A working prototype has simple placeholder graphics, but the clicking and dragging work as they will in the final activity. Build a quick-and-dirty version of the activity of your dreams, and use it to convert everyone on your team.

Here’s a two-part video that shows what I mean. Leif Cederblom of SmartBuilder compares two prototypes of the same activity and highlights the goals and benefits of prototyping.

Part 1: The conventional drag-and-drop: busywork that’s easy to forget

Part 2: A more realistic activity that’s more likely to change behavior

Try both prototypes yourself and see how the contrast between the two underscores the power of the more realistic activity. No amount of polish would make the drag-and-drop more than a rote activity, while the “leave the lab” prototype is effective even in its raw, prototype form.

If some type is too small, click the “full” icon in the player and you’ll get the big-screen version.

The presentation is an adaptation of a talk I’ve been giving at the Australian Flexible Learning Framework conferences. It’s designed to help people break free of the traditional information-first approach to instructional design.

One of the challenges with using the approach described in the presentation is that it usually requires more design time. Since many clients don’t actually measure the effectiveness of their materials and just want information put online quickly, it can be hard to argue for immersive scenarios. Have you successfully used scenarios? Did you have to convince stakeholders to let you use them?

For a quick overview of the Action Mapping process described in this interaction, see Be an elearning action hero. For in-depth help with applying this process to your own materials, check out the Elearning Blueprint.

How I designed and built the scenario

Some people avoid creating branching scenarios because they seem too complex. In case it’s helpful, here’s the approach I took.

I kept track of the branching by writing the dialog and results in an informal flowchart. I used OmniGraffle for the flowchart, but you could use any tool that builds basic flow charts or just draw one by hand. Click the image to see a larger version.

As I built the slides, I wrote the slide number by each node of the flowchart for future reference. Then I tested the interaction by following each branch of the flowchart, marking the path with a crayon so I could see at a glance which paths had been checked.

To produce the slides and SWF, I used Keynote 08 (not Keynote 09!). Keynote is a slide editor for the Mac. You could create the same interaction with PowerPoint and a conversion tool that supports branching.

The images of Allison used in the Flash come from one of several sets of fun stock photos designed for use in scenarios, available from ElearningArt.

The “order taker” meter is a static PNG in three versions (“order taker,” midpoint, and “instructional designer”). The learner’s path determines which of these graphics is displayed, just as the path determines which slide is displayed. There are no variables involved.

The scenario in this post is about as long as I’d want to build using a presentation tool like Keynote or PowerPoint. For longer or more complex branching, I’d look at a tool like SmartBuilder, which would let me put multiple results on one “slide” and would display a flowchart of the interaction.

What’s your favorite way to guide your client or to design a branched scenario? Please share your tips in the comments.

Seminars

Webinars to come: Starting in early 2010, I’ll offer some lively, interactive webinars. I’ll announce them in this blog and look forward to seeing your name pop up in the meeting chat some day soon. (To make sure you don’t miss an announcement, you might want to sign up to receive the blog as emails or in your feed reader.)

I’d like to meet you in Australia! I’ll give workshops on how to dump the drone at a series of events organized by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. The schedule:

Nov. 10: Darwin
Nov. 12-13: Adelaide
Nov. 18: Hobart
Nov. 20: Perth
Nov. 26-27: Brisbane
Dec. 3-4: Melbourne
Dec. 7-8: Sydney

You can find details about each conference here. The Knowledge Tree has published an audio interview with me about the main message of the workshops (basically, “No more information dumps!”).

Learning and Skills Group: I enjoyed giving an Action Mapping webinar for the UK Learning and Skills Group on Oct. 8. Thanks to all who participated for your great questions and comments!

1. What do these people need to do?

A. Put out the fire

B. Describe the techniques used to extinguish a fire

2. What does this woman need to do to stay in business?

A. Sell flowers

B. Explain the principles of the flower-selling process

3. This young man wants you to give him money. Which objective are you more likely to fund?

A. Build a home for a displaced family in Sudan

B. Describe how to build a home for a displaced family in Sudan

Learning objectives are wimpy

A typical learning objective focuses on what each person supposedly needs to know, ignoring whether this knowledge will actually lead to useful action.

Instead, to create elearning that changes real-world behavior, we have to first identify what people need to do, and only then decide if there’s anything that they need to know.

Identify the action, then the knowledge

Many people start their design by writing learning objectives. Instead, it’s helpful to first choose a business goal for your project and then identify each “action” needed to reach that goal. (See action mapping and the Elearning Blueprint for lots more on this.)

What’s an action?

An action:

• Takes place in the real world, not inside someone’s head
• Takes place on the job, not during a training event
• Justifies a paycheck

“Put out the fire” is an action, because it takes place in the real world and helps us achieve our goal of a fire-free environment. We don’t hire firefighters because we want them to “describe techniques used to put out a fire.”

Follow the money

A lot of us have been told that an objective like “define pathogen” is good because it can be measured. But are you willing to pay someone to “define pathogen” for you? Or would you rather have them “kill pathogens on imported fruit,” such as the apple you’re about to eat?

Actions lead to lively activities

A course ruled by conventional learning objectives like “define pathogen” will have simple fact checks and Jeopardy games. A course dedicated to supporting real-world behaviors like “kill pathogens on imported fruit” will be more likely to have realistic simulations, such as an activity that requires learners to assess a crate of apples for possible pathogens and take the appropriate actions.

Yes, we have to make sure that our learners know what a pathogen is. But action-based materials will go far beyond that learning objective and help learners practice the behaviors that will make a real difference in the world.

To identify what learners need to know, we first have to identify what they need to do. Only then can we determine if the problem really is a lack of knowledge. And by designing our material around real-world actions rather than just knowledge, we’ll create lean, lively elearning.

Photos © iStockPhoto

At first, “elearning” followed “instructional design” in a sad slope downward. But in the last couple of years, “elearning” has perked up again, while its friend “instructional design” continues its descent into obscurity.

Maybe fewer people are searching for “instructional design” because it’s no longer a new concept (“usability” suffered a similar decline). Or, possibly, fewer people are searching for “instructional design” because fewer people care about it.

Did “rapid” kill ADDIE?

Here’s what can happen to the ADDIE approach when we care more about speed than anything else.

1. Analysis: “The client wants a course, therefore the client needs a course.”

2. Design: “Let’s use the template we used for the widget course, but with a blue background.”

3. Development: “Clean up the client’s PowerPoint slides and add a Jeopardy quiz.”

4. Implementation: “Put it on the LMS.”

5. Evaluation: “Did everyone look at every screen?”

I’m not saying rapid tools are evil. You can use them to create powerful elearning. It’s rapid design that’s the culprit, because it’s not really instructional design. It’s just content presentation. We end up putting lipstick on a pig.

But ADDIE takes too long!

When we treat ADDIE as a step-by-step process, it’s inefficient. By the time we’ve created our 39-page cross-referenced design document, we could have delivered a prototype of the course and gotten feedback from the client and learners, as Sumeet Moghe points out in his description of an agile approach to elearning design.

It would also help if we let go of our obsession with looks. Unfortunately, a text-only branching scenario that profoundly changes your employees’ approach to complex sales won’t get an award—it won’t even be submitted. The award submission will be a glitzy “course”/slideshow with redundant narration, flying pie charts, and a game-show quiz that has little effect on people’s performance.

But what about the lemurs?

I’m not saying that the Google Trends chart proves that instructional design is getting short shrift in elearning. I posted the chart because it happens to be a visual expression of my concern. There could be just as much correlation between the two searches as there is between “elearning design” and “lemurs” (which, happily, shows no worrying trends):

The researchers used Camtasia Studio to create two presentations on information security. The audio narration was the same in both presentations. The visuals were the same, too, except one presentation used an average of 3.4 animations per slide to make bullet points, words, or images enter at different times. The other animation had static slides—the information was simply there.

After viewing the presentation, students answered a multiple-choice quiz. Students who saw the flying-bullet-points presentation scored 71.43%, while students who saw the more static version scored 81.98%, a statistically significant difference.

What does this mean?

To me, this suggests that flying bullet points are not only annoying and gratuitous, they’re so annoying and gratuitous that they distract from the content. This isn’t a surprise.

However, this doesn’t mean that all animation is bad. The published study doesn’t show the presentation, but the researchers’ multiple-choice quiz strongly suggests that they presented simple facts. Here’s a typical question from the quiz:

7. Most computer crime is attempted by:

1. Competitors
2. Employees
3. Outside hackers
4. Foreign governments

It looks like learners could have read a cheap and simple PDF to get the same facts, in which case I wonder why the information was delivered as a presentation at all.

Bigger concern: Why use elearning for this?

Too often, elearning is viewed as simply a way to deliver information, and it looks like the researcher’s presentation has that goal. But elearning’s strength is in its ability to challenge learners with realistic interactions that make them interpret and apply new information. Animation could have a role in such an interaction—for example, it might be needed to duplicate a process in the real world.

I wish the researchers had also tested a short, concise text document, because it looks like that’s all they really needed.

If we really just need to deliver information, we can send out an email or a link to an intranet page that presents the facts clearly and concisely. We can then use our elearning tool or LMS for the quiz, and we’ll be done in less than half the time it would have taken to craft a slick elearning module—plus we don’t have to give a second’s thought to whether we should make the bullet points fly.

Flashback: Like this topic? You might like these posts from previous years:

Is a course really the answer?
Common mistakes when writing multiple-choice questions

Small victories like these make me love to travel. Every day I move from clueless to confident as I tackle questions like, “How do I peel and eat this hardboiled egg using only this tiny spoon?”

I find the answers through experimentation and observation—there’s no one telling me what to do at every step. And as a result I love the learning I’ve done and want to learn more.

How can we help our learners feel the same sense of achievement?

1. Let them figure some of it out

Often, we tell our learners everything they need to know, and then test them on it.

“Here’s the correct way to present our product to a cost-conscious prospect,” we say. “Now answer these simple multiple-choice questions to prove that you’ve been conscious for the last five minutes.”

Instead, we can give the learner a few pointers and then put them in a realistic, challenging scenario.

For example, we could have an experienced salesperson offer some recommendations for dealing with cost-conscious prospects. Then we could put the learner at a fictional lunch table next to a penny-pinching but valuable prospect.

A branching scenario lets the learner try various approaches. The prospect’s reactions and a sale progress bar show the learner if they’re moving toward a sale, and if necessary, feedback provides more pointers. And through it all, the learner knows that the prospect could get up and walk away.

2. Let them risk failure

Without the risk of failure, success doesn’t mean much. And our failures are memorable teachers.

If someone had told me before I went to Barcelona, “Don’t touch the produce,” I would have been spared one of my more memorable lessons, helpfully provided by a horrified shop owner.

Importantly, my lesson also reinforced a bigger, more useful rule: “Watch the locals before acting.” I made a mistake that proves the usefulness of the rule, so I’m more likely to follow the rule in the future.

A realistic elearning scenario lets learners make the kinds of mistakes that prove the rule. The trick is to make sure learners don’t get frustrated or discouraged. One way is to offer optional, context-sensitive help.

3. To help, show instead of telling

My travel mantra is “Follow the locals.” If most of the locals turn left when they get off the train, I’ll turn left. In the same way, we can use models to guide learners to the right decisions.

For example, if the learner in our scenario makes a common mistake by criticizing our competitor’s product, we could have the sales progress bar show that the learner has lost ground. Then we could have a (real or fictional) experienced salesperson show in a flashback how they avoided that mistake with a similar prospect.

If the learner follows the model’s example, they get closer to the sale. If they continue to bash the competitor, the prospect walks. This is far more effective than simply telling learners, “Don’t criticize our competitors,” although we’ll want to include that point in a summary of the scenario.

4. Have them use real-world job aids

Another way to help learners succeed is to give them the job aids that they’ll have in real life. Every tourist needs a map, and every staff member needs a guide for a complex procedure, or a list of pointers to prepare for a challenge.

For example, the tips that we give the learner before their lunch with the prospect could be provided as the real “cheat sheet” that our sales people use in the field to prepare for challenging situations. This makes the scenario more realistic and encourages learners to continue using the aid in the real world.

No fancy software required

This kind of scenario could be produced using photos and a rapid development tool that supports branching. If your tool can’t keep track of a variable (the sales progress bar), you could instead display a simple positive, neutral, or negative indicator to show the learner how their decision has affected the likelihood of a sale.

What do you think? Is this too much trouble? It takes a little more time to design this kind of material. How can we convince our clients to give us that time?

(If your organization blocks YouTube, you might be able to watch the video here on BlipTV.)

This video introduced me to the world of roller coaster simulators, such as this inexpensive one for Mac and Windows. I unfortunately don’t have time to experiment with new software, but if you do, please let us know how it works for you in the comments.

Are there any other inexpensive ways to turn statistics into a first-person adventure?

At the start of an elearning project, your client will often give you more information than will be useful. Some of it will go into your elearning material, some will go into job aids, and some will get cut. Here’s one way to track what happens to your client’s favorite content.

1. Agree on the goal and activities.

Make sure the client and you agree on what the materials are supposed to accomplish and, therefore, what content is likely to be included. Action mapping can be handy for this.

I start the content-sorting process when we’ve agreed on a high-level outline that briefly describes each activity and suggests what information will be needed.

2. Copy the client’s content files.

I work from copies so I can mark them up. The originals go into an “originals” folder.

3. Choose a place to dump the relevant info.

Your client has probably given you several files in different formats. Often, you need to pull bits of content from all of these files. I put the information I’ve pulled into one document, either an action map or a Word file.

Action map: For mapping, I use Compendium, which lets you paste text, PowerPoint slides, PDFs, and web sites in the map. That way, I can link the raw content directly to the activity it will support. This makes it easy to locate the relevant information when I write the storyboard. Other mind mapping software also lets you include documents; if you have a favorite program, please recommend it in the comments section.

Word dump: If I’m not building a Compendium map, I put all the relevant content into one Word file.

4. Move the info into your content dump and color code it in the source doc.

Write summaries, take screenshots (on Windows, I use SnagIt), and copy and paste the relevant content into your action map or master Word dump.

When the source document is a Word file, I mark it up as I pull information out of it, highlighting text to show what I did with it. For example, you could use these colors:

Grey: Not used anywhere (course or job aids). I might add a comment to remind myself why I’m not using that content.

Green: Will be used somewhere in some form. This means I’ve copied and pasted this info into the action map or master Word file. I usually add a comment to remind myself where the information will be used, like “quick reference card” or “eavesdropping scenario.”

When I’m done, everything in the source file is marked either grey or green, and there are comments recording my decisions. Later on, if the client asks what I did with a specific bit of content in a particular file, I can open that file and answer immediately.

For PowerPoint decks, I often don’t mark the slides as I pull them, because it’s usually easy for me to remember what I’ve done with a slide.

5. Paste the pulled information where you’ll need it.

Paste the information in your action map or Word content dump in an order that makes sense to you. For example, if you’re writing a linear course, your Word content dump might follow the course organization.

As I paste, I usually add comments reminding myself where the information came from. If I’m using a Word doc, I also add headings to make it easy to group information by activity.

6. Identify missing or conflicting information.

Now that you have all related information in one place, it’s easy to see what’s missing or conflicting. Ask the subject matter expert (SME) for help by sending him or her specific questions (not your content dump). For example, you could send an email pointing out that Carol’s PPT said X, while the IT policy document said Y. Which is correct?

7. Write the storyboard and draft the job aids.

Write the storyboard and job aids, incorporating the client’s information in its most useful form. This usually isn’t a word-for-word copy of the original content.

For example, a paragraph that warns staff against sending account information over unsecured email could become a scenario in which someone sends an unsecured email and exposes a client’s account information. You might try to replace as much text as possible with an activity or scenario.

As you use information, mark it or (more satisfying) delete it from your map or content dump. You might also find that some of the information you pulled isn’t relevant after all. You might want to mark it as grey or otherwise record your decision in case the client asks about it.

8. Send the storyboard and job aids for review.

It’s a good idea to have the SME and other stakeholders review your storyboard and draft job aids before you develop anything further. Send them just the storyboard and job aid drafts. The marked-up source documents and content dump are just for your records.

I’ve gotten the best results by writing very specific SME questions directly in the storyboard and highlighting those questions in yellow. Ideally, the SME answers the question by typing right there in the document.

At the end of a project, I save both the marked-up source documents and the unmarked originals. If the client wants to update the elearning materials later on, it can be helpful to have a record of the decisions I made during the first round.

How do you keep track of details? Does your team have an official process in place?

The blueprint is an interactive job aid that helps anyone design lean, lively elearning. It can be used by one person or an entire team—including subject matter experts. And because it’s based on Action Mapping, the blueprint helps you create materials that improve business performance.

With the blueprint, you can:

• Create action-packed elearning with your existing tools
• Streamline your instructional design process
• Confidently make design decisions that are supported by learning research
• Tie your elearning to business strategy—show that you’re indispensable!

Worksheets and other aids help you immediately apply what you’re learning to your current project.

Get better results from subject matter experts

Want your SMEs and designers to work together more effectively? With a team license for the blueprint, they’ll all use the same process and follow the same recommendations.

For less than the cost of sending one person to an instructional design workshop, you can improve the skills of everyone on your team. And rather than sitting in a class, they’ll learn by doing, right on the job.

Curious? Find out more and take a tour of the blueprint here.