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WebNet 2000 Preconference Minicourse - Independent Comparisons of Online Learning Tools and Environments

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WebNet 2000 Preconference Minicourse -
Independent Comparisons of Online Learning Tools and Environments

• By Bruce Landon, PH.D.

• Psychology Department

• Douglas College

• website: http://www.ctt.bc.ca/landonline

Back  2  Forward   DECISIONS   CONTEXT   THEORY:   IDEAL   ILLUSIONS   FALLIBILITIES   CLUES   COMPARATIVE  11  12  13  14  15   REVIEW  17   THANKS

AGENDA

• Why application decisions are difficult

• Illusions & Fallibilities of Decision Makers

• How Comparative Analysis can help

• Review of Main Points

Back  3  Forward   CONTEXT   THEORY:   IDEAL   ILLUSIONS   FALLIBILITIES   CLUES   COMPARATIVE  11  12  13  14  15   REVIEW  17   THANKS

DECISIONS are difficult because:

• Deciding to Buy - Who Decides cartoon

• Existing applications are changing quickly (Moore's Law and digital storage)

• Not every application is a winner

• Decision makers cannot do a problem this big in their head (memory span limits 7 plus or minus 2 things at once - demonstration)

• There are over 100 potential applications

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CONTEXT of Institutional Decision Making

• The people who choose may not be the people who use the application

• The life Cycle of Technology

• Early Adopters want more technology

• Late Adopters want convenience, reliability, low cost

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THEORY: Multi-Attribute Utility Theory

• Breaking a decision into independent dimensions

• Determining the relative weights of each dimension

• Listing of all of the alternatives

• Ranking the alternatives along all dimensions (rating can work as well as ranking)

• Multiplying the ranking by the weighting to determine the value

• Selecting the alternative with the highest value

Back  6  Forward   ILLUSIONS   FALLIBILITIES   CLUES   COMPARATIVE  11  12  13  14  15   REVIEW  17   THANKS

IDEAL Decision Process:

• Select relevant features and assign importance weighting to features

• Evaluate each application on relevant features and assign a suitability score

• Score Applications by first multiplying each score by the corresponding feature weight

• Select the application with the highest weighted average score - The Rational Choice

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ILLUSIONS - Cognitive Illusions

• Availability Heuristic

• Representativeness Heuristic

• Gambler's Fallacy

• Framing Effects

• Illusory Correlation

• Hindsight Bias

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FALLIBILITIES OF DECISION MAKERS:

• Effect of more options - delaying

• Similarity effect

• Decoy effect

• Effects of Decision Deadline

• Overconfidence

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CLUES from Decision Research:

• Decision makers handle overload by using heuristics and strategies to reduce the load

• For Example the Elimination by aspect strategy for example by price of product

• Neural Network simulations by Roe (1999) suggest that decision maker's attention is limited to one aspect at a time and is influenced by relative closeness of options.

• Implication is Need to Keep it Simple,

• - make little decisions and then combine into a complex decision with help in keeping track of everything.

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COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS APPROACH:

• Use review panel to provide consensus on feature/tool importance weighting

• Limit Focus to what is required

• Consider only a very few things at a time when making ratings/rankings of suitability

• Make the computer keep track of the data and do the arithmetic calculations for the familiar weighted grading model for scores

• Provide for sensitivity analysis (tweaking and recalculating)

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Comparative Analysis of Application Features:

• Focus on Different User Perspectives

• Learner Features/Tools

• Support Features/Tools

• Technical Information

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Learner Tools:

• Web Browsing:

• Asynchronous Sharing:

• Synchronous Sharing:

• Student Tools:

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Support Tools:

• Course:

• Lesson:

• Data:

• Resource:

• Administration:

• Help Desk:

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Navigation By Application name

• Examples

• -WebCT

• -BlackBoard aka CourseInfo

• Side by Side Comparison of features

• - WebCT and BlackBoard's CourseInfo

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Navigation by selected features

• Starting from an application's features

• Starting from a list of desired features

• Viewing one application's feature notes

• Viewing two applications' feature notes in a side by side comparison frame

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REVIEW of Main Points:

• Importance of the application selection decision

• The cognitive illusions of the decision makers

• Strategy to break down complex decision into smaller, simpler decisions

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The Comparative Analysis Approach to Decisions

• - Structure the decision with importance weights of important application features that accommodate your institutional context

• - Rate suitability of single features/tools one at a time

• - Use the Multi-Attribute Utility (weighted averaging model) to select most suitable application for your institutional situation

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THANKS you for Your Attention

• The Afternoon Breakout Session -

• Evaluating tools of the trade
  will demonstrate how to apply this strategy.

updated on 10/18/00  
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