eLearning Weekly

In the next few weeks, I will be transitioning to a new job where I will be designing, developing, and implementing learning solutions. This is pretty similar to my current position, but my audience is changing drastically. At my current job, my audience consists of everyday working people. They often don’t have much experience with technology, and most of the training revolves around system tasks (ex. entering a delivery order in PeopleSoft). At my new job, my audience will be highly-technical, highly-educated professionals (ex. engineers with PhDs). I’m trying to be proactive and anticipate some of the differences I’ll see with this new audience. I think I’ve broken it down into the following chunks…

• Writing Style
  Content should be written for the right audience (ex. using technical jargon vs. writing content at a 6th grade level).
• Motivation
  Does the learner just want to know how to complete a task to do their job? Or are they dedicated to learning, knowing that it is beneficial for their career?
• Devices
  When working with a more technically-savvy audience you may be able to use newer technologies and utilize a wider variety of devices (ex. iPods, smartphones).

Am I missing anything? What other considerations are there for an audience’s learning preferences?

I really enjoyed Cammy Bean’s latest post, Writing Less Objectionable Learning Objectives. Cammy throws open the door for people to discuss how they communicate learning objectives when dealing with a typical (e)learning experience. It’s good to see several different opinions from some respected people in our field - and it made me sit and reflect on how I communicate learning objectives. I hate to say it, but I think this is one of those areas where it’s easy to get stuck in a rut. I don’t know if we’ll ever get everybody to agree on a best practice, but I think it’s healthy that there’s always a discussion about it; this will help all of us move in the right direction over time.

So, how do I communicate learning objectives? I’m glad you asked. I admit that many of my eLearning courses simply show a list of objectives to the learner on the second page of the course. For example, the first page presents a description of the course (in paragraph form), and then the objectives would be shown on the next page in the “Upon completion of this course, the learner will be able to…” format. Pretty boring, huh? We’re in the process of migrating to a new course model where the learner will be presented with a mission at the start of the course. They will be assigned tasks that they need to carry out in order to successfully complete their mission. We’re also introducing a secret agent character with our new course model to guide the learner through the experience. (We need to be careful and use the character sparingly; we don’t want the learner to develop a hatred for an annoying character similar to Clippy). I think this will make our courses seem less academic and more…game-like. Again, we may have not achieved the best possible way to communicate learning objectives, but we’re trying different options. And that’s better than staying in a rut, right?

(Make sure to take a look at the comments on Cammy’s post; there’s good stuff there, too.)