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Re: Why human beings skim instructions



At 08:55 PM 10/8/01 -0700, Richard Hake wrote:

In fact, even some Phys-L'ers sometimes fail to read and follow directions.

At Dan McIsaac's Phys-L home page
<http://purcell.phy.nau.edu/phys-l/> ... appears the following

"WRITE DESCRIPTIVE SUBJECT LINES:

ROTFL!!!! (Rolling on the Floor, Laughing).

Hoist on our own petard.

It would appear that reading and following directions is contrary to human
nature, not just student nature. A famous sign reads "When All Else Fails,
Follow Directions."

Indeed!

Anecdotes in this thread suggest
-- Teachers are no good at spotting changes in a monotonous pattern.
-- Lawyers are no good at spotting changes in a monotonous pattern.
-- Students are no good at spotting changes in a monotonous pattern.
And in fact careful studies have shown
-- Nuclear power-plant operators are no good at spotting changes in
monotonous patterns.

There is solid psychological literature on this subject. If you want such
a task done right, don't ask a human to do it.

We are bombarded with details every day. Do you read all the ingredient
labels and nutritional analysis on all the prepared food you buy, or do you
just assume that this week's bread is pretty much like last week's bread?

(Note that for some people, this is a life-and-death matter: suppose you
are allergic to soy, and the bread manufacturer gets the bright idea of
"improving" the product by adding soy protein....)

Not only are we offered lots of details, the advertising industry spends
billions of dollars trying to find ways of making information intrude on
our consciousness. The product is labelled "NEW" even if it hasn't
significantly changed. How then are we supposed to know when we !do! need
to re-read the label? Just reading all the "NEW" labels would take more
time than anyone can possibly afford.

At 04:52 PM 10/8/01 -0500, Kossom wrote [numbers added by jsd]:
1) Every test contains exactly the same long set of instructions.
2) It takes two paragraphs for me to say all the legalese that I want to
on a test.

3) On the semester exam (the sixth test with the instructions), I have the
same instructions with a single, different line buried two-thirds of the way
down,

Note that statement (3) baldly contradicts statement (1).

4) "Do you read these every time or do you just assume that they stay the
same? If you read these each time, mark an X next to this on the page."

5) I want to emphasis that the instructions are always the same. I tell
the students on the first day of class that the instructions haven't
changed in years.

Why emphasize something that isn't true? See items (3) and (1).

We give students baldly self-contradictory instructions, and then wonder
why they don't follow them! If I were the student, I'd be irked and
disappointed.

===========

Have you ever tried to write really good instructions, in situations where
it really mattered? Imagine a situation where you are going to deploy a
service "at scale" (i.e. millions of customers) and you know in advance
that Customer Care is going to be your biggest expense. I have a
dictum: "If it's hard to document, it's wrong." Accordingly, on numerous
occasions I've redesigned the product, in order to remove a
hard-to-document feature or (preferably) to make it more intuitive.

===========

At 04:52 PM 10/8/01 -0500, Kossom wrote:
I wonder if my students are different?

At 12:37 AM 10/9/01 -0500, John Clement wrote:
I think the question should be am I any different.

Indeed, THAT is the question.

In other threads recently, people have been asking why it is so hard to
establish rapport with students. Obvious observation: If the teacher goes
in with a me-versus-them attitude, the students will detect it immediately.

Suggestion: We need to lighten up. We need to laugh at ourselves a
little. We need to stop treating the students as different from
us. They're not so different. They're human beings, with limitations and
anxieties and vanities and conflicting motivations -- just like everybody else.