Resources Brightwave blog Those butterfly moments
Those butterfly moments
11 November 2011 | 
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On the back of yesterday's webinar 'Design innovations: 10 ways to improve the user experience' I'm picking up on a couple of dominant themes in the chat and the tweets. Thank you to everyone who attended and contributed.
Click here to watch the webinar recording and access the slides
The idea of little, modest innovations based on the flights of imagination we've dubbed 'butterfly moments' seemed to strike a chord. These innovations often yield the biggest benefits for end-users, and are achieved by the learning design rather than the use of technology for technology's sake...
A couple of familiar themes surfaced in the chat:
1. Freedom brings its own challenges
Participants seemed to like the evolving portal style approach to e-learning courses because it enables a self-directed informal approach to the learning. At the same time they pointed to a tension between such freedom and users then not knowing what's expected of them. And perhaps, users not knowing what they don't know or what they need to know. The portal style isn't linear and provides a freedom they're often not expecting, especially in the context of workplace training.
And Yes. This is a recurrent issue when designing this way with clients who are bold enough to adopt this approach. In response, we either explain the approach up front and then simply give learners (who are, after all, adult learners) the unfettered, untracked freedom of the portal approach. Or we work with other clients to give users a licence to roam but then track items the user has visited, or even lock down an assessment.
It doesn’t really matter - from a user's point of view at least it feels self-directed and informal in that sense. A touch of the smoke and mirrors perhaps?
2. How do you know what you don’t know you don't know?
Another recurring debate is whether or not to do a diagnostic, a self-check in order to help the user identify which elements to focus on. On the flip side this can get in the way at the start and act as a barrier.
Personally, I don't think it's about diagnostics, pre-tests and so on. In some regards, this is putting too much faith in the technology and the answer is simpler. I mentioned in the webcast I prefer the Driving Test analogy. We choose how we learn to drive with some formal lessons, some informal ones, some practice etc - we learn in a self-directed way in that we create our own mix then we take the Test. It's a tough two-parter. If we fail we take it on the chin. We go back and learn/practice some more, then give it another shot. We don't need a pre-test. It's the Test or bust. If we took the Test before we learned, we'd almost certainly fail because it's a challenging test and we'd find out what we didn't know and needed to know. We can design the test so it gives this feedback. It's not advanced functionality.
That's the formal test which can be used pre and/or post. From a learning design point of view we can blend this with the informal. In No.3 coming up there's more on a possible low-cost approach to this informal aspect of the design.
In other words, for me it's Electric Kool (rove around the portal any way you like) and the Acid Test (but pass the test).
3. "Smoke is expensive these days" - innovation on a budget and within IT constraints
Budget is an issue. IT infrastructure too. On the whole, at Brightwave, our clients are corporate, often blue chip and deal in budgets that although less extravagant than you may think, are still greater than some organisations, and certainly individuals can stretch to.
Whatever the constraints, I would still maintain that it should be possible to come up with an appropriate design simply by thinking really hard about all the following considerations; not least because it may be that as a result of this exercise, you come up with something that isn't anything like e-learning as we know it. Or the design may be simple, inexpensive and low bandwidth - example coming up next.
But first the drivers for the design approach:
- Objectives – what are the learning and business aims and objectives for the e-learning and the context within which they will be achieved?
- Target audience – what's the demographic profile, likely expectations, includes attitude to the content and delivery medium?
- Content – is it factual, attitudinal, behavioural, process-driven, knowledge/skills, straightforward/complex, easily visualised, will it benefit from media like video and audio, its scope and volatility?
- Media – what are the technical strengths and/or constraints of the delivery platform - can we use audio, video, learning management/tracking etc?
- Budget – what can practically be achieved for the money; there's no point starting off on a creative innovative path that cannot be completed to time and budget?
Here's how this could pan out…
When you think about what the business really needs from the design, you realise that mainly it is evidence of a kind that your learners have the knowledge - this includes of course an improvement in performance. So, a central part of your design will be a decent, meaningful test. Not a tokenistic, 5 questioner that insults people's intelligence. This should not be complicated or expensive to develop. You can make it challenging and comprehensive through the quality of your questions and how they are written.
From an audience point of view, when you think about it, a significant proportion of the demographic may be connectivists who "want learning to be interactive, student-centred, authentic, collaborative and on-demand” and they may be prepared to learn from material that already exists in all sorts of media from links to documents, case studies, training notes/trainer versions of PowerPoints, video clips on the intranet, internet etc. Afterall, how much of the content you need to train already exists in one form or another? There's never been so much information as there is now.Perhaps it just needs organising, collating, researching.
In other words as the learning designer, perhaps you can put together a self-study hit list for your learners. This might be a mosaic of links, materials, maybe some agreeable people to contact and ask questions of etc - all technically available on/through the network. And, then you explain that they have to pass the really tough 20 minutes (driving) test which features questions that assume a reading and comprehension of all these materials.
Finally, you can support this training by mounting a communications campaign using, for example, e-mails or available social media : 1) Before - to tease your audience "When is training not training?" 2) During - telling them it's live and where to go and 3) After - reminding them to do the training to re-advertise and explain this new approach.
From a budget point of view and a bandwidth point of view, this whole design, from the communications campaign (the e-mails and messages), the mosaic of links, and the driving test assessment should not break the bank.
And from a design point of view the very absence of "smoke" here would surely constitute an innovative approach!
Click here to watch the webinar recording and access the slides
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