by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

I spent most of last week at ASTD’s annual TechKnowledge conference in Las Vegas.  As usual, there was an impressive array of vendors exhibiting in the Expo and a diverse collection of presenters in the sessions. I wish I felt more energized by these events.  I am inspired, in part, but I also come away feeling somewhat discouraged—mainly by the disconnect that is so evident between what is talked about and what actually gets created. 

While there is still much to know about learning, there is quite a bit of knowledge we can point to on what works effectively.  Yet it seems that somehow this research and knowledge gets bypassed in “e-learning” development, as if the technology is a magic ticket that supersedes common sense and gives designers a kind of instructional amnesty.  Developers and vendors alike end up creating e-“learning” interactions that would be rejected immediately if presented as instruction in any other context. 

For a moment, consider if this were an interaction in a classroom:

Instructor:  Read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student:  I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor:  OK. Now read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student:  I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor:  OK. Now read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student:  I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor:  OK. Now read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student:  I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor:  OK. Now read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student:  I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor:  Which of these words did you see in paragraph #2? 

Or this: 

Instructor:  How do you turn on this piece of equipment?
Student:  I press this button.
Instructor:  No.
Student:  I turn this knob.
Instructor:  No.
Student:  I flip this switch.
Instructor:  No.  We’re moving on.

Or this:

Instructor:  Watch this video.
Student:  <silent>

Honestly, if those situations were to occur in a real-life classroom, those instructors ought to be fired.  In fact, I hope it would be hard to find any real person that doggedly persistent in obstructing the possibility of learning.  Yet those samples convey EXACTLY what I saw demonstrated last week in a great deal of e-learning  demonstrations. (To illustrate my point, re-read the above samples replacing Instructor with Computer.) 

These are monumental examples of failed teaching, and no amount of enhancement with prettier speech bubbles, or an avatar character reading the text with carefully orchestrated eye-blinks, or 3-D renderings of straightforward images, or automated narration, or even the speed with which they were created justify the belief that they are a useful contribution to learning.  If we as instructional designers create these kinds of applications and label it training, we’re simply not doing our jobs.

There was a website I encountered some time ago in which the transcripts of political debates were read by very young children.  It was done primarily with humorous intent, but I was surprised how clearly the readings highlighted the absolute absurdity of much political discourse.  When hiding behind the formality of officials in business suits speaking in formal settings, the pointlessness of the endeavor is easy to miss.  But put into the mouths of children, without the hidden agendas and preconceptions brought by the listener, the debates were exposed for the drivel they often are.

I encourage you to try something like that with e-learning scripts you are developing; it might be similarly insightful.  Try executing your design for e-learning in real life—have an instructor do nothing but what the lesson provides in terms of presentation of information and assistance to the student. Confine the student to doing ONLY those things that could be done online.  You may be surprised at how this simple little test illustrates how so many of our “accepted” models of instruction for e-learning utterly fail to support actual student learning.

Remember, any teaching event you create is in some way a conversation, and for a conversation to work, each participant must be present and participate in a meaningful way.  As you design each project keep in mind that you are building that conversation with a living, breathing individual:  instead of static presentations, create challenges; instead of judgment, provide helpful feedback for improvement; instead of mindless response mechanisms, simulate meaningful performance behaviors; instead of casting the learner as a passive observer, turn control over whenever possible for full involvement.

We need to shed the default behavior of thoughtless instructional design that is encouraged by the overly simplistic tools at our disposal.  We need to overcome unreasonable expectations for the rapidity at which e-learning should be churned out. Then perhaps we can actually start taking all the great things we know about training for performance change and begin to create a discipline for designing e-learning that actually gives people a chance to learn.