Compulsive design – how not to design elearning

A few years ago I was in China on 3 missions on an EU project. The task was to build capacity so that the Chinese organizations I worked with could develop elearning themselves. (It fits very well with what we otherwise do :-)). It was an incredibly exciting task, not least because it took place in a completely different culture.

I met a lot of humorous, humanistic and gifted Chinese people, where I actually think there was strikingly little difference in what we perceived as good learning, despite the obvious cultural differences. It is clear that not everyone had much experience with elearning, but my messages were well received and understood.

But there was one experience in a single organization that I think wonderfully illustrates a problem with a mindset that is unfortunately seen all too often in all parts of the world - ALSO in Denmark.

I was asked for advice about a problem that the leaders of an organization were having. The problem was that their users were trying to “cheat” them.

The background was that they were creating e-learning for a large group of people for whom it was mandatory to take these e-learning courses. In an attempt to motivate the users, they were given some “points” for each course they took. The courses were designed based on a philosophy that “if we show them, they will learn it”. It was largely one-way communication, with long videos, sometimes, but not always, followed by a series of questions. A very classic design :-)

One thing that was really great about this organization was that they were good at collecting data about their users. And they quickly found out that users rushed through the courses. They simply opened the courses and pressed next, next, next, etc. (And I think EVERYONE who has taken an elearning course has tried that).

This was discovered because the total time users spent on the modules was much shorter than the duration of the videos, and they therefore could not possibly have watched the videos.

The leaders speculated that the reason for this was probably that the students were not very motivated to take the courses when they were forced to, and that the courses were probably also a bit boring :-) (Good idea.)

But the “solution” to the problem was initially to LOCK the navigation, so that users could not continue to the next page until the video had finished playing. The good thing about the solution was that it was cheap and quick to implement. (The bad thing was, of course, that it was not a good solution.)

The leaders launched the updated course content and collected more data. Then they found that users were simply opening other windows while the video finished playing, and therefore users were still not watching the videos.

The next "solution" was to program the pages so that they were ALWAYS in the front window of the computer. THEN they got the shovel under the stubborn users, right?

No.

The users opened the courses and WALKED AWAY from the computer to do something else, all the while the video happily finished playing :-) (Fortunately, humans are wonderfully creative when it comes to getting rid of boring things.)

I don't know how they figured out that the user was leaving. But I do know that their "solution" was to ask users to answer Multiple Choice questions (INCLUDING, by the way, WITHOUT relevance to the content) about every two minutes - in order to force users to follow the screen.

I have strong doubts about whether the latter initiative leads to genuine, deep learning, but I don't know what happened afterwards in the "arms race" between the users and the forced, boring e-learning.

It happens all the time – also in Denmark

Unfortunately, I must say that the mindset is not unique to this organization, as I have seen it many times before – and since – in the rest of the world, including in Denmark.

Examples of forced design

Here are some examples of what I call a “forced design”

• Users are not allowed to move on to the next page until a video has COMPLETELY finished playing.
• Users are not allowed to go directly to the final test, but must be forced to view ALL the content before they are allowed to take the test.
• In video or audio streams, users are not given the option to pause playback and fast forward and rewind.

The overall idea behind such coercive design is a belief that if you ensure that users are exposed to some material, then they will learn it.

Here are some fundamental problems with this line of thinking:

1. With the above story in mind, I would argue that you cannot claim with certainty that users have learned anything from such a design. But you might imagine that you have your hands full when it comes to offering learning on a topic. You might be able to point to a “completed” status in your Learning Management System and say: “Well, they HAVE taken the course, so it’s not our fault they made mistakes”. That’s what I call “alibi elearning”.
2. As I described in my article on Motivation – Self-Determination Theory , being deprived of autonomy (i.e. not being able to decide on one's own actions) is demotivating. Motivation is like rocket fuel for learning processes, so it goes without saying that it is a bad idea to do something that has a demotivating effect on users.
3. Forced designs assume that people DO NOT WANT to learn. This has negative consequences for those who actually WANT to learn, as they are exposed to completely unreasonable conditions for learning. Try to imagine that you were reading a book where you were not allowed to turn back and forth, or that you were watching an instructional video where you could not pause or rewind? When I read non-fiction or watch videos with professional content, I make great use of being able to go forward to orient myself, and back to review passages. Sometimes I also need to take a break, for example if I need to consider what I have heard or read, or if I get too tired to learn more. I think that is how the vast majority of people feel.
4. Typically, these “forced designs” will also make it difficult for a user to use an e-learning course as a reference by going to a specific place in the material.

It's funny; I've often experienced that nice and kind people come up with very militant ideas that they would never offer to people if they were sitting across from them. It's as if the distance between sender and receiver becomes so great that some forget that it's real people like themselves who are going to take their elearning courses.

When designing elearning, it is therefore a good idea to ask yourself:

• Would I even care to take the elearning I'm doing?
• Would I offer my students these conditions if I were sitting in front of them?
• Is the content relevant to the target audience? Can anything be cut out?

And then design the courses with the premise that people WANT to learn something.

If you need proof that users have actually learned something, you can always TEST them (although that doesn't always reveal the depth of what was learned, but we'll come back to that in another article).

As always, I hope you found this article useful. Please share and comment if you have any questions or concerns.