A number of comments made by participants at the Second European Articulate Conference, which I attended in Leeds last month, gave me the impression that designers are overly anxious about the production values of their interactive content. In particular they are concerned that learners might regard their content as low quality in comparison with commercial video games, movies and other mass media, and therefore not worthy of their attention.
In my opinion, it is pointless to fret about relative production values, for a number of reasons:
- You will never in your wildest dreams be able to match ‘Hollywood’ production values or even get anywhere near.
- Even if you did, it would not make a positive impression on learners. Why? Because they’ve seen it all before. They don’t expect it of your content anyway. They may even be suspicious of content that is too glossy – what is it you’re trying to sell them?
- Learners (indeed all media consumers) are tuned in to fitness for purpose. They expect Hollywood movies and big, expensive games to be awesome. They expect top-down efforts put together by their employers to be accurate, usable, reasonably engaging and professional in appearance, but no more. And when it comes to user-generated content, then frankly anything goes. Remember they are quite happy skipping from rock promos to home-made YouTube movies. They know what ‘good enough’ means.
- Unlike entertainment media, learning content should not be seeking to engage through its production values. What learners find engaging is material that is relevant to their daily work, will help them solve current problems or improve their general employability. It doesn’t take a lot of money to create relevant content, just a sound knowledge of your audience and a lot of care.
I agree with you, whizz bang doesn't necessarily mean learning. Unfortunately I also see the opposite in many eLearning courses, good content but presented in a way that seems to actually disengage learners, absolutely no bells or whistles - in fact pretty boring, even if the content is very good.
ReplyDeleteAs you say a solution may lie in ensuring 'fitness for purpose', in balancing constraints such as time and cost with the need to engage learners and help ensure actual learning occurs.
That said however, costs and time constraints do not have to mean eLearning made up of text heavy 'slides' one after the other. It is possible to ensure that eLearning is designed in a visually appealing way, utilising science-based approaches to information transfer built following graphic design principles.
It's not so much 'production values' that matter (I agree, comparing with 'Hollywood' standards isn't helpful) but rather it should be about ensuring that elearning engages both through it's content and it's design.
Nice post. Broadly speaking, I agree but would like to offer some qualification: with 'pull type' learning (typically referencing) production values don't matter, and may actually get in the way (when you Google something you usually just want the answer). Of only all learning fell into this category. With 'push type' learning ( typically top-down mandatory training) production values can be very significant - but perhaps not in the obvious sense: one of the best movies I have seen recently is 'pontypool' shot on a single room with three actors, but gripping from start to finish. For me, high production values means engaging the audience with compelling stories and challenging scenarios - not necessarily expensive to produce, but a far cry from ppt online. Having said all that, it is probably still true that many clients/buyers evaluate content on the basis of the look of the first few screens.
ReplyDeleteI'll off another comment in agreement. Flashy production in learning inevitably gets wasted. Spending too much time here is time spent taking away from other elements.
ReplyDeleteI would however argue strongly for a strong graphic design segment of the process that at least addresses interface design and functionality (if we're talking WBTs or other asynchronous online events). A clean, measured presentation can still go a long way.
I think one of the hindrances early on is access to stores of elements that can be plugged in where appropriate. I face this problem often, and have to fashion my own bits and pieces.
If I were to offer a general rule, I would say that making things simple, while augmenting with few subtle touches, will have the biggest impact.
relevancy = learning motivation, this equation seems to always be true for me in the classroom, and I think your post does a good job of discussing this point.
ReplyDeleteClive, Whilst I agree with the irrefutable logic that learners are able to discern the difference between Hollywood and on line learning, I feel that there is a huge gap in the market for improved content.
ReplyDeleteResearch that I have carried out clearly leads me to believe that an improved level of production values correlates directly to improved engagement of learners, which in turn leads to improved learning outcomes.
Too many people, vendors and trainers have in the past focussed on the 'what' rather than the 'how'. This presupposes an inclination in the learner to engage. However (Depending on the industry) somewhere in the region of 80% of learners are not directly incentivised to learn and it is to this passive massive (What we refer to as the Mass Knowledge Consumer) that the quality of the production values matters.