Tag Archive for: research

The Backfire Effect is NOT Prevalent: Good News for Debunkers, Humans, and Learning Professionals!

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An exhaustive new research study reveals that the backfire effect is not as prevalent as previous research once suggested. This is good news for debunkers, those who attempt to correct misconceptions. This may be good news for humanity as well. If we cannot reason from truth, if we cannot reliably correct our misconceptions, we as a species will certainly be diminished—weakened by realities we have not prepared ourselves to overcome. For those of us in the learning field, the removal of the backfire effect as an unbeatable Goliath is good news too. Perhaps we can correct the misconceptions about learning that every day wreak havoc on our learning designs, hurt our learners, push ineffective practices, and cause an untold waste of time and money spent chasing mythological learning memes.

 

 

The Backfire Effect

The backfire effect is a fascinating phenomenon. It occurs when a person is confronted with information that contradicts an incorrect belief that they hold. The backfire effect results from the surprising finding that attempts at persuading others with truthful information may actually make the believer believe the untruth even more than if they hadn’t been confronted in the first place.

The term “backfire effect” was coined by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler in a 2010 scientific article on political misperceptions. Their article caused an international sensation, both in the scientific community and in the popular press. At a time when dishonesty in politics seems to be at historically high levels, this is no surprise.

In their article, Nyhan and Reifler concluded:

“The experiments reported in this paper help us understand why factual misperceptions about politics are so persistent. We find that responses to corrections in mock news articles differ significantly according to subjects’ ideological views. As a result, the corrections fail to reduce misperceptions for the most committed participants. Even worse, they actually strengthen misperceptions among ideological subgroups in several cases.”

Subsequently, other researchers found similar backfire effects, and notable researchers working in the area (e.g., Lewandowsky) have expressed the rather fatalistic view that attempts at correcting misinformation were unlikely to work—that believers would not change their minds even in the face of compelling evidence.

 

Debunking the Myths in the Learning Field

As I have communicated many times, there are dozens of dangerously harmful myths in the learning field, including learning styles, neuroscience as fundamental to learning design, and the myth that “people remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, 30% of what they see…etc.” I even formed a group to confront these myths (The Debunker Club), although, and I must apologize, I have not had the time to devote to enabling our group to be more active.

The “backfire effect” was a direct assault on attempts to debunk myths in the learning field. Why bother if we would make no difference? If believers of untruths would continue to believe? If our actions to persuade would have a boomerang effect, causing false beliefs to be believed even more strongly? It was a leg-breaking, breath-taking finding. I wrote a set of recommendations to debunkers in the learning field on how best to be successful in debunking, but admittedly many of us, me included, were left feeling somewhat paralyzed by the backfire finding.

Ironically perhaps, I was not fully convinced. Indeed, some may think I suffered from my own backfire effect. In reviewing a scientific research review in 2017 on how to debunk, I implored that more research be done so we could learn more about how to debunk successfully, but I also argued that misinformation simply couldn’t be a permanent condition, that there was ample evidence to show that people could change their minds even on issues that they once believed strongly. Racist bigots have become voices for diversity. Homophobes have embraced the rainbow. Religious zealots have become agnostic. Lovers of technology have become anti-technology. Vegans have become paleo meat lovers. Devotees of Coke have switched to Pepsi.

The bottom line is that organizations waste millions of dollars every year when they use faulty information to guide their learning designs. As a professional in the learning field, it’s our professional responsibility to avoid the danger of misinformation! But is this even possible?

 

The Latest Research Findings

There is good news in the latest research! Thomas Wood and Ethan Porter just published an article (2018) that could not find any evidence for a backfire effect. They replicated the Nyhan and Reifler research, they expanded tenfold the number of misinformation instances studied, they modified the wording of their materials, they utilized over 10,000 participants in their research, and they varied their methods for obtaining those participants. They did not find any evidence for a backfire effect.

“We find that backfire is stubbornly difficult to induce, and is thus unlikely to be a characteristic of the public’s relationship to factual information. Overwhelmingly, when presented with factual information that corrects politicians—even when the politician is an ally—the average subject accedes to the correction and distances himself from the inaccurate claim.”

There is additional research to show that people can change their minds, that fact-checking can work, that feedback can correct misconceptions. Rich and Zaragoza (2016) found that misinformation can be fixed with corrections. Rich, Van Loon, Dunlosky, and  Zaragoza (2017) found that corrective feedback could work, if it was designed to be believed. More directly, Nyhan and Reifler (2016), in work cited by the American Press Institute Accountability Project, found that fact checking can work to debunk misinformation.

 

Some Perspective

First of all, let’s acknowledge that science sometimes works slowly. We don’t yet know all we will know about these persuasion and information-correction effects.

Also, let’s please be careful to note that backfire effects, when they are actually evoked, are typically found in situations where people are ideologically inclined to a system of beliefs for which they strongly identify. Backfire effects have been studied most of in situations where someone identifies themselves as a conservative or liberal—when this identity is singularly or strongly important to their self identity. Are folks in the learning field such strong believers in a system of beliefs and self-identity to easily suffer from the backfire effect? Maybe sometimes, but perhaps less likely than in the area of political belief which seems to consume many of us.

Here are some learning-industry beliefs that may be so deeply held that the light of truth may not penetrate easily:

  • Belief that learners know what is best for their learning.
  • Belief that learning is about conveying information.
  • Belief that we as learning professionals must kowtow to our organizational stakeholders, that we have no grounds to stand by our own principles.
  • Belief that our primary responsibility is to our organizations not our learners.
  • Belief that learner feedback is sufficient in revealing learning effectiveness.

These beliefs seem to undergird other beliefs and I’ve seen in my work where these beliefs seem to make it difficult to convey important truths. So let me clarify and first say that it is speculative on my part that these beliefs have substantial influence. This is a conjecture on my part. Note also that given that the research on the “backfire effect” has now been shown to be tenuous, I’m not claiming that fighting such foundational beliefs will cause damage. On the contrary, it seems like it might be worth doing.

 

Knowledge May Be Modifiable, But Attitudes and Belief Systems May Be Harder to Change

The original backfire effect showed that people believed facts more strongly when confronted with correct information, but this misses an important distinction. There are facts and there are attitudes, belief systems, and policy preferences.

A fascinating thing happened when Wood and Porter looked for—but didn’t find—the backfire effect. They talked with the original researchers, Nyhan and Reifler, and they began working together to solve the mystery. Why did the backfire effect happen sometimes but not regularly?

In a recent podcast (January 28, 2018) from the “You Are Not So Smart” podcast, Wood, Porter, and Nyhan were interviewed by David McRaney and they nicely clarified the distinction between factual backfire and attitudinal backfire.

Nyhan:

“People often focus on changing factual beliefs with the assumption that it will have consequences for the opinions people hold, or the policy preferences that they have, but we know from lots of social science research…that people can change their factual beliefs and it may not have an effect on their opinions at all.”

“The fundamental misconception here is that people use facts to form opinions and in practice that’s not how we tend to do it as human beings. Often we are marshaling facts to defend a particular opinion that we hold and we may be willing to discard a particular factual belief without actually revising the opinion that we’re using it to justify.”

Porter:

“Factual backfire if it exits would be especially worrisome, right? I don’t really believe we are going to find it anytime soon… Attitudinal backfire is less worrisome, because in some ways attitudinal backfire is just another description for failed persuasion attempts… that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible to change your attitude. That may very well just mean that what I’ve done to change your attitude has been a failure. It’s not that everyone is immune to persuasion, it’s just that persuasion is really, really hard.”

McRaney (Podcast Host):

“And so the facts suggest that the facts do work, and you absolutely should keep correcting people’s misinformation because people do update their beliefs and that’s important, but when we try to change people’s minds by only changing their [factual] beliefs, you can expect to end up, and engaging in, belief whack-a-mole, correcting bad beliefs left and right as the person on the other side generates new ones to support, justify, and protect the deeper psychological foundations of the self.”

Nyhan:

“True backfire effects, when people are moving overwhelmingly in the opposite direction, are probably very rare, they are probably on issues where people have very strong fixed beliefs….”

 

Rise Up! Debunk!

Here’s the takeaway for us in the learning field who want to be helpful in moving practice to more effective approaches.

  • While there may be some underlying beliefs that influence thinking in the learning field, they are unlikely to be as strongly held as the political beliefs that researchers have studied.
  • The research seems fairly clear that factual backfire effects are extremely unlikely to occur, so we should not be afraid to debunk factual inaccuracies.
  • Persuasion is difficult but not impossible, so it is worth making attempts to debunk. Such attempts are likely to be more effective if we take a change-management approach, look to the science of persuasion, and persevere respectfully and persistently over time.

Here is the message that one of the researchers, Tom Wood, wants to convey:

“I want to affirm people. Keep going out and trying to provide facts in your daily lives and know that the facts definitely make some difference…”

Here are some methods of persuasion from a recent article by Flynn, Nyhan, and Reifler (2017) that have worked even with people’s strongly-held beliefs:

  • When the persuader is seen to be ideologically sympathetic with those who might be persuaded.
  • When the correct information is presented in a graphical form rather than a textual form.
  • When an alternative causal account of the original belief is offered.
  • When credible or professional fact-checkers are utilized.
  • When multiple “related stories” are also encountered.

The stakes are high! Bad information permeates the learning field and makes our learning interventions less effective, harming our learners and our organizations while wasting untold resources.

We owe it to our organizations, our colleagues, and our fellow citizens to debunk bad information when we encounter it!

Let’s not be assholes about it! Let’s do it with respect, with openness to being wrong, and with all our persuasive wisdom. But let’s do it. It’s really important that we do!

 

Research Cited

Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When corrections fail: The persistence of political misperceptions.
Political Behavior, 32(2), 303–330.

Nyhan, B., & Zaragoza, J. (2016). Do people actually learn from fact-checking? Evidence from a longitudinal study during the 2014 campaign. Available at: www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/fact-checking-effects.pdf.
Rich, P. R., Van Loon, M. H., Dunlosky, J., & Zaragoza, M. S. (2017). Belief in corrective feedback for common misconceptions: Implications for knowledge revision. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(3), 492-501.
Rich, P. R., & Zaragoza, M. S. (2016). The continued influence of implied and explicitly stated misinformation in news reports. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(1), 62-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000155
Wood, T., & Porter, E. (2018). The elusive backfire effect: Mass attitudes’ steadfast factual adherence, Political Behavior, Advance Online Publication.

 

Seek Research-to-Practice Experts as Your Trusted Advisors

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I added these words to the sidebar of my blog, and I like them so much that I’m sharing them as a blog post itself.

Please seek wisdom from research-to-practice experts — the dedicated professionals who spend time in two worlds to bring the learning field insights based on science. These folks are my heroes, given their often quixotic efforts to navigate through an incomprehensible jungle of business and research obstacles.

These research-to-practice professionals should be your heroes as well. Not mythological heroes, not heroes etched into the walls of faraway mountains. These heroes should be sought out as our partners, our fellow travelers in learning, as people we hire as trusted advisors to bring us fresh research-based insights.

The business case is clear. Research-to-practice experts not only enlighten and challenge us with ideas we might not have considered — ideas that make our learning efforts more effective in producing business results — research-to-practice professionals also prevent us from engaging in wasted efforts, saving our organizations time and money, all the while enabling us to focus more productively on learning factors that actually matter.

Prompting Learning When Our Learners Play Games

 

Another research brief. Answer the question and only then read what the research says:


 

In a recent study with teenagers playing a game to learn history, adding the learning instructions hurt learning outcomes for questions that assessed transfer, but NOT recall. The first choice hurt transfer but not recall. Give yourself some credit if you chose the second or third choices.

Caveats:

  • This is only one study.
  • It was done using only one type of learner.
  • It was done using only one type of learning method.
  • It was done with teenagers.

Important Point:

  • Don’t assume that adding instructions to encourage learning will facilitate learning.

Research:

Hawlitschek, A., & Joeckel, S. (2017). Increasing the effectiveness of digital educational games: The effects of a learning instruction on students’ learning, motivation and cognitive load. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 79-86.

Doing Research On Our Learning Products

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The learning profession has been blessed in recent years with a steady stream of scientific research that points to practical recommendations for designers of learning. If you or your organization are NOT hooked into the learning research, find yourself a research translator to help you! Call me, for example!

That’s the good news, but I have bad news for you too. In the old days, it wasn’t hard to create a competitive advantage for your company by staying abreast of the research and using it to design your learning products and services. Pretty soon, that won’t be enough. As the research becomes more widely known, you’ll have to do more to get a competitive advantage. Vendors especially will have to differentiate their products — NOT just by basing them on the research — but also by conducting research (A-B testing at a minimum) on your own products.

I know of at least a few companies right now who are conducting research on their own products. They aren’t advertising their research, because they want to get a jumpstart on the competition. But eventually, they’ll begin sharing what they’ve done.

Do you need an example of a company who’s had their product tested? Check out this page. Scroll down to the bottom and look at the 20 or so research studies that have been done using the product. Looks pretty impressive right?

To summarize, there are at least five benefits to doing research on your own products:

  1. Gain a competitive advantage by learning to make your product better.
  2. Gain a competitive advantage by supporting a high-quality brand image.
  3. Gain a competitive advantage by enabling the creation of unique and potent content marketing.
  4. Gain a competitive advantage by supporting creativity and innovation within your team.
  5. Gain a competitive advantage by creating an engaging and learning-oriented team environment.

Fitness Training Supports Improved Cognitive Functioning in Older Adults

A 2003 meta-analysis found that fitness training was likely to improve cognitive functioning in older adults.

I'm reprising this because it is one of Psychological Science's most cited articles as recently as September 1, 2016.

Fitness and Aging

The researchers examined 18 scientific studies and 197 separate effect sizes. They categorized measures of cognitive functioning into four categories as depicted above in the graph, including:

  • Executive functioning (the ability to plan, schedule, and generally engage in high-level decision-making).
  • Controlled processing (the ability to engage in simple decision-making).
  • Visuospatial processing (the ability to transform visual or spatial information).
  • Speed processing (the ability to make quick reactions).

As you can see in the graph above, overall the groups that exercised outperformed those who didn't.

 

Some Details:

  • Results were stronger for people 66-80 than for those 55-65 (judged by effect size), although all groups showed significant benefits from exercise.
  • Exercise for less than 30 minutes produced very little benefit compared to exercise for 30-60 minutes.
  • Females seemed to get more benefits from exercising, but the way comparisons were made makes this conclusion somewhat sketchy.
  • Those who engaged in both weight-training and cardio-training had slightly better results than those who did cardio alone.

 

Research Citation:

Colcombe, S., & Kramer, A. F. (2003). Fitness effects on the cognitive function of older adults: A meta-analytic study. Psychological Science, 14, 125-130.

 

More Information

Check out a 2009 blog post I wrote on aging and cognition, and test your knowledge with the quiz!!

What Causes Forgetting? Decay Over Time or Interference with Other Learned Information?

For millennium, scholars and thinkers of all sorts — from scientists to men or women on the street — thought that memories simply faded with time.

Locke said:

"The memory of some men, it is true, is very tenacious, even to a miracle; but yet there seems to be a constant decay of all our ideas, even of those which are struck deepest, and in the minds of the most retentive; so that if they be not sometimes renewed by repeated exercise of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which at first occasioned them, the print wears out, and at last there remains nothing to be seen."  John Locke quoted by William James in Principles of Psychology (p. 445, the 1952 Great Books edition, original 1891).

However, in the mid 1900's research by McGeoch (1932), Underwood (1957) and others found that memories can fade when what is learned interferes with other things learned. Previous things learned can interfere with current learning (proactive interference) and current learning can be interfered with by subsequent learning (retroactive interference).

The debate between decay and interference went on for over a century! Indeed, it paralleled the debate in physics over the property of light. Is it a wave or a particle?

The first ever photograph of light as both a particle and wave

In physics, the debate was so important that Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for the solution. Einstein's solution was simple. Light was BOTH a wave and a particle. The picture above is reported by Phys.org to be the first photograph demonstrating light's dual properties.

Now in the psychological research, we have the first experimental evidence that forgetting may be caused by BOTH decay and interference.

In a clever experiment, published just this month, Talya Sadeh, Jason Ozubko, Gordon Winocur, and Morris Moscovitch found evidence for both interference and decay.

Their research appears to be inspired, at least partially, by neuroscience findings. Here's what the authors say:

"Two approaches have guided current thinking regarding the functional distinction between hippocampal and extrahippocampal memories. The first approach maintains that the hippocampus supports a mnemonic process termed recollection, whereas extrahippocampal structures, especially the perirhinal cortex, support a process termed familiarity… Recollection is a mnemonic process that involves reinstatement of memory traces within the context in which they were formed. Familiarity is a mnemonic process that manifests itself in the feeling that a studied item has been experienced, but without reinstating the original context." (p. 2)

To be clear, this was NOT a neuroscience experiment. They did not measure brain activity in any way. They measured behavioral findings only.

In their experiment, they had people engage in a word-recognition task and then gave them either (1) another word-learning task, (2) a short music task, or (3) a long music task. The first group's word-learning task was designed to create the most interference. The longer music task was designed to create the most decay (because it took longer).

The results of the experiment were consistent with the researcher's hypotheses. They claimed to have found evidence for both decay and interference.

Caveats

Every scientific experiment has caveats. Usually these are pointed out by the researchers themselves. Often, it takes an outside set of eyes to provide caveats.

Did the researchers prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that forgetting has two causes? Short answer: No! Did they produce some interesting findings? Maybe!

My big worry from a research-design perspective is that their manipulation distinguishing between recollection and familiarity is somewhat dubious, seemingly splitting hairs in the questions they ask the learners. My big worry from a practical learning-design perspective is that they are using words as learning materials. First, most important learning situations utilize more complicated materials. Second, words are associative by their very nature — thus more likely to react to interference than typical learning materials. Third, the final "test" of learning was a recognition-memory task that involved learners determining whether they remembered seeing the words before — again, not very relevant to practical learning situations.

Practical Ramifications for Learning Professionals

Since there are potential experimental-design issues, particularly from a practical standpoint, it would be an extremely dubious enterprise to draw practical ramifications. Let me be dubious then (because it's fun, not because it's wise). If the researchers are correct, that memories that are context-based are less likely to be subject to interference effects; we might want to follow the general recommendation — often made today by research-focused learning experts — to provide learners with realistic practice using stimuli that have contextual relevance. In short, teach "if situation–then action" rather than teaching isolated concepts. Of course, we didn't need this experiment to tell us that. There is a ton of relevant research to back this up. For example, see The Decisive Dozen research review.

Beyond the experimental results, the concepts of delay and interference are intriguing in and of themselves. We know people tend to slide down a forgetting curve. Perhaps from interference, perhaps from decay. Indeed, as the authors say, "it is important to note that interference and decay are inherently confounded."

Research

The experiment:

Sadeh, T., Ozubko, J. D., Winocur, G., & Moscovitch. M. (2016) Forgetting patterns differentiate between two forms of memory representation. Psychological Science OnlineFirst, published on May 6, 2016 as doi:10.1177/0956797616638307.

The research review:

Sadeh, T., Ozubko, J. D., Winocur, G., & Moscovitch, M. (2014). How we forget may depend on how we remember. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 26–36.

 

 

Can Instructor Attractiveness lead to Higher Smile-Sheet Ratings? More Learning? A Research Brief.

In a recent research article, Tobias Wolbring and Patrick Riordan report the results of a study looking into the effects of instructor “beauty” on college course evaluations. What they found might surprise you — or worry you — depending on your views on vagaries of fairness in life.

Before I reveal the results, let me say that this is one study (two experiments), and that the findings were very weak in the sense that the effects were small.

Their first study used a large data set involving university students. Given that the data was previously collected through routine evaluation procedures, the researchers could not be sure of the quality of the actual teaching, nor the true “beauty” of the instructors (they had to rely on online images).

The second study was a laboratory study where they could precisely vary the level of beauty of the instructor and their gender, while keeping the actual instructional materials consistent. Unfortunately, “the instruction” consisted of an 11-minute audio lecture taught by relatively young instructors (young adults), so it’s not clear whether their results would generalize to more realistic instructional situations.

In both studies they relied on beauty as represented by facial beauty. While previous research shows that facial beauty is the primary way we rate each other on attractiveness, body beauty has also been found to have effects.

Their most compelling results:

1.

They found that ratings of attractiveness are very consistent across raters. People seem to know who is attractive and who is not. This confirms findings of many studies.

2.

Instructors who are more attractive, get better smile sheet ratings. Note that the effect was very small in both experiments. They confirmed what many other research studies have found, although their results were generally weaker than previous studies — probably due to the better controls utilized.

3.

They found that instructors who are better looking engender less absenteeism. That is, students were more likely to show up for class when their instructor was attractive.

4.

They found that it did not make a difference on the genders of the raters or instructors. It was hypothesized that female raters might respond differently to male and female instructors, and males would do the same. But this was not found. In previous studies there have been mixed results.

5.

In the second experiment, where they actually gave learners a test of what they’d learned, attractive instructors engendered higher scores on a difficult test, but not an easy test. The researchers hypothesize that learners engage more fully when their instructors are attractive.

6.

In the second experiment, they asked learners to either: (a) take a test first and then evaluate the course, or (b) do the evaluation first and then take the test. Did it matter? Yes! The researchers hypothesized that highly-attractive instructors would be penalized for giving a hard test more than their unattractive colleagues. This prediction was confirmed. When the difficult test came before the evaluation, better looking instructors were rated more poorly than less attractive instructors. Not much difference was found for the easy test.

Ramifications for Learning Professionals

First, let me caveat these thoughts with the reminder that this is just one study! Second, the study’s effects were relatively weak. Third, their results — even if valid — might not be relevant to your learners, your instructors, your organization, your situation, et cetera!

  1. If you’re a trainer, instructor, teacher, professor — get beautiful! Obviously, you can’t change your bone structure or symmetry, but you can do some things to make yourself more attractive. I drink raw spinach smoothies and climb telephone poles with my bare hands to strengthen my shoulders and give me that upside-down triangle attractiveness, while wearing the most expensive suits I can afford — $199 at Men’s Warehouse; all with the purpose of pushing myself above the threshold of … I can’t even say the word. You’ll have to find what works for you.
  2. If you refuse to sell your soul or put in time at the gym, you can always become a behind-the-scenes instructional designer or a research translator. As Clint said, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
  3. Okay, I’ll be serious. We shouldn’t discount attractiveness entirely. It may make a small difference. On the other hand, we have more important, more leverageable actions we can take. I like the research-based findings that we all get judged primarily on two dimensions warmth/trust and competence. Be personable, authentically trustworthy, and work hard to do good work.
  4. The finding from the second experiment that better looking instructors might prompt more engagement and more learning — that I find intriguing. It may suggest, more generally, that the likability/attractiveness of our instructors or elearning narrators may be important in keeping our learners engaged. The research isn’t a slam dunk, but it may be suggestive.
  5. In terms of learning measurement, the results may suggest that evaluations come before difficult performance tests. I don’t know though how this relates to adults in workplace learning. They might be more thankful for instructional rigor if it helps them perform better in their jobs.
  6. More research is needed!

Research Reviewed

Wolbring, T., & Riordan, P. (2016). How beauty works. Theoretical mechanisms and two
empirical applications on students’ evaluation of teaching. Social Science Research, 57, 253-272.

Effects of Burnout on the Brain and on Cognitive Performance

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Great Article: Burnout and the Brain by Alexandra Michel, writing in The Observer, a publication of The Association for Psychological Science.

Article link is here.

Major Findings:

  • Stress may cause changes in the brain.
  • Stress may cause problems with:
    • attention
    • memory
    • creativity
    • problem-solving
    • working-memory problems in general

Will's Caveats:

  • Studies were mostly correlational, so not clear whether there is cause-and-effect relationship.

Defining Stress:

  • Stress is NOT caused just by working long hours. As the article says:

"a comprehensive report on psychosocial stress in the workplace published by the World Health Organization identified consistent evidence that 'high job demands, low control, and effort–reward imbalance are risk factors for mental and physical health problems.' Ultimately, burnout results when the balance of deadlines, demands, working hours, and other stressors outstrips rewards, recognition, and relaxation."

Learning-and-Performance Ramifications

  • If we want our organization's employees to work at their best, we can't put them under long-periods of stress.
  • We need to give them more control of their work, reward them appropriately especially with recognition and status (not necessarily with money), promote periods of rest and relaxation, and give employees input into their job environment.

Research on Smile Sheets — New Video

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I created a video to help organizations fully understand the meaning of their smile sheets.

 

You can also view this directly on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QucqCxM2qW4

Practice Firms — Giving People Real-World Experience

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Today’s New York Times has a fascinating article on the mostly European concept of practice firms. As the name implies, practice firms give people practice in doing work.

This seems to align well with the research on learning that suggests that learning in a realistic context, getting lots of retrieval practice and feedback, and many repetitions spaced over time can be the most effective way to learn. Of course, the context and practice and feedback have to be well-designed and aligned with the future work of the learner.

Interestingly, there is an organization that is solely devoted to the concept. EUROPEN-PEN International is the worldwide practice enterprise network. The network consists of over 7,500 Practice Enterprises in more than 40 countries. It has a FaceBook page and a website.

I did a quick search to see if there was an scientific research on the use of practice firms, but I didn’t uncover anything definitive…If you know of scientific research, or other rigorous evidence, let me know…