Yes - eLearning does suck, but for how long?

This presentation, “eLearning sucks”, (link from Clive Shepherd) is beautifully put together and persuasive. Although pretty much everything it says has been said before (including by me!), it really illustrates that the medium is the message. It's very powerful.

It helped me clarify the changing relationship between two hugely powerful trends that are affecting the industry:

1. The clamour for better learner engagement is overwhelming now; we simply can’t go on shoveling out dull products to people. There’s may be a silent rebellion, but it will be one nevertheless.
2. The pressure for lower cost.

Until fairly recently these two trends would appear to be contradictory: better engagement = higher cost. But I don’t think that’s true any more. Rapid tools are increasing in sophistication in leaps and bounds, and “rapidisation” is affecting every aspect of digital production. So I can now develop immersive 3D games (with Thinking Worlds), richly branching scenarios (with Experience Builders) and complex interactive animations (with SwishMax), all without programming; I can get hold of a bewildering array of sounds, photographs, animations and even complex 3D models from sites that give them away for free. I can grab free, or low cost alternatives to just about every major desktop tool, from Dreamweaver to Photoshop, from Captivate to Flash.

Cost savings and effectiveness improvements flow in so many ways from these changes. Just one example: small independent operators can now produce very sophisticated products with few overheads. They can manage their own projects, as they no longer need to employ large teams of specialists. And most important of all, they can have a direct and close relationship with their clients, which means they hear what they‘re saying and feel very directly the consequences of their actions – whether good or bad. Small is beautiful (and cost-effective…).

The e-learning industry that emerges from the recession is not going to be the bloated, over-charging, under-delivering one that went into it. I think learners and organisations can look forward to far cheaper, far better e-learning products and services, as long as clients are savvy enough to know to ask for them - which is another issue altogether. 

Just one afterthought about “elearning sucks”: on slide 15 it says: “eLearning authors often put engagement a distant second to academic rigour”. Well – if they had any genuine academic rigour they would know that learning can only take place with engagement. A “learning experience” without engagement cannot be an academically rigorous one, because there is no such thing as dull learning.