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This is one in a series of thoughts on some broken areas of ID that I’ve been posting for Mondays.   The intention is to provide insight into many ways much of instructional design fails, and some pointers to avoid the problems. The point is not to say ‘bad designer’, but instead to point out how to do better design.

Instructional design has established that the correct order of elements is introduction – concept – example – practice (and feedback) – summary.   While that’s a good default, it doesn’t have to be that way, and there are times when it makes sense to provide other approaches or even self-navigation.   What we shouldn’t see is the prevalent (click to advance ‘next’ button), with linear navigation forwards and back.   Or, rather, we shouldn’t see that without some other support.   And more.

When we did a course on speaking to the media (and without an LMS to handle the navigation, so no built-in ‘next button’), we had a scheme that both provided a good default, and allowed self-navigation.   We had the elements of each of the 3 modules labeled from a learner perspective (e.g. Show Me, Let Me). And we had a nav bar in the upper left that let you choose where to go. At the bottom of the screen (we erred for scrolling rather than one page to minimize clicks and load times, this was over 10 years ago) were also some options of where to go next, with one indicated as the recommended choice.   We graphically supported this with a dotted   line leading the learner through the content and to the default choice (follow the bouncing ball).

Was there benefit from this?   Anecdotaly, I heard (I’d returned to the US) that about half the users followed the bouncing ball, but the other half (presumably the self-capable learners) took the initiative for their own learning and used the nav bar to go where and when *they* wanted to.   I note that UNext/Cardean had a similar nav structure at one time.

Now, you may have heard of case-, problem- or project-based learning. In this case, before you present the concept, you present either an example (a case-study) or a problem.   These serve as the introduction, but are attuned to different ways of learning.

If you buy into some of the learning style models, they have cycles through different learning approaches, but recognize that different learners could prefer to start in different areas.   That was the premise that drove at least part of the strategy behind the adaptive learning system project I led from 1999-2001. We had the system   recommend a path, and alternatives, but it was based upon who they were as a learner.

It turns out that some learners could prefer an example first, that links concept to context, some prefer problems first, to get concrete about what the situation’s about, and some might prefer a more typical approach.   We didn’t have all the answers at the time, but we had a good set of rules, and were going to extract better ones as we went along.

The point is, while a good default is a reasonable choice, having some alternative paths might be worth considering, and allowing learner navigation is almost essential.     Allowing learners to test out is a good option as well.   Don’t lock your learners into a linear experience, unless you’ve really designed it as an experience, focusing on the overall flow and testing and refining until your learners tell you it is an experience.   And I do recommend that, it’s not as tough as it sounds.   However, don’t take just the easy default, learners prefer and deserve choice.   So consider some alternative pedagogies, consider the learner, and think outside the line.

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This is one in a series of thoughts on some broken areas of ID that I’m posting for Mondays.   The intention is to provide insight into many ways much of instructional design fails, and some pointers to avoid the problems. The point is not to say ‘bad designer’, but instead to point out how to do better design.

When it comes to closing the elearning experience, not surprisingly too often we drop the ball here, too.   Our endings tend to be too abrupt, and merely rehash what has been learned, and, if we’re lucky, point out further directions. Not that we don’t want to let them know what they‘ve learned, and indicate that if they want to go deeper, they should go here, and they’re now prepared to learn about this thing over there.   But there’s so much more!

First of all, if we’re viewing this as an experience, developing motivation and addressing the emotional components, and we should be, then we should close off the experience emotionally as well.   We should acknowledge the effort they’ve put in, and celebrate the fact that they‘ve learned the ability to do something new (and it should be do something new, if you‘ve got your objectives right).

Ideally, we’d personalize this, and say something like”you did really good on A, but your B was a little weak, try a bit of C to build that up” or whatever.   We don’t always have the ability to track performance at this more granular level, nor the ability to make the learning content adapt in that way, but it’s conceptually feasible and you should be thinking about how you might accomplish that.

Also, in the introduction, we drilled down from the larger context in the world (right?), and we should similarly drill back up.   Let‘s reconnect the learner with the broader context, and reactivate and associate the learning experience by letting them know how what they now can do plays a role in the world.   It‘s not just “you learned X”, but “you learned X, which means Y”.

Finally, let me add a valuable lesson I learned.   I was working on some content for speaking to the media, and the SMEs (hello, Jane & Susan!) had a nice statement format that worked really well (with a memorable acronym: the SEX statement – Statement, Examples, eXplanation – I’ve never forgotten it :).   However, they realized that the opportunities to apply it might be few and far-between, so they encouraged ways to practice it.   They suggested using it with co-workers, bosses, even your kids!

The important point was the effort they put in to help you keep it active until you needed it, and that‘s too often an element we forget.   We can and should stream out reactivations at a rate that is appropriate for how soon and how often we’ll apply the skills, but our decision about how to support the learner’s retention should be conscious and related to their task and practice opportunities.

Note that this can and should be all done in a minimum amount of words.   It doesn’t take much, a sentence or two at most, unless it‘s been a big elearning experience, but it is appropriate.

So, in summary, make sure you wrap up the learning experience with the same care that you began it. Make it an experience to be remembered!

Cathy Moore has a lovely post with a slideshow that talks about using action mapping to design better elearning, and it’s a really nice approach.   While I don’t know from Action Mapping (tm?), I do know that the approach taken avoids the typical mistakes and focuses on the same thing I advocate: what do people need to be able to do?

The presentation rightly points out the problems with knowledge dump, and instead focuses on the business goal first, and then asks you to map out what the learner would need to be able to do to achieve that business goal.   That’s the point I was making in my ‘objectives‘ post of the Broken ID series.

Cathy nicely elaborates on that point, going directly to practice that has them doing the task, as close as possible to the real task.   Finally, she has you bring in the minimum information needed to allow them to do the task.   This is really a great ‘least assistance‘ approach!

Now, it’s not talking about examples or models (though those could fit under the minimum information principle, above), nor introducing the topic, so I’d want to ensure that the learners are engaged into the learning experience up-front, and provide a model to guide their performance in the task.   What this does, however, is give you a framework and set of steps that really focuses on the important elements and avoiding the typical approach that is knowledge-full and value-light.   Recommended.