I got into e-Learning a number of years ago for the opportunity to express myself creatively. Back then we called our creations interactive multimedia. First there were laserdiscs, then CD-ROMs and now online delivery. Many of our influences and models came from narrative media, like films and television. By often focusing on story, we really made interactive movies.
With the advent of each new technology, moving picture fidelity paradoxically took a hit in favor of easier access and updatability. We designers had to keep finding new ways to replace that high-quality, full-frame video that used to flow like water with smaller movie clips, animation and photos. I asked myself, “This is progress?” It seemed like our creativity was being stifled as we tried to do good work.
Moving to Clark Training and Consulting two years ago, I was met with a structured approach to design which involves classifying content into one of Robert Horn’s Information Mapping categories (concepts, facts, processes, procedures, principles). This structured approach further advocates lessons which teach “how to” procedures and principles after providing supporting information (concepts, facts, and processes) up front.
This approach
attracted the attention of Chuck Barritt at Cisco. Chuck was one of the authors
of Cisco’s reusable learning object (RLO) methodology, and the categorization
scheme was a good fit to the challenge of RLO tagging and design. As a result, Chuck
hired Lee Alderman, who was then at
In the forward to their book, Ruth Clark says, “Technology now makes reusable learning objects possible. The challenge, however, falls to the training professional to adopt an entirely new way of working — an evolution from an artisanal approach characterized by great flexibility to a more standardized, assembly-line approach. Although you may have a gut reaction against the assembly-line idea, do not forget that, from automobiles to computers, the Industrial Revolution and its underlying processes allowed mass access to modern consumer goods and a higher standard of living.”
She’s right. The problem was: we were successful. e-Learning caught on, and as the volume of projects has grown into an industry, there is an increasing desire for standardization, and for smaller and more adaptable chunks of learning content, or “learning objects.”
The creativity issue
I look back wistfully at the freewheeling approach of the early “interactive media” projects I worked on — the game shows, time machines and, yes, even singing cows I gave to clients — “served up on a silver platter,” as we used to say about the shiny laser discs and CD-ROMs that were our delivery media in those days. Back then, we believed we were creating a new media form based on “infotainment” concepts, and some of those concepts are still useful in my work today. But perhaps in most respects, people don’t look to their jobs to entertain them. Maybe they would rather just go to the movies after work. How important to learning is a good story, anyway?
Maybe it’s more important to focus on the uniqueness of the students rather than to create training media that is primarily a form of expression for the designer. Allowing the user to get specifically what they need was one of the primary educational drivers behind e-Learning in general, and learning objects in particular. The “Me Generation” spawned learner-centered students who sought to take control of their learning experience away from boring lecturers and other linear educational devices. Why shouldn’t this concept of flexibility replace the older “creative” paradigm?
I called Chuck and Lee to help me with this dilemma.
Customization and context
Chuck described how well served he felt by the Amazon.com engine, which knew (based on his past actions) that when he searched on Cake, he meant the band, not the confection. For Chuck, this meets a primary test for today’s systems, in that the structuring force behind the interface is the “relevancy” of the information presented.
“I think from a student’s point of view, doing their job is key.” says Chuck. “Their interest is in being able to move up the career path to meet their goals and objectives, or to meet their manager’s goals and objectives. So knowing what you don’t know, and knowing what you need to know is the key.”
“I am not going to belittle the need to make training and anything you provide to them as a performance resource engaging,” Chuck adds. “I don’t want to use the word ‘entertaining,’ because that is subjective. Let’s look at ‘engaging’ and ‘relevant.’”
Lee adds: “Sometimes the content [you teach is inherently] lively; sometimes it’s boring. Given a choice, people like to be entertained.” Lee also picked up on the relevancy theme, which implies context. “Some people want every piece of information to be reusable. Each piece of reusable content is context free. This is where the ‘no creativity’ myth comes from. Objects with learning content should be context free. Then have contextual objects to link between them. In this way you are creating a third object. So as soon as you do that, that third object is not reusable. This is not any different from a technical writer who writes an introductory paragraph.”
What can RLO’s do?
If learning objects can provide context, what else can they do? Can they support various learning architectures or instructional methods? Lee replies, “RLO’s are a delivery method. You can deliver any type of training you want. If you take a bad course and apply RLO methodology to it, you have a reusable bad course. I have not met an architecture that could not be supported with RLO’s.”
Chuck concurs. “I don’t think it would matter if you wrote them as objects or not. It’s really about transfer of learning — can they use it on the job? The performer doesn’t really care if it is an object or not.”
Standardization
Learning objects can have many different types of structures, but to an organization, is this flexibility important, or do they favor a more standardized approach in their design of RLOs?
If you follow good RLO methodology, you are following good ISD practices,” says Lee. “Training organizations should have standardization anyway. If the content is standardized, the student can move through faster. RLOs can benefit from a template approach. You will see improved quality with standardization, without making it a ‘cookie cutter’ that stifles creativity. You need to make sure everything is in place — practices, examples, etc.”
Chuck notes that, by definition, “an object can be any size or shape you want it to be. There is nothing that requires you to make it look the same as another object in your database. That is a business rule — it’s completely up to the organization. It depends on the level of complexity you are using in implementing learning objects. Most systems apply templates.”
Designers working together
When asked if there was resistance to learning objects on the part of the designers, Lee explains, “It was a change, and all change is resisted. Some people thought their creativity was being taken away. They made up their minds before they fully understood.”
In a sense, RLOs require a far more collaborative model than has been used in the past, in that, the more reusable an object is, the less control the original designer has over the way another designer will use a created object. An important question emerges: Are designers willing to share?
“It depends on the overall culture of an organization — is it an overall sharing culture?” Lee poses. “If not, any system will run up with the same results. If ID’s aren’t working together now, RLO’s won’t fix it.”
Chuck has moved from Cisco to Worldwide Sales Training and Communication at Apple Computer. He describes a culture at his new company that at times favors designer creativity (or empowering the designer to create targeted content for different user groups) over reusability. As an example, Chuck contrasts the language that might be used in talking to Apple’s customers versus its internal sales force.
“It’s going to be a different message. I will often go to our Website, apple.com and read through it, and see a lot of content that has a lot of adjectives in it. Our salespeople hate to read adjectives. So to use this content for our salespeople, I would begin by stripping out a lot of the big colorful words that make Apple sound like the best thing since sliced bread, even though it is.” Chuck adds that what to include remains the designer’s prerogative. “It has always been the designer’s prerogative based on the perceived needs of the learner. How else could it go?”
“If you really want to get maximum reuse between different authors, you need strict writing guidelines. You need to work in unison and make sure they all can write procedures, principles, process, facts in perfect harmony.”
Quality requires structure to make a work hang together. Even TV dramas and sitcoms have character bibles listing what a character would or would not do. For example, Mr. Spock would not behave irrationally or violate “Star Trek’s” prime directive, in part because the writers have been given a set of strict guidelines to ensure standardization between episodes of the series. In the case of learning objects, the “series” is the entire training effort, not just one course, and thus guidelines that maintain consistency are necessary.
Learning object strategy
Both authors emphasize the importance of devising a strategy before diving in. According to Lee, “You need to create a strategy of why you do what you are doing. It’s not the words and pictures that are important, but why you chose those words and pictures. You need to figure out where you want to go, and then back up and ask: ‘How do I get there?’”
“I think a strategy is a game plan.” Adds Chuck. “It’s what you need to make sure you have measurable goals and outcomes for what you’re trying to accomplish. Are you trying to win the game or just tie? The importance of the strategy is the importance of baking a cookie with a recipe instead of just winging it. You’re probably going to be happier with the taste if you have a recipe... Otherwise you are going to be disappointed with the results; you’re going to have chaos with your development structure and you’re probably not going to increase the bottom line or impact the learner any more than you would have with your old traditional development.”
“The worst thing you might end up doing is to build a lot of smaller courses. And actually, this is probably a good thing, because it gives people a little more time on their own to synthesize and apply what you are trying to teach them.”
We have walked some of our own Clark Training clients through RLO strategy discussions covering issues such as project roles and responsibilities, criteria for conversion, types of documentation, levels of tagging, learning object structure, templates, training, incentives for participation, access, level of reuse, taxonomies, media selection, testing implementation and maintenance. Their concerns were less about creativity than the amount of work required and its ultimate value. For us, the “creativity issue” still includes meeting clients’ needs, which might mean that, while platforms and design approaches continue to change, the ultimate goals of “interactive media” remain as they always were: to make the user happy with the experience we provide for them.
