Navigation Imperatives

1. Let learners see what's here.
2. Let learners see how the content is organized.
3. Let learners see where they are.
4. Let learners go forward (when they want to).
5. Let learners back up (when they want to).
6. Let learners correct their errors (themselves).

Navigation Imperative 1: Let Learners See What's Here

Children have their school day structured for them and make few decisions about how their time will be spent. In contrast, as adults in a much too hurried world, most of us are constantly trying to assure ourselves that we are using our time wisely. Our time is valuable—we don't want to throw it away unless we choose to do so. We guard against letting others waste it.

Even if we actually have only a few options, we don't like being treated as schoolchildren. We don't like to hear, “This is good for you. Do it now.” We like to know how long something is likely to take, to have the option of doing it now or later and to decide in what order we will do things.

As adults, we like to know the purpose of our activities. We like to get some perspective, consider options, and then decide whether to make the commitment or to search for other options.

Sure, adult learners can be forced into the schoolchild's role. Some adults snap right into it, having become accustomed to it and probably successful at it in their youth. But even those willing victims are likely to have a better experience if they have the means to survey the next opportunity before the event launches in earnest irrespective of reservations and readiness. How long will it take? What does it cover? How hard will it be? Does this look interesting?

Is It Bigger than a Breadbox?

Taking a content-focused stance, many designers launch right into instruction following a list of learning objectives. (By now you know what I think about that.) If they follow my suggestions, they will make the effort to communicate the value of the pending learning experience in a meaningful way before attempting to deliver it. They will build motivation and note special learning aids that have been provided. But what authors might not think to do is give learners any sense of how big this thing is, what shape it is, what kind of crust and filling it has.

You can size up a book fairly easily. You can assess some of its characteristics even as it sits on a shelf. Pick it up and you can quickly check to see how many pages it has, about how much is on a page, how it's divided up, how big the divisions are, what the illustrations are like, how useful the index and glossaries appear to be, and so on. In just a few minutes standing in a bookstore, you can set some fairly reasonable expectations of what reading a book will be like.

Of course, the book designer is doing everything possible to give you a positive impression quickly. But you have the option to jump directly to the meat of the offering if you want to. And see for yourself.

Not so with e-learning, unless the means are provided to browse, play around, test features, and get to randomly selected points. Learners need your help to be able to do those things that give them a sense of control and self-determination.

Previewing

ZebraZapps is a next-generation system for authoring and publishing instructional software and other interactive applications. In it, we've attempted to solve many of the causes that inhibit e-learning from being what it should and can be. For example, one of the reasons learners don't get the opportunity to browse through courses prior to working through them is that authors want to control every movement of the learner—what learners can and can't see at all times. It's the victimization of learners I talked about earlier. Another reason is that most authoring software doesn't make it easy for learners to skip around, do a little of this here and a little of that there and yet not lose their place anywhere they started working. But it should. This can help learners optimize use of their time and take more ownership of their learning.

ZebraZapps as a terrific, easy-to-use (you just switch it on) utility to allow learners to familiarize themselves with an instructional application. It displays course content in book-like format and allows learners to flip through it. Learners can be allowed to enter into any interactions they find appealing, but they can also be restricted to just looking until they've worked through prerequisite learning events. Some parts of the application can be kept hidden, of course, and presented in context as appropriate.

As shown in Figures 11.1 and 11.2, ZebraZapps can deliver learning apps on mobile devices, laptops, and desktop machines using appropriate user gesture recognition on each platform. When using Sneak Peek, learners can just swipe the screen to preview all instructional events and reference materials the author makes available to preview. If allowed by the author, with just a simple tap of the screen or click of the mouse button learners can start or resume full interactivity anywhere within the e-learning program or at preceding author-specified points as may be appropriate.

Navigation Imperative 2: Let Learners See How the Content Is Organized

Navigation, by definition, builds on content organization. This creates an opportunity to let learners review the organization of content, which can help them not only get their bearings but also learn something about the content itself. If the content is organized from easy to hard, learners will gain a sense of what should be easy for them and what may take more effort; if content is ordered according to a process, the structure will impart knowledge of the proper sequence; if content is ordered chronologically, learners can get a sense of precedents and consequences and so on.

There is often a necessary compromise between the efficiency of navigation and the information that navigational controls supply. A simple click to go to the next sequential topic doesn't even require presentation of a list of topics, but omitting orienting information for the sake of streamlined navigation would be an unfortunate extreme of simplicity over being more helpful. However, requiring learners to open layer upon layer of hierarchical menus to access the next topic would err at the opposite extreme.

Excellent designs are both efficient, allowing quick and easy access to content, and informative, allowing users to see the content organization clearly. And they do more: They also present multiple points of view to the organization. They might, for example, provide the following views:

• Sequence of topics in the order of recommended study
• Structured listing of topics by discipline, such as accounting, management, and communications
• List of topics by instructional activities provided, such as simulations, drill and practice, and problem solving
• List of topics by media, such as videos, animations, and narrated text

All these views into course structure add value to the e-learning application by either providing learning support natural to some other media, or making use of technology to provide support not possible with other media. Of course, the navigation design should also provide the convenience and functionality of taking learners directly to any topic they want to investigate further, perhaps by tapping keywords found anywhere in the courseware.

Navigational Imperative 3: Let Learners See Where They Are

Once you've launched yourself into an e-learning experience as a learner, it can be difficult to know where you are. Again, the typical indeterminate nature of e-learning creates uneasiness, so the design needs to compensate by providing a sense of orientation and position (see Figure 11.3).

There are many creative ways to help learners see where they are. This may be a good place to have fun with the design, but even a simple thermometer or a dot moving from one end of a line to another as a report of progress will become a meaningful display of information for learners who are anxious to know how much they've accomplished and what they have left. It's not unusual for the learner's vocabulary to reflect how important progress measures are: “My dot is halfway there!” “I'm in the last building!” “Only one more stone to complete my pyramid!” They even compare progress notes with each other: “How far did you get? Have you made it to the green level yet?”

Of course, we'd rather they were boasting about how much they have learned, but excited exclamations over their progress is almost as good.

Note: As desirable as a progress bar is, it shouldn't dictate linear sequencing of content. Allowing learners to skip around, while perhaps unnerving some authors, is almost always a wise design. Learners will probably opt to move through the course linearly anyway, but letting it be their choice helps overcome the victimizing nature of structured software. Even if content access isn't linear, a progress bar can be based on accumulated mastery and indicate how much has been accomplished and how much remains. A menu or table of contents can provide more specific information by showing which items have been started, which have been completed, and which have not yet been touched (see Figure 11.4).

Navigation Imperative 4: Let Learners Go Forward

“I don't want to back up to go forward,” said Carl Philabaum, in one of his many profoundly insightful moments. Carl, one of my fellow cofounders of Authorware, Inc., often brought brilliant clarity to our discussions about user interface. Once you saw his vision, you couldn't possibly be happy with it in any other form. As usual, he was right on this point about going forward.

Why would you want to back up to go forward? Yet learners often do have to return to a previous menu to pick the next topic. Learners don't want to be forced to back up through a series of submenus to get to the next topic. They don't want to have to return to the table of contents just to go on. Designers might justify such an annoying requirement by suggesting that it helps learners keep the structure in mind, and there is that advantage. But if learners want to see the structure, let them. If they want to go forward to the next item in their path, let them do that, too.

Heeding Carl's principle and also providing the value of a course menu to remind learners of what content is included, is the possibility of drawers, pop-ups, and other quick overlays to provide nearly instant access to navigation. While it may involve an extra click, I think Carl wouldn't mind nor would our learners.

There's no reason you can't remind learners of the overall structure without forcing them to retreat first. You can do it with an overlay or slide-out graphical map, for example, showing learners where they are currently. If learners now want to be somewhere else, they can just click another point on the map. With a single click they've gone forward again. Easy. Thanks, Carl.

The ZebraZapps template shown in Figure 11.5 depicts an always-present main menu with current place and progress reporting built in. One click in the course editor gives the author a complete and editable structure. Contemporary authoring tools remove any excuses for not providing effective navigation.

Navigation Imperative 5: Let Learners Back Up

It can be a programming challenge, especially if the learning experience is a complex simulation, but being able to back up is usually essential to providing an optimal learning experience. We often think we understand something, only to find out a bit later that we really don't. Being able to back up at that moment of realization is very important, especially for adult learners who don't want to be constrained and are responsible for their own learning.

Not being able to back up raises anxiety, creates a helpless, lack-of-control feeling, precludes potentially beneficial experiences, and suggests to learners that:

We're in charge here, not you. If you had been paying attention, you wouldn't need to back up. If we had thought people couldn't understand this in one pass, then, of course, we would have let you back up. Because we must take responsibility for your learning, and you didn't take the opportunity to get what you needed, here's what's going to happen to you next. . . .

A bit dramatic, perhaps. But not providing a means for backing up is a regrettable constraint in many e-learning applications. It severely limits their potential.

In simple page-turning applications, it is not difficult to back up. But with highly interactive e-learning, backing up can become complex—so complex, in fact, that development teams sometimes abandon efforts to build powerful learning experiences because they cannot devise a backup function. This is a regrettable tradeoff. We need both immersive learning experiences and the ability to back up through them, perhaps changing answers to see different consequences.

If the design requirement to allow learners to back up is established early in the design of each application, the team will find it isn't usually as difficult to build as it might seem, assuming the use of a powerful authoring tool. Programming the function is a bit harder, but making provisions for backing up isn't an unreasonable effort as long as it is anticipated at the start. On the other hand, it's almost impossible to retrofit a backup capability into a completed or nearly complete e-learning application, so it is essential to be clear about this early in the design process.

Navigation Imperative 6: Let Learners Correct Their Errors

The experience of privately discovering you have made a mistake, fixing it, and finding satisfaction in your work, describes the perfect learning experience. The outcome includes knowing what happens when you make the error and knowing what happens when you do the right thing. Instead of being told what to do, you find the effective path and appreciate it in all its nuances more than you ever could by simply following step-by-step instructions. The fidelity of your learning is at maximum. Why, then, don't we design learning experiences that enable and encourage such events?

Perhaps it's because some extra work is involved. It takes work to provide intrinsic feedback through which learners see the consequences of their choices directly, instead of hearing from you, “No, that's not correct. Try again.” It takes work to allow learners to manipulate objects, make decisions, and collect information before they make those decisions. It takes cleverness to construct challenges that reveal important truths or fully present opposing points of view.

The learner-interface control for backing up may be only a simple Back button. However, helping learners know where they are, what their previous decisions or actions were, and the state of a simulated process or product exploration will also be essential interface components. These can range from simple to very complex.

Yes, it takes some effort to reap the value learning technology can provide. And it takes more creativity than does the simple presentation of information. But once you've done the right things, the costs stop and the benefits will continue to accrue for each learner and the organization. If you don't, the costs just continue to accrue without the benefits. Give learners the means to correct themselves. It's powerful.

The Imperatives

There are always exceptions, but justifiable exceptions to the listed imperatives are rare. Implementing these imperatives pay off handsomely in the successful learning experiences they enable. Unless there are incontestable objections or restrictions, insist that your learning applications follow the imperatives. Write them into the specifications whether you are buying, building, or contracting for e-learning solutions.

NAVIGATION IMPERATIVE 1

Let Learners See What's Here

The navigation system accommodates several levels of organization. A course is divided into topics. Each topic is organized into sections. Each section might be made up of one or more pages or challenges. This structure is displayed at all times, no matter where learners are in course.

The navigation bar shows the course structure in a very compact space. A numbered tab represents each topic in the course. These icons are arranged in order from left to right. For each course, only the appropriate number of icons is displayed—there are no placeholder blank images. In addition to showing the number of topics clearly, the navigation bar is also effective as a more general indicator of scope. For a learner who will be completing even just a few sections in this navigation framework, a fleeting glance provides an immediate sense of whether it is a long or short course, and how much time to allocate accordingly.

NAVIGATION IMPERATIVE 2

Let Learners See How the Content Is Organized

The topic tabs give a visual indicator of the skeleton of the course but do not convey anything about the content except to indicate the recommended order of study. More details about topics and sections are available in two ways. First, the learner can move the mouse over any tab to view the name of the topic, which appears above the tabs (see Figure 11.8).

And, for even more detail, the learner can select the Topics & Objectives button (second button from the left) to view topics and sections as a list (see Figure 11.9).

Learners can view the topics and sections list without losing their place in the course. Detailed learning objectives for the course are also available here.

NAVIGATION IMPERATIVE 3

Let Learners See Where They Are

The topic icons change status as the learner moves through the course. The current topic is highlighted and completed topics are marked with a colored bar (see Figure 11.10).

NAVIGATION IMPERATIVE 4

Let Learners Go Forward

This navigation allows users to go forward in several ways. At the most basic level, the Continue button takes the learner through the entire course in the established order (see Figure 11.11). The continue function is disabled only during challenges when the learner must successfully complete an activity before being allowed to proceed within the topic.

The arrow buttons allow learners to move forward (and backward) on a section basis rather than just one page at a time. The notation above the arrow buttons provides useful orienting information regarding the number of sections in the current topic and where the learner currently is working.

The learner can also skip forward to any topic simply by clicking the corresponding tab, if the author allows it.

NAVIGATION IMPERATIVE 5

Let Learners Back Up

Of particular interest in this navigation scheme is the bookmarking feature. Learners earmark pages for later review by clicking in the upper left corner of the screen. Earmarked pages are indicated at the upper left of the screen as well as on the topic tabs.

Conveniently, the learner can move backward in nearly all the same ways as forward. Clicking the left arrow button takes the learner to previous sections (see Figure 11.11). Clicking the up arrow button restarts the section. Clicking the icon for a topic that has been studied previously takes the learner back to that topic.

NAVIGATION IMPERATIVE 6

Let Learners Correct Their Errors

This navigation model is somewhat neutral in regard to making mistakes. However, it does allow corrections in that learners are generally one or two clicks away from any part of the content, so an unintended click can be corrected quickly and easily. The Restart button (up arrow in Figure 11.11) is available in case the learner missed or did not attend to the audio narration.

Extended Features

In addition to illustrating the imperatives, the WorldTutor structure provides some additional and handy learning support features. An Options button reveals a set of buttons for these features (see Figure 11.12).

The buttons include:

All these features are handy, and many learners have come to expect them today, except perhaps the flash card system, which I find quite inventive and valuable. The WorldTutor model goes even beyond its earmarking feature that's very handy for review, to allow learners to build a flash card deck on topics they feel they need to rehearse. At any time, learners can call up their flashcards and work through them, rehearsing to the point of confident mastery.

Some Concerns

Although metaphors for navigation—or for any interactive controls for that matter—can be powerful, they're sometimes used to mask a lack of good instructional interactivity. It's very disappointing to begin an e-learning application with an extravagant rendering of a metaphor, only to find that once you've selected your topic of instruction, the metaphor has no further utility. Even worse is to find that the interactions are shallow and lacking in imagination because too much effort was spent devising the navigational window dressing.

To make it even worse yet, metaphors are sometimes forced into every nook and cranny of interactions, where they provide no benefit, become wearisome, and may actually distract or confuse learners.

Compounding all these problems, metaphors sometimes feel childish and demeaning. There's a fine line between gamelike metaphors—those that can provide energy and a helpful lightheartedness to otherwise taxing learning events—and silly and juvenile metaphorical contexts that add little value and may impede learning. From my perspective, it's usually best to find interest and energy in the content and skills being taught and build directly on those. Adding a lot of ornamentation suggests you don't know how to make your content truly interesting and relevant.

Simplicity Is Best

In general, the simplest way to represent the structure and content of a course of instruction may be the best. Selecting a segment of content to study shouldn't involve learning the controls of a starship to fly through an alien sector to the next solar system. As fun as that might be, it seems more beneficial to put such authoring talents and resources to work building meaningful learning experiences.

So, if you can't come up with something elegant, simple, and relevant to the learning, consider giving navigational metaphors the metaphorical boot!