Down with Boring E-Learning!
By Ryann Ellis, Learning Circuits Editor
Interview with e-learning guru Dr. Michael W. Allen.
At ASTD 2004, I had a chance meeting with Michael Allen, CEO of Allen Interactions. For those of you not familiar with his work (and I can't imagine there are too many of you folks out there), Allen has been at the heart of the multimedia industry for more than 25 years, and was a principal designer of Control Data Corporation's PLATO® computer-based education system and the principal architect of Authorware®. He is the founder and former chairman of Authorware, which merged with Macromind/Paracomp to form Macromedia.
In his book, Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning: Building Interactive, Fun, and Effective Learning Programs for Any Company, Allen speaks out about his frustrations with today’s e-learning and brings fundamental issues to light. He also shares specific, commonsense guidelines that reliably produce effective and practical learning solutions.
Given his background, I thought he'd be the perfect candidate to field a few questions that readers often send me. Here's what he had to say.
Learning Circuits: There are so many definitions of/and references to e-learning floating around the market. How do you define e-learning?
Allen: When writing my book, Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning, it seemed that I should include a definition of e-learning. I didn’t really think this would be much of a challenge—doesn’t everybody pretty much know what e-learning is? But since terms are useful only if they have widely accepted definitions, I thought I’d better do a little research rather than just spit something out. I was astounded by the variety of definitions I found in various books and articles. I really disagreed with some, such as those asserting that only Internet applications qualified as e-learning.
I finally settled on ASTD’s definition. While wordy, I found this definition comfortable at the time: “e-learning covers a wide set of applications and processes, such as Web-based learning, computer-based learning, virtual classrooms, and digital collaboration. It includes the delivery of content via Internet, intranet/extranet (LAN/WAN), audio- and videotape, satellite broadcast, interactive TV, and CD-ROM.”
What this definition doesn’t specify, however, is that e-learning is interactive, or rather, provides instructional interactivity. While you can learn from many things in this world, it’s the interactivity that differentiates learning from mere e-publishing.
Learning Circuits: Good point. That definition is from 1998, and it may be time for ASTD to update its definition. So, given that definition, what is the relationship between traditional training or learning and e-learning?
Allen: Of course all learning is about change and empowerment, but each form of delivery has some specific advantages and disadvantages. Various forms of delivery are not interchangeable without redesign of the instruction. There are very different consequences when techniques appropriate to instructor-led training, for example, are applied to e-learning and vice versa.
While there are certainly some advantages in instructor-led training, to be brief, I’ll just focus on just a few of the twelve differences I’ve identified that provide e-learning advantages:
Individualization. Each learner can work as quickly or slowly as needed and desired. There’s no getting lost because other learners are better prepared or getting bored because others need more help.
Active participation. Although the best instructors work hard to create engaging activities, such as role-playing, practical constraints often restrict participation to just a few students and require others to sit and wait for extended periods. E-learners can be continuously active, working at tasks that are tailored to their precise needs and levels of readiness. They can face challenges first-hand, practice as much as needed, and develop confidence in their abilities to perform authentic tasks.
Available 24/7, everywhere. There’s no need to travel, wait to hold a class until enough learners are available, or adjust work assignments to fit class schedules. Learners can begin at the most meaningful time for them, work at the most convenient, and cost/effective locations, and study when their schedules allow it.
Learning Circuits: Do these factors mean that is ISD for e-learning needs to be different? How so?
Allen: Ooo… you raise an important and volatile topic here. Not one to shy away from controversy, or even non-diet soft drinks, I’ll relate my thinking with only a modicum of sugarcoating. Most people use a painful, expensive, long and drawn out process that doesn’t work well for e-learning—and probably doesn’t really work well for anything else either.
The complexities of e-learning, with its interactivity, mix of media, and branching aspects, stress any design and development approach. There are more design options to consider and more ramifications of each choice than with other forms of instructional delivery. So, yes, although it’s sometimes denied, an effective and practical approach for e-learning must differ greatly from traditional ISD.
Successive approximation is the process I use. It’s a fancy phase that combines the notions of iterative work and the recognition that no application ever reaches perfection. We shun reliance on specification documents and storyboards, because they are too slow and open to an unacceptably wide range of interpretations. Instead, often with only a minimal understanding of the challenge, including who is going to be trained on what and how success will be measured (all critical cornerstones that must be nailed down as soon as possible), we assemble the key visionaries, stakeholders, subject matter experts, and, if possible, one or two representative learners.
Working with this group, we begin identifying key performance outcomes, learner attributes, and contexts, while we do some rapid prototyping. It’s an electric event in which highly held values, hidden agendas, creative hopes, powerful insights, and real-world limitations pour out. As prototypes are enthusiastically built, played with, evaluated, and thrown out, we begin to see the possibilities for engaging interactions that will be the cornerstones of the final solution. After only hours of doing this, across perhaps a few days, we are ready to put a plan and budget together.
It’s a plan that can be generated at a fraction of the time and cost of more traditional approaches. And it’s a plan that supports imaginative solutions endorsed by organizational leaders, trainers, supervisors, and learners alike.
Learning Circuits: You often talk about your frustration with current e-learning efforts. Indeed, I saw that your session at ASTD 2004 was called, "No More Boring E-Learning." Why/how do you find most e-learning to be boring? What isn't working? Pet Peeves?
Allen: E-learning is often boring for the same reasons much traditional instruction is boring. It focuses on content presentation rather than the learning experience. In fact, I find that 99 percent of it all follows the “tell-and-test” paradigm: convey a block of content through lecture, books, screens, movies, bullet slides, and so forth. Then, give a quiz. All the boring stuff generally overlooks my three primary criteria (the 3Ms):
Meaningful. What’s more boring than content you don’t understand? Not much, except content you’ve already mastered. If you’re set on the content you’re going to present, regardless of who you’re training and the differences among your learners, then you’re set on boring at least some of them—quite possibly all of them. Learning experiences need to be tailored with focus on the learner: Does the learner see the value in learning this? Are learners fearful, impatient, confused? What are their goals and how do they relate to the goals you have for them?
Memorable. What value is learning material you won’t remember even a day or two past the posttest? Good posttest scores aren’t the reason for learning. It’s the ability, confidence, and readiness to perform valued tasks. We need to create learning experiences that stick with our learners so that they are able to perform at the right times.
Motivational. You can’t learn for your learners. They have to do the learning themselves. That means they have to be paying attention, thinking, and doing those things that create knowledge and skills within them. It’s as important to inspire (read energize) learners as it is to present content to them, because, with insufficient motivation, all that content is going to evaporate, leaving scant residue.
While these principles are important for all forms of instruction, they are perhaps critical to the success of e-learning where working alone on a computer can become boring so very quickly when there’s nothing interesting going on. My biggest pet peeve is e-learning that is focused on presenting a boatload of content (the worst is pages and pages of text) and not on the learning experience. Isn’t a little effective learning better than a lot of wasted time? Trim that content down so you can create some high-impact experiences. Please.
Learning Circuits: Still, readers send us complaints that the e-learning (modules, courseware, e-lab, whatever) they see on the market or build themselves doesn't look "boring," but that it doesn't seem to work either. What's going wrong?
Allen: Looks can really be deceiving, perhaps nowhere more than in e-learning. Our problems probably stem from an emphasis on looks that today’s development tools and delivery environment promote. It’s never been so easy and inexpensive to incorporate elaborate media. Even with basic e-learning, you can have marbled, wood-grained, gilded, or translucent animated buttons. And we do. But how sensitive to learner needs are the interactions?
Although it is helpful for screens to be attractive, for interfaces to be intuitive, and for information to be presented clearly, it’s the essential aspects of dynamic interactivity that are often given far too little attention and development. I’ve discussed above the critical elements of meaningfulness, memorability, and motivation. You just don’t generally get this by adding texture to buttons.
Learning Circuits: ROI is a hot topic right now, how do you think e-learning success should be measured?
Allen: You can’t, unfortunately, evaluate e-learning by looking at it. Good e-learning creates an experience. You don’t witness experiences by looking at a few screens. The most appropriate evaluation comes from measuring either business improvement or performance change, of course, and not from looking at an application or even measuring it against a set of criteria (including my own). At the very least, evaluators should experience an application to project the impact it may or may not have.
To have the best prospects of changing behaviors and being successful, however, I offer the following three-point design checklist (Details can be found in Allen’s book.)
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The interactions are purposeful in the mind of the learner. That is, learners understand what they can accomplish and why accomplishing it will be of value to them.
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The learner applies authentic skills and knowledge. Activities should be as similar to needed on-the-job performance as possible, and it should not be possible to appear proficient through lucky guesses.
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Feedback is intrinsic. Instead of getting, “Good job, Mike!” messages, feedback demonstrates to learners the value of good responses and the ineffectiveness of poor ones.
But again, e-learning applications should not be evaluated summarily by how good they look, what guidelines they follow, how happy learners are with them, or even what researched principles have been applied. Evaluation should be based on how cost-effectively they produced targeted behaviors, and ultimately, how valuable the outcome behaviors are to the individual and the organization.
Learning Circuits: Last question: In your opinion, what is the most misunderstood concept about e-learning—both in its current state and ideal state?
Allen: There are so very many misunderstood concepts, it’s hard to decide which is the most misunderstood. I guess it depends on one’s perspective. Let me give you a short list from several perspectives:
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Perspective |
Misunderstood concepts |
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Business
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· Effective e-learning is expensive. Actually, it’s poor e-learning that’s expensive. Effective e-learning can bring amazing returns and pay for itself quickly over and over again.
· Boring e-learning is all we can afford. Actually, you can’t afford boring e-learning because it’s a total waste of time and money. You can’t learn people, they have to do the learning themselves. If they are bored, learning ceases. Your costs rise every time another learner wastes time in it. |
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Management |
· It’s all about content: Get all the needed information out to people. Actually, it’s all about achieving desired performance levels, and that often means narrowing content down so that you can focus on creating meaningful, memorable, motivating learning experiences.
· We’ll be successful if the e-learning is developed on time and within budget. Actually, although these measures are important, quality matters. It’s critical to measure whether the training results in needed performance change and improvement. Otherwise, you really know nothing of importance. |
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Design |
· You need to start with the simplest concepts and tasks. Actually, the simplest concepts are often really boring. Learners prefer jumping into interesting tasks, then breaking them down into their components as it becomes understandably necessary.
· Before you can challenge learners with tasks, you need to “teach” (read “tell”) learners how to do them. Actually, it’s much more effective, for most of the American culture at least, to present challenges first. If learners can meet the challenge, you won’t have bored them by telling them things they already know. If learners can’t meet the challenge, they can ask for help. In asking for help, learners will value the information you give them and see its relevance immediately.
· You should give learners immediate feedback. Actually, delaying feedback as learners work through multi-step tasks is often much more effective. It entices learners to monitor their work more closely and make corrections without relying on external assessment and guidance. |
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