e-Learning Leadership Blog

No One Reads Online

by Linda Rening, PhD, Studio Executive

Life is full of disillusionment. I had thought I had gotten through all the disillusionment the day I realized my mom really didn’t have eyes in the back of her head, and when I learned firsthand that real children are neither as cute nor as well behaved as those on television.

I was wrong. There was a lot more disillusionment ahead.

Since coming to Allen Interactions almost 2 years ago, I’ve had to face a few other facts. These have been even harder to accept than the realities about moms and my own darling children. Just to give you a sense of the depth of my naiveté, let me tell you what I used to believe:

• Learners want to know what they will learn in an e-learning course, so all e-learning courses need to start with learning objectives. (Not true.)
• Learners appreciate learning objectives that start with verbs indicating observable behavior, like: Explain, Define, Demonstrate, etc. (Wrong.)
• If they get a question wrong in an online test, learners want to know what the right answer was and they always read the explanations. (Nope – not even close.)
• People pay attention when I am conducting a webinar. (This is actually true for the first 7 minutes, then they are checking email, ordering holiday presents online, or feeding the cat.)
• It would be really fun to have a T-Rex in an e-learning course. (The less said about that the better.)

But, the most difficult thing I’ve had to accept is this: no one reads e-learning courses. All that elegant prose, clever characterizations, and cogent explanations that I’ve written over the years? What about that? The sad truth is I have engaged in what amounted to writing exercises, pretty much for myself and the subject matter experts (SMEs) with whom I’ve worked.

At best, learners tolerated my verbiage; at worst, I annoyed them as much as most people who design e-learning annoy them.

How do I know? We’ve watched how people behave in user testing and interviewed countless learners about their experiences with online learning. We’ve asked them what works for them and what doesn’t. What we’ve heard is that mostly people do not read what is on screen.

Not to be argumentative, but I believe anyone who designs or develops e-learning already knows that. Evidence to support my assertion? Read on.

Think about your own behavior online. What do you do? The answer is found in the name of the delivery mechanism. We get online via a browser because that’s exactly what most of us do online: we browse. I used to think the term “browser” was clever marketing, now that my disillusionment is more complete, I know the term is an accurate description of online behavior.

What was the last thing you read online? This morning, I wanted to confirm that the plural of memorandum is truly memoranda. (It is, unless one uses the shortened versions, memo and memos respectively.) I actually read two full paragraphs on Wikipedia, after first scanning those paragraphs to see if I could just pick out the information I wanted. Since I couldn’t, I sighed, and read the paragraphs.

What do you read online? Actually, I can tell you the answer to that question. You read what you are interested in. Not what someone else thinks you should be interested in, like product specs or sexual harassment policies, but what you care about personally.

You read what you are interested in and, further, only when you are interested in it. Next week, if someone assigned me an e-learning course on the plural forms of nouns like memorandum, datum, curriculum, etc., I wouldn’t spend nearly as much time and energy on the topic.

So, we have a couple of clues about online behavior: it’s called a browser for a reason and none of us read unless we want to.

I think there is more evidence suggesting we know learners don’t read what we write. Think of all of the tactics we’ve used to make them read:

• Recording voice-over audio that reads every word on the screen to them
• Disabling the “next” button until every question has been answered – or even answered correctly
• Delaying activation of the “next” button for 3 seconds so learners have to read (I wouldn’t make that up)
• Video-taping the Vice President of Something telling learners how important the information is and imploring them to learn it

What have we accomplished with those shenanigans? We’ve annoyed our already besieged and weary learners a little more.

So, what’s the answer? Very simply, the answer is to create learning that matters to learners.

Dr. Michael Allen, Ethan Edwards, and others at Allen Interactions have written extensively on the topic of how to create learning that matters. We won’t go through all of it again here, but I do want to offer you a couple of reminders:

Follow the structure of Context-Challenge-Activity-Feedback(CCAF):

• Know your learners and identify desired behavior change
• Create learning that takes place in a true-to-life context and offers real-to-life challenges
• Structure feedback that follows the natural consequences of a choice the learner makes

Try test/tell:

• Let learners try something on their own and make mistakes. That will create motivation to learn the right procedure or the correct answer.
• Start with the challenge, and present information upon learner request or as part of the feedback
• Use humor, surprise, curiosity, sensory input and the like judiciously, but do use them. They serve to heighten interest and keep learners engaged.

The reality I have had to face is this: If you want to write elegant prose, keep a journal. If you want people to learn, stop talking and start creating learning that matters.

Dr. Linda Rening is studio executive for one of Allen Interactions’ Minneapolis/St. Paul based studios. While not coping with disillusionment, she works hard to enable clients to reach their business goals by helping design learning experiences that matter.

It’s an ICE Time to Leave ADDIE Behind

by Richard Sites, vice president - client services

For many years, Michael Allen has been sounding the call to move beyond ADDIE towards a process that is more responsive, flexible, and manageable. More importantly, to move to a process that can actually produce high quality learning experiences.

Yesterday at the ASTD ICE conference in Denver, he once again challenged us to leave ADDIE behind. But for what you ask? That’s a great question (A question for which I sure hope you already know the answer…hint, hint).

Before we talk about WHAT to leave ADDIE behind for, let’s discuss WHY you should leave ADDIE – and most traditional processes for that matter. These traditional processes have been churning out some disappointing training over the years. This disappointment is measured by the impact on the training departments, management, learners, and even shareholders.

• Training departments spend too much money and time on training that has little, if any, impact on the performance of the learners. 
• Management is in the constant cycle of allocating ever diminishing budgets which are not adequate to build training that has any return-on-investment.
• Learners are becoming disillusioned and unmotivated by the boring, lifeless click-through training to which they are subjected.
• Shareholders are seeing their organizations miss opportunities to improve performance and efficiency, and therefore the bottom line.

Let’s be honest for minute, ADDIE and other traditional processes do a great job of acknowledging risk and managing its impact, but this risk management comes at a cost. The foundation of any traditional process is an accurate analysis. You can’t move forward until the analysis is complete and flawless – the problem with that is no analysis can ever be complete and certainly not flawless. So, training departments get stuck in the Analysis Paralysis – and the schedule slips and keeps slipping.

Because these processes are linear and require approval to move forward, they lend themselves to a design that is focused on facts and text. Training departments attempt to explain designs with storyboards and content outlines that simply provide the words and facts. Once these are approved, it’s way too risky to redesign in order to meet learners’ need for performance focused learning experiences, and the learners ends up with disappointing page-turner training.

So, to make up for these, and the many other challenges, we modify and realign traditional processes (ADDIE). But that’s not really a solution at all. The limitations of ADDIE are not its five phases, but rather the order of the phases, the lack of practical strategies for incorporating learner input, lack of collaborative design, and limited manageability. We all analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate – there’s no other way to build learning experiences. But, we don’t have to do them in the traditional ways anymore.

Before we get too involved in modifying or realigning our old processes, let’s consider what we need for a process that will meet our needs. The criteria below are a good start:

1. First, our process should be iterative. An iterative process provides opportunities to experiment, test, and revise our designs.
2. Second, our process must support collaboration. The inclusion of learners, managers, and stakeholders in the design process will only ensure a better, performance-focused solution.
3. Third, our process must be effective and efficient. At the end of the day, we have to support the business case for training and the time and budget it takes to create learning experiences should not be wasted or extended any more than necessary. Our process must ensure we are able to move quickly and purposefully.
4. Fourth, our process must be manageable. Some great processes (on paper at least) are not easily managed, which means a lot of energy and time is spent keeping things on track…wastefully. Our process needs to provide strategies to increase its manageability.

This set of criteria is just the start. There’s plenty more to creating and implementing a successful, efficient, and manageable process. If you would like to join me in heeding Michael’s call for action to leave ADDIE behind, look for his new ASTD published book, Leaving ADDIE for SAM, coming this fall. SAM is the Successive Approximation Model (we call it SAVVY at Allen Interactions). And if you were at Michael’s ASTD ICE presentation yesterday…let me know how it went!

Get a free download of the preface from Leaving ADDIE for SAM here. 

Ellis Island Medal of Honor to be Awarded to Dr. Michael Allen

by Richard Sites, vice president - client services

Each year, there is a flurry of excitement when the efforts of our team and our clients are realized in the form of industry award recognition.  But this year, we are over the moon with excitement and pride as Dr. Michael Allen will be honored with the Ellis Island Medal of Honor at a black-tie gala reception in the historic Great Hall on Ellis Island next week!

The Ellis Island Medal of Honor is a prestigious award to honor Americans who exemplify outstanding qualities in both their personal and professional lives, while continuing to preserve the distinct values and rich heritage of their ancestors.  Previous recipients of the Medal of Honor have included Presidents, Senators, statesmen, athletes, major entertainment personalities, Noble Laureates, educators, business and religious leaders. The medals were conceived to pay tribute to the immigrant experience, remarkable individual achievements and above all, the spirit that makes American unique among nations.

In his work ranging from projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, Control Data Corporation, and Allen Interactions, Dr. Allen’s work has contributed to the first Internet-based solution demonstrated to reduce the spread of HIV, reduction in school gang violence, and academic success by those failing in traditional education.

Born in rural Iowa to a school teacher mother and a farmer father whose own father had lost all his land in the Great Depression, young Michael Allen was influenced by his mother’s love of learning and his father’s entrepreneurship.  This determination and passion propelled him to focus his efforts on making learning better.

And, this love of learning and entrepreneurial spirit is infectious. As anyone who has had the opportunity to meet and talk to him knows, he is passionate about the industry and the tools we use, but his true mission is to help every person achieve his or her full potential.  This belief has driven him to write a series of best-selling books for industry professionals and build tools, like Authorware and now ZebraZapps which allows for easier development of meaningful, memorable and motivational learning.

Here at Allen Interactions, we are encouraged to be creative, to be strategic partners with our clients but to work, first and foremost, for the benefit of the learner. While we typically work with Fortune 100 companies, we also do quite a bit of work for causes that we believe in, such as courseware for e-Learning for Kids Foundation and Operation Lifesaver.

I ♥ m-Learning

by Mary-Scott Hunter, vice president - client services

In my last blog post, I described the challenges in creating e-learning on mobile devices.  I stand by those challenges as a cautionary tale for those considering diving into the deep end of that technology pool. 

And yet…

I do worry (okay, worry is a strong word: let's say 'gently fret') that my post might not convey the excitement I feel for m-learning opportunities, so I thought I'd share some instructional value for mobile devices and reflect on successful design principles.

An Important Distinction

Before I roll up my sleeves to describe some m-learning love, I want to make a critical distinction. When I think "m-learning," I'm not considering iPads or tablets. Those devices share screen real estate comparable to a laptop or full-size monitor, which means they are more aligned with e-learning for computers.

For my purposes today, m-learning means smartphones. Now, what kind of m-learning works on smartphones?

1. Performance Support Tools

Let's start with the obvious, shall we? m-Learning kicks butt for those just-in-time opportunities. How do I access a seldom-used computer screen? What's the process for those rare times when I close out the cash register before closing? What's our four-step process for restocking kitty litter? (In my hypothetical other job, I often see myself managing a cat store called Mary-Scott’s Cat Emporium, where nobody actually buys cats. People just pay to come in and love them, while sitting on plush couches trading cat stories.)

I would not consider performance support tools like this to even be training, so "training design principles" do not apply. Instead, I would focus on solid information mapping principles and an interface that allows learners to find answers quickly.

2. Training Support

Not to be confused with performance support, training support assumes that training occurred prior to m-learning access. If I rolled out training on how to sell X or Y, I might consider rolling out a weekly m-device update targeting common customer objections. First screen: a customer says, "Your X product is great, but too expensive for me." The learner flicks through subsequent screens to see four ways to address that price concern. In the next week's update, the customer says, "Thanks for the information. I'd like to think it over."  Flick through four ways to address that concern. And so forth.

As far as good design for training support, I would first remember that training support is not the training. Do not expect the m-device to carry the skill development. I would focus on specific words, list steps, and shar the rich details of application that sometimes get lost when you're focused on the big-picture of skill acquisition. There are many content details that may get lost in the training which might be wonderful to receive five weeks after training was completed.

3. Video Support

I would use smartphone video regularly for employees at Mary-Scott's Cat Emporium. (In my imagination, we're thinking about becoming a nationwide chain. There's that much demand.) Through video, I would show proper ways to pick up and hold a cat. I would film common cat warning signs for when it's ready to claw your arm. I would show videos of cats playing. All of these could be shared with our customers, providing another means for employees to interact with customers, educating and cooing together.

How could you use this in a corporate environment? How about a hilarious 45-second video from lawyers explaining to vendors why the employee who showed you this video can't accept gifts? How about a two-minute snapshot of relevant warehouse activities a sales person could show to positively influence perception of quality? In our YouTube era where "hits" count as measures of success, I’m shocked more companies aren't ordering memorable, meaningful videos to share with employees and their customers.

Here are a few good mobile video design principles:

• Keep it short!
• Incorporate high production values.
• Use humor!
• Use personality!

Obvious as this point is, use video's advantages (which is not talking heads). Nobody forwards links to their friends saying, "Check out this VP of product design articulating the three most important product features and benefits."   

 4. Location-based Learning

I think we forget one powerful dimension of m-learning: we can do it anywhere. I often think that big companies should design new employee orientation that you could listen to on your smartphone like a museum tour. "Now, go to the fourth floor and press pause once you're there, now click play again. You're on the fourth floor? Good. To your right you'll find human resources. Walk down the hallway. In these offices you will find the person responsible for your department's support. This person will cover topics such as bereavement leave, vacation days…"

Create some m-learning love for customers on how to shop for your product in a mall. "Are you standing right now in front of the blenders? Great. Pick up the boxes to see if you can find warrantee information available. Our blenders promise a three-year warrantee right on the package. Press pause while you compare products and when you return, I'll walk you through the various useful add-ons."

Good location-based learning design principles:  

• User-test this extensively.
• Record the audio cheaply for user testing so you're not constrained by expensive voice talent as you revise and make changes.
• Use visual cues whenever possible.
• Make it interesting!
• Meaningful and memorable apply as design principles, even if it's audio-only.

5. Tweet it Out

I advocate using smartphones for thier social media potential but I want to be crystal clear: this isn't training. I think one of the reasons m-learning is doomed to fail is because people misdiagnose a smartphone solution as training and then apply inappropriate instructional design rules. Sometimes, you gotta let a tweet be a tweet.

At Mary-Scott's Nationwide Cat Emporium, we would post adorable kitten pictures all day long and tweet about how to spot a 'cat hater' as they sneak into our space. We'd build our corporate culture on m-devices.

Good smartphone social media principles: 

• Ask: “Do we need someone to constantly monitor the flow of text messages or images shared between employees? Is there any filtering needed?”
• Can ANYONE communicate and are off-topic posts welcome?
• Before you jump into smartphone social media, get very clear on what parameters you want.

Never Send a Kitten to do a Cat's Job

As a learning consultant, I find myself surprised at how eager people are to use a nascent technology just because it's fresh, new, and cute. m-Learning has fantastic applications and uses we should leverage. When it comes to developing skill-building scenarios that actually allow learners a meaningful context to practice skills, focus some of that excitement back into a familiar world: e-learning on bigger screen displays.

I leave you with this:

Well-fed and well-petted, all cats will purr. If you create learning opportunities that match the strengths of the available technologies, your learners will also purr with satisfaction.

Attention: This is NOT a Test

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

Testing is inexplicably bound to our experiences with teaching and learning.  And standardized test formats have become the model for most e-learning interactions.  Four-option multiple choice questions (press a, b, c, or d) and True/False statements (press t or f) are the basic building blocks all the authoring tools provide the e-learning author.  Even when formats are expanded to provide more variety, it is surprising how limited the questions remain.  The templates for hot-spot interactions where the learner can click on an image instead of selecting a lettered response often require four images that must be identically sized and positioned in preset locations—hardly different than a standard multiple choice.

But it’s a real shame that these sorts of questions have become the standard for e-learning interactivity.  We need to remember that these formats didn’t arise because anyone thought they were good teaching methods; instead, it was because they were easier to grade on a large scale than other methods of questioning.

And even when we grade a learner as passing these questions, what does it tell us?  There are any number of reasons unrelated to the purpose of the question that might account for the student’s response (random guessing, educated guessing, misreading a question, responding to irrelevant aspects of the question [i.e., “the longest choice is always correct”], or simple user error [i.e., “My finger slipped”]. 

And besides, we know it takes rich experiences to actually facilitate learning.  I am a big fan of the practical significance of what M. David Merrill introduced as the First Principles of Instruction. In a nutshell, these principles state that instruction must be problem-centered, prior knowledge must be activated, expected outcomes must be demonstrated, learners must be given an opportunity to apply the knowledge, and then the new knowledge/skills should be integrated into everyday life.  Sadly, standard interactions that rely on simple recall and superficial question-answering behaviors (“press a”) do little to facilitate these necessary steps.

So what do we need instead?  We need interactions that present challenges that relate to real world performance.  We need activities where performance and repetition will encourage transfer to work environments.  We need rich simulated contextual environments where learners work toward solving meaningful problems.  We need immersive situations in which learners attend to intrinsic feedback to shape desired competencies.

There are many impediments to achieving this kind of learning, but most disappointingly, a critical failure is that the authoring tools available to designers and developers of e-learning are largely unsuited for facilitating learning.  Most are optimized to make it really easy to create the sort of e-learning that no one will benefit from.

It is this vein of thinking that is motivating my colleagues here at Allen Interactions in developing ZebraZapps. As this authoring and publishing platform continues to develop, it becomes more and more obvious how transforming this tool has the potential to be.  The significance of the old saying that “if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” is becoming obvious.  With most traditional authoring tools, everything looks like an opportunity to give a PowerPoint-like presentation and then ask simplistic test questions.  With ZebraZapps, the world looks like a place that demands meaningful, interactive environments with learners meaningfully engaged in manipulating objects, experimenting, and exploring, because that’s what it does most easily.

The video below shows an accelerated process of creating an interesting simulation about vision and eye function in ZebraZapps.  You can see that there’s nothing hidden or especially complicated; the designer/developer creates interactivity just by connecting properties with wires and adjusting values. Of course logic and good design are still needed, but there aren’t technical impediments.  And it’s fast!

If you’ve not looked at ZebraZapps, or if you just haven’t looked at it in awhile, I encourage you to go to www.zebrazapps.com and check it out.  You can still create a login that provides you free personal use of the system, and there are a number of great new enhancements being rolled out in conjunction with the ASTD ICE event in Denver in a couple weeks that extend the authoring and also make it a viable enterprise solution.

And whether interested in ZebraZapps or not, if you are attending ASTD ICE, please be sure to stop by the Allen Interactions booth 215 in the Expo Hall to say “Hello.” Register today for a free Expo Only registration or register for $100 off a Full Conference registration.

Is Anyone Here a Doctor?

by Angel Green, instructional strategist

Recently, I became intimately aware of how valuable training can be. Now, you might be thinking that, given my job, this would be something I was already very much aware of – and you’re right, in theory I was. However, when my mother recently underwent surgery for a brain aneurism I was very grateful that the doctor performing her operation was properly trained.

The doctor who performed her operation, like many healthcare professionals, honed and perfected the technique he used on my mother by operating in a simulated training environment – using realistic scenarios and allowing him the opportunity to make mistakes on simulated patients, instead of real.

There are many examples of times when people have tipped their hat to training for their ability to handle emergency or difficult situations – think Captain Sully Sullenberger’s statement “That’s what we’re trained to do” after safely landing an Airbus A320 in the Hudson River.

Coincidentally, just prior to my mother’s medical situation, I had the honor of meeting and beginning a project to create e-learning for one of the world’s leading manufacturers of patient simulators for healthcare training. Between meeting with this client, the research I performed for the work we will do for him and the situation with my mother, I am more convinced than ever that in order to build skills and increase performance of learners, we must simulate the events they will experience in real life.

Of course, not every skill you need to create training on will have life or death consequences, like those of Captain Sully or my mom’s neurosurgeon, but they do have consequences. And the most effective manner to teach those skills is to show the consequences of the action. The power of scenario driven simulation-based training simply should not be ignored in creating effective learning experiences.

You may be fearful that developing scenario driven simulations will be too costly and time consuming, especially if you are the only person in your training department. The good news is this is a false assumption; not all simulation based training is expensive or time consuming. It can be – Captain Sully spent two days in a $10 million flight simulator. But likely, for the types of skills you are likely looking to create e-learning on – maybe its project management, compliance, a new software functionality or even customer service – you can work within any budget to simulate these experiences. All you need to do is write content that gives learners the opportunity to make choices based on a realistic scenario.

The essence to developing a simulation is to focus on the action that is taken and the consequence that results from the action. The patient simulators give real life responses, including crying and increasing blood pressure, due to the actions taken by the doctors, nurses or EMTs interacting with them. Their actions create a consequence – a realistic consequence.

Consequence based simulation provides learners the opportunity to experience, in a safe environment, failure. Yes, that’s right – you want your learners to fail. You want them to make mistakes. In our heart, we all know that the best way to learn is through making mistakes. Yet, we ignore that intuition.

Have you found yourself developing training that is designed only for encouraging learners, for building their confidence? “Great job! Everyone gets a trophy!” Too often, we provide learners with the information they need to know and then hope that in the moment, they will interpret that information and use it to their advantage. We take steps to avoid making our learners uncomfortable, allowing them to struggle or figure things out on their own. This is the worst mistake we can make. When things are easy in training, it is expected to be easy in real life.

But, what happens in real life when a caller becomes irate? When an ethical decision navigates between being immoral or illegal? When a missed safety violation leads to a costly infraction? When you have to suggest a meal on your menu for a person with a peanut allergy?

Ask yourself, which will be better recalled by the learner? A bulleted list on slide 15 or the time they failed miserably in a simulated event very similar to one in real life and how they tried again and again until they finally got it right?

I’m glad my mom’s doctor had the latter.

e-Learning Project Reviews – A Moment to Create Value

by Richard Sites, vice president - client services

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity to give a presentation on Creating Value-Driven e-Learning in Orlando at the Learning Solutions conference. As a strategic partner of my clients, this is a topic I feel very strongly about.

For every project you manage or work on, the mission is likely the same: accomplish the goals in the time allotted while achieving a standard measure of quality. For each of these efforts, there are plenty of documented strategies for success. There are theories and tools on setting measurable goals – especially in the world of instructional design. You can read books, and even become certified, in project and time management. Quality is the ability to meet accepted industry standards. This may be measured by passing inspection or in our case, by producing instructionally sound learning.

But what about the value of the work? Value is the benefit our clients (whether internal or external) perceive from our efforts. Value is intangible, but not unmanageable.

Have you ever worked on a project that seemed to be progressing as planned and running flawlessly, but still didn’t feel as if it was hitting the mark? Likely you experienced this feeling because you were missing the value target for the project.

As designers, we need to ask questions and seek answers on how we can meet this value target. Only by acknowledging and addressing the personal expectations and organizational obligations of our clients can we create value-driven projects.

Through my experience, I have found four main strategies particularly helpful in creating value driven e-learning projects. They are:

1. Define Review Expectations
2. Maintain Control of Content
3. Limit Revisions not Iterations
4. Reduce the Risk of Inaction

For today’s blog, I will explain one of the strategies and will discuss the other strategies in subsequent posts.

NOTE: My strategies for creating value are based on the use of an iterative process. However, you can take advantage of these with any type of instructional or training development process.

VALUE-DRIVEN STRATEGY 1: Define Review Expectations

As course designers and developers, we often make the assumption that by simply asking a person to review an instructional product that (1) they will provide us with meaningful and useful input and (2) they understand the benefit of conducting the review. But, unfortunately, nothing is further from the truth. 

When it comes time for review – whether this is a prototype, an alpha version of an e-learning course, or a facilitator guide – we generally ask our review team to complete a task within a certain timeframe in order to achieve a particular objective. However, without knowing the expectations, our review team will not have a good opportunity to provide an effective evaluation of the training.

Setting clear and concise expectations for a review is not rocket science, but is often overlooked in the rapid paced e-learning development projects many know to be familiar. When reviews are not managed properly, project leads can get barraged with frustrated comments from reviewers or even calls from the boss. These simple missteps can go a long way in the feeling that your project was not a success.

To avoid this situation:

1. Provide a review strategy to project team and reviewers – Let everyone know the intent of this review, what you hope to accomplish and what specifically you are asking of them at this review.
2. Create a strategy for collecting comments from reviewers – If the effort to provide input during the review is too difficult or time-consuming, reviewers will likely only provide general, broad-sweeping comments that may not be beneficial. Provide tools, like spreadsheets or databases, and strategies to make commenting easier for the review team.
3. Discuss the plan for aggregating and prioritizing the collected comments – If a reviewer takes the time to carefully evaluate the e-learning course and provide comments, they are certainly going to expect that their comments are recognized. If you don’t explain to all reviewers the process you will use to combine their comments into a single iteration document, prioritizing the ones that will be the basis for the next iteration, some reviewers may wonder why you didn’t make the change(s) they requested.

Improving Your e-Learning Designs: What I Learned from a Flower

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

After the New Year I bought a couple neglected amaryllis bulbs that had been discounted.  I took them home, potted them, and was surprised but overjoyed to see them finally open up in full glorious bloom this weekend. I guess it’s a little late to be thrilled that these houseplants are blooming, as the Spring flowers in the yard are mainly already out, but I’m excited nevertheless.

But seeing big showy flowers blooming inside always puts me in mind of one of my most vivid childhood memories.  I was about 5 years old and we were given a night-blooming cactus to care for while our neighbors went on an extended vacation.  It was not at all a showy plant and my young mind really wasn’t sure of why such trouble was to be taken about this rather uninteresting specimen.  But then several weeks into our care of this plant, one night well after midnight, my siblings and I were roused from sleep and herded into the kitchen to see the cactus sprung suddenly into bloom, displaying a single remarkably huge white flower.  A call was made to another neighbor, and he came trudging down our long lane in his robe in the middle of the night, Polaroid camera in hand, ready to record this event for the plant owners.  (A Polaroid camera was necessary, as our own black and white camera could not do just to such a marvel.) We all continued to sit up into the early morning hours, gazing at this bloom, listening to my mom read about it from the gardening encyclopedia, marveling at its very existence.  I’d had no idea that such plants even existed.  Eventually we went back to bed and woke in the morning light to find that the flower was completely spent, with only an out-of-focus, over-exposed photo to remind us of what we’d seen.  I’ve never actually seen a night-blooming cactus in bloom since then, but what I learned that night 45 years ago has stayed with me.

What made that such an effective learning event? 

• It was distinctive—unlike any other experiences I’d had. 
• It was rooted in the real world—I wasn’t learning about some hypothetical specimen I might encounter someday; I knew exactly what we were learning about. 
• It was delivered just-in-time with a specific focus.  In fact, the training was triggered by actual events, rather than an arbitrary curriculum schedule.

We would be well served if we applied these principles in our e-learning designs.

Distinctiveness

You’ve heard me urge this many times—e-learning must have a meaningful and memorable context.  Context creates meaning, and when you create e-learning with a context void of significance or indistinguishable from a host of other e-learning lessons the learner has experienced, you dramatically increase the difficulty for the learner in creating specific memories.  Except in cases where students select to take training for themselves rather than have it assigned to them, before delivering the content even starts, the e-learning has to provide contextual elements and triggers to activate prior knowledge, establish need, set expectations, and define success.

Concrete, Real-World Context

So often, I see designers struggling with volumes of content that is far removed from the experience of the learners.  Policy training usually focuses on definitions and official language, ignoring the actual problems that make the policies interesting and relevant.  Systems training drills repetitive gestures in software programs without ever connecting those routines to a sensible reason for ever doing those tasks.  Subject matter experts can forget how disassociated from actual performance their “content” has become.  We need to remember to start with the tangible, the familiar, and the concrete when engaging the learner’s attention.

Just-In-Time

So many of the less effective approaches to e-learning are simply a result of thoughtlessly carrying over aspects of classroom teaching.  Traditionally, getting learners together in a physical classroom, could be a major disruption to work cycles and also a big expense.  Because it was such a big deal, it seemed right to want to cram as much into those sessions as possible.  e-Learning suffers none of those constraints, yet so often the idea that we have one opportunity to communicate everything possible drives the design, resulting in impossibly large, monolithic curricula.  Instead, think about designing small lessons—even single interaction modules.  Then instead of dumping them on learners en masse, allow actual events to trigger when training occurs.  Too often, learners take training only to have weeks or months pass before there is any chance of implementing what they learned.  Small, focused interactions have the benefits of being centered on specific needs, quick, varied, immediately-relevant, appropriate for mobile delivery, task-based, and overall, less boring.

While we can’t always expect to create in our e-learning the impact of a wondrous exotic flower blooming for a few fleeting hours in the dark of the night, we can extract some principles from that event and others like it to guide our design of e-learning experiences that will create long-lasting and beneficial experiences for our learners.

Putting Learners First

by Angel Green, instructional strategist

A short time ago, I had a conversation with a young man who recently earned his Master’s Degree in Adult Education. We were totally “geeking out” in our discussion on the differences between andragogy and pedagogy. When we got to the part of the discussion where we shared the reasons we had chosen to enter into the profession, he expressed feeling a bit of disappointment.

You see, like many people who choose our profession, he had gone into the field because of a genuine passion for learning. He loved studying the science of how people learn, the techniques to best facilitate discussions among learners, and the best part – the reward of watching the light bulb ignite when something you said has clicked with the learner. However, in his current role of instructional designer, he felt isolated. He had little contact with the learner and was contemplating moving away from instructional design and back to course facilitation.

My friend wanted to connect with the learners – he wanted to teach. I understood his pain. After spending the early part of my career as a facilitator for a new hire training program, I moved into instructional design and e-learning course development. There were times during my early entry into instructional design where I felt isolated; spending my time completely removed from learners who would be taking the courses I designed.

Sure, traditional instructional design models may have attempted to connect me with learners at stages in the process. But, that small amount of learner involvement did little to fill the void I felt from leaving the training delivery world and entering the world of design and development. Luckily, I am fortunate to now work for a company who believes the same.

The iterative nature of the SAVVY Process thrives on the input, early and often, of learners. By involving learners in the content development efforts and even interface design, you can reclaim some of the joy of teaching that likely drew you into this profession.

And, the good news is that this somewhat selfish desire for justification of our efforts also benefits our learners. It makes our training better. Why? Because when you involve the learners throughout the entire design and development process, you will create a course that is much more meaningful. How? Because it forces us to focus on the real not the superfluous.

Let’s take a practical example. Say you were asked to create an e-learning course designed to build a sales associate’s ability to select the best product for a customer, based on his or her needs. What approach would you take?

You might first introduce the learner to each of the products your company offers, giving a historical timeline of when each product hit the marketplace, the sales figures and trends and the unique features and benefits of each. You might then show each product and give a features/benefits matrix and even an example of a customer who might be interested in purchasing this product. At the end of the module, to test the learner, you might ask them to drag fictional customers to the appropriate product based on their needs, giving them two tries to get it right before telling them the correct answers.

Sounds practical, right? Sure. But…is it real? Are sales associates able to drag customers to a product? What if they make the wrong choice? What happens then? What does that reaction look like? What does it feel like? Do sales associate get a chance to go back and drag the customer to another product? Of course not. Only through involving the learners could you find the answers to those questions. Only by asking them the real responses they get from customers will you understand how to write the content. Only by involving your learners can you make it real.

So, go back to the reasons why you entered the profession – was it a desire to write a series of bulleted lists and objectives, of questions and answers – or was it a desire to help people learn?

Angry Bird's Implications for m-Learning

by Mary-Scott Hunter, vice president - client services

You probably already know that the current favorite rags-to-application-riches story is Angry Birds. Conceived during the swine-flu panic in 2008, the game developer Rovio Mobile created a simple game with an equally simple premise: pigs stole our eggs. We want revenge.

By 2010, it was the number one best selling app. In MIT Entrepreneurship Review (February 2011), they called Angry Birds "the largest mobile app success the world has seen so far."

Those who want their companies to invest in m-learning might read that and salivate.

After all, Angry Birds boasts the triple crown of user nirvana:  1) behaviorally-based, 2) simple, elegant interface, and 3) a game that takes six minutes to complete, manages to draw users back for eight, nine, ten hours. Those who create learning events cry out the same outraged chorus: why can't we create learning like that?

Behavioral-based 

The problem with m-learning right now is that everyone wants Angry Bird success without paying attention to those three success factors outlined above. The secret to mobile learning success isn't much of a secret. Dr. Michael Allen discusses it in every book he writes. My team and I preach it at every project kick-off. If you want learners to value your training, first and foremost, it's got to be behaviorally-based. Your learning event must center around actions performed by users, not content.

Everyone reading this will nod at that sentence and it sure looks like agreement, but then Carol from Legal wants this text explained in detail, so suddenly that's included. Just a small compromise. Then, the Regulatory team doesn’t like the idea of putting learners at risk, so we'll just compromise a bit more and put in some reading pages here, here, and here. You must understand that successful m-learning will not tolerate content-heavy, reading-rich applications.

How many screens are learners required to read about physics and calculating angles for hurtling birds at the pig lair? None.

Simple, elegant interface

Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you willing to create a simple interface that focuses on learners? (Everyone's nodding again.) Uh huh.
• Are you willing to remove your own company logo to make sure the interface is simple? (Less nodding.)
• Are you willing to whittle away content that is not absolutely essential to the next step? (Infrequent, hesitant nodding.)

What if your CEO says, "it's not intuitive; I couldn't figure out what to do next" but your learners had no problem. Would you risk arguing against the CEO's changes on behalf of the learners? (Crickets.)

The gaming industry gets who their customers are: the ones who pay for their product. We in the training world say the learning is for learners, but when push comes to shove, is it? We don't like their suggestions so we don't include them. Yet for widespread acceptance of a learning event, the usability testing with actual learners must drive decision-making.

 If the first success factor isn't heeded (behaviorally-based), then the second success factor (interface) cannot possibly succeed and you get an application that is designed to hold content. And beyond a smartphone's contact list, users are underwhelmed by the prospect of reading extensively in the palm of their hand.

Time to complete

As a gamer, I am willing to spend several hours a stretch in an immersive world that fascinates me (Skyrim or Flower). I return over and over for the richness, to see what nuances I might discover during each visit. I play mobile games as well, 15 minutes here, an hour on a plane there.  However, meaningful and memorable experiences are more likely to happen on a PC or console device.  While the technical limitations of delivering on mobile have quickly evaporated; on a handheld device, I’m still mainly passing time.

In contemplating m-learning's golden possibilities, some fixate on its many advantages without considering what could be lost.  Learners might not invest much affect in an m-learning experience. If you're developing higher-order skills that require learner richness or complexity, m-learning may not be the right option.

Some topics aren't good candidates for your "Angry Birds" m-learning.

Winged migration to m-learning

Let me be clear.  I love technology.  I love games.  And I’m really excited about m-learning. 

As a consultant, it's my job to steer clients toward their best solutions, and (following our bird analogy) help them avoid crashing into windows. In my next blog, I will explore some of the design principles that can help make this migration more successful.  I'll analyze more gaming trends and ponder what lessons learned we can apply.

In the meantime, remember that e-learning isn't dead. Even classroom training isn't dead. No, there's just another addition to the family of options, and it's new, fragile, barely hatched out of its egg.  We must take care against crushing m-learning with expectations that it is the miracle solution.

And we must especially protect it from those damn pigs.

Mary-Scott Hunter is studio executive for one Allen Interactions’ Minneapolis/St. Paul based studios and vice president of client services.  While not gaming, she is deeply committed to solving clients’ business challenges by helping design meaningful and memorable e-learning and m-learning experiences.