5 ways to make linear navigation more interesting
This slideshow is an attempt to help people make the best of a limiting design. Regular readers know that I’m no fan of the Next button. (Are you new here? Try Why you really want to be short or Visual menus: Structure with style).
Thanks to Erik Wallen–his comment on Is a course really the answer? inspired this slideshow.
What did I leave out? What are your favorite ways to liven up linear learning?
(You can download a PDF of the slide show here.)
17 comments
on February 28th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
[...] Här har du en Slideshare av Cathy Moore. [...]
on February 29th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Thanks for this, Cathy – I needed a laugh today, and this gave me one while allowing me to feel virtuous about the fact that it was work-related!
on February 29th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Another twist on the complete a sentence would be to tell a joke, story, or anecdote with the punchline on the next slide.
Storytelling is tailor-made for this approach. This is why good books are called “page-turners” because you can’t wait to turn the page and see what happens next. A course can become a page turner through the use of “builds” where a concept adds an idea that answers a previously raised question, yet at the same time creates a new question. TV serials (like Lost and Heroes) have been doing this for years.
on February 29th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Great resource, Cathy, that I will certainly be referring back to for inspiration!
on February 29th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I love the Next button! It’s fun to see how fast I can click it to fly through the boring read-only eLearning I’m constantly subjected to.
I do most of my eLearning work in Articulate in a narrated format, and I prefer setting my course to auto advance except for screens that contain interactivity. From my perspective, the Next button is an annoyance best avoided. Imagine a classroom instructor asking “Are you ready for me to go on?” after EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of instruction. That would get old in a hurry, no? Well guess what, eLearning developers – it gets old in eLearning too!
The Next button in eLearning is equivalent to the Next Page button on a website. Deemed a best practice in the early days of the Web, but now rightly derided as trite, irritating, and completely unnecessary. The Next button in eLearning deserves to suffer the same fate.
You have my vote, Cathy. Whatever it is you’re running for.
on March 1st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
[...] 2008 Posted by B.J. Schone in Design, Development, eLearning. trackback Cathy Moore has a great blog post about the (in)famous Next button that is ever-present in eLearning courses. She suggests and [...]
on March 4th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Thanks to everyone for your comments.
Rick, you’re right that these are fiction techniques. I plan to steal more ideas from fiction in future posts.
Chris, I think one reason that the Next button continues to be popular is it gives the appearance of learner control–the learner can go as slowly or as quickly as they want. That doesn’t mean it’s the best solution. I often prefer regular-sized HTML pages with menus and embedded Flash, which means there’s more info on a single “page,” so the learner still controls the pace but isn’t clicking every nanosecond.
on March 4th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
I’d like to clear up a misconception that appeared in another blog. By saying we could compare & contrast from one slide to the next, I’m not saying we should choose two background colors and alternate from one to the other. I’m saying we should provide contrasting information.
Janet Clarey’s slideshow provides an example: on one slide we see how Charlene gets her info at home; on the next we see how she gets it at work.
on March 6th, 2008 at 1:46 am
[...] 5 Ways to Make Linear Navigation More Interesting There’s a great slideshow here that provides 5 great tips for making learners WANT to click that Next button. [...]
on March 6th, 2008 at 8:55 am
[...] botão avançar. Mas espere! Um curso assim não precisa ser necessariamente… chato. Veja aqui algumas dicas da Cathy Moore sobre como tornar a navegação linear interessante. Espero que [...]
on March 8th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Wait a minute! What!? You mean clicking “next” doesn’t count as interactivity. Oh no….
Another strategy is to use a story or narrative to support the program, leading learners through a mystery or adventure. The “A. Pintura: Art Detective” program offered by Eduweb is a good example.
on April 15th, 2008 at 5:54 am
[...] was particulalry taken with one or her posts, “5 ways to make linear navigation more interesting“. The included PowerPoint show is fantastic and I will be using it in my workplace to [...]
on April 16th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
[...] Moore heeft zich laten inspireren tot een presentatie die ideeën aanreikt om het klikken van de Next-button in een lineaire cursus interactiever [...]
on January 27th, 2009 at 9:13 am
[...] If you can, convert some of your text to graphics. This works really well if you have audio narration with your slides. In one of the slides, I took the bullet point info and made it look like a chat session. Get creative. Cathy also has some good tips on how to make your linear navigation more interesting. [...]
on January 28th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
[...] If you can, convert some of your text to graphics. This works really well if you have audio narration with your slides. In one of the slides, I took the bullet point info and made it look like a chat session. Get creative. Cathy also has some good tips on how to make your linear navigation more interesting. [...]
on March 20th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Great tips…can help a lot of boring click-next courses becoming little interesting. Thanks
on August 9th, 2009 at 6:24 pm
[...] August 10, 2009 What a terrific title for a presentation! And Cathy Moore’s blog post on 5 ways to make linear navigation more interesting has the set of presentation slides that go with this great title (and [...]