Avoiding eLearning that Oversimplifies

Many believe that eLearning is only suitable for teaching basic concepts and procedures, with more advanced skills and knowledge requiring a live instructor. This article argues that eLearning offers an effective platform for more advanced skill building, and it describes how instructional designers can accomplish this through immersive scenarios.

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Building eLearning Scenarios in Working Sessions with SMEs

Many instructional designers attempt to write training scenarios independently, based on their knowledge of the client’s needs. While sometimes this can work, scenarios written in this way often lack the details to realistically simulate workplace situations. This article explains how collaborating with subject matter experts (SMEs) helps instructional designers create robust scenarios for training. The article also includes a short case study that illustrates how this collaboration can occur.

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Making Scenarios Realistic in eLearning

Training experts and writing experts agree: showing is more effecting than telling when trying to convey a message, regardless of whether it’s a storyline for entertainment or a procedure for the workplace. This article suggests techniques for writing training scenarios that realistically simulate a work environment.

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Conveying Tacit Knowledge in eLearning

Tacit knowledge – concepts we understand intuitively but struggle to explicitly articulate – is often difficult to clearly outline in training. However, instructional design techniques such as storytelling and social learning can help convey and reinforce these concepts. This article explains tacit knowledge and describes techniques for conveying it in an eLearning environment.

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A Formula for Storytelling in eLearning

Storytelling is a hot topic in the field of instructional design. This article lists ways to use stories in training and outlines the elements of a good story.

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Use Scenarios to Make Quiz Questions Relevant to the Job

Instead of just presenting information in training and then prompting learners to apply it afterward, why not make an entire lesson into a story? Introduce new concepts in the context of the story…instead of introducing concepts in a decontextualized way and bringing examples in later.

This type of thing can work with quizzes too. The story might not be as fluid and involved in a quiz, but even using basic scenarios seems to make quiz questions more relevant. And learning theories out there support this approach. I used my latest contribution to the Integrated Learnings: eLearning blog to describe my application of scenarios to quizzes.

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