Posted by Reilly Atkinson on August 01, 1999 at 17:10:37:

In Reply to: Re: Explicit - Knowledge a description of presentation? posted by P. Richard Hansen on July 29, 1999 at 10:20:21:

Sir,

With all due respect, your "take no prisoners" assertions about the utility and efficacy of formats is incorrect, and demonstrably so. There is a rich history of the study and implemantation of formats, with which, it appears, you are not highly familiar.

First of all, there is a large literature on the subject as studied by Human Factors Engineers. They deal among other things with such topics, as how best to get critical information to airplane pilots, who than turn it into knowledge of their current situation. The formats cover all manner of dials, heads-up displays, air-to-ground communications and on and on "Best" is determined with considerable pilot input. It is the case that this type of investigation has had major influences upon the design of cockpit configurations. These formats might even have saved your life.

You seem to forget, for example, that good systems developers figure out formats based on the requirements of the system users -- the point is to develop a system that serves the users, not the developer. Good means: the system is used and appreciated.

My conjecture is that you have never taught college undergraduates, you have never designed computer screen layouts, and, probably, have never raised kids in their late teens and early twenties. It's my experience in doing all these things that quite convinced me of the great practical imortance of formats -- I am far from being alone in this matter. Students and kids are clearly very different among themselves, certainly in their wide range of learning styles, in their ability to absorb and comprehand various types of materials, in their levels of aggressiveness to master material, in their levels of confidence to challenge an instructor. So, many professors, myself included, would use multiple approaches to a topic ( multiple formats), ideally formulated from discussions with students. We'ld experiment with different teaching styles, and on an on. The format of the material and the classroom environment were crucial to educational success.

Twenty year old kids; what's to say but pig headed. Format is everything, as most any experienced parent will tell you. Don't forget, that the format issue with raising kids in general, is to help the kids get the knowledge necessary to survive, and, perhaps, prosper.

When the Information Age was young, the design of screens was a highly valued art - one that seems to have been lost in the rise of the Microsoft hegemony. Users often played a paramount role in the design of screens -- used to access data/ information to acquire knowledge, or to input data, as in a CICS system. Bad screens meant unhappy workers, and less than optimal business perfomance, and less crucial info/knowledge available.

There are countless people, books, articles, and anecdotal stories to support the notion that formats are quite crucial for ease, accuracy, and speed of learning. What evidence do you have other than your opinion that formats have no effect on building knowledge. How in the world did you ever come up with such notion?

Reilly Atkinson

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