Continued from March 2008 Newsletter

FEATURE ARTICLE :

4 Steps To Guarantee Successful Course Design

In last month's Newsletter, we gave a brief outline of four basic design aspects to consider when creating your course. They were the "4 Ms of Course Design". Make it Meaningful, Memorable, Motivational and Measurable.

In this issue we will explore the first aspect - Meaningful - in more depth.

We will look at four steps to making a course meaningful for the learner:

1. Learning events themselves must be meaningful
   
   
2. The context in which the course is set, must be meaningful
   
   
3. Creating meaningful challenges and activities encourage practice, and
   
   
4. Meaningful feedback that builds on context

What does it mean?

Paul loosened his tie and sauntered over to the office coffee station to pour himself a cup of Java and take a break from his hectic morning. Just then Steve walked in to pour himself a cup as well. "You look a little pensive this morning" he commented. "Yeah" Paul replied. "I'm still feeling the effects of last night's events". "Should I be asking?" Steve ventured. Paul smiled. "Actually, other than having to assuage my wife's displeasure after the event we attended, it was really a non-event!" "What event was this?" asked Steve. "It was an Opera. A good one apparently. Everyone was raving about how wonderful it was. How insightful and meaningful." Paul looked up from his cup with a whimsical smile and added "I had to leave half way through. Any excuse to relieve the torture!". Steve smiled and nodded understandingly. Paul continued, "you know, I have no idea what any of it was about at all!"

Have you ever been to an event or a lecture and had absolutely no idea what was going on or had no point of reference to draw from? For Paul, the Opera was boring beyond belief because it had no meaning for him. If you want to avoid inflicting your learners with boredom or frustration, then the first step you must take is to ensure the event is meaningful to them.

While not exhaustive, here are some steps to take in order to ensure successful course design.

1. Learning Events

Meaningful courses will include elements such as:

• Situations or responsibilities that the learner will likely encounter
  
  
• Settings that allows the learner to choose tasks that are important and have some relevance to them
  
  
• Design that appears challenging, is fun to do and allows a learner to earn recognition
  
  
• Provision for outside resources that can be accessed freely, and
  
  
• Include browsing capability

2. Context

Do you enjoy using metaphors or analogies? These are useful tools because they provide a way of explaining concepts to someone who has no point of reference. You can get a message across without being specific. For example: "learning a data entry system is like following a recipe". The person you are trying to teach understands that they will be required to follow a prescribed course of action, much like following a recipe. However, there are some limits to a metaphor's use.

Although it may be beneficial to use a metaphor initially, when it comes to actual course design, it is important to have the right "setting" or "context", one that is meaningful to the learner. In the case of data entry, you wouldn't use the context of a kitchen. If you did, you would waste a lot of time and effort trying to create and clarify conceptual connections. In addition, the learner would waste time and energy trying to understand the connection when what you want them to learn is how to use the data entry system!

Within the right context, you can build in real-life experiences that the learner may encounter in their job or every day life. This makes learning relevant and consistent, removing any confusion about how the processes relate to a metaphor. Context is important. It is the glue that holds the course design elements together. Creating a good course context doesn't need to be an expensive process. By simply thinking about the actual environment the learner is already familiar with, you will be able to build an effective context that has meaning to them. For instance a typical workplace complete with cubicles or an operating room. Having the ability to view the situation from a bird's eye view and eavesdrop on what's going on is inherently interesting.

Good context should:

• Be meaningful to beginner and advanced learners
  
  
• Stimulate inquisitiveness and curiosity
  
  
• Engage the learners through empathy or fascination
  
  
• Motivate and energize learners, such as through the element of risk

Context usually comes in two parts - physical location and situation. For instance a physical location may be a convenience store and the situation may be a robbery.

The physical location can be represented through video, graphics, audio or text. Strive to create a realistic setting that will help the learner prepare for real life events.

The situation should be a challenge, problem or opportunity. The learner needs to understand that this situation can happen and the skills they are learning are relevant.

3. Challenges and Activities

We've all done it. "Tell 'em first, test 'em last ". Most training is done by providing the facts and then testing the learner to see if they can demonstrate what they have learned. However, this "tell and test" method of delivering learning has generally proved to be far inferior to the opposite method of "test and tell". So how can you design your course to take advantage of this fact?

One obvious way is to present the learner with a task that is beyond their current skills and abilities (test) and then provide assistance (tell), only when they request it. Employing this method, often referred to as "learning by failing", has a couple of advantages.

• It provides the necessary learner motivation. They are confronted with a challenge instead of being bored by information they may already know, and
  
  
• It makes the material meaningful to the learner. They understand that the skills they will acquire will enable them to perform a task they don't know yet, but care about.

It is important to offer activities that can be performed in ways that ensure the learner retains the information more easily. For instance, mouse click responses work well when you are dealing with recognition and selection, but this activity does not work well with sequencing. Sequencing is easier to remember when the learner has to drag and drop items on the screen. By doing so, they focus on the items as they move them and again when they assess the fit between adjoining items. The physical gesture also reinforces the importance of sequencing while the click model does little to reinforce it.

In general, keep the following in mind when creating activities:

• Click responses are suitable when dealing with selection and recognition
  
  
• Drag and drop when dealing with sequencing, and
  
  
• Typed or spoken responses when dealing with recall

If you want to create real-world "look and feel" activities, then build in switches, dials and levers that reflect objects or equipment the learner will be working with in real life situations. Bear in mind however, that it is difficult to manipulate a turning dial with a mouse or keyboard key.

Another powerful feature to build in to your course design is the ability for the learner to explore and experiment. Surprisingly enough, many learners will go through an activity numerous times. The first time, they may get some answers wrong; the second time they will probably get them all right or at least achieve a passing score; but the interesting thing is, many learners will go through the activity one more time, purposely selecting incorrect answers just to see what will happen! Taking advantage of this observation by incorporating it into your course design can enhance the learner's experience even further. What will they learn when they continue to select wrong answers?

One last thing to consider, is giving the learner the ability to look ahead and preview the course. Who hasn't picked up a book and browsed through it to "get a feel" for what the book is about. Why should eLearning courses be any different?

4. Feedback

Feedback is important. What type of feedback is even more important. There are two types of feedback - intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic is the preferred method as it builds meaning, motivation and makes the exercise memorable.
For example:

• An emergency call operator fails to respond to a 911 call, passing it off as someone "playing a gag". Her failure to do so results in an unnecessary death, a law suit and her losing her job;
  
  
• A teacher goes the extra mile to help a struggling student who later achieves straight A grades.
  
  
• A teenager doesn't pay attention to workplace safety training and loses a limb in a stock yard accident.

This type of feedback is meaningful because it outlines the consequences relating directly to the learner's actions. The learner understands that these are real issues and can definitely ensue if they do not learn the necessary skills. This makes the learning meaningful, motivational and memorable.

Compare that to extrinsic feedback which simply says "That is the incorrect answer", or "Wrong. Try again". Meaningful? Motivational? Memorable? I don't think so.

Review

• Make the learning events meaningful
• Build a meaningful context
• Ensure the activites are challenging and meaningful, and
• Build intrinsic feedback into your courses to make it meaningful to the learner.

Incorporate these four basic elements into your course design, and you will be well on your way to creating a successful course.