IMPACT OF EXECUTIVE
FUNCTION ON ONLINE
LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
Jason Maseberg-Tomlinson
Kansas State University
Disability Support Services
View the Presentation online at www.ksu.edu/dss/efd
IMPACT OF ONLINE LEARNING
ENVIRONMENTS ON
EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION
This research began while trying to understand how
accommodations could help students in online courses. I
was looking for ways to help students tackle online
classes. I realized in doing so that we need to help the
environment become more accessible to begin with.
Outline
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Online Accommodations
Executive Function
Executive Dysfunction
Working Memory
Cognitive Overload
Web Design
Exams
Multimedia
Alt Text
LMS
Cognitive Accessibility
Kansas State University
• My role: Adaptive Technology Specialist (Assistant Director) for
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Disability Support Services
At Kansas State University, we have 33 students in 50 online
courses this semester
7 are full time distance students (sometimes as many as 25)
2-3 have visual impairments
28 have LD, Anxiety, CP, or another disability with some
cognitive component
We have 500 students taking on campus classes, but they too
have online instruction and content
How are Accommodations Determined?
• We have 20 years of experience with on campus classes.
• We have hundreds of colleagues with whom to work.
• In Kansas, we have a very strong regional AHEAD
conference.
• We do accommodations well, BUT all of our
accommodations are created for traditional on campus
courses and instruction methods.
• We are learning to think outside the box.
Online Accommodation Issues
• Captions
• Textbooks
• “I keep running out of time on my tests!”
• “I keep turning in late work because I can’t find it to begin with!”
• “Where does it say that it is due?”
• “I finally entered the phone/text chat with ten minutes left.”
• “Who is my instructor?”
• “Where do I go for my tests?”
• “I have to run home and take my online test. The window is
only open for another couple hours.”
New Instruction Calls for Retooling!
• We are taking a look at how students are accommodated.
• We are reviewing how we look at psychoeducational
evaluations and psychological reports.
• I am rethinking how I show faculty to design courses and
content in an accessible manner.
• I am asking questions of students with technology
foremost in mind.
Why look at Executive Function
Specifically?
• EF appears to be one of the common themes among the
students asking the most questions.
• Most of our students fall into the cognitive disability areas
(LD, ADHD are most common around the country).
• Executive Function is an area of focus that seems to have
the greatest impact on a student’s ability to perform well
online.
Define: Executive Function
• “’Executive function’ is an umbrella term for a set of
cognitive processes that are important in the control of
cognitive processes and action selection, especially
novel contexts, or in familiar contexts that strongly evoke
proponent but maladaptive responses. Executive
functions are necessary for cognitive flexibility and for
controlled or effortful processing.”
Define: Executive Function
• Orchestration of basic cognitive process
• Goal-oriented
• Problem-solving
• “The planning and sequencing of complex behaviors, the
ability to pay attention to several components at
once…the resistance to distraction and
interference…ability to sustain behavioral output for
relatively prolonged periods.”
Define: Executive Function
• EF helps us with task switching and ignoring irrelevant
information.
• EF allows us to hold one idea or concept in your mind and
apply it to a new problem or situation.
Executive Dysfunction
• There is no “one” disorder; EF shows up in many places.
• ADHD
• Learning Disabilities
• Discrepancy between ability and performance
• LD with Reading comprehension and monitoring
• LD with Writing, coherence, basic mechanics
• Issues with Social Domain (Application)
• Pervasive Developmental Disorder (example: Aspergers)
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorder*
• Depression*
• Traumatic Brain Injury*
ADHD?
• Often times, EDF is confused with ADHD.
• ADHD is not equal to EF Disorder.
• Some would suggest, however, that all ADHD students
have some EF Disorder, but not all EF Disorders are
ADHD.
• Some believe in a possible Subtype of ADHD with
excessive executive dysfunction, which is more impairing.
• Timeliness
• Starting/Stopping a Task
• Planning
Features of EF That Affect Online
Environments
• Ability to sequence behavioral outputs
• Ability to delay responses
• Planning, future orientation (seeing a project through)
• Maintaining intentionality
• Executive System (Your Executive)
• Goal making
• Planning and organizing
• Initiating behavior/ pursuing the goals you have made
• Being flexible & strategizing, shifting behavior with obstacles that
interfere with goal pursuits
Working Memory
• Is a multiunit system (Counterfactual).
• Is overburdened if instruction involves excessive elements
of novel information.
• Cognitive Load Theory- John Sweller
• Working memory is used/taxed to link visual and auditory
processes, using energy and resources that should be available for
learning.
Stroop Test
• We are now going to try a visual test. Keep the following
directions in mind to apply to the following “problem.”
• Directions: Please say the name of the color on the next
six slides, not the name of the text.
RED
BLUE
GREEN
BLUE
GREEN
RED
Results?
• What were you concentrating on?
• Did you feel the need to act fast?
• Was it easy?
Math Test
• Please put down your papers, pens, iPads, and cell
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phones. The test is about to begin.
5x8=
40
13 x 4 =
52
38 x 7 =
266
Math and Working Memory
• 5 x 8 = 40
• One step is all it takes.
• 13 x 4 = 52
• This is a two step problem and we only have to remember half
the answer before taking the second step. Not always easy to
do.
• 38 x 7 = 266
• This is a two step problem but we not only have to remember
that first 6 before the next step, we also have to carry the 5 and
remember to add it after the second step.
Examples of Taxed of Working Memory
• Imagine yourself:
• Either moving all of your notes, paperwork and files online (paperless office)
• Or, moving from Evernote, OneNote or a Wiki to a graphite pencil and paper
notebook or text file that is not searchable.
• Example of what a student would see online:
• Three tools to use at once!
• Exam page (short essay, 20 questions, timed to one hour)
• Textbook website (three biology chapters of fifteen headings each)
• Scratch paper
• On a 15-inch monitor (Many students are using a laptop in a coffeehouse and
its busy at 8pm and they stayed awake all night with energy drinks and behind
that browser window for the LMS is Facebook and Twitter and behind the
laptop is a phone.)
• They choose more factors in their environment than we do.
Cognitive Overload
• Cognitive Overload
• John Sweller, Cognitive Load Theory
• How much thinking is required to use your page?
• Help students ease the adjustment to an online environment.
• Have some training set up for students to practice
• Exams
• Finding Folders
• Chat spaces
• Interactive Environment
• Students find information when they have to get it done, many times at the
last minute
Webpage Design
• Let’s think about websites in broad terms
• Main Pages
• Portals
• LMS Spaces
• Search Pages
Webpage Design (2)
• Text Presentation and Density
• Density
• Density, use of white space and bullets
• Expository information on one screen
• Low Density for presentation of lengthy text, short chunks and
simplified for content
• Text should be in order and have an appropriate flow. Minimize
inserted “text boxes,” side bars, and anything that disrupts the
vertical flow of text. For example: http://www.nytimes.com, arg!
Webpage Design (3)
• Windowing Environments
• Navigational (Links, Breadcrumbs)
• If you send someone to another page do you show how to bring them
back?
• Organizational (Spatially relate information)
• Structure, Headings
• Explanatory (guidance, substantive)
• Prose, Lists
• Metaphorical (symbolize operation or concept, graphics)
Webpage Design (4)
• Visual Complexity
• Deemphasize lengthy passages
• Visuals, media, interaction (download times: 2000 56K, 2011 3G)
Exams
• How has assessment changed for online courses?
• Big Debate! Timed vs. Untimed Exams.
• Materials usage: better or worse to have an open note
exam?
How do WE know what we know?
(Google Effects on Memory)
• This research shows that many of us are primed to call upon
transactive memory (external from ourselves) for answers.
• Many search for information they already know.
• If we find information online, through a search, we know we
can come back to it and recall information much easier when
we think it has not been saved or is found online easily.
• We often remember where information is stored better than the
facts themselves. YET! Remembering how to get there or
finding something while remembering what to look for is
hindered greatly by EFD.
Multimedia
• Working memory (WM) is used to link visual and auditory
information that is new and unseen.
• New Text + New Audio + New Visuals uses more WM
• Text + Audio / Text and Visuals(pause) Audio
• WM load is imposed on when you have one piece of information
that you need to hold while waiting for secondary information to
process
Multimedia (2)
• Redundant On-Screen Text
• Precept: When something is presented to us in written
and spoken format we have a better ability to learn and
understand information.
• Authors suggest "if learners are required to coordinate
and simultaneously process redundant material such as
written and spoken text, an excessive working memory
load is generated”
Multimedia (3)
• Presenting identical spoken information and written
material simultaneously may need to be avoided, esp. in
conditions of limited instruction time or system-controlled
pacing of instruction.
• Best to present one format (audio), then present visuals
and text all in small segments.
• Great case for Closed Captions and the ability for users to
determine when and were they want captions.
Audio/Visual learners can turn it on the second time
around when comfortable with it.
Dual Coding Theory
• Activity of two distinct subsystems of cognition:
• Verbal, which deals directly with language
• Nonverbal (imagery), which deals with nonlinguistic objects and events
• Operate independently or cooperatively and may or may not
experience inner speech or imagery
• Additive effects on recall, likely to recall pictorial information
when asked about verbal information and verbal information
when asked about pictorials.
• While seeing text and hearing it may tax our cognition,
overusing the verbal system, it doesn’t hurt to see a picture or
video while hearing information.
Alternative Textbook Users/ Text-toSpeech
• Redundant Text – What does this mean for students with
Learning Disabilities listening to their books with a text-tospeech program or Daisy?
• LD students get the information; they may just have to
listen first, and perhaps read and listen a second time.
• Adaptive technology and exams/ timed events and
trainings: shouldn’t we expect that it will take users time to
coordinate the task with technology?
Learning Management Systems
• Use folders and a solid/ clear structure.
• Create a nucleus for them, a center for them to come
back to for important information
• Syllabus
• Home Folder
• Repeat information and written instructions.
• When designing an LMS portal, when is enough
information too much for one screen?
Learning Management Systems (2)
• Find ways to check in with students.
• Use interaction as an instruction style.
• Break up tasks into manageable bits.
• Allow for breaks in material.
Helping our Google ways?
• Make sure that the LMS is easy to navigate.
• A class isn’t a list of assignments or readings that
students check off.
• Students will go to and fro to find text, information, and
content repeatedly.
• Create a traffic flow that they can follow to the information
they will need time and time again.
Guidance on Cognitive Disabilities
• This isn’t completely new.
• Guidance does exist, albeit more in regards to webpages
than online instruction and pedagogy.
EFD / Cognitive Accessibility
• W3C : WCAG 2.0 Principle 3: Understandable
• Three Areas
• Readable content
• Predictability of pages
• Input assistance: help users avoid mistakes
Cognitive Accessibility (2)
• WebAIM information on Cognitive Disabilities
• Practical information
• Link text
• Warn users of changes in information
• Structure!
• Visual Organization
• Write clearly – Plain Writing Act of 2010
• WebAxe
• Great set of links
• http://webaxe.blogspot.com/2011/02/about-cognitive-accessibilityrelated.html
Questions?
• Jason Maseberg-Tomlinson
• Email : jasontom@k-state.edu
• Twitter: Kiwijt
• GoogleVoice or Text: 42 42 kiwijt (424-254-9458)