Give Me Back My Fun Learning!

Call me a spoil sport, call me a traditionalist desperately holding out against new trends, but terms such as “Speed is King” and “Rapid Creation” in the context of e-learning sends a chill down my spine. To me, speed often means “plain vanilla” and “no jazz” and “no fun”, because there is just not enough time or resources to add such elements.

I do understand the compelling business requirements that drive Rapid e-Learning. I appreciate the needs of businesses to deliver rapidly-changing information such as the latest product knowledge, competitive intelligence, and corporate initiatives that help employees to respond quickly. We are all living in “future shock” zone and acceleration has become a way of life.

But whither fun learning? What about learning that is engaging, interactive and exciting? What about the amazing things that can be done on the (not so anymore) new medium that adds to the learning experience?

My angst is that of a learner, not of a developer.

When I was 10 years old, my all-consuming passion was to learn Indian classical dance. Fearing that I will waste away with the longing, my parents arranged for an instructor in great haste. She came with excellent credentials—she was a product of one of the premier performing arts institute and had a lot of successful students.

The enterprise lasted for a tenuous 18-month period despite my high levels of motivation because the instructor just failed to engage me in the process. In fact, she managed to de-motivate me with her unimaginative, “don’t-ask-questions-because-it’s-the-way-things-are-done” approach. I think both of us heaved a sigh of relief when I dropped out in the end.

This has been more-or-less the story of my life. Suffice to say that I was never popular with my teachers.

This is perhaps why I am always pushing the envelope when it comes to participative learning experiences.

Give me games; give me case studies that I can sink my teeth into; give me “wow” concept diagrams to fix my mental models; give me an exploratory learning experience that sharpens my “aha” moments; give me humor—in short, give me fun!

(Priya Thiagarajan is a Senior Instructional Design Consultant at TIS)

Comments

[Shilpa Sharma]

As a professional in the field of Education,I face this issue constantly. As a Toy Designer, I design Educational Aids for children,which would convey concepts to them as they play and learn. Sometimes,in the effort to "make children learn",one forgets that children learn best when they are having fun. Information overload,without any fun is just too dry for children. "How Children Learn" by John Holt is such a wonderful reference to understand the processes of learning. Also,this link http://www.idesignthinking.com/07theory/01theory.html is extremely worthwhile ,especially for designing for children. Only yesterday,I was working on designing activities for teaching alphabets to young children, and I had such fun while designing "K" aerobics,wherein children would learn to write the letter "K",by doing a little dance.And this not only would they enjoy but also learn more effectively.
Also,Matilda's teacher,Miss Honey, is my favorite teacher of all times and a source of inspiration too.

[Chas Martin]

I can relate to your frustration. The fun is gone. And, I believe the process is to blame.
In the 1970s, I worked for an ad agency in Boston. It was one of the most creative agencies outside of New York. We were innovative. We broke rules. That won us larger clients and bigger products with more demographically diverse audiences. That required more sophisticated processes. We hired more Harvard MBAs and expanded our research. The creative department was fed key words, buzz words, words that hit a responsive chord with the target audience (according to focus groups). Soon, it seemed nothing included the edgy creative attitude that had made the agency great. Everything was dumbed down to the lowest common denominator for the broadest possible audience. Every ad had to include 6 of the 10 “focus group approved” words. The creative brains that had given our campaigns such a playful, gutsy attitude grew frustrated and left. In the end, we had a formula for effectiveness which may have won short term ROI battle, but in the long run lost the brand war.
Something similar has happened to elearning. The time consuming process of review, feedback and approval for those who create the courseware is in conflict to the spontaneity that makes it fun, memorable and/or interesting. The formulas may be efficient, but the long term result is boredom on a grand scale. There’s no personality, no compassion, no spirit, no life.
I suspect it’s the cost and time involved in creation that has forced a process to take precedent over brand. Mediocrity is the result. Maybe all the buzz words are there, but where’s the heart?
Elearning is often complex, and is usually produced by multiple experts – probably a geographically distributed group whose task of creating the elearning is as painful as the end product is for the student.
I have hope that the Web is moving into a new realm where efficiency restores creativity and spontaneity in the content and interactivity of course development. I’ve addressed this topic in several posts at http://blog.qmind.com. I’d appreciate your feedback.

[Debasree Bagchi]

Absolutely Priya...infact you have wonderfully penned down the thoughts of many...and when it comes to loosing the fun element due to speed, I believe it is true for many such things in life.

[Gaurav Peters]

From where I stand, I see rapid eLearning development [ReD] as something that helps to quickly preview the final product. Writing content should not be wearing a straight jacket in the ReD setup. In fact ReD environments are a tech thingy, that help Instructional Designers quickly see the finished product; quite like an internal prototype.

For a WBT - an authoring tool, that allows you to drag and drop the basic elements with the code written already, is ReD. This means we can actually think of a gaming model to involve the user and learn more effectively. ReD could employ "Procedural Generation". Here is a link in context. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8372603330420559198&q=spore
Creating dynamic scenarios to engage the learner in challenges that arise and thence experience the results of the decisions. Now this would conventionally mean a lot of media involvement... NOT! With Procedural Generation the elements once created can be placed anywhere in the scenario; in different situations, now that’s Rapid Development.

ReD is also about re-purposing existing content for different media - Mobile phones, Podcasts, etc. Once the learning objectives are defined its a matter of what can be done or not done in a particular media.
Tools that convert for another media now that's Rapid Development

[Aditi Kulkarni]

An absolutely important aspect is put through this article. Being a novice instructional designer, I truely agree with the idea. I have been moulding myself to fit into business requirements but I think the way eLearning is taking shape, we will have to break the paths...I think its important from instructional designers' point of view to make learning joyous. Having latest technology and machines in the room won't help alone..its time to come up with innovative,productive(and yet cost effective!) deliveries..when the music changes, so does the dance!