Is it informal learning if ...

What makes informal learning "informal"?

• Is it the lack of a certificate of completion?
  
• Is it the lack of an instructor?
  
• Is it the lack of learner evaluation?
• Is it the lack of a "formal" motivator?

I can think of examples for each of these that would qualify as "informal" learning. I can't think of a single characteristic of learning that could not be informal for one person and formal for another.

For example:

• When I wanted to learn about SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model), I searched the Internet and found a web-based tutorial on SCORM. The tutorial tracked my progress and when I completed the tutorial I was presented with a certificate (on the screen) that I could print. Would this be "formal" learning because I received a certificate? I would not call it such. To me, this was also informal learning. However, if I needed a SCORM certification, then the certificate of completion could be considered formal training. This also serves as an example of learning without an instructor. The course did not even have an associated email address for learner questions. The learners were completely on their own.
  

• Currently, I am auditing a couple of sociology courses at the University of Ottawa. I attend the "formal" lectures, but do not write tests or papers, and I am not graded. From my perspective, this is an informal learning opportunity for me. I am not part of any formal process, I simply attend the lectures I chose to attend and I learn (I think I learn a lot more than those who attend the course formally, since I am not concerned about how I will be graded). But for the majority of folks in the class, this is a formal learning opportunity. Their learning is measured and they received "credit" for the learning that they demonstrate. For the other students, the credit provides an external motivator. My motivation for attending is strictly personal interest.
  

So, is "informal" just a context?

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?

Will rapid e-learning tools go the way of PowerPoint?

When the magic rapid e-learning tool comes out, will it suffer the same negative fate at PowerPoint? That is, will the tools be misused to create bad e-learning? Of course! It will just like PowerPoint, a tool that is often mis-used and abused. Making e-learning easy makes it so that anybody can create e-learning. It doesn't mean that anybody SHOULD make e-learning.

How do we get people and the various industries to understand that good e-learning is not as simple as the tools used to create it. When the cost of production goes down, more of the money should be transfered to effective design.

My view of the future is a lot more bad e-learning. I hate bad e-learning, it gives all e-learning a bad reputation. It is just like PowerPoint. Too many people create too much bad PowerPoint, such that the tool gets a bad rep. My prediction: E-learning made easy will make for more bad e-learning! How do we change the priority from rapid development, to well designed development?

How do we change the world such that people and organizations learn to appreciate the skill involved in designing good e-learning? Or will the speed always trump quality? When creating e-learning, we should be asking ourselves, "for this presentation, what's more important time-to-market or learning experience?".

Why do we blame the tool?

In Brent Schlenker's post "20 years of death by PowerPoint", he talks about all that is wrong with PowerPoint. This has got me wondering, why do we blame the tool for its misuse? Why do we blame the big guy?

It is partly this attitude that led me down the path of using more complicated tools to do the same job that PowerPoint itself would do. In creating training material, I used Illustrator and Frame to create most of the content. PowerPoint was only used to create the final instructor slides, as this is what PowerPoint was indended for. The problem with this solution: no one but me could maintain the content. When anyone wanted a minor change in a graphic, I had to make that change. One of the beauties of a pure PowerPoint solution was that everyone had it. Not everyone was good at using it, but everyone had it!

So that leads to the heart of the problem. It isn't the tool that is wrong, it is the lack of appreciation for the skill in using the tool appropriately. Too many people do not recognize that developing a decent PowerPoint presentation takes more than just subject matter expert skills. Figuring out presentation flow as well as developing decent look-and-feel are skills that go under appreciated in many places.

That being said, one of the key learnings from my last job was that often even the client (or student) does not appreciate the difference between excellent, good, and mediocre training material. If the client can't tell the difference between mediocre and good, why waste your time and money producing something good. Just have your subject-matter-experts throw together some PowerPoint slides and run with it. That is the beauty of PowerPoint.

One of the bigger issues with the use of PowerPoint is that corporate templates kill effective presentations. Frequently the header and footer information on corporate templates take away the emphasis on the content. (For a good tips on how to generate good presentations, see Beyond Bullet Points). Too often corporate templates are developed by people that do not understand nuances of the delivery medium. I have seen many a presentation that looks good on the developers computer, but doesn't display well on the projected screen (I too have made that mistake). Finding the balance between branding and good presentations is a challenge.

One other point that Brent brings up is the use of PowerPoint to generate quick and easy E-Learning. I think this CAN be done well. The issue is not the tool set, it is the people behind the tools. Too many people do not understand the complexity of creating good e-learning. That being said, you still need to ask yourself, does it need to be good? Will mediocre meet the training need? If it will, then go for it.

Of course, when mediocre training meets the need, it leaves me without a job! It is OK to recognize in industry, that mediocre is often all that is required. And there are many people out there that can develop mediocre training and many tools out there to make it fast and easy to do. I just need to find myself the organization that actually NEEDS good, or better yet, excellent training.

Cheers,
Becky

Full sentence slide titles makes it easier for others to use your slides

It has been awhile since I last blogged. I've been reading various blogs, but haven't felt the inspiration until today.

I am about to embark on a new project. I want to figure out how to integrate the good parts of ISD (identifying objectives and outlining the flow before developing) with the concept of storytelling and the Beyond Bullet Points approach to writing slideware.

My requirements are pretty standard. The products I write training for are rapidly changing (isn't everything in high tech?). The folks teaching the training are not trainers, rather they are technical folks (programmers and troubleshooters). So, the goal is to create PPT presentations that can be presented well by anyone, and to do it in a manner that doesn't take a tonne of time to maintain, since the products constantly change.

I tried incorporating full sentence titles in my slides (rather than topic headings). Apparently research shows that students remember more of the presentation when this technique is used. I found a useful side effect to this approach: it makes the slides easier to present. Specifically, it makes it easier for someone who didn't author the slides to present them. I found that the instructors knew what the intention of every slides was -- because it was written in the title! I'm a convert. I will no longer use topic titles for slides .... that being said ....

The use of full sentences doesn't align well with a "topic" based approach to course design. The process I have been using definitely promotes the use of topic titles rather than full sentence statements. So, this is my next journey. I'm going to try and figure out a process for developing training that involves excellent PPT presentations (full sentence titles and lots of graphics), and takes into account learning objectives. I'll share this on my blog as I discover things that work.