e-Learning Leadership Blog

Who Cares About e-Learning for Compliance Training?

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

Each time I teach the ASTD e-Learning Design Certificate courses, I’m reminded of how many organizations look to e-Learning as the vehicle for delivering compliance training — training that for legal or regulatory reasons the organization is required to conduct and document.  Compliance training often is related to certification or accreditation, and failure to comply may result in hefty monetary fines or restrictions to even operate.

It seems that organizations rush to use e-Learning in these situations for two major reasons:  the burden of teaching this bureaucratic information consistently through other means is too onerous, and the reporting of completion data through an LMS greatly simplifies the effort to document compliance.

Unfortunately, there are two common attributes of the resulting e-Learning that virtually guarantee failure: company-wide acceptance that compliance content is by definition “boring” excuses the worst sort of useless page-turning as the instructional model for the learning modules, and the “check-box” reporting mentality creates simplistic and meaningless interactivity that begs to be ignored by the learners.  (And this check-box mentality is coming back to haunt organization as many overseeing entities have realized the meaningless nature of this kind of reporting and have begun to validate training through site visits and more challenging qualitative evaluation methods.)

This is a good example of how positive motivators for one group can be at best neutral or even de-motivating for others. While one hopes that individual businesses value the positive impact on the individual worker of these training topics (like sexual harassment, workplace diversity, or even something as practical as emergency preparedness), the primary motivation for the organization to comply with these training requirements is a matter of administrative duty.  They have no choice if they want to continue operating.  

This administrative duty does not really transfer with the same impact to individual employees, yet I am amazed at how often the sole “welcoming” message to the learner that opens a compliance training piece is essentially, “The only reason we’re making you do this is because we have to.”  This message is reinforced when the learner gets into the “training” and is subject to the tedious and inane page turning and trivia activities that result from this sort of design approach.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  As twisted and misguided as some of these regulations have become in their official implementation, there is usually a valuable idea at the core.  Workplaces really do function better when there is a shared respect for diversity; no worker wants to be the victim of sexual harassment, and it is in everyone’s interest to be able to proceed safely in various emergencies.  

These topics touch each learner in very personal ways, and any training that is going to be successful is going to have to tap into how each employee is responsible for the work climate.  The motivators that are going to engage the learner by necessity will have to address attitudes, personal consequences, and elicit specific memories of past experiences that can be tied to the objectives.  This will not happen unless the designer of the instruction creates interactivity that will lead the learner in that direction.

Creating bad e-Learning is just as expensive as creating good e-Learning. Actually it’s probably more expensive when you take into consideration the wasted training time and the ill-will and distrust that it builds while not teaching.  Just because we think of the course as required teaching doesn’t mean that learners process it as required learning.  The necessity for creating meaning and relevance is probably even greater than for the other training projects we face.

In Designing e-Learning Motivation Makes all the Difference

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

This July 4^th holiday weekend gave me another reminder about the unique importance of personal motivation in performance environments.  As regular readers of this blog have figured out, in addition to my jet-setting life as designer of e-learning, I ‘m also operating a family organic produce farm in Southern Illinois.  Out of a combination of tradition, choice, and stupidity we continue to operate using largely non-mechanized methods; so naturally the holiday weekend was spent almost entirely working by hand in the dirt in blazing-hot temperatures. My 87-year-old parents toiled away in spite of pain and infirmity, motivated by sense of tradition and values unique to them.  Meanwhile, my lovely visiting nieces and nephews made spotty efforts at helping but didn’t stick with anything more than a few minutes.  The challenge and discomfort was greater than their motivation to help could overcome, in spite of their sincere good intentions to be of use.

Now I don’t want this to sound like an “In the good old days people knew how to work” argument because I don’t believe that at all.  It really was so much an issue of personal motivation.  No amount of pleading to rest for the holiday or to cut off because of the heat could lessen my parents’ motivation to plant, to weed, to care for the vegetables, in spite of all the environmental factors working against that.  Similarly, no amount of nudging, lecturing, modeling, or even royal edict could motivate the kids to do much.  What was deeply personal to one group was irrelevant and pointless to another.

This is exactly the problem we face so often as designers of e-learning.  Our subject matter experts or project owners live and breathe the content we are to teach. And they expect that the same values that have given significance to the content for them over many years can be directly transferred to the learners.  Unfortunately, that’s impossible.  To get learners engaged in understanding new content and performing new skills, we as designers need to tie the content to some motivation existing in the learner, or to manufacture an urgency (using game design, networking, or simulation aspects) that the learners buy into.  This is important in all learning, but particularly so in e-learning where learners are, for the most part, working entirely on their own.

So equal to the task of analyzing content and designing instruction is the challenge of understanding our learners and designing interactivity that will provide personal motivation.  And if you have to err on one side or another—creating perfectly crafted content or building motivating instructional interactions-- I’d err on the side of creating the compelling interactivity.  With the right motivation, learners will figure out ways to make meaning out of even poorly designed content.  But there’s no way to impose motivation on the most beautifully structured content without considerable planning and insight. 

Here are some ideas for designing for motivation:

• Ensure learners are aware of meaningful consequences
• Develop a sense of risk
• Ensure the learner benefits from adaptive content and branching
• Draw the learner in by expert storytelling and creation of suspense
• Appreciate the aesthetic appeal of graphics and media
• Engage in meta-thinking with questions whose importance is elevated through multiple-step tasks and delayed judgment

Taking the time to really understand one’s audience and what motivates them will reward the designer many times over in engagement and active metal processing that results from powerfully-designed and relevant training tasks.

Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference Free Webinar Series

Overwhelmed with everything that makes great e-learning? Don't be! Register now for this free webinar series consisting of four, one hour sessions, and learn about a design process that you can harness and apply to your daily e-learning efforts to create e-learning that makes a difference!

In this series led by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist for Allen Interactions, you will learn a four-step e-learning design model (CCAF) for achieving instructional interactivity and meaningful learning experiences that can result in lasting performance change.

Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference - A Webinar Series
Monday, July 26, 2010 - Thursday, July 29, 2010
Daily from 1:00 - 2:00 pm, CST

Over the four days Ethan will focus on each of the four components that comprise the CCAF Design Model: Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback. He will explore real-life examples from organizations that have implemented successful e-learning programs and illustrate this model's application for creating interactive and effective e-learning. 

You will learn:

• how to apply these components to your e-learning design efforts for maximum learner engagement and performance.

Webinar Series Schedule:

• Monday, July 26th - Context
• Tuesday, July 27th - Challenge
• Wednesday, July 28th - Activity 
• Thursday, July 29th - Feedback

About Ethan Edwards
chief instructional strategist and principal consultant, allen interactions

Ethan draws on more than 25 years of industry experience as an e-learning instructional designer and developer. He is responsible for the delivery of the internal and external training and communications that reflect Allen Interactions' unique perspective on designing and developing meaningful and memorable e-learning program. Edwards is the primary instructor for ASTD's e-Learning Instructional Design Certificate Program. He is also the lead blogger for Allen Interactions' e-Learning Leadership Blog and author of thee-book "Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference". 

e-Learning Design: Less is More

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

"You can't teach people everything they need to know. The best you can do is position them where they can find what they need to know when they need to know it."  - Seymour Papert

These are words that most e-learning designers would do well to take to heart. One of the biggest problems with so much of the e-learning I encounter is that it is simply bloated with too much content.  I think this is a result of two primary factors:

 

• Subject-matter experts demand that everything they know be included in the training for immediate mastery (forgetting that it probably took them 10-20 years to master that much content).
• Designers are used to using actual training materials as "documentation," relying on classroom instructors to provide the filters for what really is necessary to learn. Learners working on their own can't make that judgment.

 

A really useful method I've found for deciding what to include is to first be very specific in deciding what immediate performance outcomes are expected from the training.  Then using these outcomes as a strict filter, separate the content into two buckets: "Need to Know" to achieve the performance outcome and just "Nice to Know."  Most people (including your SMEs) will be astonished at how much of what is viewed as essential content really is just "nice to know."  Then build your instruction around just the "Need to Know" content.  Usually, this turns out to be an achievable goal, even though the prospect of teaching the originally-proposed content scope would have been impossible (or at least unbearable).

In some cases, if circumstances require that all content be included for other reasons, then just put the "Nice to Know" content into a structured reference area, accessible to the learner via a "I'd like to learn more" button, but don't burden the learner with seemingly irrelevant content, and by no means should you be testing on it.

My own slant on the sentiment  expressed in the quote from Papert is to remind myself that the objective of most e-learning is not to create an Expert, but rather that make someone minimally competent.  True expertise must develop over time with experience and with extended interaction with knowledgeable colleagues.

I've Got a Hunch e-Learning Could be Better

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

I've been playing around with a fun website, hunch.com, and its  
accompanying iPhone app, Hunchable. The premise is sort of  
preposterous but irresistible. You answer a series of questions about  
your preferences in all sorts of categories, and then the site  
assembles a portrait of you, from which it gives you suggestions about  other aspects of your life--from what car to buy (Volkswagen Jetta) to  what kind of salad to eat (Arugula with Pears and Gorgonzola), and even to if you should wear a beard (Yes). At worst, it's greatly amusing. But it can also be incredibly helpful at times in guiding you with its hunches, suggesting restaurants you might like in a new city, or bookstores you would find interesting. etc.

 

This has made me think about how transforming this approach could be in creating truly adaptive and individualized e-learning. We have elaborately sophisticated Learning Management Systems that collect volumes of information about our learners, yet that information is rarely used to actually enhance the learner experience. If we could observe that a learner showed a preference for diving right into activities to learn by trial and error, we could use that knowledge to  
structure an experience with more learner control than for another student we knew preferred to read instructions and content carefully before being tested. If we knew that a student tended to do online assignments in short bursts, we could cue up our content in smaller, more easily chunked modules, than we would for a student who tended to like long, uninterrupted sessions.

If this sounds extreme, I'd like to remind us all that this is actually what a really good tutor does--being observant of learning styles and subtly adjusting the teaching approach of the moment to match a learner's preferences--even about things of which the learner might not be fully aware.

Even if our training programs didn't try to make predictions, but rather simply were observant and mindful of the learner, it would do wonders, I think, in engaging the learner. If I choose to skip (or fail) pretests, the lesson should quit forcing me into opportunities for guaranteed failure. If I chose to turn off the narration last  
time, then assume that that's what I still desire until I say otherwise. I think striving for this kind of personalization could translate into so much more effective interaction than superficial but ultimately irrelevant things like choosing the hairstyle for my coach avatar.

Looking Back: Refelecting on the History of e-Learning

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

This week we celebrated Memorial Day here in the United States. Mainly it is intended as a time to honor the men and women of the armed forces who gave their lives in the protection of freedom.  And in the early part of this century, at least here in Southern Illinois, it also fostered a tradition of honoring our ancestors in general by decorating cemeteries with floral bouquets gathered from home gardens. 

Unfortunately, this appears to be a tradition falling by the wayside, as the ease and longevity of plastic flowers take precedence over living flowers.  But I think it's really important to be aware of the traditions of our lives and our livelihoods, and so spent Monday morning gathering flowers for the graves of my grandparents and my brother and contemplated how their lives have had a guiding influence on my own.

Back at work, that contemplative mood has made me think similarly about the roots of early efforts at e-learning and what it should mean to us now. With the emphasis always on new tools and expanded technologies, I find many are surprised to realize that this is a field with traditions and research stretching back almost 50 years. 

I had the privilege of starting my work in e-learning at the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where the PLATO system originated.  PLATO was one of the initial and arguably the most successful of several pioneering research projects in the sixties to explore the use of computers in teaching.  And I was reminded of several key insights that that were at the core of the PLATO system that are still overlooked.

A few of these insights:

• E-learning authoring requires a sophistication of authoring that must be both powerful and accessible.  PLATO lessons were written using a specialized programming language called Tutor that was similar to other structured programming languages of the time, but that incorporated several key functions around creating interactivity.  There were a lot of shortcomings of Tutor, but already it was clear that the ability to create interactive experiences was a differentiator between standard programming and tools to create learning. 
  
  Now we are using an entirely different generation of authoring tools, but in general, they are inadequate because they don't place creating interactivity at the core of the tool.  Flash is an impressive tool, but what it does easily is create compelling animated sequencing; the actual interactivity is added through complex programming in ActionScript tacked on awkwardly to a timeline model that with which it doesn't match entirely.  PowerPoint provides powerful presentation structures, but interactivity is difficult to build beyond the basic gestural level.  Tools in between seem to focus more on asking test questions than creating interactive learning experiences. 
  
  We're still in quest of that elusive tool that enables designers to create learning modules where the interactive experience is the core element. (I have high hopes that Allen Interactions Zebra development project will move us much closer to that possibility.)
  
  
• Linear paging structures are too limited to realize the immersive learning opportunities capable with e-learning.  The engineers who developed PLATO realized early on that the scrolling CRT monitors would not do for learning.  One can't create a meaningful experience with extended significance if images on the screen have no permanence; one needs to be able to change part of the screen (and not necessarily the bottom most part) and leave other parts the same.  This insight led to the development of plasma panel technology (didn't know those plasma panels were a direct result of e-learning research, did you?) to be able to have screens where any pixel was individually addressable without necessarily having to change anything else on the screen.  This enables a design concept called "screen inertia" which is a critical component of helping learners focus on critical elements of an experience.  This was so clear years ago, yet so many of today's designs ignore this insight.
  
  
• Learning happens best when supported by a community of teachers and learners.  Unimpeded communication between learners and between learners and teachers was critical feature of PLATO. Long before current email systems, discussion boards, and instant messaging, PLATO supported amazingly full-featured versions of these communication methods and integrated them, along with Halls of Fame and other shared resources to support learning.  Even so, implementations of e-learning where online communication is fully integrated into instruction is relatively rare.
  

Certainly we've come a long way since the early days of CBT, but it would serve us well to look back and be aware of the vast efforts that have fueled this field of online learning over the years. Many insights are really valuable and worth preserving in our continuing efforts. Perhaps, then, we could make bigger strides forward instead of seeming to go through cycles of rediscovering the same things over and over.

Architecting e-Learning

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist 

I spent this last week in Chicago, participating in the annual ASTD ICE event.  As always it was great to have a chance to connect with training professionals from all over the world.  For those of us interested specifically in designing instruction, Chicago was a fitting place, from which I hope we all could take some inspiration.

More than nearly any other major city, Chicago is known for the uniform excellence of its architecture.  And as a visitor to the city, it makes a difference.  One can't help but be impacted in some way by the designed spaces and structures encountered everywhere.  Buildings, on one level, have a very specific, rather limited purpose:  to provide living space or working space protected from the elements. 

Successful buildings, however, do much more than that.  They create an experience that touches the people who use them.  They provide amusement, inspiration, calm, awe, wonder, meaning.  One can't help but feel a greater purpose or heightened significance of oneself in those surroundings.

We have this same opportunity and challenge in designing instruction. Training should not be about the narrow idea that communicating information is all that is necessary. Training needs to transform the learner so that whatever it is that we are teaching takes on a significance that truly connects and inspires the learner in the same way that experiences with the designed spaces around us feed our daily lives.

Even when we agree with this philosophy, too often we make excuses: "That's fine if you have the time, but we just need to get this done," or "There's no way to add interest to teaching this software; the learners are required to do it so this is good enough."  Well, those are exactly the times when learner-centered design is most necessary.

In many places, we can see the failures of poor architectural design:  housing developments of endless identical tract homes, built for the convenience of the builder rather than the needs of the people who will live there; enormous housing projects in densely-populated cities that provide shelter but also stifle basic human needs for community and space.  We know these are failures in the frequency with which the mind-numbing uniformity of blank suburban landscapes is the source for arts and literary inspiration and in how many of those housing projects have been the victim of the wrecking ball.  They didn't fail because they hadn't succeeded in providing protection from the elements.  Instead, they fail because they lose track of how the structures need to connect to the people who will live in them.

The same thing holds for designing e-learning.  It isn't enough to simply put words on the screen, only to be forgotten or avoided, or ultimately discarded like the housing projects.

Practice, practice, practice...

by Ethan Edwards, cheif instructional strategist

I went to a trivia night fundraiser over the weekend.  It was fun in the way those kinds of things are.  The questions were a mixture of items I knew and other things that were really interesting but unknown to me. Now it's only two days later and I can't recall more than a handful of the pieces of information I was exposed to.  I can remember the things I got correct (what I already knew) better than the things I didn't know.  So, all-in-all, a nice party but a petty useless learning opportunity.

It does make me wonder why I actually learned so little.  Even though it wasn't a formal learning environment, I was highly motivated to get answers correct, I was given clear feedback, and I was rewarded for my successful performance along the way. This doesn't differ that much from a lot of e-learning interaction models.  Can we learn anything from this that we could use to improve e-learning?

A couple of the key failures were:

• Insufficient Repetition.  There are very few things that create long-term memories without extensive rehearsal and retrieval.  One exposure to anything, unless it is infused with significant emotional significance, is unlikely to create a lasting impression.
  
  
• Context-free Presentation.  Encountering information in the abstract without tying it to a context in which it gains relevance is of little value. A lot of learning has to do with the mental structures that we build as we integrate new information.
  
  
• Missing Performance Opportunities. Information is made more significant when it is used to achieve some performance outcome.  This is particularly important in training as the valued outcome is performance in the work environment, not recall.

I'm sure there are several more very important factors, but I think if our designs for e-learning would really deliver in just these three areas we would see vastly improved retention and performance change in our learners.

And now if I could only remember if it was Ransom Olds or Henry Ford who died in 1950, I'd be all set for the next trivia night...

What Counts as e-Learning?

 by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

This is a frustrating field to be in. In most areas of production and consumption, the consumers of a product can exert influence on the product by the choices they make.  But there are some arenas where the decision makers are not ultimately the ones to gain or lose whether the product is any good or not, and thus decisions get oddly distorted.  For example, the college textbook market is a good example.  Publishers make their money by selling books to college students who have no voice in the actual purchasing decision.  The professor who makes the decision is driven by different factors than those that matter to the learner. Thus, publishers implement features that are of benefit to the professor (like pre-built PowerPoint slides, pre-written tests, suggested lesson plans, etc.) at the cost of features that might deliver more  significant benefits to the student (like readability, effective layout, a lower price, etc.)  If students chose their books based on what would help them learn most effectively, I bet textbooks would look a lot different than they do now.

e-Learning is a victim of this same sort of problem.  A lot of the money that exchanges hands in e-learning (and that's what drives products and development) is spent on authoring software and LMS system purchases.  Ultimately, these software companies succeed or fail not so much on whether their products provide value to the learner, but rather whether they satisfy the needs of the instructional designers and developers and the larger organizations that use them.  It's remarkable to notice how much of the marketing of e-learning products is focused almost entirely on cost, ease of converting existing slides, and speed of development, none of which equal "learning."  I'm not suggesting that these are factors to be ignored, but if we take our responsibility as trainers seriously, those factors certainly need to rank a little lower in priority than a basic question of whether the tool provides capabilities necessary for creating effective instruction. Based on a sampling of product marketing, it appears that the ability to import a PowerPoint deck and coordinate it with narration is THE essential characteristic of an e-learning authoring system.  I even remember several years ago when that was lauded as a worthy enhancement to Authorware! But I would hazard a guess that  if you polled actual learners about what they benefit from in e-Learning programs, being able to page through or listen to narrated PowerPoint presentations are unlikely to rank very high.

Unfortunately, this has serious implications for what monopolizes the dialog in this field.  Several years ago, the concept of "Rapid e-Learning" was introduced.  Rapid e-Learning was a response to the changing dynamics in the workplace.  It calls for very fast transfer of information to learners; it occurs in small accessible chunks instead of long, extended curricula; it has significant impact on end-performance; and it can be developed quickly and at low cost . These are all ideas of significant merit.  The first three primarily impact the learner; the fourth impacts the organization.  But guess what?  Now, several years later, when you hear the someone talk about Rapid e-Learning, in almost all instances, it means "e-learning developed quickly and at low cost." Period.

And ultimately this just devalues the amazing transformative impact that e-learning can have.  I'm not arguing that cost and time aren't important factors.  But e-learning requires more than just being online.  It implies that a learner is engaged in a productive, active process.  It implies a larger plan that content is meaningfully linked to the real world. It implies some assurance that meaningful behavior change will result.  If our criteria for e-learning success are limited to "Did you build it fast?" and "Did you build it cheap?" then we're no longer doing e-learning.  We may be doing Rapid Online Information Access Development or Rapid Document Conversion, or maybe something else of value.  It's important that even while we juggle the administrative aspects of e-learning design (such as timeline, budget, content scope, etc.) we never lose sight of the essential requirement of e-learning to be a vehicle through which we create change in learners' performance.

Testing Ain't Teaching

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

One of the frustrations in designing instruction for e-learning delivery is that the interactions that almost all authoring systems let you build easily are not the interactions that you need to build in order to teach.  The traditional standardized question formats (like the context-neutral ubiquitous 4-option multiple choice or true and false) that are so prevalent come from the world of evaluation and testing, not from the world of good teaching practice.  And those formats are useful not so much because they are particularly effective in teaching, but rather because they are uniform and are easy to score.

But it's really important to understand what you are trying to accomplish in your interactions before you can design your instruction.  There are, indeed, situations where the purpose of a test or quiz is simply to assess knowledge.  In these cases, especially when the test results need to be reported into a pre-existing scoring system, or when specific comparisons and rankings between students need to be done without bias or unfairness, then issues of uniformity of format, unambiguous scoring, prevention of cheating, etc. are important.  That's what most interaction templates provide, and unfortunately, has given the impression that that's all that e-learning interactions are about.

But a far more important role of interaction in e-learning is to encourage active thinking through meaningful challenges.  This is, in most cases, what designers are trying to achieve by inserting interactions into the middle of a lesson rather than in pre- or post-tests, but they are using limited context-independent interaction formats that are ill-suited for the purpose.  The intent of these interactions needs to be not nearly as much on determining if the learner gets the right answer, but rather on what opportunities for meaningful processing and critical thinking are being created.  Some of the best learning outcomes occur specifically when the learner makes mistakes-trying alternatives, testing hypotheses, comparing consequences of parallel decisions.  In these cases, strengths of the standard interaction styles for assessment and scoring can become impediments to good teaching.

The best learning interactions often have characteristics that might actually make them bad test questions.  They often delay judgment, allowing opportunities for learners to engage in extended self-analysis of their work.  They may even ask the learner to judge their own correctness.  Question phrasing and feedback is less concerned with avoiding "giving away" the answer and more focused on how to make the challenge and consequences most impactful. 

Exploring lots of different options can be really useful and so learners often choose to repeat interactions multiple times. Feedback is provided extrinsically in the context, which may require more effort on the learner to interpret but provides much greater significance than simplistic judgment phrases.  It can even be a benefit to retain a modicum of obscurity or mystery about exactly how to accomplish the intended task since it makes it less likely that learner actions are thoughtless stimulus /response patterns instead of thoughtfully-constructed attempts to solve a meaningful problem.  (A phrase from Robert Frost's poem "Choose Something Like a Star" always seems appropriate to reinforce this idea:  "Some mystery becomes the proud."  Google it; it's a great poem!)  It even helps to require learner effort in learning interactions; this, again, ensures that learners need to work with intention to produce appropriate responses, and also significantly increases the meaningfulness and memorableness of the learning experience.

There's a phrase that is used often in training circles, "Telling ain't teaching."  As part of that mantra for designers of e-learning, especially given the way that authoring systems seem to recommend and facilitate the creation of thoughtless testing questions as good e-learning design, I think we should add "Testing ain't teaching" as a reminder to ourselves when designing learning interactions.