Are You Building the Right Type of E-Learning Course?

A lot depends on the interactivity level of the course too. I wanted to present guidelines for customer interaction with a real-time example. But the information in the example needs a scrollable/clickable Level 3 animation.

However, since the client wants a Level 1 course i have presented the examples in just a click and see interaction. So, instead of moving from example to concept, i am moving from concept to example.

In another principle-based course i had to clean up introductory learning animations for a screen into click-and-view stuff. This was to reduce the number of screens as per client request.

-Anitha

Hi Tom,

I am really enjoying your blog, there is so much useful and practical content.

I work in the UK, mostly in the financial services sector where corporate responsibility for training is reinforced with regulation. Whilst I utterly endorse the principle of ‘teaching people to find information rather than giving it to them’, my e-learning projects often need to leave a very clear learning activity trail for both internal and external auditing, demonstrating that content has actually been consumed. Unfortunatley, this can become a bigger issue than developing the right type of course from the learners perspective.

I guess what I am saying here is that in some situations, the learner is not the only customer. It would be interesting to get your views in a future blog on satisfying the different customers in an e-learning project.

Thanks

Simon

I love getting the Rapid e-learning clips in my email inbox. The brief, common sense-based articles provide me with additional support when trying to persuade upper management on specifics for our e-learning tasks.

Why do you characterise using software in with completing a worksheet? When we use software we often have to make some very complex choices indeed. Those choices often influence how other people will work with our information.

As an example, I once worked with a group of people who said they needed help learning about Lotus 1-2-3 (it was a few years ago). It seems they were having a lot of trouble with word wrap when they wrote letters with it! Apparently the first person who created their form letters knew how to use a spreadsheet but didn’t know enough about word processing to use a mail merge. So from then on, everyone struggled with creating letters in a spreadsheet.

Using software effectively often requires decision making, and some of them can be very complex as well.

My $.02 cdn

Tom,

How can I get Articulate run on a Mac computer?

Thanks for your latest email. After 17 years of teaching experience, I agree completely with your advice. Focusing on the learner outcomes improves instructional design. I refer to Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe.

An excellent write-up, as always! I really enjoy your informative mails!

However, I do think that courses for sharing information are needed as much as courses for changing performance. And while information can easily be read offline, in any electronic format, building it in a e-learning course (which, essentially, is a movie), makes the experience mopre lucid, content organization more eaier to understand, and in the form of click ineractivities, more engaging.

Secondly, although I agree that many of times our clients do not need e-learning courses as solution, and as learning consultants we need to provide the true advice to our clients, I am not sure we can convey the same message to our clients. Because, this would only mean a loss of business for us, which, I am afraid, no one in the business can afford in this competitive market. Moreover, the training organization of the client organization has often its own target of quota of creating e-learning courses, and therefore, even if they accept such suggestion for one project, they would certainly look for another vendor for the next project.
I see this as a serious dilemma, and is looking forward to your views on this.

Hi Tom! Thanks for your prompt and detailed response. I do agree with you that providing the best advice certainly increases our value, and helps in the long run.

Hi Tom, great post, as usual refreshing and I do like those graphics you come up with!

Just one thing I wanted to say. I quite agree with your distinction in various courses, but to me target audience should also be built into that equation.

Building a course for one specific type of audience is tenfold easier than building a course designed for people in different positions, etc.

Take decision-making for instance. You may need to train people working in completely different areas (e.g. maintenance staff, lab technicians and physicians). If you are on budget-restrictions (who isn’t?) it may cost you less to build a single course with “optional” extras than to build three separate courses for each level of understanding/detail. (Also this may simply be a user requirement).

Just wondering what your take is on this and whether you would build this into an Articulate presentation or use a different means of training.

BTW, I like your idea of “coursels” (reminds me of information mapping), it definitely links in well with that approach, and obviously increases reusability, etc., etc.

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Hi Tom,

Thanks for your speedy response!

Just wondering though. Don’t you find the first solution more or less equates to developing N courses for N levels of expertise? IMHO, trainers in corporate environments unfortunately often lack the time (and sometimes even the motivation) to insert prerequisites or build valid assessments to allow for dynamic learning paths.

The core path with links to additional training really appeals to me on the other hand as it seems simpler and less time-consuming to develop and also to maintain in the long run.

Thanks again for reading and sharing, I am definitely looking forward to reading that future post :-)!

– Elinor

Hi Tom,

I agree with Sandipan Roy’s comment that just having some learning documents instead of e-learning courses is not a good idea. E-learning courses provide learners with an environment that is conducive for learning. It motivates and attracts learners towards learning. This might not be true if the learners are provided just some pdf docs.

– Sushil Yadav

[…] Are You Building the Right Type of E-Learning Course? […]

Hey Tom,

Can’t agree more!

I was given a contract fix the Call Centre induction for a large financial firm. It took new staff nearly 6 months to reach the minimum quality statistics (that’s if they stayed that long).

My analysis found that in induction they taught them: obscure pieces of knowledge on the off chance that they might get a call about it, products that had been phased out and accounted for less than 0.01% of all calls, seasonal knowlege all year rond, to refer to out of date training manuals rather than the up-to-date support tools, etc, etc.

Almost two thirds of what was being training was irrelevant. And they weren’t learning how to use the tools at their disposal.

I cut the training from 5 classroom based weeks to 3 weeks (almost half of that time was spent on-job to get a feel for the role). I changed the learning focus to the core things they needed to know and how to use the search engines. Through out most of the training manauls and replaced them with workbooks where they had to look up information in the online database. Every learning activity had a practical and measurable outcome.

By the 3 month mark – they had the best stats in the call centre (including quality). By the 6 month mark, several moved into more senior roles. By the 12 month mark, we had retained 10 out of the 11 trainees. Two had become trainers and the other 2 becaome Team Leaders.

Too much focus is spent on training people to recall minute pieces of information they may never use on job. We have to teach them how to fish. And the best news is that it’s so much easier, faster and effective to approach training this way.

Cheers
Jen

[…] that move self-guided e-learning beyond the linear slide-based approach. It mainly depends on what type of e-learning course you want to design. Two interesting approaches we can refer to […]

[…] Are You Building the Right Type of E-Learning Course? “The transition from eLearning to mLearning proceeds through constant innovation and experimentation, and tools like Blueprint can help us get creativity started. Therefore, don´t be afraid to leave old patterns.” Using traditional instructional templates for mLearning or forcing old eLearning courses into mobile devices is like standing on the peak of a high mountain and just looking at the ground under your feet. […]

I am new to instructional design and I appreciate all the tips you post. I started out teaching myself to build courses, but found that I lacked knowledge about designing a course that met the needs of different learners. In my instructional design (ID) class, I am learning about how the brain learns and the need for instructional design professionals to use this knowledge when designing courses. I read an article earlier written by Dr. Bruce Perry that talked about the brain’s ability to stay focused for 4-8 minutes’ worth of factual information before beginning to wander (Perry, n.d.). I also read another article that spoke of mental fatigue and studies pointing to the specific area of the brain affected when the symptons (lethargy and slowness of thinking) are present (Publishers, 2012). With this information in mind, what do you suggest about how the ID professional should structure a course that is heavy on factual information? How do we get the important information to the learners before they check out mentally? I like the idea of the coursel (course morsel). I can definitely see how I could have benefited from receiving smaller chunks of information at one time. The only problem, though, is what if you have a limited time / resources to present the material?
References
Perry, B. (n.d.). How the brain learns best. Retrieved from scholastic.com: http://teacher.scholastic.com/professional/bruceperry/brainlearns.htm
Publishers, I. (2012, December 10). Functional magnetic resonance imaging offers insights into mental fatigue. Retrieved from Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121210101630.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29