Can students learn from self-paced courseware or, does an instructor or facilitator have to be involved for students/employees to “really” learn? That was the question posed recently during the IPT 523 course.
I believe it is possible for students to learn from self-paced courseware, but I feel two things need to be present in order for it to be effective:
- Context / relevance
- High fidelity multimedia
I can tell you from personal experience that a PowerPoint presentation (by itself or converted to E-learning) has little to no value if it is not in context or relevant to the learner’s needs. In my current work as a consultant, I use PowerPoint as support material to the live training I conduct. After the training session, I deliver the PowerPoint slides I create as job aids to reference as learners begin to work on their own. Had they not gone through the training I provide and were simply given the PowerPoint slide to use as their initial training, I highly doubt it would produce positive results.
Note: I try to follow the “simple is better” rule with the PowerPoint slides I create and deliver. With that said, my slide decks aren’t very meaningful without the actual training session to support it.
The other aspect that makes self-paced courseware effective is multimedia, using all or a combination of audio, images, video, animation and text. One way to clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of multimedia in self-paced courseware is looking at it through Dale’s Cone of Experience. The more interactive you can make it, and the higher fidelity of the multimedia (the more real it is), the more effective it will be.
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