The ideal rapid e-learning tool

I have been contemplating a lot lately what I think the ideal rapid e-learning tool would look like. I've put my current thoughts below. If you are a "text book" ADDIE fan, you will find that I am suggesting the development of some material backwards or completely contrary to good practices (specifically, the learning objectives are written after the story and not the other way around). I think this approach is more organic, and therefore, will be more likely to produce courses that have a more positive user experience. I don't think the world needs any more bad e-learning!

The key concept of this tool is that a story is used as the design mechanism, rather than the learning objectives. In my experience, courses written from learning objectives directly don't flow well. They are often very chunky, moving from one topic to another. It takes a lot of work by a good instructional designer to make a learning objectives based course flow well.

Note that the tool and associated process assumes that the designer has done research into the course topic.

To begin, the designer hits the "Start" button. This brings up a wizard.

Stage 1: Who's the course for?
The first question would be: "Who is the audience for this course?". The tool would encourage the designer to be specific about the audience. What is their prior knowledge on the topic? What skills do they have? What background skills do they have? What personality types are they? What is their normal job role?

Stage 2: What's the purpose?
The second question is "What are the course goals?". Another way to phase this might be "what behaviour do you want to change as a result of this course?" Designers can list multiple goals, but then the tool would ask that the goals be prioritized. A single course should not have more than five goals (two or three is ideal).

Stage 3: The story outline
The third question is the outline of the story. The designer would be asked to write the story that is the course. This would be full sentences that flow together. It is a narrative. When the designer feels that further detail is necessary, they add a further detail icon at the end of a sentence. Each one to three sentences would form a topic.

When the story narrative is complete, the tool would ask the designer to "tag" the sentences into different topics, and move the sentences around until the story flows well. Not all sentences require tags.

Stage 4: Checking against the goals
The designer would then be re-prompted with the course goals and be given an opportunity to validate that the course goals are being met. The tool would asked the designer to tag specific topics to the various course goals (based on the topic tags created in the previous step). A given topic can be in none or many of the goals. Topics that are not in any of the goals are "glue" topics, that are in the story simply to make it flow. Topics that support the goals are candidates for "learning objectives".

Stage 5: Writing the learning objectives.
Now that the topics have been associated with course goals, the learning objectives need to be written. The tool gives the designer topics and the designer is prompted to write appropriate learning objectives for these goals.

Note that it is intentional that topics that do not support the course goals do not have learning objectives. Glue topics should not be used for evaluation; therefore, they are not included in learning objectives.

Stage 6: Developing the assessment.
If the course requires an assessment, the test question are developed in this stage. The tools provides the designer with a learning objective. The designer can develop one or more question per learning objective. Questions are categorized as "review" or "assessment" questions.

At this point, the tool is just a set of drop down menus and places for text to be added.

Stage 7: Auto-generation of template
The course takes the narrative, the topics, and the assessment questions and creates the "outline" of the course with the development framework. This is where the wizard ends.

The development framework
The development framework looks something like the following:

The designer would be able to configure the layout (like any good graphics design tool). In addition, there would be a "storyboard view" that allows the designer to change the order of pages. The design will also be able to "preview" the course as the user would experience it.

A good tool would allow the course to be "published" into multiple formats: SCORM compliant, Self-contained web-based, self-contained application-based, etc.


So, what do you think? Would it help every aspiring course developer build better e-learning courses faster?

Covenanting and Online Collaboration

On Jay Cross' Informal Learning Blog, Jay asked for "what makes for successful online collaboration". This was a timely question, since I am in the process of preparing a workshop on covenanting.

Covenanting is a process that I have used both in face-to-face intentional communities and in online learning communties. It may be called different things, but the goal is the same: to set expectations (ground-rules) regarding behaviour.

From wikipedia, a definition: "A covenant, in its most general sense, is a solemn promise to do or not do something specified."

Covenanting in a face-to-face environment
In a face-to-face environment, I first learning of covenant when doing youth ministry work. I was an adult adviser working with a group of youth that use an "intentional community" model. The youth use covenant as a way to create a safe community without the need for too many "rules". It was more effective than creating "rules", because the youth themselves defined the covenant. As a result, they owned the expectations and agreed to abide by them.

Here is one way to build a covenant in a face-to-face environment. This method works well in small groups (6-15 people):

1. Ask each person to reflect upon the characteristics of particular group they participated in where they felt safe and enjoyed the experience (give them a minute or two to recall).
2. Ask people to share the characteristics of that group (record them on flip-chart paper). For example:
• Each person was allowed time to speak.
• People's ideas were respected.
• When you didn't understand someone, you could ask for clarification without judgment.
• etc.
3. Keep collecting items until no one has anything left to add. Ensure you check with each person.
4. Ask the group if they can agree to behaviours listed. If there are any behaviours that don't align or apply to this group, discuss them. If necessary, remove or modify them.
5. Once all the items are agreed by the entire group, re-write the agreed list neatly, and ask each member to sign the "covenant" or "agreement".
   
6. Post the signed list somewhere visible for all group meetings.
   

Covenanting in an online environment
In an online environment, I did a covenant within the first class of my Master's degree. The Master's program used an online learning community as the main learning tool. It was a transformative experience. I worked with an incredibly diverse and talented group of people throughout the program and learned a lot from sharing experiences with my fellow learners.

One of the reasons our learning community was so strong was in the beginning we had discussions about expectations and trust in the online environment. One of our activities was to post answers to the following questions within a discussion group:

• What trust builders do you personally consider to be the most important and why?
• What can you contribute to your virtual team?
• What do you need to receive in return?
• Describe your sense of the ideal virtual team?

We were encouraged to discuss the items that each person listed and as a team propose a list that we could all agree upon.

Covenanting and context
Covenant items are different depending on the context of the interaction. A covenant for a group of students in a course will be different than a group of professionals working together or a church group discussing spirituality. Covenant items might include:

• Be respectful of others.
• Always assume good intentions.
• Keep your commitments, don't commit if you can't follow through.
• Participate (if you are going to be away, let the team know).
• Everyone has the right to pass.
• Step-up step-down (if you are an outgoing extrovert be mindful when you are dominating the conversation and step-down, if you are introvert or shy be mindful of when you are not participating and step-up).

The important points about the covenanting process are:

• The items are determined by the group (use language that the group agrees upon).
• Each member of the group has the right to challenge items on the covenant (discuss challenged items until all can agree on the language used).
• The complete covenant must be agree upon by everyone (you might ask each person to sign the covenant to indicate their agreement).
  
• Each member is responsible for their own behaviour and upholding the agreed upon covenant.
  

As I prepare my covenanting workshop, I'll post some more articles in this area. If you have an suggestions or best practices, I'd love to hear them.