There are three vowels in 'learning' (and 'i' comes last)

Digital learning content comes in many forms. Sometimes the intention is simply to provide information at the point of need, sometimes to stimulate reflection and discussion, sometimes to allow a learner to explore a subject in depth. But for many of us our bread and butter is instruction – doing the best we can to make sure our target audience understands and can apply a concept, a principle, a process, a rule or a procedure. When this is the case, we simply have to apply what we know about teaching and learning carefully and systematically. In particular, I would argue, we need the right balance between three critical elements:

• information, in the form of our principal learning point(s)

• elaboration, in the form of examples and analogies

• activities that allow learning points to be put into practice, explored and consolidated


I’m sure we would agree that the ‘i’, the ‘e’ and the ‘a’ are all important, but do we provide these in the right proportions? I would contend that a typical ratio in a self-study module would be i:60, e:20, a:20. I am going to argue for something very different.

Above all, we need to avoid information overload. As Julie Dirksen warns us: 'Most learning experiences are structured around lots of new information. Lots and lots of new information: The problem with this is that it’s exhausting for your learners. Do you really want to ask a new learner to bike straight uphill for the entire lesson?'

I believe that we will achieve much more by limiting the amount of new information we provide in any given learning module. In the long run, it is better to teach one idea comprehensively than ten ideas superficially. Teaching ‘comprehensively’ starts with the examples we provide. Because learning is essentially a process of recognising patterns and making connections, it is not possible for new learning to occur in isolation. Learners are not empty vessels, waiting to be filled with new knowledge – any new learning has to connect to something that’s already there. For this reason, it is easy to see why explanations that make the link between new learning and prior knowledge as obvious as possible are going to help the learner.

As Chip and Dan Heath explain: 'Language is often abstract but life is not. Abstraction is the luxury of the expert. Novices crave concreteness. Give plenty of examples. The more hooks you can get on an idea, the more it will stick in memory.'

Take the following statement: 'It is possible for a person to consciously engage in an activity while carrying out other tasks unconsciously.’ As such this is a useful idea, but it means little if a learner cannot relate this to a specific situation with which they are familiar. So, add an example: 'You can hold a conversation while going for a run with a friend. You cannot hold a conversation while playing a video game, as both tasks require conscious attention and humans cannot truly multi-task.'

Whereas examples serve to demonstrate how the general applies in particular cases, analogies draw a comparison between two particular cases. Analogies help learners make connections: 'The heart is like a pump’, 'The pen is to a writer like the voice is to a singer’, 'Working memory is like the random-access memory of a computer'.

A little ‘I’ and a whole load of ‘e’ gets the learner to the point at which they can test out their understanding. Can they now apply the general idea to specific situations? For this, we need the ‘a’ – activity.

It is no exaggeration to say that self-study e-learning is completely pointless without plenty of meaningful interactivity – otherwise we would be much better off with a simple web page or a video. Interactivity turns a resource into a lesson, a casual exploration into a remote encounter with a virtual teacher.

The nature of the required interaction depends, of course, on the type of learning objective, but the goal is always the same – to encourage the learner to engage with their new learning, to make connections with prior knowledge, to build the confidence that will allow them to apply what they have learned independently. This process takes time. It will usually require multiple practice opportunities in each case accompanied by helpful feedback. If we skimp on this, can we be really sure we are doing an effective job?

While I know that every situation is different, I will stick my neck out here and say that the recipe for the perfect instructional module is i:20, e:40, a:40. That’s very different from where we are now. I’m sorry, but there are three vowels in 'learning' and 'i' comes last.