How do people acquire beginning competence at using new technology? The legendary Funnel of Nurnberg was said to make people wise very quickly when the right knowledge was poured in; it is an approach that designers continue to apply in trying to make instruction more efficient. This book describes a quite different instructional paradigm that uses what learners do spontaneously to find meaning in the activities of learning. It presents the "minimalist" approach to instructional design - its origins in the study of people's learning problems with computer systems, its foundations in the psychology of learning and problem solving, and its application in a variety of case studies. Carroll demonstrates that the minimalist approach outperforms the standard "systems approach" in every relevant way - the learner, not the system determines the model and the methods of instruction. It supports the rapid achievement of realistic projects right from the start of training, instead of relying on drill and practice techniques, and designing for error recognition and recovery as basic instructional events, instead of seeing error as failure. The book's many examples - including a brief discussion of recent commercial applications - will help researchers and practitioners apply and develop this new instructional technology. The Nurnberg Funnel inaugurates the Technical Communications series, edited by Ed Barrett. Author John M. Carroll has participated for a number of years as a leader in the interdisciplinary field of human-computer interactions. He has been: Manager of User Interface Theory and Design at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center (1976-1994); a professor in Computer Science at Virginia Tech (through 2003); and is currently (2018) Distinguished Professor and co-Director of the College of Information Sciences and Technology's Laboratory for Computer Supported Collaboration and Learning at Pennsylvania State University. He is also the Director of the university's Center for Human-Computer Interaction. He has received numerous awards, especially for his contributions to Information Technology and its relationship with humans. ~Compiled from MIT Press and Penn State University: https://jcarroll.ist.psu.edu/ (Retrieved 2018, September 7.)

Minimalism is an action- and task-oriented approach to instruction and documentation that emphasizes the importance of realistic activities and experiences for effective learning and information seeking. Since 1990, when the approach was defined in John Carroll's The Nurnberg Funnel, much work has been done to apply, refine, and broaden the minimalist approach to technical communication. This volume presents fourteen major contributions to the current theory and practice of minimalism.Contributors evaluate the development of minimalism up to now, analyze the acceptance of minimalism by the mainstream technical communications community, report on specific innovations and investigations, and discuss future challenges and directions. The book also includes an appendix containing a bibliography of published research and development work on minimalism since 1990. Contributors Tricia Anson, R. John Brockmann, John M. Carroll, Steve Draper, David K. Farkas, JoAnn T. Hackos, Robert R. Johnson, Greg Kearsley, Barbara Mirel, Janice (Ginny) Redish, Stephanie Rosenbaum, Karl L. Smart, Hans van der Meij. Published in association with the Society for Technical Communication.

Easy-to-apply, scientifically-based approaches for engaging students in the classroom Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham focuses his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning. His book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn. It reveals-the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences. Nine, easy-to-understand principles with clear applications for the classroom Includes surprising findings, such as that intelligence is malleable, and that you cannot develop "thinking skills" without facts How an understanding of the brain's workings can help teachers hone their teaching skills "Mr. Willingham's answers apply just as well outside the classroom. Corporate trainers, marketers and, not least, parents -anyone who cares about how we learn-should find his book valuable reading." —Wall Street Journal

This style guide is a product of the voting system standards and test methods research at NIST. The most recent version of the tech. standard, the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines of Aug. 2007, contains requirements for the usability of documentation used by poll workers and election support staff. The approach to testing these requirements has two components: (1) Style guide incorporating best practices for voting system documentation; (2) Test protocol for voting system test labs. to use to measure the usability of instructions supplied by voting system manufacturers for election workers. This style guide sets out guidelines for voting system manufacturers to use to implement best practices in their documentation for poll workers and election support staff.

The Web changes how people use content; not just content on the Web, but all content. If your content is not easy to find and immediately helpful, readers will move on almost at once. We are all children of the Web, and we come to any information system, including product documentation, looking for the search box and expecting every search to work like Google. There is no first, last, previous, next, up, or back anymore. Every Page is Page One. In this ground-breaking book, Mark Baker looks beyond the usual advice on writing for the Web, and beyond the idea of topic-based writing merely as an aid to efficiency and reuse, to explore how readers really use information in the age of the Web and to lay out an approach to planning, creating, managing, and organizing topic-based documentation that really works for the reader.