online education

Converting Manuals into eLearning by Adding Engagement

Converting Manuals into eLearning by Adding Engagement

Leave a Comment / Instructional Design /

Instructional designers are often given the task of turning manuals into eLearning. That sounds easy enough given that the manuals are already a finished product that say what they need to say. But we know that there are core differences between these types of resources; that’s why it’s usually not the best approach to dump a stack of manuals on a new employee. Manuals are intended to communicate specific steps in the briefest way possible. They are structured to be easily referenced and are mostly print focused. They assume you already know what to do with the information they are presenting. eLearning, on the other hand, is intended to be an experience that brings the learner to the point where they can do something they couldn’t before. So, we’ll look at converting manuals into eLearning by adding engagement; ways to keep the learner’s interest and attention.

Here are some areas to consider in when looking for opportunities to add engagement to some otherwise dry manuals. And to do it without change the accuracy of the information being taught.

Structure & Guidance

Structure is the order you present your content and how you transition between concepts. Learners remember things they were previously told about (priming), things that appear at the beginning and end of a list (primacy and recency effects), and things that are grouped together logically (segmenting). Learners also benefit from context, stating where the knowledge is relevant and what you should already know before starting the course.

These and many other learning effects can be used to structure your content. Consider how you can use segment and order the information. Furthermore, provide details on what you’ll learn in this course and what you should already know before getting started.

Suggestions

  • Break up and order your content in a way that makes sense to learners
  • Use introduction and summary activities to bookend chapters
  • Navigate and transition through each topic to tell a story or illustrate a workflow

Informal communication

If formal communication is the barebones text of the manual (the absolute minimum of what you need to know), informal communication is everything else around that. These are the pieces that explain the concepts or share personal anecdotes. Where formal communication is succinct and accurate (like a dictionary definition), informal communication can highlight, clarify, or provide motivation. Think about how you would explain a concept in person to someone who isn’t getting it right away–  you wouldn’t tell the learner to just read the definition over and over again. Instead, find ways to add a personal touch where it might be needed most.

Converting Manuals into eLearning by Adding Engagement

Suggestions

  • Include additional explanations in a casual tone separate from the “main” readings
  • Share anecdotes and stories that complement the materials
  • Suggest common mistakes and how to avoid them

Multimedia

Multimedia means simply using more than one media to communicate your information. Undoubtedly, some knowledge work best as videos, infographics, or simulations. You wouldn’t try to teach someone to tie their shoe using plain text. In the same way, we want to find the best way to illustrate your concepts beyond text. Visual diagrams, infographics, and animations are better at showing processes and relationships. These kinds of multimedia, when used correctly, are much more likely to stick with the learner.

Suggestions

Feedback

Feedback provides immediate information to the learner in response to an action. Consider how often teachers ask their students “do you get it?”. They do this to ensure the learner is following along and to gauge if more explanation is needed. It also produces new opportunities to teach when learners have their brains working on a challenge. Think of your eLearning course as a kind of teacher that anticipates when to check-in on its learners. Find ways to add feedback events in your training.

Suggestions

  • Prompt learners to get their input throughout the content with interactive elements
  • Give meaningful feedback beyond right and wrong
  • Show outcomes based on the learner’s response

Application

Application shows how the knowledge being taught is used in a new situation and context. It’s important for learners to see theoretical concepts applied in reality, possible variations, and repetition of consistent elements. Altogether, these experiences help learners understand the knowledge far more than just reading the usual manual descriptions and steps.  

Suggestions

  • Use case studies and examples to illustrate concepts in action
  • Provide practice problems and questions the learner can use repeatedly

Assessment

Assessment involves checking that the learner actually understands what they need to. This helps prevent learners from moving on unless the have adequate knowledge of the materials. Formative assessments are used along the way to find out areas where the learner needs improvement. Summative assessments occur at the end to confirm the learner understands the content.

Suggestions

  • Add knowledge check questions along the way to keep learners on the right track
  • Use quizzes and exams at the end of chapters to prove learners know their stuff

Conclusion

While it may seem to be a simple and common task, converting manuals into eLearning gets at the core value of instructional design. Manuals serve an important purpose in every organization, but they do not satisfy training requirements by themselves. That’s why we suggest converting manuals into eLearning by adding engagement and .

The next time you are given a manual and are asked to “you know, make it engaging”, try comparing your materials with areas above. Hopefully they inspire ideas that build on the core materials with a little extra engagement.

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A Doctor Patient Model of eLearning

A Doctor Patient Model of eLearning

Leave a Comment / Instructional Design /

As instructional designers, it can be easy to feel like our jobs boil down to creating content and passing it on down the factory line. Sometimes, our work schedules can make it seem like that is all there is. However, our end goal isn’t to publish content endlessly, it’s to help our audience learn what they need to know. That’s why I suggest a doctor patient model of eLearning.

We can think of the relationship between instructional designers and their audience as a doctor patient relationship. Obviously, doctors are responsible for their patients’ health. They know how to tell if a person is “healthy”. If a person is not healthy, they have ways to identify what is wrong and recommend treatments to help the patient get better.

Diagnosis and Treatment

Instructional designers are responsible for our learners’ education. We need to know what a “healthy” learner looks like. We need measurable indicators that we can compare against each learner. Instead of blood pressure, body temperature, and vitamin levels, we use workplace performance and knowledge levels as indicators. Instead of stethoscopes and thermometers, we use quizzes and checklists.

To oversimplify, a doctor is responsible for diagnosing a patient that has a problem and prescribing treatment to help with that problem. Doctors specialize in knowing what “healthy” means, identifying the causes of unhealthy problems, and suggesting treatment that will help bring the patient up to and beyond healthy levels.

Tools For a Doctor Patient Model of Elearning

What tools do instructional designers use? For diagnosis, we might use quizzes and reviews to see if our patient meets the baselines. These tools can further help identify the precise things a learner struggles with.

For treatment, we might assign eLearning content such as videos, readings, and exercises. And after treatment, we need to keep following up to ensure it worked.

A Different Paradigm for Instructional Design

If we see instructional design as a patient doctor relationship, how might that change how we do our job? I think we need to get past the idea that instructional designers are just there to constantly roll out treatments. Here are some ways I think we can apply a doctor patient approach to eLearning:

  • Better identify baselines: do you know how to tell if somebody can do their job?
  • Develop a personalized plan to help new learners reach their baseline
  • Use the right tools to diagnose problems: do you have adequate ways to tell if a user is ready to do their job? Can you accurately identify problems?
  • Use the right tools to treat problems: does your content achieve its goals? do you have tools that address specific problems?
  • Follow up with your treatment: do you have ways to follow up to ensure the tools worked once they’ve been used?

Modern training programs must deal with increasingly specialized knowledge and as a result our eLearning models need to be more deliberate about how we interact with learners. A doctor patient model of eLearning helps us with this very problem. You wouldn’t want a doctor that gives all their patients the same advice without any tests; likewise, an instructional designer needs to do more than publish generic eLearning content.

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eLearning and Scaffolding

eLearning and Scaffolding

Leave a Comment / LMS /

Making your eLearning materials interactive always sounds great at the beginning of a project. Interactivity has become synonymous with engaging and fun.

But there’s a catch. Interactivity can be very tricky to execute, especially if you don’t have a deliberate and realistic design to implement right at the start. How should we design eLearning materials that are also interactive?

Interactivity for the sake of interactivity?

In many cases interactivity starts out as a suggestion to make materials less boring. This is not wrong, but should interactivity really be the ultimate goal when designing learning content?

In my experience, I’ve seen a simple desire for interactivity blow up into difficult projects that, in the end, did not see the light of day. When eLearning authors start down the path of creating content for the sake of interactivity, they risk the following outcomes:

  • The activity is not fun and is not used
  • The activity requires too much resources and is never finished
  • The activity is finished but underdeveloped and doesn’t work
  • The activity does not improve learning and wastes time
  • Interactivity is risky because it doesn’t state a specific goal you are working towards, it’s just a feeling

You might design and develop in circles trying to capture a “fun” feeling but as instructional designers we usually have compliance, assessments, ROI’s, and other things to worry about!

Effective learning should be your goal, not just interactivity. If you are looking to make your content more engaging, I suggest you start with the concept of scaffolding instead of delving into the depths of “interactivity”—and you’ll likely end up adding interactive elements along the way.

Scaffolding in eLearning

Scaffolding is the concept of providing learning supports for your learners and gradually removing those supports as the learner progresses.

Think of these supports as training wheels on a bike that are eventually taken off when the rider can balance themselves; or a teacher that teaches addition with real apples until the students have mastered the skill of apple counting.

Educators over time have found numerous creative ways to use scaffolding in their teaching, reading out loud the same lines from a textbook over and over can only go so far.

In eLearning, scaffolding can be applied in a digital medium through helpful tables, questions, info graphics, hints, all the way up to complex games. We start with the goal of reinforcing the learning and think of the best method to do that. Sometimes it doesn’t have to be “interactive” in a traditional sense. The idiom “lefty loosey, righty tighty” is a mostly true mnemonic device to help you remember which direction loosens or tightens a screw or bolt (or many other practical items).

This minor device can be a big help to students (e.g. in carpentry or auto repair); they might be able to complete example repair tasks faster or be less likely to “screw up” and feel more confident in their abilities.

Let’s say “Lefty loosey, righty tighty” is now a scaffold we want to introduce in our eLearning. It can be presented online very simply with text (maybe spice it up with some font styles or graphics). We can use animations to demonstrate the idea. We can even build an interactive game where users have to click and drag a virtual socket wrench on screen. When we start with the scaffold, we start with an idea that will help the learner learn. From there we can use text, multimedia, or interactivity to get our point across but the focus is always on the learning.

Scaffolding doesn’t specify how interactive the device is, it can be a single graphic or a full-fledged 3D simulation, it is just concerned about helping the learner in a specific situation to move on. In eLearning, we can’t hover over the learner and speak directly to them. We have to make our scaffolding activities part of the content — ask probing questions, present mnemonic devices, play a video, or more. Check if the learner gets the material and if not, provide more tools to help them get it. Engage the learner first by providing them content to help them learn (assume the learner wants to learn the materials and not struggle), then design interactive elements where appropriate.

Conclusion

When you receive the next stack of source materials to turn into an eLearning course, resist the urge to make it interactive just for the sake of interactivity (however dry the materials may be). Instead, do what teachers have been doing for ages — think about the materials and ways that you can clarify, demonstrate, and reinforce the core concepts. The difference for an eLearning instructional designer is to consider the tools you have to build and deliver the activity — they might look quite different from a teacher in the classroom but the approach is very much the same.

Are you an instructional designer looking for the cleanest and easiest way to build scaffolded eLearning content online? Get in touch with us!

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