eLearning is Just Another Tool

There has been much debate around the office recently over what online learning is or isn't and of course if it truly is it an effective means to train.  I myself have gone back and forth on this issue over the years.  In my last position with a large telecom that was spread all across Canada we did a great deal of web based training.  The obvious reason for this was the vast distance our company spanned and the number of points of presence was large as well.  Trying to get 10,000 people in 2000 locations under one roof for training is a logistical impossibility.  For that organization eLearning just makes sense. 

The current client that I'm working for is an organization that is hundreds of employees in one location.  While online learning may eventually be an option for this organization, they have not officially rolled out their LMS.  This particular project is a curriculum of hundreds of short courses that need to be rolled out in the next few months for a business transformation project.  While most of these employees already work in similar jobs, the changes in their responsibilities mean subtle differences in what they are used to doing.  Our training will make them ready for these changes.  I feel we not only can deliver a more robust classroom solution in the short term, but we can avoid the pitfalls of launching a new online learning solution for them as well.  I personally would rather spend my time building the training and not troubleshooting if the author-ware will publish results that will upload properly with their LMS and so forth.

If you rely only on online learning, you are also missing several learning domains.  If you were given the task of changing an organizations attitude for example (affective domain of learning), I’m not sure you could accomplish this in an e-learning module.  Even if it was really well designed, I daresay you could only change the attitude of some of your audience.  It also isn’t a very good tool for the psychomotor domain (physical skills), unless the group is learning computer skills.  If the group needs to learn how to rebuild an engine, you will never really know if they can rebuild an engine upon completion of an online learning module.

I see online learning as a tool rather than a complete methodology.  Even when I worked for the telecom with all the points of presence across the country, we still ran classroom training; we still brought people in for specialized training events.  No, I feel that online learning is a training tool, in the same way that flip-chart paper or conducting role plays are training tools.  You can use them from time to time when it’s appropriate, however you cannot rely on them exclusively.

Training is Never Finished

When sending your second draft of training out for approval, only send the content that received feedback during the first round.  Don't send anything that did not receive criticism the first time, otherwise they may find something they would like to change during the second round.  Stake holders love to change things.  Without their changes, what would they have contributed?  My thinking is that if there was something wrong with it the first time they would have said so.  Don't give your SMEs or stake holders an opportunity to simply create more busy work for you.

Leonardo da Vinci said: "Art is never finished, only abandoned."  I think this is generally true of training design.  There comes a point where the training needs to go out to the field.  I'm certain if you got enough people to review your work, there would be something to change everyday.  Even once you get beyond spelling and grammar, there are subtleties in the way things are said that could be interpreted differently.  You could literally work on training design forever.

Rapid Instructional Design

I've decided to give myself a project this week and next.  I'm going to template out all the learning exercises that I typically inject into my classroom training.  I found myself racking my brain this week trying to think of a learning activity for a classroom course that I'm presently designing.  I was flipping through books and reading my blog trying to come up with something.  To my dismay I had nothing.  It wasn't until I came home that day and flipped through one of my older courses and saw essentially what I was looking for.

I think if I had a thumb drive filled with the skeletal structure of all the learning activities and exercises I can think of, I would save hours trying to find the right exercise.  This way they will all be at arm's length and I can get back to the work at hand.

Assumptions

You've heard the old expression; "Never assume because it makes an ass out of you and me". 

I'd like to suggest an alternative that may be a little more useful in an instructional design world; "Never assume unless you assume the worst case scenario".

I design to that worst case scenario all the time.  I like to assume that the person delivering my training has no knowledge of the subject and little to no training experience.  How many times have you received a PowerPoint file with no leader's notes or delivery instructions?  These types of files are typically designed by people who expected that they themselves would be delivering the material.  That or they simply do not care to put the extra effort in.

I think a general business rule should be to leave instructions to your replacement.  This is especially applicable to leader’s notes in training.  While you might be off on the next project, someone entirely different may be required to deliver your course.  It just makes sense to provide them the context needed to do a great job.  Not only is it professional, it's a testament to your instructional design capabilities.

Back At It

I apologize for the lack of entries over the last month.  I have been hired by a large organization to create and revamp the majority of their training programs.  It's obviously a big job and very time consuming.  I will try to publish more regularly.

Library Book vs. Yesterday's Newspaper

I have worked alongside many Instructional Designers over the years.  Some good and some not so good.  I personally believe that getting something done right is far more important than getting it done on time.  Ideally you want to do both, however if one has to be sacrificed, I don't want it to be accuracy.  I would much prefer to be a little late but accurate, instead of on time and wrong.

I also prefer to be the library book on the shelf, rather than yesterday's newspaper. In other words, I don't want to design work that needs to be taken down or recalled tomorrow. In my line of work I want something I create to be well enough designed to have value for years to come. This not only shows that the value of my work is high, but it also gets rid of the need for re-work that often comes from not thinking ahead.

Letting Informal Learning Happen

I have discussed informal learning before in this post here, however one of the challenges in informal learning is allowing it to happen.  The reason it's a challenge is that you cannot control it.  The moment you control informal learning, it stops being informal learning.  At best you can foster an environment conducive to formal learning.

I recall taking some training some time in my past where the instructor noticed that the group activity that I was participating in had completed their work and we began discussing a topic related to the lessons we were involved in.  In a move that was more police-like rather than trainer-like, she interrupted what we were discussing and told us to return to our original seats if we were finished the group activity. 

I was surprised that we were shut down.  The conversation which our group continued during our lunch break was very informative and I felt that the collaborative nature that this group dynamic created was very beneficial to those that were involved.  When I returned to work after the training and asked by my manager if I had learned anything, my response was yes, but I almost didn't.

Make sure you allow time to let informal learning happen.  It's very collaborative and social and can happen when you least expect it.  Because it's driven by the participants it usually is far more effective then some written curriculum so don't stifle it when it happens.

A Learning Revolution is Needed

Sir Ken Robinson is an author, public speaker and an international advisor on education.  Earlier this year he spoke at TED about the need for an education revolution.  He states that education in it's current form is similar to manufacturing.  Students are all treated the same and put through a system where the expected results are all the same as well.  When a student doesn't fit into this mold they are usually left by the wayside.  He suggests that an organic approach is better.  Like a farmer creates an environment for his crops to grow, education should simply create an environment that is conducive to allow the student to flourish.  Here is the video:

Don't Forget There Are Two D's in ADDIE

I have been thinking about the design model we know as ADDIE.  ADDIE is an acronym for...

• Analysis
• Design
• Develop
• Implement
• Evaluate

These are the stages or phases that an Instructional Designer typically takes when creating learning.  Many who design and develop their own work often consider combining these two steps into one step or stage.  Typically I design my courses in Microsoft PowerPoint as a storyboard.  Since I was typically the one who also develops my courses into full blown e-learning, I take the time to convert my work from PowerPoint to one of the various authoring tools that I use for creation. 

Why would I waste the time?  Why not simply design my course directly into the author-ware I intend to use?  There are several reasons for this.  The first reason is that subject matter experts and stake holders like to receive something in email that they can easily open up and view without any effort on their part. 

The second reason is time.  Developing can take more time than design.  In other words, if I designed a course in PowerPoint, I don't need to spend time building all the functional buttons, animations and interactivity into that PowerPoint.  That can come later.  My goal is to get approval as quickly as possible so I can move on to the development stage.  I will then have the time to test my design, and ensure everything works great before I implement it to my learners out in the field.

Another issue is that subject matter experts and stake holders may force you to change directions.  I can't tell you how many times my courses have ended up going in a completely different direction.  This can mean you having to return to your storyboard and dramatically change your design.  Having to redesign an already developed course would waste a great deal of your time and may jeopardize your deadlines.  Make sure you do not skip the steps of ADDIE.  Trust me, they will work in your favour.

Cheaters

One problem that e-Learning designers face is designing with cheaters in mind. Early in my career as an Instructional Designer we used e-Learning software that presented evaluations on a single page in whatever order you entered it. Once an evaluation was submitted, learners saw a results page that revealed all the correct answers. We began to see a trend where the first learner from each location across the country would receive a lower average score, while each subsequent learner would score much higher. What we suspected turned out to be true. The first learner was sharing their results with other learners, resulting in much higher scores for the remaining learners.

To resolve this we switched to a new authoring tool capable of providing different evaluations to each learner who took our online courses.

The key features of this authorware's evaluations were:

1. Questions in Random Order - The authorware was capable of randomizing questions so that the order of the questions was never the same
2. Randomly Displayed Answers - while some of the questions may get repeated, the answers themselves appeared in random order. In otherwords, what might have been answer a) the first time the course was run, may become answer c) the next time
3. Pulling from a Larger Pool of Questions - the authorware was able to generate its random set of questions from a larger pool of questions. For example, we might have 10 questions presented from a possible list of 30 questions.  This would also present a completely new set of question each time the course is run

Employing these techniques certainly reduced the number of cheaters who were taking our online courses, however improving the quality of questions helped as well.  We almost entirely stopped using True/False questions.  The reason is that a True/False question tends to lead the learners to the correct answer.  In an organization where keeping employees positive about the products and services they sell, the answer to a True/False question is usually true.  You don't want to draw attention to what isn't true about a product or service.

Also ensuring that all the answers in a multiple choice question are at least plausible is important.  If the learner can deduce the correct answer by eliminating all the improbable answers, then you really haven't evaluated their knowledge of the topic.  All you have tested is the learner's skills of deduction.

Another thing relating to the plausibility of possible answers is the length of the answers.  Back in high school, I learned that when I didn’t know the correct answer to a multiple choice question, the longest answer was often the correct answer.  The reason for this is that designer of an evaluation may have to be careful about phrasing correct answers to ensure there is no room for interpretation.  The same is usually not true of wrong answers.  Obviously a wrong answer only needs precise wording when there is risk of it being a correct answer.