what you need when you’re looking to the OSG for guidance and support. You want to find your spot and gather your information from that spot. Instead what happens is that at worst the user misses vital information, and doesn’t carry out the test correctly, or at best, if you are fortunate enough to find both bits of information, your attention is split between the two parts. And that leads to unforced errors, circuits not tested properly, and assessments failed.
Designing to focus the learner's attention
In vocational training, learners often need to integrate information from various sources like diagrams, text, and instructions to master practical skills. I encountered this precise problem with the specification for an electrical installation that was inherited from previous educators. Information for each of the circuit was scattered in various places throughout the document making it almost impossible for the apprentice to find all the information required because they couldn't for the life of them tell where that information might be hiding. Finding a single piece of information required the learner to read, re-read, and read again the whole spec every single time that they needed one piece of information. The learner's working memory became overloaded, trying to mentally connect the disparate information instead of focusing on understanding the skill itself. Consequently, and not unsurprisingly, information was missed, and tasks were left undone. Again, the problem lay not with the reader whose attention was split across too many points but with the design of the specification. It was like the learner had been tasked with collecting water in a sieve.
The solution, of course, was simply to redesign the specification so that all the information for each individual circuit was consistently presented typographically and collated in one specific place. In other words, the specification was designed to focus the reader's attention rather than split their attention.
The Split-Attention Effect
The split attention effect, identified by John Sweller within his Cognitive Load Theory, describes a situation where a learner must divide their attention between multiple sources of information that are presented separately in space or time. This separation requires learners to mentally integrate the disparate pieces of information, and this consumes valuable working memory resources. Essentially, when information is not physically or temporally integrated, learners experience an increased extraneous cognitive load. This load is unproductive for learning as it's directed towards mentally connecting the fragmented information rather than understanding the content itself. As a result, less working memory capacity is available for processing and encoding the actual material, leading to less effective learning.
Physically integrating disparate sources of information so that they no longer have to be mentally integrated reduces extraneous cognitive load and facilitates learning. (Sweller)
The problem with the spec. for the electrical installation mentioned earlier was that information was spread across multiple pages: some of it was here, some of it was there, and other bits were somewhere else entirely. The learner had to constantly switch their attention between the multiple places and hold information in their working memory to make the required connections. This split attention hindered the learning process compared to the new scenario where the text is integrated into one place. By physically and temporally integrating this information, we reduced extraneous cognitive load to optimize learning and performance. In effect, the educator bore the complexity of the design, allowing the user to experience the simplicity of it. (I’ve written elsewhere about Tesler’s Law in education).
The split attention effect highlights the importance of instructional design that minimizes the need for learners to mentally integrate separate but related sources of information. By being mindful of the split attention effect, instructional designers in vocational education can create more effective learning materials that reduce extraneous cognitive load and allow learners to focus on acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge.
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Sources
* Doughton, M. (Ed) (2022) On-Site Guide BS 7671:2018+A2:2022, The Institution of Engineering and Technology, London
* Lidwell, W. (2003) Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions and Teach through Design, Rockport Publishers, Massachusetts
* Sweller, J. (2016, February 10). Story of a Research Program. In S. Tobias, J. D. Fletcher, & D. C.
Berliner (Series eds.), Acquired Wisdom Series. Education Review, 23. http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/er.v23.2025
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