E-learning or e-reading? How online courses often fail (Part 1)

Each year there are more online courses out there – but how many of them are actually fostering learning? The ASTD 2009 annual report suggests that between 2006 and 2008 e-learning investments grew by nearly a tenth, from 30.3% to 32.3% (Paradise, 2008).

On the one hand, this is good news because of e-learning’s many advantages, including ease of distribution, cost benefits over a traditional classroom, and, when designed properly, the enhancement of learning and the transfer of training.

Is it all good news, though? That depends on the quality of the materials produced. Let’s be honest – how many times have you taken an e-learning course and found yourself hitting the “Next” button repeatedly to get to the end or to the exam so you could be done with the course? Have you ever looked for a menu option that would let you go right to the exam and see if you could test out of the course? Have you ever tried taking the exam, knowing you would likely do poorly, but you just kept retaking the exam until you met the magic score needed to pass it? And finally, were you ever working on something else, such as a teleconference, while taking a required course?

Even if you didn’t do any of these things, others clearly do and the questions here are: how often do they do this and – maybe even more importantly – does it matter?

Does it matter? How many designers, developers, or training managers are aghast at the thought that this may occur, or at the fact that I suggest it may not matter? Let’s shift perspectives. If a learner can skip to the exam and meet its requirements, e.g., pass the course without spending the time necessary to read all of the course content, then hasn’t that person been more time efficient? Central to this discussion is this: is the exam is a true measure of learning or is it simply something that is being used to increase the evidence that one has completed the training and now “knows more” – a concept that is itself suspect.

Here is another perspective on this discussion: is the course providing learning or is it a fancy reading assignment? Poorly designed e-learning is often nothing more than e-reading. If you’re not sure whether this is an accurate statement, take a few minutes to assess one of your e-learning courses and count the pages or minutes the learner spends reading versus all other learning methods in the course. Did you find that a high percentage of the learner’s time was spent doing nothing more than reading? Now what evidence do you have that the learner actually “comprehends” the material being presented? Sure, you built in a few recall questions for interactions – mostly within a few pages of where the relevant content was presented – so you’ve demonstrated that their short-term/working memory is functioning, but have they actually learned anything long-term?

In my research I have found significant correlations between student satisfaction and course readability and between learning and reading skill (Finnegan, 2010). Here are three questions for you:

1)      Have you measured the readability of your e-learning content?

2)      Do you know the reading skill of your target audience?

3)      Was the content mainly developed by a Subject Matter Expert?

Most training staff would answer no, no, and yes to these questions. If you answered the same then the reading ability of your learners and the readability of your course will probably not match.

That could be a problem.

Instructional designers and writers must have a sense of the reading skill of their audience for reading-based courses if learning is the objective. Assuming we have made this leap to ensure the material is being comprehended by learners, how do we ensure or foster both retention and on-the-job skill transfer? I’ll deal with this tricky question in part two of this blog.

Thanks,

Denis Finnegan
CLO, CERTPOINT Systems

References

Paradise, A. (2008). ASTD State of the Industry report. Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training & Development.