The Evolution of eLearning

The learning and development industry must re-imagine the way an increasingly impatient, diverse and tech-savvy workforce interacts with content.

Historically, eLearning companies have possessed competency and rigour in academia, applying traditional learning frameworks to online content. However, rapid advances on two digital fronts present challenges to this approach and fall outside of traditional eLearning departments and organisations’ capability sets. These fronts are the evolution in consumer technology’s accessibility and functionality, and the transformation of users’ habitual engagement behaviours.

eLearning — a dirty word

We have all seen eLearning gone bad at some stage. Plain, text-heavy, “click next” PowerPoints with the occasional multiple-choice question at the end are shudder-worthy for learners and learning and development professionals alike. Yet they can exist for any number of once-justifiable reasons; one of the most common is the basic re-development of face-to-face facilitated content into online learning content. A square peg was being pushed through a round hole, when the toys should have just been thrown out of the cot altogether and replaced with iPads, smartphones, wearables and virtual-reality goggles.

The way we consume information has changed

The commonly held view in today’s society is that our ability to devote our attention to a single task is worse than ever. Advances in connected technology have led to an increasingly impatient and multitasking user. The average attention span (the amount of time concentrated on a task without distraction) has shortened from 12 seconds in 2000 to only eight seconds in 2013 — goldfish now outrank us with nine seconds.

Changes to users’ habitual engagement behaviours in the workplace mirror this, with the average employee checking their email inbox at least once every 1.5–2 minutes. Furthermore, only 4 per cent of users will stay on the same website for more than 10 minutes. And 51 per cent of users won’t reach the end of content containing more than 111 words (meaning more than half of those who began reading this article have already moved on to something else).

All of this data tells us some simple and unavoidable truths; we are now used to accessing information of our ownchoosing in a rapid manner, and will often switch between tasks. In order to adapt to the rapidly evolving needs of users, we must abandon implementing techniques that work in a classroom, where you have a seemingly engaged audience. Digital platforms have a growing capacity to keep up with the required functionality and sophistication users expect; however, traditional learning and development departments and companies do not have the necessary digital development capabilities to capitalise fully on the technology.

But it is not all doom and gloom for digital learning. In fact it’s the opposite. Adult learners are adopting online learning as their primary form of education in unprecedented numbers. By 2019, 50 per cent of all tertiary education will be completed online, and corporate online learning is also becoming increasingly valuable; 72 per cent of companies believed online learning enabled them to keep up to date and competitive. The online learning space is predicted to be a $100 billion industry by 2015.

What’s ahead for digital learning

Getting the user experience right means understanding online behaviour and the importance of delivering constant, bite-sized engagement pieces. This doesn’t mean throwing out traditional learning approaches. Key learning outcomes act as a beacon in developing effective content. A polished user experience with no learning direction will hold little value in changing behaviours and skillsets, just as well-designed learning outcomes delivered in a dry and flat manner will be ineffective. The most successful programs have the learning outcomes and user experience working together, not in opposition.

The next wave of online learning will begin to focus on personalisation of the experience. Not just in look and feel of platforms, but in terms of the type of content, how it’s delivered and how it’s accessed.

The future of digital learning is trending in an exciting direction. Gamification, self-directed learning, data-rich reporting engines and wider, more diverse accessibility will accelerate the industry, giving it a much greater impact. However, these tools will be only as powerful as the people, organisations and principles that underpin their appropriate and impactful use.

The fundamentals of building eLearning content

WHAT TO DO

• If dealing with existing content, pull it apart before putting it back together.
• seek to understand changes in the way the content has been presented historically; know the desired learning outcomes for the immediate program and how they fit into an organisation’s wider organisational development strategy.
• When creating content, create narratives at all stages of the experience.
• Be open with the audience about what’s required from them, in both time and effort.

WHAT TO AVOID

• dense, copy-heavy content.
• one-dimensional checkbox assessment questionnaires.
• lack of visual engagement.
• lack of narrative/context.
• PowerPoints turned into online-learning applications.

Originally published at Campus Review