Conceptual Modelling: Learning Icon™

Introduction: Conceptual Modelling

An important part of human interaction design is to build up a conceptual model of what is to be designed. This should include elements of the user needs analysis or business case and enable the designers and clients to visualize and discuss the developemnt of the product.

This is not a formal model, but one placed here to advance the ideas already discussed within this blog.

Applications for the Learning Icon™

The Learning Icon™ is a learning strategy that can be employed across the Face-to-Face and eLearning paradigms, either in one or both settings as blended learning might demand.

The Learning Icon™ could be a static image within a PowerPoint presentation or have hyperlinks attached to it (using transparent shapes in PowerPoint), which can link to other slides within the presentation, or to external presentations, and to any variety of other media files or resources

More complex multimedia Learning Icons™ may employ quite complex animations and menu systems, rollover effects, video-enhanced appearnace, audio media, etc. to add interest or to motivate learners to explore their content or linked files.

Their design can be formal or of an informal nature using metaphorical devices, for example. The functioanality as well as the graphical design of the Learning Icon™ is as flexible as the content and appearance of other Learning Objects. They may contain only a short learning resource, a full courseware, or only indicate a meaning through their symbology. Learning Icons™ may be deployed independently, as part of larger visualization strategies, or in sequences of actions, liguistics, or other ontological and empiracal arrangements

Practical Example

A first aide course is taught in a classroom using an interactive wipe-board. The tutor drags and operates Learning Icons™ around the screen to form an ontological approach to the dealing of a casualty with a bleeding leg: "Airway, Breathing, and Circulation", for example. On stimulating the "Circulation" icon, it expands a menu system from which a wealth of reference and rersources can be opened. In this instance, the bleeding of a limb is indicated and chosen.

Once the class has been taught the sequence of events indicated in iconic form, thelearners are invited to use a pack of Learning Icons™ presented in a similar manner to a pack of cards and are asked to lay out the correct sequence of actions required to treat a bleeding leg.

Learners who may still be uncertain of what all the icons mean will be delighted to read their simple labels as a reminder of their meaning. They open up, either like a fortune cookie, or folding out, which allows their positioning on a surface or floor in a manner that is visible to other learners like an element of a house of cards.

This activity stimulates group discussion and reflection on the information delivered earlier by the tutor.

Back home, the learners insert their DVD or CD-ROMs into their own PCs and follow an interactive eLearning programme using the same icons seen, learned, and manipulated earlier in the course of study. They drag and drop them into algorithmic arrangements in assessments and exercises, able to open up further resources from within each Learning Icon™.

When in the workplace with no IT or Av equipment available, the simply designed Learning Icons™ may be hand-drawn on a wipe or chalk board to train others in the workplace how first aide might be conducted. Aide Memoirs can be encoded withthe same Learning Icons™ as were learned in the classroom.

First Aide equipment has Learning Icon™ icon symbols printed on it to denote what it is and how to apply it. These icons are laid out in linguistic strings familiar to the first aiders from their course or training.

Resupplying of the first aide box is completed by ticking the same icon designs on the order sheet, which can be easily input into an electronic form designed to use the same iconic symbols input through an intuitive menu system.

Learning Icons™ are potentially not only able to promote learning across language and abilty barriers, but may also extend important signalling of instructions, too.

The Learning Icon™: Definition

A Learning Icon™ is a discrete learning object that may offer intuitive support to a learner through its interaction with the parent learning software’s resources or external resources in addition to its own integral ones.

Learning Icons™ may be of one, or a combination of the following types or formats:

Icon with/without label


As above, but with as hyperlink


As above, but with a drag function


As above, but with an interactive menu system or image map to further links

Learning Icons™ are suited to MS PowerPoint presentations (with / without hyperlinks)or higher-level multi-media development environments for advance eLearning. In their most technologically advanced form they are wholy a self contained Learning Object; a learning opportunity containing all cross links to other topics, references, links to new file formats, resource files, and other learning strategies common to both eLearning and Face-to-Face paradigms. Flexibility is built in and their scope depends only on the need and the imagination and technical know-how to create the solution.

An Example Learning Icon™

The following example is for the benefit of consistency within this project and blog. This should not be regarded as the limit of exploitation that the Learning Icon™ can offer.

Human Interaction Controls

It offers the following common controls though it is not limited to them:

Expand
(expands the context tree or algorithm – exchanges with 'ZOOM' )


Minimise
(returns the icon to its ‘resting’ state – exchanges with 'ZOOM'.)


Information
(enables access to a menu or a link to references and facilities)


Query
(opens an instant pop-up explanation of the icon in its context)

Flexibility

The icons need only be fully operational in the correct context, i.e., when a learner might require it.

When there is sufficient evidence, the icon can be presumed to have been learned. At this point the learning icon might be replaced by a single-media ‘dumb’ icon, which could still act as a link to the original introduction of the learning icon. It may contain learning icons.

Expansion

Although there are only four initial controls, the information and explanation controls can contain unlimited resource links within them: even new learning opportunities could be stored as part of the icon’s wider object or as links from it.

Development and Display Platforms

Although ideally suited to development in Macromedia Flash environment the functions of the learning icon may also be executed using XHTML through Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript.

Screen Shots ('A' For Airway)

The icons can act as any Learning Object can by linking to integral or external .swf or .xhtml, etc. sources. The prototype represented in the screen shots is one of a set to be tested as sequenced "dumb icons" in a PowerPoint presentation. It is a demonstration of the Learning Icon characteristics that can be embedded within it.

It could be used for stand-alone learning software or (of particular interest) as part of a class interaction using a touch-screen projection.

The Learning Bit

The learning bit is not difficult to prove, but the empiracle proving of the idea has met with some key project management and human resource issues. Anectdotally, they work well and casual users have expressed a preference for them over existing text boxes in the First Aide algorithms.

Work continues to develop guidelines for their design but already it can be reported that these guidelines are likely specific to clients' needs; whether the Learning Icon™ has 4 or more or less menu roots isn't inmportant, it is if they assist learning that is.

Summary

The use of icons in learning is not a new concept though it appears this use is not mainstream within eLearning or HUI/GUI design circles as icons are consigned to be no more than navigational aides. By combining known knowledge of icon and interaction design, visualization, and the use of images and icons in learning, the Learning Icon™ has proven, at least to be an intelligent and flexible strategy to use for Face-to-Face, blended, or entirely eLearning learning and to support learners far better than text-only strategies might.

Extract from dissertation

The standards intended for application to the icon are recognised to need updating according to technological and software advances. The standards concentrate mainly on the clear presentation of the icon at differing resolutions and a consistency in operation of them across software to reduce the learning of each icon required of users. They also apply to a narrower concept of what an icon does than the Learning Icon™ intends to achieve, which negates their enforcement to Learning Icons™. To impose standards of design would probably also prove quite difficult; a Learning Icon™ in the image of a fairy that animates when the cursor moves over it, appears to fly to a branch on a hedgerow depicted below it, and expands to present a menu is dissimilar to another Learning Icon™ that is quite formal in its pictographic representation and does not interact with the user beyond indicating its meaning.

I've found, in agreement with Wiley (2006, p.7), that the restraints of current standards that apply to icons are not tailored to meet the need for flexibility that the Learning Icon™, like Learning Objects, requires in order to succeed in assisting learning across the range of classifications of learner or subject it is intended to meet. Standards may also stifle the accessibility of tutors to the strategy. Perhaps with the strategies maturity poor practice may be identified from which wary standards may emerge to protect learners and designers from it.