E-learning: what is it good for?

First of all, before we get started, let me just clarify that I am not talking about e-learning in the broadest sense, encompassing live online sessions and all sorts of online collaboration. I prefer to refer to these as learning technologies, perhaps even 'digital learning'. No, what I�m referring to in this post is the use of interactive self-study materials, particularly in the workplace. For most learning professionals that I meet, that is what they mean when they use the term e-learning.

The problem is that the term e-learning, used in this specific context, carries too much baggage. When it was first coined, in the late 1990s, it promised a brave new world of engaging, multimedia-rich learning freed from the confines of the classroom, providing unlimited accessibility, flexibility and scalability.

And in many cases it fulfilled the promise. However, the majority of people that I encounter associate it with tedious tell-and-test slide shows that they must sit through whether they like it or not. E-learning as a label is, I�m afraid, broken.

At the same time, digital learning, in the broadest sense, is having a huge impact on our lives. Billions of people of all ages use YouTube, Wikipedia, SlideShare and all sorts of other tools to access web articles, blog posts, videos, podcasts and infographics to find out just about everything they could ever want to know. If we are looking for a model for information delivery in organisations, we just need to look at the way this works in our personal lives.

E-learning is not a great medium for delivering information. If it was, we would see it all over the Internet and be using it every day, but that is obviously not the case. In the past five years, I have not once recommended to a client that they use e-learning to deliver information and I cannot imagine doing so in the future.

So, what is e-learning good for? Actually, quite a few things, as long as they are primarily interactive in nature and we don�t call them e-learning:

Drill and practice: Interactive learning materials are brilliant at providing you with repetitive practice in a wide range of skills (typing, mathematical problem-solving, etc.) and the opportunity to rehearse important knowledge sets (vocabulary, terminology, visual recognition, etc.). Of course computers aren�t good for all sorts of skills practice but where they do work, they work wonderfully. Drill and practice is ripe for gamification.

Exploration: Interactive learning materials allow you to explore all sorts of objects and environments in 2D or 3D, whether that�s oil rigs, historical events, aero engines or organisation structures.

Performance support: Interactive learning materials can help you troubleshoot problems and make informed decisions in situations in which there are too many variables and options to easily consider. Learning is incidental here, but may happen anyway.

Discovery: Interactive learning materials can present you with problem-solving situations with which you can interact and gain insights into important principles and processes. Case studies, scenarios, simulations, strategy games: they come in varying levels of complexity and realism, but the idea is essentially the same - just make them as realistic and challenging as you can.

Assessment: Interactive learning materials can test you on your knowledge and, in some cases, understanding. Yes, there are limits in what you can achieve given current technology, but developments in AI will mean we will soon be able to do a lot more than multiple-choice quizzes.

Tutorials: We have to be careful with this last option, because I don�t mean tell-and-test slide shows. I mean something that has the character of a real tutorial, with continuous dialogue between the learner and the software. Materials like this were relatively common in the 1980s but rarely seen now. The nearest I�ve got to reproducing the feel of a tutorial was with Oppia software, which I used within the More Than Blended Learning taster course.

As you can see, there is plenty of on-going potential to create genuinely interactive learning materials that provide an experience that cannot be achieved with multimedia alone. We have the tools we need but, as ever, the problem is not with the tools but with the way we use them. Hesitate before you import more slides into your development tool. Think: how can I enrich learning through interactivity?

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