Good learning requires a basis for intrinsic interest. The topic should be of interest to the learner, a priori or after the introduction. If the learner doesn’t ‘get’ why this learning is relevant to them, it doesn’t stick as well. And this  isn’t what gamification does. So tarting up content is counter-productive. It’s a bad (s)tart!

Ok, to be clear, there’re two types of gamification. The first, important, and relevant type of gamification is using game design techniques to embed learning topic into meaningful series of decisions, where the context and actions taken affect the outcomes in important ways, and the challenge is appropriate.  However, that’s not the one that’s getting all the hype.

Instead, the hype is around PBL (which, sadly isn’t Problem-Based Learning but instead is Points, Badges, & Leaderboards).  If we wrap this stuff around our learning, we’ll make it more engaging.  And, at least initially, we’ll see that. At least in enthusiasm. But how about retention and transfer?  And will there be a drop-off when the novelty wears off?

Yes, we can tart up drill-and-kill, and should,  if that’s what’s called for (e.g. accurate retention of information). But that’s not what works for skills. And the times it’s actually relevant are scarce. For skills, we want appropriate retrieval.  And that means something else.

Retention and transfer of new skills requires contextualized retrieval and application to decisions that learners need to be able to make. And that’s scenarios (or, at least, mini-scenarios).  We need to put learners into situations requiring applying the knowledge to make decisions. Then the consequences play out.

If you’re putting your energy into finding gratuitous themes to wrap around knowledge recitation instead of making intrinsically meaningful contexts for knowledge  application, you’re wasting time and money.  You’re not going to develop skills.

I actually don’t mind if you want to tart up  after you’ve done the work of making the skill practice meaningful. But only  after!  If you’re skipping the important practice design, you’re letting down your learners. As well as the organization.  And typically we don’t need to spend unnecessary time.

Please, for your learners’ sake, find out about  both  sorts of gamification, distinguish between them, and then use them appropriately. PBL is ok when rote knowledge has to be drilled,  or  after  you’ve done good practice design.

While I ordinarily refuse (on principle, otherwise I’d get swamped  and become a PR hack; and I never promise a good review), I acquiesced to Patti Shank’s offer of a copy of her new book Write and Organize for  Deeper Learning.  I’ve been a fan of her crusade for science in learning (along with others like Will Thalheimer, Julie Dirksen, and Michael Allen, to name a few co-conspirators on the Serious eLearning Manifesto), and I can say I’m glad she offered and delivered.  This is a contribution to the field, with a focus on writing.

The first of a potential series on evidence-based processes in learning design, this one is focused on content: writing and organization. In four overall strategies with 28 total tactics, she takes you through what you should do  and why. Practicing what she preaches, and using the book itself recursively as an example, she uses simple words and trimmed down prose to focus on what you need to know, and guidance to generalize it. She also has practice exercises to help make the  material stick.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t quibbles: for one, there’s no index!  I wanted to look for ‘misconceptions’ (an acid test in my mind), but it’s in there. Still, there’s less on cognitive models to guide performance than I would like. And not enough on misconceptions, But there’re lots of good tips that I wouldn’t have thought of including, and are valuable.

These are small asides. Some of it’s generic (writing for the web, for instance, similarly argues for whitespace) and some specific to learning, but it’s all good advice, and insufficiently seen.   What’s there will certainly improve the quality of your learning design.  If you write prose for elearning, you definitely should read, and heed, this book.   I note, by the way, that my readability index for this blog always falls too high according to her standards ;).

She has a list of other potential books, and I can hope that she will at least deliver the one on designing practice and feedback (what I think is the biggest opportunity to improve elearning: what people  do), but also examples, job aids, evaluating, objectives, and more.  I hope this series continues to develop, based upon the initial delivery here.

So, I’d like to ask a favor of you.  I would like to improve my thinking about elearning design, and where this starts are objectives.  Or outcomes. Now, they can be easy, or challenging. I’d like to see some of the latter.

When the goal is fairly obvious, it’s simple to address. They need to be better at doing X?  Well then, practice lots of X! But there are more challenging situations.  You know the ones: weak verbs that aren’t about doing, where the performance is vague, where it’s about knowledge.

I’d like to get concrete. So…

I’d greatly appreciate it if you would share your challenging learning objectives (or outcomes you’re supposed to come up with objectives for) with me.  The ones you dread.  If they’re proprietary, feel free to generify them.  I will also keep you anonymous. Feel free to ask for help, and I’ll respond appropriately.

What will I  do with them?  It depends. These may get written up as a post, if I see themes.  They certainly are likely to be included in any workshops about deeper elearning design. I just want to work from real things, not my made up examples (as fabulous as they might be ;).

Feel free to comment here, or if you see this via LinkedIn or some other channel respond in whatever channel makes the most sense.  Let me know if you’d like a reply.

And thanks in advance.