The world of Learning & Development abounds with myths, advertorials, pseudo-religious dogma, echo chambers, contrarianism, counter contrarianism, and assumptions presented as fact. In this chaotic context, how do we practitioners … Continue reading Evidently
The world of Learning & Development abounds with myths, advertorials, pseudo-religious dogma, echo chambers, contrarianism, counter contrarianism, and assumptions presented as fact.
In this chaotic context, how do we practitioners distil what really works to improve our practice?
One way is to focus on evidence. The scientific method – despite its flaws and limitations – is designed to separate the signal from the noise. Hence, we should take more notice of the empirical research that’s available to us.
In the immortal words of W. Edwards Deming, “Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”
So it was my pleasure to host peers who feel as passionately about this topic as I do at the latest IDeL Meetup. And this was no regular talkfest.
A mission that I bestowed upon my guests was to arrive on the night armed with a source of evidence (eg journal article, industry report, or perhaps the results of their own in-house experiment), and share at least one finding that is practical (we can apply it in our own roles) and is supported by data (qualitative or quantitative).
And the resourceful nerds accomplished their mission with distinction.
I kicked off proceedings by socialising the journal article Features of high-quality online courses in higher education: A scoping review. In this study, the researchers report the findings of a thematic content analysis they conducted on 38 peer-reviewed publications, with a view to identifying the principal features of online courses that contribute to a positive learning experience for students and improve the teaching experience for educators.
I was attracted to this paper because my role in the corporate sector has historically involved e-learning, and more recently it has pivoted to enterprise-wide skills-based learning for which I blend online courses with other formats to uplift capability at scale. So anything I can learn from the higher education sector to improve the online components of my solutions should increase their quality overall.
In the paper the researchers identify four themes relating to high-quality online courses: design, facilitation, student engagement, and assessment. Under those banners they discuss several subthemes and considerations, and it was a couple of those that I chose to share with my guests at the meetup.
Clear learning outcomes
The career contrarians in our midst would have us believe that we shouldn’t present learning objectives to our target audience. However, as with so many other academic arguments in our domain, the “right way” is circumstantial.
For a mandatory compliance course, for example, stating the learning objectives up front is arguably unnecessary because the employee must complete it regardless. However if the course is optional, the learning objectives are valuable information that helps the employee decide whether it’s relevant to their needs and hence worth their time and effort.
Within the course environment, I’m also an advocate of learning objectives because they act as advance organizers. Having said that, I’m less inclined to list them in traditional bullet-point form, but rather start with a splash (eg a scenario) from which they emerge in context. These objectives can be presented as broadly or as granularly as you deem appropriate for the target audience; while the outcomes you report back may be worded quite differently for quite a different audience.
By the way, before any learning has taken place, I call them learning objectives. After learning has taken place, I call them learning outcomes. The former are an aspiration; the latter are an evaluation.
Instructor presence
The benefits of instructor presence acknowledged by the researchers won’t be a surprise to anyone – timely feedback, clear communication, community building – and instructor absence has been a bugbear of mine for almost a decade.
In my opinion, educators who dump their tuition-paying students into online courses and leave them to fend for themselves are violating their ethical obligations as a service provider. But this is a hornet’s nest that I shall refrain from kicking any further because many folks in the higher education sector don’t even see themselves as service providers.
Back in the corporate sector, I think the extrapolation from the research is that expensive content libraries and digital learning platforms are doomed to fail on their own. Indeed I have seen this prediction play out throughout my own career, and I have grown to appreciate that human-human interaction not only improves learning outcomes… the audience craves it.
Whether an AI agent can replace the role of the instructor is another hornet’s nest that I shall not kick today. Suffice to say, regardless of how advanced the technology becomes, a human partnered with a robot would be my bet for the best model.
On the subject of human-human interaction, I had a ball discussing the above with my guests at the meet-up, along with the evidence that they brought to the table.
If you’re disappointed in missing out on all the fun, join our group and keep your eyes peeled for the next meet-up.
Not in Sydney…? Reach out to an organizer and host your own!
