What does that mean?

The common myth is that something more visual, like a video, is better than text or spoken word for example.  The truth is, it is not the delivery mechanism or media that is chosen for instruction that facilitates learning, it is the components that make up the instruction that enables the learner to gain new knowledge or change their behavior (whichever the primary performance objective is).

Those “components” and their examples are:

• Communication mode – text, audio, graphics
• Instructional methods – definitions, examples, demos, practice
• Instructional architecture – receptive, directive, guided discovery, exploratory

Out of these components, I wonder how a learner’s learning style comes into play? According to the authors, the media doesn’t matter.  It’s the components employed that are important as to whether or not the learner gains new knowledge or changes their behavior.  Certainly, some media is going to work better than others at delivering a message based on learning style.

Perhaps I’m falling into the very myth I’m trying to debunk here.  One thing I didn’t notice in the text was discussion of some upfront audience analysis that should be done before pulling instructional components together to create synchronous e-learning.  It wasn’t covered in the first two chapters of the text.  Maybe it was only assumed this would be done before any instructional components were pulled together.

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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:

1. Context / relevance
2. 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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