This is something that I’ve always wanted to rant about, but never had quite
the right reason to post. Well, this morning I noticed a link on Computer Zen.com - Scott Hanselman's
Weblog to the new Microsoft
eLearning site, and the door was opened.
In my previous life, I used to develop eLearning courseware. My
post-graduate degree is in eLearning, (well, technically my degree is
in instructional technology but it’s the same thing) and
I also worked for a time creating this crap for one of the biggest US
eLearning vendors. I tried to start a company with the
bright idea of delivering this crap on tiny devices. What did I
learn from my experience?
eLearning is Condescending Fluff
Most of the eLearning content out there is cranked out by IDs (instructional
designers) who don’t know the content. They try to quickly learn the material
using SMEs (subject matter experts) and other resources. The end result is usually content that is
bland and boring at best. At worst, the student is presented with
content that is insulting to their level of knowledge of the subject.
Students Hate It
If they’re not totally insulted, they hate the entire experience
nonetheless. Tell someone that they have to complete some
eLearning, and you'll hear an audible groan.
I was part of a roundtable discussion for a popular industry magazine
in 1999. I asked all the experts at the table “Does anyone here
actually use this stuff?” A few of the “experts” admitted that
they use eLearning, but I’m not sure I believed them. I never
spent any real time eLearning, and by the same token, not one
person I knew in the industy did either. In my experience, the
eLearning industry doesn’t dog food their products. If they did,
they’d realize how truly crappy it is.
HR Departments Love It
Compared to “butts in seats” training, it’s cheap. And since
the results of learning can’t really be accurately
measured, the fact that no one is really
learning much goes un-noticed. For the HR person who heads up training,
eLearning it's like a present from above. Their costs go down.
They get to report to the president that they’ve managed to train all
3000 employees on the latest and greatest technologies. Everyone
wins! (er, except the employees, who don’t get trained, but who
can tell?)
It’s a Huge Waste of Time and Money.
Even though it's cheap as compared to instructor-led training, it's
expensive when you consider what you get. If the world only knew
how much money and time was wasted on this stuff, it’d make the front
page of all the newspapers. This stuff is relatively expensive to
create, it’s costed in terms of an “hour” of courseware, and
costs about 25–35 K per hour. It’s a big industry. It’s
thriving because of basically a flaw in the structure of corporate
spending and the inability to accurately measure the products of
learning.
If you want to teach someone how to do something, sit down next to them and
show them. If this is impractical, get them in a classroom for a week with someone who is passionate and knows their
stuff. If you can’t do this, send them to a conference for a week. If this
is too costly, send them to a code camp. If all else fails, buy them a library
of books.
If you don’t care about true learning, but need to spend your training budget
anyhow, then eLearning is for you.
-Brendan