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The Eleven Commandments for successful e-learning programmes

Hans Vollenhoven & Han van der Pool

Introduction

In a broad sense e-learning can be defined as: any form of learning that makes use of a network for distribution, interaction and facilitation.

There are plenty of demonstrable success stories and breathtaking ROIs.

However, the other side of the coin is that many web-based investments turn out to be a great fiasco and only lead to a waste of time.

Many e-learning initiatives are granted only a short life, because they have been developed with too strong a focus on technology or creativity (nice to do, but not goal-oriented) or insufficiently aligned with the specific work situation and the perspective of the target group. Often isolated once-only hits are concerned, which primarily were great fun for the developers. This leads to e-learning tools not being used or not contributing to a higher output.

In this article we expound our vision on the basis of starting points enabling to develop successful e-learning programmes.

Make sure to have a shared vision and shared starting points

One of the common reasons for failing e-learning concepts is a rash development of the concept on the basis of traditional learning methods and traditional media. Before developing an e-learning programme, you should have the right vision, strategy and starting points. These should, moreover, be shared by everyone who is involved in the development of e-learning programmes.

Without unambiguous and shared starting points, development of an intelligent, well thought-out and effective learning programme is doomed to fail. The fact of the matter is that vision, strategy and starting points are crucial for the way the learning path is actually taking shape. Once these points are clear, the path to an effective learning concept is self-evident. So the question is to create a solid foundation.

From content to context

Developing modern e-learning programmes implies much more than digitizing books, teachers and classrooms and making these interactive. For content is shifting to context: from subject matter to creating a learning environment and a learning culture.

Learning = changing behaviour and improving performance. So a crucial question is: how do we create an effective e-learning culture ? And how can we ensure that the required competences are shown ? Every step we make, every learning programme we develop should contribute to this.

Focus on learning processes and learning culture

In our knowledge and information society it is not so much a matter of possessing information as knowing to find proper information at the right moment, to gauge the value of it and to transform it into application and changed behaviour.

For the development of learning programmes this means that not so much reproducing content as the learning process with regard to a certain theme should be the centre of attention. Therefore, the following learning goals should be focused on during the learning programme:

            discovering, astonishing, learning to be open to new insights;

            learning (assess your optimal learning path);

            retrieving and selecting information (databases, I-net, literature, networks,

            files, colleagues);

            digesting information;

            applying information, using knowledge to attain the desired behaviour in

            specific work situations;

            creating: generating new insights on the basis of knowledge, own views and

            work situation (knowledge increase);

            sharing of knowledge, making new insights and experience available for

            others (knowledge management)

The best educational tool is the learning person himself

Because of all wonderful technological and creative possibilities we have nowadays, there is a real risk that too much confidence is being put in technology. The starting point in learning and programme development is that the most superior educational tool is man itself and not the computer. You should ask yourself in which way the computer can complement this superior educational tool.

Integrate theory with practice

Establishing connections with daily practice is of fundamental importance for effective learning processes. Learning to bring about the right transfer to one’s own (local) work situation stimulates active thinking.

E-learning methods and models should therefore also provide a transfer to a specific situation. For example by comparing the actual situation (how do we do it now) with the “model situation” (how should it go according to the model).

By asking questions (personally or by e-mail) it could for example be found out why in practice things don’t go according to the book. This way of learning will result, on the one hand, in a situation in which the environment learns from the trainee (we are going to do it in a different way) and, on the other hand, in which the trainee learns from practice (the reason why you better do it otherwise in practice). As a result, there is fruitful interaction between theory and daily practice.

E-learning is a social process

Creating a learning culture is a social process. E-learning is not effective unless used in a broader context: that of a learning organisation with a learning culture.Often e-learning concepts stand remote from daily practice or are even totally isolated from it. By isolating the student with his computer screen, not only the sense of urgency to learn will go down or even become negative, but also the sense of usefulness (relevance). This will cause the learning efficiency to decrease.

Practice-oriented learning also means that the student interacts with colleagues, with fellow students who have the same learning experience as well as with experienced colleagues. Collaborative techniques like chat boxes and discussion groups, but also the telephone should be part of the learning process. By interacting with colleagues, identification and internalisation into one’s own mental system of what has been learned will increase significantly. In this way the learning process contributes to imparting sense and significance.

Besides, these interactions stimulate the required daily learning behaviour and promote in this way the required learning culture intelligence.

Long live line led learning

Just like competence development, the learning process is primarily a line responsibility. Without the support from management there is a risk that the daily activities take priority over the stimulation of a learning climate. Moreover, the involvement of the line will make the learning processes more practice-oriented. Consequently the learning process should be organised “from the sideline”, from where the e-coach and the mentor stimulate and facilitate the learning process.

Make connections

One of the major success factors in the development of e-learning is being connected. This means that during the development, implementation and anchoring of integral learning methods, the following connections should be brought about:

            -          the staff member’s need

            -          the organisational need

            -          the practical situation in the organisation (vision & strategy, norms &

                        values, culture)

            -          the student’s required attitude and performance

            -          the actual work situation, the daily reality

            -          the trainee’s learning needs: job (level), what do you know, what is it

                        that you don’t know, what’s in it for me ?, what is important for you ?

                        what questions do you have in daily practice ? what problems do you

                        encounter ? what is your required learning and communication style ?

            -          the e-learning path (strong push)

            -          knowledge management (learning to retrieve, pull)

            -          competence programmes

            -          daily practice

            -          electronic media

            -          traditional media: face-to-face (coach, classroom, print, manual and

                        virtual, print and others)

Fully deploy your development competencies

Developing e-learning programmes calls for a unique combination of knowledge and experience. The lack of this is one of the main reasons why many e-learning programmes are not effective and get stuck in:

-           a didactically justified concept, making, however, insufficiently use of the technical and creative possibilities offered by today’s modern media, as a consequence of which the ROI turns out to be poor while costs are high;

-           a sophisticated creative and/or technical programme, but of low functionality

and insufficiently aligned to business objectives, let alone didactically justified.

That’s why developers of e-learning programmes should possess more than knowledge and experience with development tools to make interactive programmes. They should also have insight into didactics. And they should have a well-founded vision on the creation of an “effective e-learning environment” as well as insight into the way organisation (development) processes work.

So the effective development of e-learning programmes calls for the application of a complete and balanced set of knowledge and experience, larded with the necessary creativity to apply these in combination.

Focus on quality improvement instead of cost saving

Learning during work costs a lot of time and money. The time one is following a course represents not only non-productive hours which only costs money, but what’s more, at that moment no contribution is being made to the company’s production (secondary costs). Bad programmes which generate a low or negative ROI are extremely harmful to the image of e-learning and the marvellous opportunities e-learning-based programmes can offer to increase the power of organisations. Besides, they have, as said before, a negative effect on the learning culture. To put it briefly, let cost saving not be the hidden agenda when designing the e-learning programme ! Which means that training officers and developers should not miss any opportunity to make the precious learning time as efficient as possible and to invest in quality instead of quantity.

Make competence-driven learning possible

One of the basic rules in learning processes is that the subject matter should be geared to the trainee. Not only to what he is (actual situation), but in particular to what he should do (WHAT) and the way in which he can realise performance (HOW).

The “how”or required competencies should be an integral part of the design and the content of the learning programme. During the learning process the trainee should be stimulated to show the learning performance by way of the required behavioural competences. If for example “creativity”or “networking” is a core competence, this means that the learning programme should stimulate this. In this way this methodology can be used adequately for competence-oriented learning.

Recapitulating: the way to go constitutes the goal.

As you can gather from these eleven commandments, the learning process constitutes the starting point. This means that the monitoring of the learning results does not consist in measuring the “reproduction capacity”. Performance is the starting point. What matters first of all here, is that the trainee “learns to learn” and “learns to apply” with regard to a specific subject, that he is made co-responsible for creating his own learning environment and that of others, by which a contribution is also made to the concept of a learning organisation. In addition, the input from the target group will automatically have the positive effect of making the learning path target-group-oriented.

One of the common points of criticism on traditional learning methods is that as soon as you are back on your feet again in daily practice, you soon have forgotten all that you have learned and that enthusiasm, if any, is soon damped. Not in the last place by subtle feedback on (too) enthusiastic behaviour of the trainee freshly returned from the course. Remarks like “just act normal”or “we have tried that already, but that does not work here”. This is due to the fact that the daily reality and the learning situation are often insufficiently linked. Learning takes place in too isolated a manner. Besides, we see that the course structure of traditional e-learning methods is strongly focused on offering knowledge or instruction. Looking at the structure of the traditional CBT courses, we see that content is always the starting point.

If we regard e-learning more as a virtual journey, a learning process you go through and in which you are accompanied, then another arrangement principle emerges: a structure in which the learning context takes a central place, instead of theory. The knowledge and learning objects no longer are part of the learning programme itself, but are offered via media which also in daily practice are playing a great role, like the knowledge management system. E-learning becomes much more practice-oriented this way and links up with the desired daily learning process !

Considering this approach, a trainee does not take lessons, courses or programmes, but he follows a track or part(s) of it. In this way e-learning becomes a process in which you take steps in a virtually controlled learning process.

disclaimer

The Eleven Commandments for successful e-learning programmes Hans Vollenhoven & Han van der Pool

Introduction In a broad sense e-learning can be defined as: any form of learning that makes use of a network for distribution, interaction and facilitation. There are plenty of demonstrable success stories and breathtaking ROIs. However, the other side of the coin is that many web-based investments turn out to be a great fiasco and only lead to a waste of time. Many e-learning initiatives are granted only a short life, because they have been developed with too strong a focus on technology or creativity (nice to do, but not goal-oriented) or insufficiently aligned with the specific work situation and the perspective of the target group. Often isolated once-only hits are concerned, which primarily were great fun for the developers. This leads to e-learning tools not being used or not contributing to a higher output. In this article we expound our vision on the basis of starting points enabling to develop successful e-learning programmes. Make sure to have a shared vision and shared starting points One of the common reasons for failing e-learning concepts is a rash development of the concept on the basis of traditional learning methods and traditional media. Before developing an e-learning programme, you should have the right vision, strategy and starting points. These should, moreover, be shared by everyone who is involved in the development of e-learning programmes. Without unambiguous and shared starting points, development of an intelligent, well thought-out and effective learning programme is doomed to fail. The fact of the matter is that vision, strategy and starting points are crucial for the way the learning path is actually taking shape. Once these points are clear, the path to an effective learning concept is self-evident. So the question is to create a solid foundation. From content to context Developing modern e-learning programmes implies much more than digitizing books, teachers and classrooms and making these interactive. For content is shifting to context: from subject matter to creating a learning environment and a learning culture. Learning = changing behaviour and improving performance. So a crucial question is: how do we create an effective e-learning culture ? And how can we ensure that the required competences are shown ? Every step we make, every learning programme we develop should contribute to this. Focus on learning processes and learning culture In our knowledge and information society it is not so much a matter of possessing information as knowing to find proper information at the right moment, to gauge the value of it and to transform it into application and changed behaviour. For the development of learning programmes this means that not so much reproducing content as the learning process with regard to a certain theme should be the centre of attention. Therefore, the following learning goals should be focused on during the learning programme: discovering, astonishing, learning to be open to new insights; learning (assess your optimal learning path); retrieving and selecting information (databases, I-net, literature, networks, files, colleagues); digesting information; applying information, using knowledge to attain the desired behaviour in specific work situations; creating: generating new insights on the basis of knowledge, own views and work situation (knowledge increase); sharing of knowledge, making new insights and experience available for others (knowledge management) The best educational tool is the learning person himself Because of all wonderful technological and creative possibilities we have nowadays, there is a real risk that too much confidence is being put in technology. The starting point in learning and programme development is that the most superior educational tool is man itself and not the computer. You should ask yourself in which way the computer can complement this superior educational tool. Integrate theory with practice Establishing connections with daily practice is of fundamental importance for effective learning processes. Learning to bring about the right transfer to one’s own (local) work situation stimulates active thinking. E-learning methods and models should therefore also provide a transfer to a specific situation. For example by comparing the actual situation (how do we do it now) with the “model situation” (how should it go according to the model). By asking questions (personally or by e-mail) it could for example be found out why in practice things don’t go according to the book. This way of learning will result, on the one hand, in a situation in which the environment learns from the trainee (we are going to do it in a different way) and, on the other hand, in which the trainee learns from practice (the reason why you better do it otherwise in practice). As a result, there is fruitful interaction between theory and daily practice. E-learning is a social process Creating a learning culture is a social process. E-learning is not effective unless used in a broader context: that of a learning organisation with a learning culture.Often e-learning concepts stand remote from daily practice or are even totally isolated from it. By isolating the student with his computer screen, not only the sense of urgency to learn will go down or even become negative, but also the sense of usefulness (relevance). This will cause the learning efficiency to decrease. Practice-oriented learning also means that the student interacts with colleagues, with fellow students who have the same learning experience as well as with experienced colleagues. Collaborative techniques like chat boxes and discussion groups, but also the telephone should be part of the learning process. By interacting with colleagues, identification and internalisation into one’s own mental system of what has been learned will increase significantly. In this way the learning process contributes to imparting sense and significance. Besides, these interactions stimulate the required daily learning behaviour and promote in this way the required learning culture intelligence. Long live line led learning Just like competence development, the learning process is primarily a line responsibility. Without the support from management there is a risk that the daily activities take priority over the stimulation of a learning climate. Moreover, the involvement of the line will make the learning processes more practice-oriented. Consequently the learning process should be organised “from the sideline”, from where the e-coach and the mentor stimulate and facilitate the learning process. Make connections One of the major success factors in the development of e-learning is being connected. This means that during the development, implementation and anchoring of integral learning methods, the following connections should be brought about: - the staff member’s need - the organisational need - the practical situation in the organisation (vision & strategy, norms & values, culture) - the student’s required attitude and performance - the actual work situation, the daily reality - the trainee’s learning needs: job (level), what do you know, what is it that you don’t know, what’s in it for me ?, what is important for you ? what questions do you have in daily practice ? what problems do you encounter ? what is your required learning and communication style ? - the e-learning path (strong push) - knowledge management (learning to retrieve, pull) - competence programmes - daily practice - electronic media - traditional media: face-to-face (coach, classroom, print, manual and virtual, print and others) Fully deploy your development competencies Developing e-learning programmes calls for a unique combination of knowledge and experience. The lack of this is one of the main reasons why many e-learning programmes are not effective and get stuck in: - a didactically justified concept, making, however, insufficiently use of the technical and creative possibilities offered by today’s modern media, as a consequence of which the ROI turns out to be poor while costs are high; - a sophisticated creative and/or technical programme, but of low functionality and insufficiently aligned to business objectives, let alone didactically justified. That’s why developers of e-learning programmes should possess more than knowledge and experience with development tools to make interactive programmes. They should also have insight into didactics. And they should have a well-founded vision on the creation of an “effective e-learning environment” as well as insight into the way organisation (development) processes work. So the effective development of e-learning programmes calls for the application of a complete and balanced set of knowledge and experience, larded with the necessary creativity to apply these in combination. Focus on quality improvement instead of cost saving Learning during work costs a lot of time and money. The time one is following a course represents not only non-productive hours which only costs money, but what’s more, at that moment no contribution is being made to the company’s production (secondary costs). Bad programmes which generate a low or negative ROI are extremely harmful to the image of e-learning and the marvellous opportunities e-learning-based programmes can offer to increase the power of organisations. Besides, they have, as said before, a negative effect on the learning culture. To put it briefly, let cost saving not be the hidden agenda when designing the e-learning programme ! Which means that training officers and developers should not miss any opportunity to make the precious learning time as efficient as possible and to invest in quality instead of quantity. Make competence-driven learning possible One of the basic rules in learning processes is that the subject matter should be geared to the trainee. Not only to what he is (actual situation), but in particular to what he should do (WHAT) and the way in which he can realise performance (HOW). The “how”or required competencies should be an integral part of the design and the content of the learning programme. During the learning process the trainee should be stimulated to show the learning performance by way of the required behavioural competences. If for example “creativity”or “networking” is a core competence, this means that the learning programme should stimulate this. In this way this methodology can be used adequately for competence-oriented learning. Recapitulating: the way to go constitutes the goal. As you can gather from these eleven commandments, the learning process constitutes the starting point. This means that the monitoring of the learning results does not consist in measuring the “reproduction capacity”. Performance is the starting point. What matters first of all here, is that the trainee “learns to learn” and “learns to apply” with regard to a specific subject, that he is made co-responsible for creating his own learning environment and that of others, by which a contribution is also made to the concept of a learning organisation. In addition, the input from the target group will automatically have the positive effect of making the learning path target-group-oriented. One of the common points of criticism on traditional learning methods is that as soon as you are back on your feet again in daily practice, you soon have forgotten all that you have learned and that enthusiasm, if any, is soon damped. Not in the last place by subtle feedback on (too) enthusiastic behaviour of the trainee freshly returned from the course. Remarks like “just act normal”or “we have tried that already, but that does not work here”. This is due to the fact that the daily reality and the learning situation are often insufficiently linked. Learning takes place in too isolated a manner. Besides, we see that the course structure of traditional e-learning methods is strongly focused on offering knowledge or instruction. Looking at the structure of the traditional CBT courses, we see that content is always the starting point. If we regard e-learning more as a virtual journey, a learning process you go through and in which you are accompanied, then another arrangement principle emerges: a structure in which the learning context takes a central place, instead of theory. The knowledge and learning objects no longer are part of the learning programme itself, but are offered via media which also in daily practice are playing a great role, like the knowledge management system. E-learning becomes much more practice-oriented this way and links up with the desired daily learning process ! Considering this approach, a trainee does not take lessons, courses or programmes, but he follows a track or part(s) of it. In this way e-learning becomes a process in which you take steps in a virtually controlled learning process.
disclaimer