Category: Ed Tech

This is a simple little tool that underscores the straitjacket that the corporate world has put itself in vis-a-vis learning objects. For a variety of reasons, I have recently been catching up on what the higher ed world has been thinking about learning objects these days. Of course, they have a lot more freedom off the bat than their corporate counterparts because they don’t have to rely on a totally self-paced course paradigm and the lame, page-turner authoring tools that most LCMS’s provide these days. They can have an instructor provide the context that knits the content together. But Instructional Architect, out of Utah State University, shows that you don’t need a live facilitator or a fancy LCMS to put together a rich course. Be sure to check out the examples and browse the user-created projects.

The key, of course, is having a rich repository of content to which you can link. But hey, it’s the web. How hard can that be?

elearnspace is a font of interesting links today. From the abstract of this one:

In this research we analyze data from two three-month-long ALN academic university courses: a formal, structured, closed forum and an informal, non-structured, open forum. We found that in the structured ALN, the knowledge construction process reached a very high phase of critical thinking and developed cohesive cliques. The students took on bridging and triggering roles, while the tutor had relatively little power. In the non-structured ALN, the knowledge construction process reached a low phase of cognitive activity; few cliques were constructed; most of the students took on the passive role of teacher-followers; and the tutor was at the center of activity. These differences are statistically significant. We conclude that a well-designed ALN develops significant, distinct cohesion, and role and power structures lead the knowledge construction process to high phases of critical thinking.

This is essentially the supporting evidence for the argument I have made regarding how structured asynchronous online class discussions can be used as springboards for building more permanent communities of practice.

Here is a decent article with annoyingly hyperbolic title (which comes by way of elearnspace).

Frankly, “rapid e-learning” (which is probably better titled “quick and dirty e-learning”) is nothing new. In fact, my experience is that it is now by far the norm rather than the exception within corporations, and the LCMS vendors tend to encourage it. What the authors of this article provide that many organizations need is guidelines about when using the quick-and-dirty approach is appropriate (and, by inference, when it is not appropriate):

Examples of When to use Rapid E-Learning
Delta: Teaching the difference between what was learned and what has changed
Disposable: Content that has a short shelf-life and will go out of date
Continuous: Topics that require frequent and regular updates
Urgent: Problems that must be addressed immediately
Introductory: Topics that may preface an instructor-led class or more detailed blended learning program
Notice that, in the list above, we don’t include the mastery or certification of skills. We believe that Rapid E-Learning techniques are best used for teaching conceptual information. Rapid E-Learning courses can be blended with other forms of training to achieve higher level skills, or they may morph into a skills development program over time.

Right on.

I think the other thing that needs to be said about a “rapid e-learning” approach is that it generally works best when you have pre-defined templates that support not content but learning tasks, e.g., a template that supports memorizing a physical procedure or a template that supports reinforcing a certain decision-making process. The best simple example I can think of is something like what epiplex outputs (IE for Windows only, I’m afraid). One of the reasons that epiplex is quick to author in is that the learning tasks (and therefore a huge chunk of the instructional design) is well-known, so content can be automatically poured into templates. I see organizations spending a huge amount of time making their PowerPoint slides or Dreamweaver templates look pretty–an effort that has absolutely zero impact on learnability.

This article on design and situational control (which comes by way of elearningpost) gets to the heart of the problem with the majorit of corporate e-learning course designs today. As training designers, we have very little situational control over the e-learner’s environment. We therefore have to work hard to get their attention in the face of competing distractions. But many course designs use inappropriate means, such as forcing hokey interactions every few screens or adding unnecessary audio or video.

Then, to add insult to injury, when spend many hours debating where the navigational buttons should go, what color they should be, how the menus should look, etc., without ever testing to see if our design is intuitive to the user. This is exactly the wrong approach:

I also believe that designing in accordance with user mental models becomes more crucial in low situational control. One reason is that the designer gets a lesser chance to let her design vision unfold. In contexts of low situational control, and low attentional focus, there is less time for the user to grasp the designer’s vision, unless it maps onto their existing mental models. Innovative navigation strategies based on obscure metaphors and the much-maligned Flash Intros of yesteryears, are all, in my opinion, examples of imposing a high situational design paradigm on a low situational control context. One of the reasons that Google works so well is that it is designed for a very low situational control context. There is no integrated Google experience. You use it when you need to, experiencing it in bits and pieces.

What this all boils down to is the fact that most self-paced e-learning courses are designed in a vacuum where designers have no incentive to get into the heads of their end users. This is the main reason why we get perennial research articles proclaiming that e-learning doesn’t work.