Comments on: Reviewing elearning examples

By: The price of perfection

The price of perfection — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 16:19:19 +0000

[…] recently read this excellent post by Clark Quinn (@Quinnovator) despairing about the continued dire examples of eLearning continually […]

By: Moira de Roche

Moira de Roche — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:25:53 +0000

As my good friend John Ambrose would say, Content is King, but CONTEXT is the Kingdom. It’s not clear whether the courses in question are internally developed, or generic off-the-shelf. If the former, then I’m not that surprised. Many people end up developing courses (both e-learning and classroom) with absolutely no understanding of instructional design. You can get away with this is classroom, but not with e-learning.

By: Millie Vilaplana

Millie Vilaplana — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 19:11:27 +0000

Karen’s and Rob’s comments especially resonate with my experience. Time and time again I have re-do relevant, better chunked content into knowledge dumps, either because my client said his leader wouldn’t understand the interactivity and would like to see all their website content and terminology in one fell swoop, or because my boss’s manager insisted on more text and bullet points in each sidle (!!!)

I believe we have no choice than to educate, educate, educate the general public, T&D directors, business executives, etc. Let’s unite, show some meaningful metrics and make the case to them!… In the meantime, I’ll be joining the UK eLearning Network.

By: Mark Jones

Mark Jones — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:08:21 +0000

The eLearning Network (UK) is waging a campaign to wipe out ineffective, inefficient, flabby elearning. We want great elearning and we want it now! http://www.elearningnetwork.org/content/campaign-effective-elearning

hastag #c4ee

By: sandra

sandra — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 12:16:19 +0000

Excellent points all around, on budgets and less than ideal constraints placed on the developers. I especially like Clark’s last comment as it matches my own thoughts – it’s all about the content. If it is garbage, no amount of interactivity, swirling 3D imaging, or enticing visuals will change that.

So – how do we get the focus back on that design level? How do we evangelize that core principle and learn to get that part right?

By: Clark

Clark — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:42:25 +0000

Thanks for the feedback. BrainySmurf, no, we weren’t told the reason it was elearning, but to your and Rob’s point, these were NGOs, clearly not-for-profits serving the under-developed world. As a consequence, they probably were running on a budget, and trying to reach vastly dispersed populations. All the info we, as judges had in addition to the courses, was a separate list of objectives. The objectives varied but often were just informational (a fail, right there). And even the winner wasn’t high production value, just high design. And that’s the point, if you get the design right, there are lots of ways to implement it, including on the cheap. And if you don’t get the design right, it doesn’t matter how you implement it. Most of them failed at the design stage: let’s just run a bunch of facts and figures by them and then test. That’s the form of ‘instructional design’ I’m going to rail against. I beleive that you could’ve done more meaningful things with the same budget. And if information/knowledge *was* what you were trying to do, you still couldn’t achieve it with one large knowledge dump and test.

By: Rob Stevens

Rob Stevens — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:26:46 +0000

Clark, I’m curious if there was any information on the backstory of these courses? Budget? Timeline? Decision making process on why eLearning was chosen? Development process? I’m a little slower to throw stones. As a custom developer, we are sometimes put in a position where our recommendations are not accepted and we follow the requirements of our client. Our hope is that over time, we can influence our clients to make better learning decisions. Of course, we could simply put a stake in the ground and refuse to follow the requirements but that seems like a certain way to end the relationship.

By: Karen Hicks

Karen Hicks — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:16:23 +0000

Unfortunately, eLearning needs a paradigm shift. Typically, the people making decisions about what eLearning should be, aren’t the developers, but management teams who haven’t done any research on where eLearning is going. So, we keep getting the “information dump” eLearning programs. I know in my company, I did a presentation over where eLearning is going, and I took some of our information dump eLearning and changed it into an activity based module. No one liked it, and didn’t buy into it. So, instead of having interactive eLearning, we have information dumping. Very sad indeed that people can’t embrace change and see something different.

By: brainysmurf

brainysmurf — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:17:05 +0000

Thanks, Clark, this is eerily familiar. Of the finalists you reviewed, was there any compelling reason given as to why e-learning was the chosen methodology rather than some kind of on-the-job intervention?

By: David Glow

David Glow — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:13:14 +0000

Even beyond the standard fare of “bore and score”, I find that the more developed elearning today clearly puts effort into the sizzle, not the steak.

I hope as an industry we can start to refocus on meaning more than media.