One of the account managers in my office just sent me an interesting email. He stated that his experience with self-paced learning materials has been ‘that it needs a lot of…hand holding to go with it to be effective’. Unfortunately, I am sure that many feel this way when it comes to self-paced learning. Why would that be? There are many reasons that eLearning courses could fail; however, based on my experiences, here are the 3 main points I believe this person has made this conclusion.
1. Communication Methodology Ineffective
Whether you are teaching in a traditional classroom setting or designing an eLearning course, you, as the teacher, MUST be a master of the material. Failure to know the material is a surefire way to confuse your learners. Someone who has ‘mastered the material’ is able to do 2 key things regardless of the learning environment: They are able to communicate the material in numerous ways to make sure each student understands the subject content and they are able to predict the questions their learners will ask.
In a traditional classroom environment, it is much easier to communicate with your audience because you see their faces and can react accordingly. You can ask if anyone has questions. You can reiterate information in a multi-faceted manner. You can take a break so your students can clear their heads…and so forth. In an asynchronous environment, these things are much more difficult to attain. Therefore, it is absolutely vital that you have mastered the material so that you can incorporate the proper elements to effectively share the information. As stated before within this blog, set the mood and incorporate things that make learning an adventure. Use storytelling, music, games and other means to grab their attention…and, make absolutely sure, the learners are in complete control of the course.
2. Lack of Learning Objectives
Whether you are in a traditional learning environment or an online environment, you must know the purpose of your course. If you don’t know the purpose, your learning audience certainly will not know it. If you have mastered the subject material, you know what your students must grasp in order to succeed. Regardless of the learning environment, make it a point to tell your students what they must know.
Think back to your high school or college days. Most of us we’re given reading assignments and told there would be a quiz at the end of the week. So, you would read the book and highlight the ‘important’ parts. Unfortunately, you didn’t know the truly important parts, so you ended up highlighting the entire book. Although, you worked to understand the reading material, you may not have ascertained what your teacher thought was important. As a result, the quiz came and you didn’t know the answers to the questions. Why? The learning objectives were not made clear. You worked hard and made it through the book, but, based on the quiz, you failed. Remember how you felt after the quiz? You probably thought to yourself, ‘What a waste of time.’
What would have happened had your teacher given you clear objectives? What if your teacher said the purpose of reading this book is for you to demonstrate your ability to find the main themes within the book? You would have read with that purpose in mind. You would have worked to demonstrate that ability. When the quiz came, you would have been prepared. For this reason, when teaching in any environment, tell your students what they need to be able to do when finished with a course and give them the ability to prove to themselves they understand it (i.e. knowledge checks, quizzes, etc).
3. Failure to Engage Your Audience
This is what I’ve discussed at length within the previous posts of this blog, so I won’t spend too much time discussing this point. To summarize the other posts…if you bore your audience, they won’t respond. If you fail to engage them, you will lose them. Few people can learn dry materials in a dry manner; however, if you capture your learners’ imaginations, you can teach them the phone book. Always incorporate the culture of the day in which you are teaching…
When you fail in any of these three ways, you are no longer designing an eLearning course. You are designing eWaste. You are wasting your time as well as your learners’ time. The results will be less than what you (and your client’s) expect. Your learners will be dissatisfied because their performance and it all stems from you. You, as a teacher/eLearning developer, are only as successful as your students. When they fail, you fail. When they succeed, you succeed.
Filed under: eLearning General | Tagged: adult learning, eLearning
