Have you been involved in designing or developing self-paced eLearning training materials? These are learning modules that are designed to be used for interactive demonstrations, simulations, or branched learning activities. This conversation session will engage participants in sharing design assumptions in this area and establishing practices that enhance eLearning.
eLearning courses that utilize self-paced instructional authoring tools, such as Articulate 360 and Captivate, have become common in higher education and K-12 professional development and credit-based courses. These tools allow developers and educators to create learning materials that go beyond static text content delivery by adding interactivity, adaptive branching, multi-media, and embedded assessments within an inclusive package delivered via the web or and through an LMS. These materials are also useful when courses are delivered in responsive environments from browser-based LMS to mobile devices. In whatever capacity these tools are being used, it is pertinent to raise a few questions about assumptions being made on their designs, use, and impact. How are these, “eLearning” materials being used and do they have an impact on learning? Are there different design considerations when used in for-credit courses or within staff training? How do we measure time-on-task in this type of learning environment, and what role can learning design theory play in bolstering their efficacy?
It is helpful here to establish the term, Self-paced eLearning (SPeL), which may be considered part of a distance education continuum or as a specific way to think about eLearning design and delivery. For instance, there are types of eLearning designs that may fall somewhere between facilitated synchronous distance courses and self-paced non-facilitated asynchronous courses, each with varying design practices.This means there is a difference between a facilitated eLearning course offered through a university and a training course offered to employees of that university. However, do designers, faculty, and subject matter experts make the same learner assumptions and design choices in both cases? Thinking of SPeL as a specific design case, instructional design professionals may be able to develop better courses. This is particularly relevant when considering how SPeL might reach large audiences and even be a part of adaptive course technologies that branch into AI-facilitated learning (Saba & Shearer, 2018).
Drawing from eLearning theory, eLearning designers and administrators might develop the rationale for the use of SPeL design choices as a different from other eLearning offerings. One such framework is Moore’s Theory of Transactional Distance (TTD), which posits how distance learning design consists of the variables of structure, dialog, and learner autonomy. Therefore, with an increase in distance, courses have more structure, little to no dialog, and less autonomy (Moore & Kearsley, 2012). This may inform designers of SPeL courses by assuming that learners will need to be self-motivated enough to engage with the materials, expecting them to focus on the content and fully engage with the interactions. Without this assumption, SPeL design could easily become something that learners can easily skip over, resulting in design choices that force learners to click through materials and answer comprehension questions. This could make such learning experiences more akin behaviorist's stimulus and response, conveying more of a didactic learning design instead of being constructivist - with engaging and interactive learning experiences.
From another perspective, SPeL design decisions may also derive from the evidence-based eLearning design principles collected by Clark & Mayer (2016) that when used, enhance learning. These include principles in displaying and organizing text, images, and videos, named: modality principle, redundancy principle, etc. However, some designs may misuse these principles, such as overuse of narration in SPeL trainings instead of text – a misapplication of the modality principle.
Theory aside, a conversation on defining SPeL and how authoring tools are used to support it as a form of distance education would be beneficial to conference participants in thinking about their practices. As a conversation session, the facilitator and participants can intimately interact, which would involve discussion and debated based on a short presentation of theoretical basis for SPeL and showing SPeL examples from university professional development and K-12 educator training. A handout (written and online) will summarize the main points and function as an interactive component for participants and the facilitator to post their ideas.
Clark, R. C. & Mayer, R. (2016). eLearning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning (4th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley
Moore, M., Kearsley, G. (2012). Distance education: A systems view of online learning. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Saba, F. & Shearer, R. (2018). Transactional distance and adaptive learning: Planning for the future of higher education. Routledge.