I really always read and appreciate your ideas as they are very practical and simple to understand and apply. It is the simple things that make a better learning experience. I often don’t comment but let me tell you this has been my favorite post and I keep reading it over and over again, simply because it makes so much sense.

I recently attended a very good classroom training session where I think i was a learner who had come in to gain whatever i could. I was low on confidence and afraid to try things even if i knew something lest I spoil something. The trainer was really excellent and the course actually boosted my confidence every time I understood why something was done the way it was and also when I was able to do a certain hands-on exercise on my own. Initially i was one of the slowest to get through an exercise, and by the end of the training I was competing to finish my assignment as fast as I could. This was a great boost. I relate to this post so much now because I think I’ve gone through the stages you describe. That added so much to my experience as an Instructional Designer that I recommend more ID attend good classroom sessions and go through the process a learner goes through.

Thanks very much and keep sharing such good articles!

Sreya

It’s true also that SMEs and IDs get put off from branching scenarios for various reasons – mostly effort! but i do also think that a scenarios can be effective as a simple scene setter (“…a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”) – relatively easy to write. The interactivity isn’t in the clicking, but the engagement with the real world, or of painting a picture.

It’s easy to blame this on our tools (“I can only create multiple-choice questions, so of course there’s only one correct answer!”). But if we break out of the standard elearning mold, we can see more creative ways to use these tools that allow for ambiguity, complexity, and independent judgment.

Branching scenarios are an obvious way to do this but are often considered too time-consuming to write. So instead of spending a few more hours of our time in the design phase, we waste the time of thousands of learners who passively click through a “course” and learn very little.

One insight I’ve gained as I’ve been plowing through Ten Steps to Complex Learning is that there are two kinds of information involved: the procedural kind, which you apply in the same way each time, and the non-recurrent kind (as authors van Merrienboer and Kirschner call it), which you apply differently for each task.

So the bank officer, talking with a new customer, uses procedural knowledge to operate the banking system, take in customer date, open accounts, and so on. The officer uses non-recurrent skills in identifying the customer’s needs, responding to questions, and so forth.

Often, in complex learning, there’s no single right answer. Rather, there’s a range of acceptable responses, a situation where a flexible approach will succeed much more often than a host of click-next-to-continue screens.

I am an academic and have read much in the instructional design and elearning categories. As an English teacher, I know that ideas like “show instead of tell” are important reminders of ideals that date back to Socrates. It becomes necessary to find fresh ways to convey the accepted wisdom.

This blog presents the accepted wisdom in a fresh way, weaving in real-life lessons from travel experience. There is no need to cite any references. Certainly no modern writer was the first to claim these principles.

I believe there are annotated bibliographies of important texts on elearning and instructional design out on the web — can anyone help point out where avid learners could find such a list?

Best,
Eric

While apparently I agree with the authors you refer to, I haven’t read them and therefore feel no need to cite them as the source of what I’ve written. The ideas in the article seem to me to be common sense.