One major issue that faces the E-Learning industry as we look to grow and consolidate is the issue of Quality. Ask two E-learning professionals for what amounts to “Quality” E-learning and you will probably get two very different responses.
Broadly speaking, there are two views on Quality. The first is pedagogical. If a piece of E-Learning is pedagogically sound then some would argue the presentation of this information, so long as it’s usable, is largely irrelevant to the measure of Quality.
This is a view largely taken by higher education institutions; I’ve spoken to rather a lot of them and all of the internal E-learning departments at universities appear to share this view. Of course they would, it is at the heart of any universities core competence to know pedagogy. This approach is not limited to a specific media (say PowerPoint, or HTML) and can be used in more social learning frameworks, but never-the-less, presentation is barely a part of the Quality measure. Here it is more of an order qualifier; is it usable? Yes, tick, done.
At the other end of the scale are those with little to no interest when it comes to pedagogy in E-Learning. Here it is all about style over content; making sure it wows the audience and captivates the imagination with little thought as to the learning framework itself. Sometimes this doesn’t matter; a bite-size piece of learning which is tightly focussed and lasts 10 minutes is quite likely to hit the nail on the head without any in-depth analysis as to the pedagogical nature of the learning. Sometimes it doesn’t. I saw a great looking E-learning demo the other day, nice dashboard layout, hand-drawn images to complement the content and lots of interactivity. The questions were awful, they had little consistency in the approach and the feedback was completely nonsensical. The E-learning looked great, but I would have soon resorted to just hitting the “next” button to get through things as reading it was largely pointless.
It’s worth pointing out at this stage that rapid authoring tools often miss both of these measures of Quality. As these two views stand you either look good, or read good (forgive the expression). So unless you are a designer flexing their muscles into the world of E-learning, or a teacher who knows their online teaching techniques, you aren’t likely to create a piece of Quality piece of E-learning. This assumes that you have the ability to manipulate these rapid and easy authoring tools at all. Whilst the tools are increasingly easy to use for someone like me (you know the type, the one that always fixes the TV/DVD/VCR for the extended family) they remain fairly complex for those whose software experience is largely limited to the Office family of products. But that’s another story.
It would be easy to think that these two views on Quality, whilst fundamentally different, are easily reconcilable. Let’s just make a piece of E-learning that has pedagogical foundations that would make Oxford proud and then get 2Advanced studios to knock it together. Your first issue here is that those ingredients alone aren’t enough to make a great piece of E-learning; both parties need to know something of the others world. But your bigger issue, expense aside, is that the proponents of these two views on Quality often believe they are not reconcilable at all.
The arguments are thus:
“Pretty pictures take away from the real purpose of the product and actually detract from the learning experience”.
“Pedagogical frameworks are out of date, hugely restrictive and make any piece of E-learning long-winded and largely dull”.
Solving this issue will take movement from both sides. Pedagogy will need to evolve (it is, see Connectivism) to take into account the ways in which people are now learning online. Its proponents will also have to step outside of their core competence and realise that creating a piece of E-learning with engaging looks and increasingly complex interactions will only add to the value of the end product, if done correctly.
Equally designers need to be much more than their job titles suggest. They need to develop an understanding of teaching online and to realise that style does not trump substance, it merely augments it.
Developing a shared view on Quality will help the E-learning industry to evolve its next-generation of content and learning. At the moment these two polar opposite views don’t sit well together and present a confusing front to end-users. You might not dare to question the authority of an austere institution telling you that their learning experts will ensure quality learning transfer, but how many words will it take to explain that to your boss, who thinks the end product looks awful?
The corporate E-learning world is a little different to the world of higher education. When you attend a university you are there to learn. When you go to work, sitting through a training course is not at the front of your mind. It’s a job to be done, probably a monotonous one. E-learning needs to reach out more to this audience, to appeal, to make the user want more. Or perhaps less ambitiously, just to avoid pissing people off.
Both sides have good arguments. We need to move to a situation where people realise they can and should have it both ways. Anything less is failing to make Quality E-learning content.
