Is it smothering, or authoring? Are we authoring actual learning, or creating smothering amounts of content? Maybe the answer is ‘yes’…I’m suspicious, however. So, I’ve had opinions on authoring tools, though they’ve changed over the years. Still, there are some things that need to be core. And, of course, they’re violated. So here’re some thoughts on smauthoring tools.
So, first, to achieve real learning – acquiring new skills – you need real practice. Knowledge presentation is unlikely to yield any meaningful changes, because unless folks apply the knowledge, it’s just knowledge. And, in fact, you should be evaluating to see whether you’re having an impact. You might make content available, or present beforehand, but the important aspect is the practice. Repeatedly, over time. (Yes, there are exceptions, with experts, and serendipitous outcomes, but it’s not a fruitful bet.)
What this implies, then, is that authoring tools should focus on practice. That is, they should make it easy to make meaningful activities. If they just support knowledge test, they’re not going to support the important learning we need. Sure, you can turn multiple-choice into mini-scenarios (I’ve run a whole workshop on that in the past!), but… You’re really working around the limitations of the tool. It took years for them even to have more than one response for all the wrong answers, for crying out loud! In short, authoring tools haven’t, by and large, provided good support for designing learning that sticks. (There have been tools to support building branching scenarios at scale,
However, folks who don’t know learning (or learning science, hence our conference, *cough*), can often believe that presentation = acquisition. That’s a legacy, I suggest, of old beliefs about how our brains work. And, authoring tools have been promoted then, and again now, to not require instructional designers (IDs)! Yes, you can just have experts create learning! Ahem. Sure, it’ll sell, and the executives and managers and learners will feel good about having seen the content. But, you have essentially zero change of actually having an impact.
So, you really can’t have domain experts design learning. And, you shouldn’t. Experts should be experts in their domain, and not be experts on learning. That’s a waste of resources. You should have IDs who know learning, and they should work with the experts to create experiences that develop abilities. The problem is compounded, of course, by having folks who are good at the job being moved to trainers and then instructional designers without any real experience with learning. What Cammy Bean aptly called the ‘accidental’ instructional designer. Give them tools, and they too can create elearning! Er, no.
AI compounds the problem, of course. It can take the content and do the manipulation into information and knowledge test quite well. Yet it’s still not learning. And, really, AI doesn’t know context, and so can’t really make meaningful practice. Again, what we need if we want to develop skills, not just knowledge, is contextualized practice. I don’t think AI can do that.
In the (very) old days, it took teams to develop digitally-delivered learning experiences: they had folks who knew how to program, and folks who knew interfaces, and folks who knew the domain, and folks who knew interfaces. I understand the desire to reduce head count to keep costs lower, and we now do have technology that can support meaningful learning. (I should know, I’ve tracked many and even advise one!) It’s too bad, however that the vendors want quick sales and promote the knowledge, and not the skill. We have to measure, to know, of course. (Completion, and ‘liking’ the course aren’t good measures, by the way.) Once we do measure, we can start erring on the side of making learning that moves necessary needles. We need real practice development tools, not smauthoring tools.