Tips & Tricks

I'm passionate about good instructional design, and about helping others to create great e-learning experiences, so I'm delighted to be taking over the Tips & Tricks section of the Mohive newsletter. In this and coming articles I'll do my best to offer you a variety of concise, easy-to-follow tips that you can try out straight away.

Having a rapid e-learning publishing tool in house provides trainers and SMEs with the opportunity to create high quality bespoke e-learning, previously only achievable by outsourcing to high-end developers. However, it's one thing having an array of templates for creating say, multiple choice, sorting, drag and drop and exploring exercises, right at your fingertips. It's quite another, knowing how to use them to best effect. Actually, I believe it's really not that difficult to create brilliant e-learning using a rapid tool with just a little knowhow and confidence gained through practice. If you follow this series of Tips & Tricks, I'll provide you with some of my best tips while you cultivate confidence by practicing!

"There's a lot we can learn from the classroom trainer when it comes to creating e-learning that must deliver results."

Learning from classroom trainers

In this first article I'd like consider what lessons an e-learning designer can take from the classroom trainer. Can I hear alarm bells ringing in some of your heads? "Why is she talking about classroom training? We want to reduce our training costs and time to market by doing more online!" In fact, I believe there's quite a lot we can learn from the classroom trainer when it comes to creating e-learning that must deliver results (although, ironically, this capability can get temporarily lost by a seasoned classroom trainer when they first transition into the e-learning world).

Be open to new ways of working

I think one challenge is letting go of what we're familiar with and opening our minds to new ways of working. Here's what I mean by that. When first tasked with creating an e-learning module we tend to draw on what we are familiar with, what's in our comfort zone, and often that sort of thinking leads to static screens with text and pictures and we find it hard to break out of the mould. Such content might be accurate and well written but is it going to hook your learner in?

Grab attention, then keep it!

Think for a moment about a really good classroom training session you attended. What was it that drew you in and helped you learn? It probably started with a bang! Something that really grabbed your attention. I'm not talking about the location of the fire exits here (though a little on module navigation wouldn't go a miss if your audience is fairly new to e-learning), I'm thinking of attention grabbers like a popular myth exploded, a scenario with a problem to solve, or an unusual perspective on the subject. A learner will be much more motivated to continue if you start with something exciting like this, instead of the more familiar approach that comes to mind: "Welcome to this module on… When you have completed this module you will understand how to…" (Yawn). Of course it’s still a good idea to give your learners some flavour of what to expect, but try and think of an attention grabbing way to get it across.

"A learner will be much more motivated to continue if you start with a popular myth exploded, a scenario with a problem to solve, or an unusual perspective on the subject."

What's the fuss about structure?

Here's another tip from the classroom - give your course some structure. Does the classroom trainer always make it clear when you are moving onto a new topic? Perhaps there is a roundup of the key points, maybe a break, and then an introduction to the next topic. This is another golden opportunity to set the scene and grab attention. Do you see where I am going with this one? If your learner can't work out where they are in the module, other than by checking the menu, then there is something amiss (take away the headings in this article and you'll get a feel for what I mean).

Learners will find it easier to grasp your content if it is broken down into bite-sized chunks. End of section summaries can help to reinforce the learning. But while a list of bullet points is enough to get the learner reaching for the 'next' button (or flicking through the workshop manual to see if there is anything interesting coming up), a more interesting participative sum up exercise (sorting 'Dos and Don'ts' for example) might just keep their attention. Perhaps too there's a closing point that provides some form of link with the next topic, whetting our appetite to continue and giving us some context around what is to come and how it relates to what we've just covered?

An alternative to 'explaining'

The best classroom trainers don't stand at the front of the room and 'explain'. No, they are more like facilitators, giving out enough clues to help students work things out for themselves, and feel good about it as a result! So how can we translate this technique when creating e-learning?

Think about what the trainer actually does. S/he might pose a question and invite responses from the audience. But s/he won't tell students when they are wrong; instead s/he will try to guide students to the right answers by encouraging them to think about the consequences of taking a particular action. Of course, e-learning doesn't present the opportunity for two-way conversation like in the classroom, but we can generate plausible, typical courses of action with good or not-so-good consequences. With just a little thought you can go from a screen of otherwise uninspiring explanation to an engaging, challenging multiple-choice scenario based question, with useful feedback options - all with the same underlying learning content.

It's all in the question(s)

Here are just a few more classroom techniques that translate into effective e-learning.

The common theme you will see here is that we have taken what could otherwise have become passive, linear ‘text and picture’ content, and thought of ways to get the learner to engage with it by posing questions - achieving the learning through actively interacting with the response options.

That’s it for my first 'Tip's & Tricks'. I look forward to sharing more with you in later newsletters. If you have any suggestions for future articles please e-mail me at the address below.

Patricia Kyle Director

LearnAbilityTM and Partner, Mohive pkyle@learnability.net