"Online trainings not so successful" - lively debate on LinkedIn

Apparently, the log might be the most effective learning technology ever invented. Read on to find out why...

There is a discussion in the group Learning, Education and Training Professionals Group on Linkedin which appears to have taken on a life of its own. With nearly 600 posts, it represents an interesting cross section of what can be quite polarised views on the success (or otherwise) of learning technology as compared to classroom methods.

Some interesting points have been made on the way, and I've also weighed in with some views along the way. Given that you have to be on Linkedin and a member of this particular group to see it, I thought I'd share my last response to a comment posted that said:

No matter how hi-tech we are or how good the CBT/Online Training is, nothing replaces the "real time" of a live instructor who interacts with the student. The relationships fostered in the classroom training session for exceeds the few dollars saved by not contracting with a live person. In the 90's, at Lifeway Resources, we spent millions on then hi-tech video training through satellite transmission. In the end, all we did was spend millions on no training. 

In the words of a great Greek teacher, "the best classroom is me seating on one side of the log with you siting on the other exchanging ideas".

Here's my response:

One-to-one tutoring and support can be highly effective. But it doesn't scale very easily. With new technologies that enable wider interactive access to expertise it is feasible for one good teacher to effectively reach a wider audience than "one". As soon as the numbers of students rise, a teacher/trainer has to juggle attention and that leads to compromise - mainly in depersonalising the learning experience.

As a result a great deal of classroom teaching/training is simply ineffective even with a good quality instructor. Unfortunately there is a shortage of good instructors, so many students' experience is reduced to just making it through the session either in a state of boredom, confusion or anxiety. That can't be right.

With the technology now at hand to many (but by no means all) of us in the world, we can reach more people with a consistent learning experience, even if it lacks some level of personalisation. That too though is changing. A well designed CBT/e-learning experience can be highly engaging, impactful and result in behavioural change, just like a well designed face to face lesson. The key is the quality of the design, not the technology or medium used.

So, yes, it is easy to waste millions on technology when the case for deployment has failed to be made. But we waste billions on a now outdated model of education/training that is hugely inefficient, de-personalises the learning experience and results in unintended behaviour changes that are of suboptimal worth to employers and society as a whole.

We can - and should - think more deeply about how we change. As change we must if learning and development professionals (and educators for that matter) are to remain relevant in the future.

While a log would do for the Greeks centuries ago, I'd say the internet - and all the great array of interaction and collaboration it brings us - is the long overdue upgrade. Indeed the great teacher of the future might say:

"the best classroom is me sitting on one side of the blog with you sitting on the other exchanging ideas. In fact, why sit? We can exchange ideas any time, any where."

Actually, they probably wouldn't even use the word classroom at all...

What do you think?

Learning the LINGO

I had the privilege of speaking at the INGO E-learning Conference at Oxfam House, Oxford today. Fellow speakers included Clive Shepherd, Jane Hart and Rob Hubbard. There is a growing interest amongst charities and other non governmental organisations in more effective and efficient approaches to learning and development. When you have staff, volunteers and other representatives spread across the globe, often in hard to reach areas with little infrastructure and tight budgets it can be a real challenge to provide sufficient training support. E-learning is clearly of value in these situations but also it has to be flexible in its design and delivery to avoid just becoming an expensive white elephant.

Talking of elephants, I gave the audience the benefit of my “elephant in the training room” message – that despite best efforts, much training is delivered by the wrong people, to the wrong people, at the wrong time in the wrong way. What is the result? No learning, no value gained by the individual or the organisation they serve. E-learning is no different – too much of what people experience is plain dull, ironically hard to access and use and similarly lacks relevance. Design is crucial to the success of a learning experience, online or offline. This does not necessarily mean spending large amounts of money on high production values (although that can be sensible and appropriate). Instead, it is developing a more elusive skill – smart selection of design treatments/concepts, clear, energising writing and the appropriate use of media that fit within your project constraints (time, budget, technical).

I used my IMPACT framework to illustrate how e-learning design can be more effective and impactful than the “slide-ware” many people default to creating and even more people have to endure. We can all do much better than this and I’m optimistic that as technology supported learning becomes ever more mainstream, good design will be recognised and valued. After all, the objective is to change attitudes and behaviour in our learners for the long term – and that’s worth dedicating the right level of investment of skill and resource to achieve isn’t it?

Designing e-learning for IMPACT

Creating an engaging, effective e-learning experience can be a daunting task. There are many considerations, the LEAST of which is the technical delivery which most folk normally latch on to. The tools are an enabler, for sure, but the ability to communicate – in words, in pictures, with meaningful interaction, with clarity – is much more important. However, this ability appears to be in scarce supply. Too much of what people experience as “e-learning” makes poor use of the medium, even to the extent of obscuring the key learning messages it intends to convey.

This is a shame as poor perceptions mean that people can come to an e-learning experience already expecting to be bored, uninspired and desperate to secure their “tick in the box” as quickly as possible. It doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be this way. It is hard to hold attention, granted. Distractions abound. Learners can, quite rightly, simply click away if the experience we design fails to offer a compelling enough proposition to stir the necessary self-motivation needed to stay focused or return when circumstances allow. Mandating completion is not enough. We have to persuade and engage – and that takes thought, consideration, creativity and care. It is a false economy to ignore the steps to good design practice. You can, with some guidance, learn to design e-learning that has real IMPACT.

Over the past few months – at both conferences and webinars – I have been describing a model that can be used to successfully audit existing and planned e-learning projects, and become embedded within a e-learning development strategy. The IMPACT model provides a structure for considering six key aspects of effective e-learning design:

Interaction

Multimedia

Personal

Actionable

Challenging

Timing

Let’s take a brief look at each one in turn:


Interaction
Interaction is what makes e-learning different from other media. It should be purposeful, bringing the learner into the content, bring alive a key concept and immerse them in believable scenarios. It is not just “click next to continue” or “click to reveal more information”. Too much e-learning relies on this alone and wonders why it loses its audience’s attention at virtually the first screen.
Good examples of interaction include dynamic models that let you play and explore with variables so you can quickly see the consequences of your actions. This does not have to be complex and expensive. For one organisation, to explain how pensions work, we designed a simple real time graph that allows the learner to change important factors that affect the eventual value of their pension including length of service, contributions and investment performance. Visually simple, the dynamic nature of the interaction quickly demonstrates the effect these have on retirement (frighteningly for many people!). Note that this learning could not easily be achieved any other way than with a good interaction. That’s a good indicator that you are including interaction appropriately and not just to add unnecessary barriers for your learners.


Multimedia
E-learning can draw on any digital asset you can care to mention. Yet we typically settle for text, stock images and clip art. Often there are technical constraints that preclude the use of video and audio. Indeed, there are also learning design reasons why the use of media is inappropriate. For example, for those audiences working in contact centres where the telephone is the primary form of customer communication, it would be good practice to design customer care scenarios that are audio only to provide a model of practice that can be more readily transferred to the work environment.
Where possible though, using video can be emotionally engaging and can realistically replicate real world situations when combined with well constructed interaction. Simulating elements of a job, whether this is real video, 3D animation or an immersive world, or simply photo sequences can provide a meaningful and applied framework for the learner.


Personal
If the message is too generic, bland or full of alien language that is patronising to your intended audience, it is unlikely to resonate. Context is crucial and writing clearly in a tone that fits your organisation’s culture, values and specific work practices makes a huge difference in learner’s taking ownership of the experience you present them with.
Equally, personalising the content to their specific needs, such as their job role, their accessibility requirements (low, high bandwidth option, screen-readers etc) and preferred media can ensure the learner feels in control and can concentrate on the key messages rather than the tool they are using to access them.
Introducing social media can further personalise the experience through access to other peers and expert support where available.


Actionable
Too much training and learning focuses on abstract policies, processes, systems and idealised situations which lack the real hooks and context that allow learners to apply new skills and knowledge back in the work place. The very fact they have had to leave the workplace – physically in the case of traditional classroom training, and cognitively in the case of abstract e-learning content – makes it difficult to transfer the learning experience into practice. You can bridge this gap by closely simulating the work environment in which they need to apply the new skills and knowledge. One example of this is a simulation within a travel agent which trains new staff to sell foreign exchange. This brings together all aspects of the role – operating a computer system, understanding currency, regulatory policy, customer service, sales skills and rapport building. By mixing these activities in a way that mimics the actual job, transfer of the virtual practice is much much easier than if these elements were separately trained.


Challenging
Too much e-learning is too simplistic. It fails to challenge its audience either in its treatment or the difficulty levels of its assessment. There’s almost an unspoken conspiracy that lulls trainers, managers and staff into a false sense of security because they all “pass”. Never mind if any lasting change in performance is seen in the workplace. Challenge the expectations of the learner and provoke an emotional response. Take a stance, use your writing style to set an attitude, create surprise, laughter, fear, whatever is appropriate for your subject matter and audience. Don’t make your interactions too obvious and easy – it’s good to make the learner think carefully before they act or answer. But that’s not to say we want to frighten learners way – the challenges can be structured to support failure positively and use it as a learning experience to move forward. But foremost the learning must be stimulating, cognitively stretching and memorable.
Game designers have evolved highly sophisticated models that make challenges fun, addictive and memorable for it. In particular casual games, with their shared leaderboards, multiple levels, and regular achievements/badge collecting can be used to great effect in learning about product features/benefits, policies, processes and other knowledge heavy areas where repeated exposure improves long term retention.


Timing
Repetition matters more than we like to think. Too many training courses – either in the classroom or as e-learning sessions - are deployed as single events that are completed once and we expect our audience to be trained. The fact is we forget most of what we experience with this one-hit, sheep-dip model. E-learning provides a unique opportunity to structure more frequent, spaced exposure to learning that is interwoven into work practices. This increases learning retention and transfer massively. Thinking in terms of a “campaign” rather than a “course” will change how you design every learning solution towards a smaller, fluid, blended experience. It may have less visible Big Bang, but it will be more effective in building the intended performance change in your audience.


Make an IMPACT
The IMPACT model can act as a useful framework for a more in depth review of how to design more effective e-learning. Anyone of any level of experience, resources, budget can benefit from applying this model to their design activities. While the quantity of e-learning will continue to rise, I’d like to see quality to rise too so that e-learning can really deliver on its promise. We all have a part to play in demanding good design – it makes all the difference.

This blog post is also published here together with lots of videos and examples of impactful e-learning design.

Back in blog seat - it's getting lively out there...

It's been a while - 6 months in fact - since I last posted on this blog. This is largely due to lots of activity in the day job and a preference for Twitter as a platform for comment and sharing of useful links etc... (you can follow me on here). I've also published a number of articles in printed journals/magazines and been remiss in posting up here due to the now confusing delay between writing and publication (so much more instant online but you know that already).

Anyhow, I am back in the blog seat and will start with referencing a couple of recent posts from Charles Jennings and Donald Clark. Charles tackles an important point about the difference between instructional design and interactivity design and its effect on long term learning and performance support. Donald lays out some techniques to tackle the longstanding poor levels of retention that result from most learning/training activities.

I've been promoting these ideas for some time and thought it would be useful to supplement these recent posts with some still very relevant articles I wrote dating back to 2006 when I put forward the concept of "Less Learning More Often" while in the US with Charles and many discussions with Donald over the years.

Links are below and would welcome your comments as usual.


Less Learning More Often

Transfer of Learning - Missing in Action

Ubiquitious Performance Support

Also a slide deck that promotes consideration of the spacing effect:

Lars Hyland Webinar 090709 Re-inventing the E-learning Experience

Same old story says Clive

Clive Shepherd has posted on the continuing failure of many organisations to harness the benefits of e-learning:

...a large government department, had initiated a major e-learning programme, but the response had been disappointing. "I bet I can guess why," I said. "Really?" she said, "Do tell me." This was my guess:

• the e-learning was entirely self-study;
• the e-learning was unsupported;
• the content was largely textual and uninspiring.

"How did you guess?" she said. "Easy," I said, "that's always the problem."

I agree with Clive's weary tone.

There are still far too many e-learning initiatives which flounder because of a simplistic view that transferring learning content from one medium to another is sufficient.

Of course it needs support (so does classroom), of course it needs to be engagingly designed and instructionally sound (so does classroom) and of course it needs to be multimodal (that means sensibly deploy a range of media, online, offline, interactive, human) to generate a learning experience that effectively segues into the desired performance in the workplace.

A lot of e-learning projects brutally expose the lack of fundamental design thinking. In many respects this at least is a positive step forward as it is harder for organisations to continue hiding behind a thin veil of training activity that is clearly ineffective, costly, variable in its presentational quality and unsupported once back in the job.

A more holistic approach to design (that includes communication, performance support as well as the learning experience itself) and collaborative partnership with e-learning expertise would pay dividends. As does a focus on learning as an ongoing process rather than a defined event (with an arbitrary deadline).

'Millionaire' tests help kids learn

This is an interesting short report up from the New Scientist:

Replacing dry multiple-choice tests with quizzes akin to the hit TV show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire could help boost comprehension levels in children.

Tzu-Hua Wang at the National Hsinchu University of Education in Taiwan has devised a web-based multiple choice testing system with some fun elements influenced by the TV quiz. The system gives pupils the chance to "prune" away two incorrect answers from four - or, in a nod to "phone a friend", they may ask the class for help.

Unsurprisingly, children were more willing to be tested using Wang's system. But he also found kids had higher comprehension levels after using it, suggesting the system could be used for educational purposes.

This is interesting as it supports my view that DESIGN MATTERS. Engaging and holding attention is increasingly tough and just moving something online is not enough. Testing strategies really do need to move on from standard multiple choice mechanisms. This research demonstrates that different approaches can have an impact on learning effectiveness.

From Tzu-Hua Wang's paper, the use of an "Ask-Hint Strategy" turns what would otherwise be a standard web-based formative assessment into an online quiz game, called GAM-WATA (not quite as catchy a title as "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"). The strategy consists of two elements: a ‘Prune Strategy’ and a 'Call-in Strategy'. The Prune Strategy emulates the "50/50" life line contestants are offered on the TV show, but contrary to the New Scientist report removes one option from four, not two. The Call-in Strategy provides the rate at which other test takers choose each option when answering a question. This I think is more like "Ask the Audience" than "Phone a Friend" as reported.

I'd like to understand better how they measured the improvement in comprehension amongst students taking these assessments, but it certainly illustrates that smart design does make a difference to learning outcomes.

It also shows that you should go back to the original research wherever possible as this seemed slightly misrepresented by the New Scientist report.

Location based learning

Jotyou is a location based messaging service for your phone. It basically allows you to send messages to friends which are received when they enter a specified geographical area. Check out the video for a feel for the service - it's especially well integrated with Google maps and a whole range of mobile phones.

Now the main focus of the service at present is on getting messages to people to come visit you in the coffee shop if they happen to be passing close by, or to remind yourself to pick up some milk when you are close to the grocery store, or better still for organised location based games. But the more I think about it the most exciting application of this sort of technology is to support learners in taking action on newly acquired knowledge/skills.

We know that context plays a key role in learning. Location is one such context. Anchoring new knowledge to relevant locations is an intriguing way to help push people into active application.

Perhaps on a wider performance level we can imagine messaging travelling sales reps or support engineers to automatically notify them of customers in the local vicinity who might value a quick update call/visit - linked to that message could be a prompt that reminds them to practice a particular rapport building skill, or offer a particular cross/upsell opportunity that would be relevant to that customer given their sales history.

Jotyou and other similar services could open up a whole new dimension of learning and performance support.

Learning as you like it

This week will be the Learning Technologies 2008 show in London. I'll be there for both days (30/31 January), delivering a seminar on "Less Learning More Often" which covers some of the ground described in my earlier article on the theme.

I've also written the Last Word for the Learning Technologies magazine which as a sneak preview I've reproduced below. I'd be interested in your responses so if you're coming along, see you there.

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"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."

I sometimes think that a large proportion of the education and training world unwittingly lives by the cynicism of this famous passage of Shakespeare (As You Like It, Act 2 Scene 7). As students or adult learners, how many times have you felt part of a helpless and trapped audience for a teacher or trainer who is more interested in their own performance than yours?

The famous bard goes on to describe the second of seven ages of man:

"Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel and shining morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to school."

He's identified the core problem with most learning experiences we have – a failure to engage and harness our intrinsic motivation to learn. Now this is a problem not just limited to school boys and our school days – it affects all of us at all ages. And the world has clearly changed dramatically since Shakespeare's day, even just in the past twenty years. In a connected world, technology is fundamentally challenging traditional models of education and training, empowering us to learn in a more fluid and natural way than ever before, at our own pace and place. The learners are taking control, at long last.

So how fundamental is this change?

Well, consider the research of Sugata Mitra, Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, formerly Chief Scientist at NIIT in New Delhi, India. His "Hole in the Wall" experiments with communities in India, Cambodia and Africa demonstrate that children can intuitively learn how to use interactive multimedia applications in very little time. By literally building a networked PC into a wall accessible in an outside space (very much like a cash machine here), and providing no direction or instruction he sat and waited to watch what would happen. One child learned to browse in 6 minutes and was teaching 70 other children by the end of the day. They interacted with content that was not even in their own language – they had to self-learn English to get to the content itself. In one experiment children managed to grasp basic concepts of biotechnology and the principles of DNA! All this occurred without a teacher or classroom. Tellingly, he found that children learned best when the "hole in the wall" was kept right away from the traditional school environment. Now this is "informal learning" in its extreme, but it provides a compelling argument for us to radically review how learners of all ages, in education and in the workplace, spend their time developing new skills and acquiring new knowledge. Are we holding people back rather than propelling them forward?

In the corporate world, the attempts to define and (ironically) control "informal learning" are forcing us to realise that much of the energy and resources that go into our formal approaches to educate and train goes to waste. Forcing us to learn away from the context of our actual job environment, in concentrated blocks of time goes against the core truth that we will forget and fail to apply most of the new knowledge and skills we are exposed to when we go back to our normal activities. In contrast, when we harness the available technology around us, we move away from artificially extracting "learning" from the "performance" we want to see demonstrated.

Connectivity is rapidly accelerating the learning process, and the younger generation who don't know a world without the internet and mobile phone, get this more than most. In fact they take this for granted. Increasingly, they won't stand for the one-size-fits-all pace of traditional classroom based sessions that deny the existence of these tools. Why leave the workplace when you find the answers you need at your desk, on your laptop, in your phone? Through simulation we can practice skills and gather virtual experience that we can more readily and directly apply in real contexts. Not only that, we can literally pull out of thin air the resources that support our performance, just-in-time, at the point of need.

So, while many corporate environments appear to be a long way from being able to harness this phenomenon, in many ways they are being bypassed by the way we are using technology socially. Social networks cut across hierarchy: knowledge is just a search and a few clicks away, and virtual environments allow us to practise (perhaps crudely at present) quite complex technical and soft skills. Now, not everyone is naturally drawn to these experiences. However this is often a matter of design and usability.

Take Nintendo for example. With their DS and Wii gaming platforms they have brought e-learning to the masses. Who would have thought that in 2007 we would see Nicole Kidman, a Hollywood actress, advertising a Brain Training game on national TV and in cinemas? Travel to the Continent and you'll see that the top selling "games" for the DS are English Training and other life skill based titles. Apple, with their iPhone, iPod and iMacs, have succeeded in making technology highly desirable. Both organisations share a core principle – they are design-led and obsessive about the overall user experience. Good design that is sensitive to the user, is intuitive, is exciting to interact with and simply does what it is meant to do. Imagine if your corporate systems, tools and processes were as easy to operate. We could remove whole swathes of training activity that are only necessary to make good poor design and usability. In terms of e-learning design, too many products are hard to use, un-ambitious in scope, and dully written. No wonder many people's experience and perception of e-learning is poor.

But it doesn't have to be that way. We can shift our learning design principles to those that take into account current cognitive research. We can genuinely consider the environment in which people will use and interact. We can tailor our design with the personal goals of the individual. Then e-learning becomes truly performance enhancing. After all, learning can only ever be as you like it.

One Page Guides - Quality over Quantity

Tim Davies has produced some great examples of how small, targeted and (crucially) well designed resources can be highly effective in learning. Tim's One Page Guides on subjects such as wikis, blogs and sharing stories give novices the confidence to take some action of their own. As Brent Schenkler comments:

"I'm certain it did not take ANY ISD knowledge to create these. But I'm certain MANY people will be learning from these...go figure."

I've long advocated a wider sphere of design influence for those involved in training and learning design. Doggedly sticking to one structured methodology is not going to work any more, if it ever did.