Do you remember that 60’s song from Aretha Franklin, “Think”?
That song pops in my head every time someone asks me “What makes good e-learning?”
e-Learning should make people think.
That’s where the Aretha Franklin connection comes in, but there’s one more piece that’s required for “good” e-learning: feel.
Good e-learning makes people think and feel.
There is lots of e-learning out there that makes people think.
It gives them something to differentiate, reason, conceptualize, create, decide, deduce, infer, discern, judge, speculate, act, form, do, etc.
But, too often, those “somethings” are in the form of “tests” or “quizzes” provided after a bunch of information has been passively provided in the form of bullet points, talking heads, voice overs, captions, etc., that the “learner” reads/watches/listens to.
What is really being tested is the ability to remember for a few minutes what was read/watched/listened to. The “thinking” involved is trying to remember what you just read/watched/listened to in order to correctly answer the question so that you can get credit for having taken the e-learning.
That’s okay if your goal is to:
- Ensure someone can remember something for 5 minutes
- Give a check mark for completing a course.
But if you want people to really learn something, you have to inject a “feel” component into the mix. You need to get people emotionally attached to what it is you want them to learn.
We’re probably all familiar with the terms “interesting” and “engaging”. That’s usually high on the list of someone requesting e-learning. “Make it interesting!” “Can you make it like a game?” “Put lots of graphics and pictures in it.” “Make it interactive.”
What the requester is saying is, “I want the learner to have an emotional attachment.”
What the requester is really saying is, “I want the learner to only have a “feel-good” emotional attachment.”
But is that the way we learn in the real world? Do we do our best learning when there is no risk involved in our choices, where there are no consequences to our actions, when every step in a task is performed flawlessly – and we know it before we go to the next step?
Performing in the real world is fraught with emotions that aren’t all “feel-good”. We get annoyed, confused, hurt, upset, frustrated, perplexed, exasperated, shocked – all valuable emotions in the quest to learn something.
It is what makes the learning stick! We remember when we blew up the lab because we mixed the wrong chemicals. We remember when the movie didn’t show on time because we didn’t have the lamp in the projector. We remember when the computer didn’t boot because we plugged the RAM in the wrong socket.
So, having all the “feel-good” emotions are necessary – you want your e-learning to be interesting and engaging – but good e-learning needs to contain the not-so-feel-good emotions, too.
After all, isn’t that how real learning happens?
Think about it.
Until next time…
Scott Nipper 
Interesting. And yes, I think we more often can remember our failures (or futile, miserable attempts at something) rather than successes. But how to spin something with positive intentions bad – purposefully – without making a mockery of everything? I don’t know!
The beauty of e-learning is that you can incorporate all the bad ramifications of mistakes without any real harm. You can simulate the risk of a xenon lamp exploding in your face because you mishandled it and the consequences of ending up in the hospital without any of that actually happening!
You don’t want to intentionally make a challenge impossible or so difficult the learner gets frustrated and quits. But if you put a challenge in the context of their day-to-day job, so that it’s has meaning for them, and at a skill level where they should be, or you want them to be – challenges can get progressively harder and draw upon knowledge and experience gained in the previous challenge – it can be a very positive and motivating experience for the learner.
And give them options, like a hint button that shows up after one or two unsuccessful attempts – or perhaps the hint is in the feedback. Or, have a “show me” button that walks them through the steps. There are a number of ways to “help” them but with the idea that they are the ones controlling when they ask for help.
I’m not sure if that answered your question or not but thanks for the post!