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?

An ah-ha moment -- Learning Theories

I'm taking an introduction to sociology class at the moment, and in yesterday's class I had one of those ah-ha moments. Back when I was studying learning theories (as part of the Master of Arts in Distributed Learning program) I had a hard time grasping the relationship between the different theories. I was trying to analyze learning theories as a "natural scientist" rather than a "social scientist". With a background in computer science and physics, I suppose that isn't too surprising ... however, a paradigms shift was definitely necessary for me to grasp learning theories.

In sociology class we are exploring the different ways in which socialists attempt to describe culture (specifically western culture). Each of the sociologists do their analysis using a different theoretical framework. It is within the confines of their frameworks that they are able to describe how people interact with the society. Reasons for a given behavior can be describe in many different ways, based upon the framework used for the description.

This concept also applies to learning theories. For example, behaviorist learning theory is not an attempt to describe absolutely how everyone learns: rather, it is an attempt to describe how learning occurs within the constraints of the framework. In the case of behaviorist learning theory, the constraint is the stimulus-response framework. The cognitive learning theories use the framework of the brain as an empty vessel, and learning is the process of filling the vessel. The constructivist learning theories use the framework of building learning through social interactions.

Each learning theory is an attempt to describe how learning occurs given the specific framework. Learning theories are not absolutes. As an educator, my job is to alter the frameworks as necessary to ensure that learning occurs.

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?".

How not to introduce a new presentation paradigm

Hi all,

This is the first in my series on what I learned in my last job as training specialist at a small high-tech start-up.

I picked up the book Beyond Bullet Points and wanted to give the new presentation paradigm a try. I was able to make some minor modifications to the corporate template to meet my needs, and I had complete control over content creation. I wasn't giving the presentation, I was just writing it. The presentations would be presented by instructors that where knowledgeable on the topic.

I created what I though was an amazing PowerPoint presentation, that used full sentence titles. If you looked only at the slide titles, you could follow the presentation's "story". The slide content itself was mostly graphical. As a general rule, the slides avoided bullet points. Some slides did have a key statement that supported or provided additional information relating to the slide title.

So, I setup a review meeting and asked one of the instructors do to the presentation for the review. I was really excited about the new graphics and the new format. I thought that everyone would find the presentation easy to follow and would be impressed by the ease with which the instructor presented the material. Unfortunately, that is not what happened :(

I did not brief the instructor, and the instructor did not really look at the slides in advance. As a result, he struggled to present the material. He would open a slide and look for the bullet points to help him figure out what to say next. Of course, there were no bullet points. Also, the new template had the unfortunate characteristic that the slide titles were faded out, so they were not obvious. The instructor struggled through the entire presentation without reading a single title! The entire presentation was build around the idea that the first thing that the instructor said was the slide title.

So, what did I learn?

First, when you are trying out a new template, make sure you preview/test the template on a projector (not just your screen) prior to the presentation. The titles which looked OK on my screen became washed out and almost invisible when they were projected.

Second, when you are trying something new and having someone else doing the presentation, make sure you brief the instructor on the new paradigm. It never occurred to me that the instructor would need to be "re-trained" on how to view and present the material. All I needed to tell the instructor in advance was to be sure to read the titles. (I did this with a different presentation and different instructor and it worked brilliantly). When titles are topic based, you often don't read them. However, with this new paradigm, the titles were a critical component of the story.

In the end, I think the new paradigm that uses full sentence titles really does help communicate the intended message. It also helps ensure that the instructor knows what the instructional designer intended with the particular slide. However, the instructors do need to be re-trained on what to expect and how to present the material. Without bullet points, the instructors need to be more knowledgeable on the subject and more familiar with the presentation itself.

Cheers.