Imagine that you’re in a competition to overhaul an information-heavy course so it creates a real change in the world. What changes would you make? Check out this story-based presentation to see what one fictional company did.

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?

I climbed onto the tram, folded my ticket, and with some trepidation stuck it into an unmarked metal box. A happy ding announced my success. I did it! I correctly rode a tram in Amsterdam!

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 (more…)

U.S. Department of Justice staff are just like you and me—their retirement plan took a hit in the economic downturn. So when they got an email saying they might qualify for bailout money, some of them responded.

Unfortunately, the response required them to enter their account information at a fake website. Fortunately, the site was set up by their own employer. It was a test to see how many staff would fall for a phishing scheme.

Apparently, the test ended there. But the department could have turned the fake site into an interesting mini-lesson and used it to market their privacy course. Here’s one approach.

1. Separate the clueless from the savvy (more…)

“We shouldn’t use contractions because then people won’t take the content seriously.” Sound familiar?

Or maybe you’ve heard this: “We shouldn’t use contractions because they’re confusing for people who speak English as a second language.”

The result of these beliefs can be robotic chanting like the paragraph that you are reading now. I will not use contractions as I say that sometimes we become obsessed with details of grammar that are not actually useful, and as a result of this obsession we do not see the big picture. We are too busy enforcing small rules that do not help the learner, so we do not realize that our learner is thinking, “I will leave this course now because this text I am reading did not come from a human being.”

“They won’t take it seriously!”

Here’s what Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer have to say about “conversational” style in e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: (more…)

Probably everyone on your team agrees that elearning should be concise and lively. But does everyone agree on what “concise and lively” looks like? Here’s one way to get everyone on the same stylistic page.

Quantify, quantify

When we talk about writing style, we can get bogged down in personal preferences that are hard to communicate. But if we use readability statistics to quantify style, it’s easier to guide writers.

I’m not talking about the nearly useless “ninth-grade reading level” requirement in your corporate style guide. Instead, let’s look at the Reading Ease measurement that’s part of Word’s readability check. It’s a much more practical guide, especially if you compare your score with that of familiar publications.

What does this chart tell us? (more…)

Hooking learners with a simple story: Kevin Shadix describes why he uses a short story to motivate learners with a “teaser” scenario. He shows his scenario and asks, “Does a introductory story/scenario like this make you more likely to be interested? Or is it too goofy?” Stop by his blog and give him your feedback.

Your (teeny-tiny) brain on drugs: Join the Mouse Party to learn how drugs affect the brain. When you drag a drugged mouse to the x-ray-type machine, a narrator first explains what’s happening in the brain–and then text appears with the same info, reinforcing the narration. This seemed much more effective to me than simultaneous text and narration.

E-tired of e-hype? Reinvigorate your e-commitment to e-learning with this e-learning cheer!

You’re standing in the Daniel Boone National Forest wearing 97 chiggers and a banjo. You’re surrounded by old-time musicians, and they’re playing this tune:

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(“Natchez Under the Hill” as played by The Fatted Calf String Band)

You want to play along. But you’ve never heard the tune in your life. What do you do?

If you answered, “Pull out my copy of 10,273 American Old-Time Tunes and read from the book,” you would be very, very wrong.

To join the jam, you need to be able to play by ear–you need to be able to wing it. You need to adapt the rules you’ve learned from other old-time tunes to this new situation.

To transfer their learning to their jobs, your learners need to be able to wing it, too. They need to apply the rules they learn from your courses to new situations that you could never foresee.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to teach people to wing it. It’s easiest to just tell them what to do, but what we need to do is to teach them how to think.

What’s wrong with telling them what to do? (more…)

“I don’t have all 217 Jubumba Beanie Bops!” your child cries. “I only have 216! I have to have the last one! Just one more! Pleeease!!!”

Your child has been possessed by the Compulsive Completer, a beast that lives in all of us. From deep within our brains, it intones, “Must! Complete! Collection!” The closer we are to completion, the more insistent the demand.

You can harness the mighty force of the Completer to motivate your learners. Here’s one way to do it.

Consider offering a series of rewards throughout a course or other linear experience. Each reward builds on the last to create a desirable collection–all of it imaginary.

In a comment to Tom Kuhlmann’s post Motivate Your Learners with These 5 Simple Tips, Martin Kopsch describes the approach he took with home loan consultants: (more…)