Chapter 8
The Serious e-Learning Manifesto

Logo of the Serious E-learning Manifesto.

In the 1960s, it seemed that emerging instructional technology would truly change the world for the better—or at least the world of education. It wasn't a complicated vision. It was simply the belief that we could provide learning experiences that were:

  1. Consistent and Impartial Instead of learning opportunities varying widely in quality, depending on the abilities, health, and even the mood of instructors, they would be consistent, impartial, and developed by the world's best talent.
  2. Individualized The programs would continuously assess each learner's individual needs and adapt accordingly.
  3. Free National governments would make access to libraries of educational programs free to all citizens, with or without enrollment in educational institutions, to create a wiser public and a more compassionate and connected world.
  4. Competitive Improvement Instructional programs would improve continuously through competition, public and expert assessment, and an open market for commercial offerings.

More than 50 years later, we haven't made nearly the progress expected. The vision is still alive, at least with me, and significant progress has been made in some aspects. Clearly, e-learning is widely accepted, even with its many shortcomings. But it's disappointing that so much of the progress has been made on the technology side, offering greater and greater practicalities, while so little benefit has been realized through instructional designs that realize the promise of e-learning.

Quality Obligations

When we create instructional programs, we have a much greater responsibility than jotting down a plan for tomorrow's class. A greater responsibility than outlining presentation topics. A greater responsibility than readying a set of visuals.

In a classroom, we can help students advance, depending on their varying degrees of readiness and abilities and our instructional competence and agility. If we're good at it, don't have too many students, and our students have uncanny similarities, a classroom experience can be a successful event for all. But what if students are diverse in abilities, interests, and readiness as they usually are? It's very likely, even if you're a great instructional marvel, that a lot of learner time will be wasted, whether in waiting for help or waiting for the next topic.

Perhaps a Hippocratic oath for us instructional designers could first admonish us to:

With apologies to Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and space-time curvature, lost learner time is never retrievable or reusable. And worse, negative attitudes shaped toward learning by poorly taught subjects preclude future successes and contributions. Poor instruction is regrettable to an extreme (regardless of how rapidly it was produced).

Unlike a teacher in a classroom, the computer can be doing something different with each student at every moment simultaneously. It can accelerate or slow the pace; it can heighten or lower the challenge; it can skip ahead or provide extended practice or remediation. Most important, the effectiveness of computer-delivered instruction can be improved systematically through evaluation and revision. No matter how poor the first version might be, an instructional program can eventually reach extraordinary effectiveness through iterative refinement.

Page Turners

A fun novel may be called a page turner, but it is not a compliment when describing e-learning. Unfortunately, over the last decade, we've seen page-turning presentations, sans critical instructional elements, in all sorts of disguises, rolled out in droves, boasting of compromises to the lowest common platform capabilities so as to be responsive or adaptive to any device. All of this regardless of whether the instructional need were simply for information or advanced skill development.

To be sure, there are cases in which access to good information is all that's needed. We will discuss those instances in a later chapter. But it's clear that we're far too ready to assume an online textbook is sufficient to develop skills and improve performance.

Basic Principles

I've been delighted (and enlightened) to work with thought leaders in e-learning to address what's become an epidemic of abandoned basic instructional principles. Year after year, we see courseware designs at tradeshows and conferences that reveal new and inventive ways to make page turners look like something better. We see tremendous effort put into creating distracting treatments while neglecting the basic principles of effective instruction and the unique opportunities e-learning provides. But no matter how well disguised, such neglect wastes learner time and sacrifices opportunities.

What to do? Spearheaded by industry thought-leaders and stalwarts Julie Dirksen, Will Thalheimer, and Clark Quinn, we decided to create what is now called The Serious eLearning Manifesto. The crafting of the Manifesto took months of discussion, consideration, and writing, because it was important to get it right. We wanted it to clarify the concerns we shared and become the foundation of our craft and profession—the basis of instructional design curricula everywhere. It needed to be based on sound research, practical for application, and successful in the field.

The Manifesto was reviewed, revised even more, and endorsed by dozens of industry spokespersons who became the Manifesto trustees in the process. It has since been endorsed by over a thousand professionals worldwide. You can access and endorse the Manifesto yourself at www.elearningmanifesto.org.

Design Values

The Manifesto sets forth a list of values that should guide the design of e-learning (and any instructional design, for that matter) along with a comparative list of values that are currently shaping the preponderance of work being done today. The values contrast strongly with one another, helping to define what we should and should not do in our design work.

Let's review each comparison.

Comparison of Typical e-Learning and Serious e-Learning Characteristics

Typical e-Learning Serious e-Learning
Content versus Performance Focus
Typical e-learning focuses on presentation of content. That leads to making sure all the information is presented in orderly fashion—clear and complete. With a high percentage of authoring time consumed by content preparation, instruction tends to focus on knowledge acquisition instead of building performance skills. Interactive learning events that take additional time to develop may be either omitted altogether or superficial. Targeted toward achieving performance outcomes, serious e-learning starts with focus on needed behaviors and then constructs contexts in which those behaviors can be developed and practiced. If authoring begins with designing active learning experiences and then creates content required by them, the end product tends to be quite different from typical e-learning and much more impactful.
Efficient for Authors versus Meaningful to Learners
Although the history of e-learning boasts successful learning in significantly shortened learning time, it also takes a considerable investment of time to design and build learning experiences that achieve these important results. The desire for shorter development time has fueled a movement toward rapid authoring, which has achieved speed mostly by using templated interactions. Templates are typically generalized for wide applicability, but that often renders designs that are less than ideal for specific uses. Serious e-learning prizes learning experiences that produce superior post-learning performance in the shortest learning time. For serious e-learning, such learning experiences and successful performance outcomes are mandatory. To a certain extent, the more authoring time invested, the shorter the required learning time will be and the better the performance outcomes will be. More authoring time and less required learning time is preferable to less authoring time and subsequently extended learning time.
Attendance versus Engagement
Many of today's programs are evaluated by how many learners have been put through them. A larger throughput indicates a more successful undertaking. The assumption, of course, is that the program works for learners and achieves the performance the organization needs. Outcomes often go unmeasured, leaving usage as the primary measure of achievement. If learners find open programs engaging and beneficial and encourage colleagues to take them, there's good reason to think these programs will have a more positive impact. Engaging learners with helpful, relevant learning is preferred to forcing learners into required training.
Knowledge Delivery versus Authentic Contexts
Organizing and preparing information for presentation takes a lot of time and effort. In addition, technology allows highly polished presentation of information, including videos, three-dimensional illustrations and animations, graphic effects, paging effects, and more. Authors have an almost endless list of options to choose from, which easily distract authors from the greater opportunity e-learning provides—the ability to provide learners with interactive experiences. Unfortunately, typical e-learning tends to build only on the technology's ability to disseminate information rather than on its ability to let people learn from witnessing the consequences of their actions in situations resembling those they may actually encounter. The desired outcome of learning is the ability to do something the learner couldn't do before. If reading how to do something can ensure successful performance, then knowledge delivery is enough. But, in many cases, learners need to be put in situations in which they can learn to recognize salient aspects of a situation, respond to them, note the consequences, and practice until they can act effectively with confidence. Realistic or authentic contexts in which the learner may be called on to perform make learning experiences relevant to the learner and heighten the meaningfulness of the instruction.
Fact Testing versus Realistic Decisions
Typical e-learning takes advantage of the convenience of standard-form questions to assess retention of facts. Multiple-choice and matching questions are very common (and quick to implement). But short-term fact retention has little to do with performance proficiency. Although excellent performance has knowledge prerequisites, serious e-learning doesn't consider retention of facts a valid measure of performance readiness. Rather, learners must be asked to make realistic decisions and execute procedures as may actually be required.
One Size Fits All versus Individualized Challenges
Typical e-learning ignores individual differences and assumes all learners will benefit sufficiently from the same instruction. All learners see the same presentations and receive the same tests. To avoid severely frustrating slower or less well-prepared learners and boring more advanced learners, serious e-learning works to provide growth-enabling challenges for each learner at (for practice) and just above (for advancement) their current skill level.
Onetime Events versus Spaced Practice
Typical e-learning sequences through topics, progressing steadily to the end of instruction and probably a posttest. Practice is often minimal, but if it's included, it's usually a block of practice exercises that learners must complete. On the basis of solid research, we know that practice sessions need to be repeated and spaced gradually farther and farther apart. Learning dissipates quickly after a single session of practice but persists for much greater lengths of time when multiple sessions are spaced apart.
Didactic Feedback versus Real-World Consequences
Typical e-learning gives instantaneous judgment in the form of “correct” or “incorrect.” Sometimes the reason for the judgment is included, but learners rather quickly become focused on getting positive feedback and avoiding negative, rather than fully understanding the relationship between their decisions and the real-world consequences they are likely to cause. Effective performance derives in large part from predicting the consequences of various decisions and being able to evaluate alternative consequences as good or bad. On the basis of these skills, people can correct errors as they occur and perform at a level higher than simply following a preset script. Serious e-learning puts learners in situations in which the primary feedback is a representation of what would really happen given the choice(s) the learner made.

The Principles

The Manifesto provides guidance for achieving the characteristics of serious e-learning with a set of 22 principles. The principles constitute a pledge taken by the author-instigators, trustees, and signatories to use their best efforts to break the trends of typical e-learning and do work that has credible possibilities of producing successful and valuable learning that changes behavior and improves performance. They are set forth as follows:

  1. Do Not Assume That Learning Is the Solution

    We do not assume that a learning intervention is always the best means to helping people perform better.

  2. Do Not Assume That e-Learning Is the Answer

    When learning is required, we do not assume that e-learning is the only (or the best) solution.

  3. Tie Learning to Performance Goals

    We will couple the skills we are developing to the goals of organizations, individuals, or both.

  4. Target Improved Performance

    We will help our learners achieve performance excellence, enabling them to have improved abilities, skills, confidence, and readiness to perform.

  5. Provide Realistic Practice

    We will provide learners sufficient levels of realistic practice, for example, simulations, scenario-based decision making, case-based evaluations, and authentic exercises.

  6. Enlist Authentic Contexts

    We will provide learners with sufficient experience in making decisions in authentic contexts.

  7. Provide Guidance and Feedback

    We will provide learners with guidance and feedback to correct their misconceptions, reinforce their comprehension, and build effective performance skills.

  8. Provide Realistic Consequences

    When providing performance feedback during learning, we will provide learners with a sense of the real-world consequences.

  9. Adapt to Learner Needs

    We can and should use e-learning's capability to create learning environments that are flexible or adaptive to learner needs.

  10. Motivate Meaningful Involvement

    We will provide learners with learning experiences that are relevant to their current goals and/or that motivate them to engage deeply in the process of learning.

  11. Aim for Long-Term Impact

    We will create learning experiences that have long-term impact—well beyond the end of instructional events—to times when the learning is needed for performance.

  12. Use Interactivity to Prompt Deep Engagement

    We will use e-learning's unique interactive capabilities to support reflection, application, rehearsal, elaboration, contextualization, debate, evaluation, synthesis, and so on—not just in navigation, page turning, rollovers, and information search.

  13. Provide Support for Post-Training Follow-Through

    We will support instruction with the appropriate mix of after-training follow-through, providing learning events that reinforce key learning points, marshal supervisory and management support for learning application, and create mechanisms that enable further on-the-job learning.

  14. Diagnose Root Causes

    When given training requests, we will determine whether training is likely to produce benefits and whether other factors should be targeted for improvement. We will also endeavor to be proactive in assessing organizational performance factors—not waiting for requests from organizational stakeholders.

  15. Use Performance Support

    We will consider providing job aids, checklists, wizards, sidekicks, planners, and other performance support tools in addition to—and as a potential replacement for—standard e-learning interactions.

  16. Measure Effectiveness

    Good learning cannot be assured without measurement, which includes the following:

    1. Measure Outcomes

      Ideally, we will measure whether the learning has led to benefits for the individual and/or the organization.

    2. Measure Actual Performance Results

      Ideally, an appropriate time after the learning (for example, two to six weeks later), we will measure whether the learner has applied the learning, the level of success, the success factors and obstacles encountered, and the level of supervisor support where warranted.

    3. Measure Learning Comprehension and Decision Making during Learning

      At a minimum, during the learning, we will measure both learner comprehension and decision-making ability. Ideally, we would also measure these at least a week after the learning.

    4. Measure Meaningful Learner Perceptions

      When we measure learners' perceptions, we will measure their perceptions of the following: their ability to apply what they've learned, their level of motivation, and the support they will receive in implementing the learning.

  17. Iterate in Design, Development, and Deployment

    We won't assume that our first pass is right, but we will evaluate and refine until we have achieved our design goals.

  18. Support Performance Preparation

    We will prepare learners during the e-learning event to be motivated to apply what they've learned, inoculated against obstacles, and prepared to deal with specific situations.

  19. Support Learner Understanding with Conceptual Models

    We believe that performance should be based on conceptual models to guide decisions and that such models should be presented, linked to steps in examples, practiced with, and used in feedback.

  20. Use Rich Examples and Counterexamples

    We will present examples and counterexamples, together with the underlying thinking.

  21. Enable Learners to Learn from Mistakes

    Failure is an option. We will, where appropriate, let learners make mistakes so they can learn from them. In addition, where appropriate, we will model mistake making and mistake fixing.

  22. Respect Learners

    We will acknowledge and leverage the knowledge and skills learners bring to the learning environment through their past experience and individual contexts.

A Goal to Strive For

Although seemingly ideal, the Manifesto sets forth such a strong contrast to typical design practices that significant movement in the proposed direction will take time. It's not simply a lack of guidelines that are at fault today, constraining what's done to the simplest, fastest, and often minimally effective e-learning. We have to realign the pervasive mind-set.

The Manifesto urges designers to recognize the fundamental difference between presentations of information and instruction—to understand the different uses and values of each, and to avoid indiscriminant application. While the Internet has achieved remarkable and genuinely awe-inspiring capabilities for searching, retrieving, and presenting information, instruction requires a good deal more than this.

I don't doubt we'll get to automated instructional design at some point. Even if it made some egregious errors at first, my guess is it would outshine much of what's done today in the stampede to churn out as much courseware in as little time as possible. But research on the artificial intelligence required and attempts to create intelligent tutoring systems have yet to provide practical, suitable systems.

In the meantime, however, there's much to be gained by incrementally incorporating the values and principles of the Manifesto into our work. Even if adopted just one at a time, the guidelines can contribute hugely to the success of e-learning to the benefit of our learners and their organizations.

The Takeaways

Perhaps because modern technology facilitates rapid development and dissemination of information, the slower and more arduous efforts to use this same technology for serious (read “effective”) instructional uses have been obscured. While access to information at the right time and place can certainly facilitate performance, presentation of information is only one component of what needs to be done to develop skills and motivate performance change.

Substituting presentations for instruction is, sadly, only one of the egregious errors commonly made today. In the rush to do things fast, cheaply, and easily, focus has turned away from well-established instructional values. In the pursuit of fast, cheap, and easy, valuable instructional impact has been lost. Too often, today's instructional technology is grossly underutilized and falls far short of the contributions it could otherwise make.

The Serious eLearning Manifesto is an industry effort to return professionalism to the field. Endorsed by hundreds of experienced thought leaders, the Manifesto online at www.elearningmanifesto.org offers the following support to industry workers:

  • A list of values that are guiding typical e-learning design and development
  • A contrasting list of preferred values known to be much more effective
  • Short commentaries on all listed values
  • A set of 22 principles that can guide and assist e-learning designers to incorporate the preferred values
  • Comments and endorsements posted by hundreds of people working with e-learning
  • An opportunity to add your own endorsement to the initiative
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