Posted on 16th October 2008 by admin in eLearning Development
I hosted an elearning showcase today at our company. A few of the courses were built entirely in house using rapid development tools like Articulate and Captivate. A few of the courses were built in Flash and Flashform (now Proform), a tool that I really like. Some of the courses were built in collaboration with a vendor and one of the courses was built entirely by a vendor.
The course built entirely by a vendor had a $110K price tag. It was an amazing work of art and demonstrated the power of Flash. It utilized an elegant interface of a building floor plan, included video, didatic lectures and everything you can think of. It was submitted for various awards and the owner proudly displayed them. Some of the awards rivaled an Emmy or Oscar in their outward appearance. But I must admit this award winning BMW elearning suite did draw me in but I wasn’t very motivated to take her for a test drive when I saw that the learning delivery wasn’t much more engaging then the Articulate course across the room.
The day prior I gave a presentation on effective elearning design and showed one of the examples from the CD that comes with Dr. Michael Allen’s book, Guide to e-Learning. The demo was built in an earlier version of Flash and simulates HR policy case studies. It is very learner centric and task centric.
The content is accessible but in the form of resources, an interative coach and embedded in the feedback. There is no reading of slides or pop-ups. The graphics are simple and for a person with intermediate Flash skills it shouldn’t be that complicated to built. However, despite it’s lack of high end graphics, abscence of video or even audio, the course is highly addictive and as I presented it, the participants were yelling out to keep going with the exercise. They were anxious to see what happened next. How often have you developed or paid for an elearning course and you were told that the learners couldn’t wait to see what came next? It might happen on occasion but rarely.
In summary, if you are on a low budget, applying learning principles and motivational principles should be your priority. It can be done with moderate effort. It’s not simple. You do need to learn the basics of Flash but you don’t need to be a high end programmer or graphic artist to create highly effective elearning that will improve performance and impact the business. And you do not have to spend $100K to provide your audience with a highly effective and engaging learning experience.
Posted on 9th October 2008 by admin in Cognitive Load Theory
Ok, I know that Dr. Ruth C. Clark has written quite a bit about this but let me share some thoughts on this topic. If you are not familiar with the Dr. Ruth C. Clark, search her name on Amazon and you will find her 3 most recent books.
Ok, so what is Cognitive Load Theory (CLT)? CLT discusses our capacity in working memory and how our working memory capacity impacts the design of learning solutions. I am extremely over simplifying this principle. You can read the article, ” Merrienboer and Sweller, “Cognitive Load Theory and Complex Learning, Recent Developments and Future Directions”, Ed. Psyc. Rev. Vol. 17, No.2 2005). Of course you need access to Ed. Psyc. Rev. journals. Sorry I can’t link to them.
Here are two fundamental CLT rules
- Working memory can only store 7 pieces of information however it can only work with 2-4
- One piece of information for an expert might equal 20 or even 100s of pieces of information for a novice
For the expert chess player the pattern on the chess board could be considered one single piece of information. It is a single pattern.
However to a novice, each position for each chess piece represents a piece of information or 100s or even 1000s of possible patterns on the board. This simple principle needs to be taken into consideration when presenting on screen information and asking a person to solve a problem with that information.
The first time you learn how to shift gears, the procedure is multi-stepped and your mind is working one step at a time in working memory. Once all of the steps are moved to long-term memory in a well orchestrated pattern, you can simply play them back any time you sit in a new vehicle with a manual transmission. Once you have learned the pattern you free up your working memory. You move information from your working memory to your long term memory so now you can learn something new.
So if you are just learning how to drive with a manual stick shift, I do not recommend that you do it on a road you have never driven on. Why? Because your working memory is trying to focus on the 3-4 steps of shifting gears and can not focus on the new roads. The new patterns in the environment are what is referred to as extraneous load. It does not help your task to learn how to shift when you are driving in a city that you have never driven in before. Or if you try and learn in bad weather conditions on a strange road. You need to remove the extraneous load in order to focus on those 2-4 pieces of information that you need to learn and move into long term memory as a single pattern.
What is the impact of CLT research on the design of elearning applications? Let’s discuss it.
What is the impact of CLT research on learning in highly complex 3D learning environments? If you have every played a 3D game you know that there is a lot going on. You would not want to teach people how to operate a particular weapon in this environment. You better know how to operate you weapon before you go into the environment. The latest movement in learning technologies is the development of complex serious games. There’s a lot going on in serious games.
Posted on 7th October 2008 by admin in eLearning Development
After 6 years of struggling to convert corporate trainers and instructional designers to the concepts of well designed online learning, I have come to a conclusion. It’s not so difficult to convert a training and development professional to the fact that online learning should engage the mind in the same ways that a well delivered workshop does. I have taught people how to design learning interactions applying research in the field. In my workshops people have come up with some very innovative learning interactions. So why don’t they ever bring that back to their training departments. The answer is simple. Developing innovative learning interactions takes a competency level that these same individuals simply do not have.
In the 80s and early 90s if you decided to go into the field of CBT development you expected to learn tools like SuperCard, Toolbook, Director or Authorware. All of these tools required programming skills. Some very innovative and engaging courses were developed and deployed to CDs in the late 80s and early 90s. You were expected to spend a year learning the scripting languages of these tools. That’s how you got it done! In fact some e-learning companies used Authorware to prototype and then built the final product in C++.
Now folks are so used to tools that allow you to rapidly build “slide deck page turners” that they simply don’t attempt to learn how to develop creative Authorware or Flash interactions. Honestly we’ve become lazy my friends. It’s much easier to convert a slide deck to a Flash slide show then to learn how to program learning games.
Solution: Internally develop competencies to design effective learning technology solutions, applying research in the field. Then outsource the development of the interactions. Why is this so powerful? It allows the designer the freedom to design and be innovative without worrying about … how I am going to build this thing? I am not a Flash programmer. I will never be a Flash programmer. If this is the case, please don’t ignore 50 years of research in instructional technology design and throw in the towel. Find a local web development shop or an over seas low cost Flash development shop and let them do what they do best. You focus on learning more about good e-learning design. Read Dr. Allen’s books, Dr. Ruth Clark, Dr. David Merrill .. read about Cognitive Load and Modality research. Take time to play with casual games and as many e-learning examples that you can get your hands on and focus on becoming a better designer or architect.
Final analogy: An architect does’t try and learn the science and mathematics of engineering. An architect studies building design and masters their art. Decide on whether your speciality is to be an architect or an engineer and master one.
