A good argument for those who are reluctant to take online courses is to ask whether they have learned anything from YouTube or a webinar. Typically, the answer is yes, and I’m all for this means of learning. This form of education has been labelled distance education, which we can’t argue that it isn’t. But information can be broken down into bite-sized pieces and scattered willy nilly all over the net, which tends to make a thorough understanding of a topic pretty much impossible.
To add to this challenge, the 70-20-10 rule assumes that you are also getting bits and pieces of critical information from various sources. But, was something left out? James thought Nancy had already done Task X and was good to go. Alice assumed Bob already gave you that information and were also up to speed.
As eLearning designers, who are also at times wearing the curriculum developer hat, ensure to include what is needed. There is a lot of discussion about bite-sized pieces of a lessons to address dropping attention spans. This is a necessity, but let’s remember to keep it all together for the convenience of our Learners.
Try these four methods to ensure all your bases are covered.
- House your content in an LMS and offer 10 minute lessons x 20 rather than one 200 minute course.
- Include a menu in your Captivate or Storyline course that greys out when the Learner has complete a lesson.
- Group similar videos together in YouTube so Learners know what they have to do and when they’re done, like Paul Wilson’s Captivate tutorials always do.
- Of course, write a simple downloadable outline for all your material so students can keep track of where they are.
These can be pretty obvious I know, but with all the informal piecemeal lessons out there it’s tempting to follow, forgetting that last, and never an out of the way corner, piece of the puzzle.
HKKS Education 