Recently I curled up on the sofa with my other half, settled down with a mellow glass of red to enjoy an episode or two of Dexter. Now Dexter is one of my favourite US series. For those of you who don’t know anything about this series, you may think I need therapy for being so compelled to watch it. It’s about a serial killer who works for the police as a blood-spatter analyst. Yes… he’s the lead character and despite his unhealthy hobby, he’s the hero (or should it be anti-hero?). Those fans of the programme actually like him and hope he never gets caught. From watching the previous series and having to wait for a whole week to go by before catching up with the next episode, we decided to record them to watch in bulk. After some mishap with the recordings, I just had to buy the boxed set (Stay with me here…. )

The up-shot is that the two episode evening lasted all weekend. It’s a good job there was nothing more pressing to get done (the ironing could wait!).

We’ve recently started to watch 24. Well, you can imagine what happened although this time we had to be very strict with ourselves.

So what’s the point of all this? Well I started to wonder why we found it so compelling – to sit there and watch episode after episode until our eyes became square (or rather 42 inch wide-screen).

From an early age we love stories. I’ve spoken to many a parent who can almost recite Thomas the Tank Engine word for word from memory or that video of The Little Mermaid is almost unrecognisable after the trillionth time of watching. My brother and his wife are expecting their first child in November and I suspect they’ll be no different. Her Auntie Laura will likely also be caught up in the magical world of story-telling too.

It doesn’t stop though does it? The love of stories? We may grow out of the wide-eyed excitement of being read bed-time stories but the magic doesn’t stop when we grow up. It just grows with us. From Disney films to Dr. Who. From romantic comedies to dark gothic vampire tales. From the trashy, steamy novel to the complicated thrillers or classical period tales of yester-year. What keeps us so enthralled?

Telling stories began thousands of year in the past. We can see evidence of it from ancient drawings on cave walls. We can imagine travellers recounting tales of their journeys round campfires and then progress meant those words could then be recorded for generations.

I have my own theories by analysing my own love of a good story and would like to share what I like them here.

immediate connection with the characters
emotional – being able to feel sadness, happiness, fear the characters are feeling
a compelling storyline
suspense
mystery that keeps you guessing what might happen next
challenging where you put yourself in the character’s shoes to work out the next step
sparking imagination through descriptive writing if reading the story
visually stimulating through clever direction and cinematography

In short – I need to believe I could be there. I need to live it and be totally immersed even if it might be the most fantastic tale of hobgoblins and superheroes.

In order to satisfy my own curiosity, I set about doing a little (and I mean a little) research into why storytelling has such an impact on us. What I found was fascinating – and it’s only the tip of the storytelling iceberg.

In a New Scientist article by Richard Fisher, entitled ‘the evolving art of storytelling’ he explored the effect an immersive experience of a good book or movie has on our brains. He found that according to neuroscientists and psychologists, areas of our brains react to the emotions the characters are feeling as if we were ‘in their shoes’. Our brains behave in such a way as if we were experiencing the fiction as if it were our real-world experiences. The reason stories have such a powerful effect is the release of chemicals serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine such compelling stories trigger in our brains. Fisher goes on to review ‘The Art of Immersion’ (available on Kindle) by Frank Rose, which investigates storytelling and how it’s evolved with technology and something those of us who are looking to design experiences in our e-learning and engage our learners might find worth a look (note to self – order this book).

In another article ‘Mind Reading: the science of storytelling’ which referenced the same research reports further that our brains will react the same way regardless whether we are reading the story or watching an action video but the most potent of all is that of the ‘emotionally charged story’.

What I found rassuring was because of the chemical triggers in the brain this “explains why we can be lured into watching back-to-back episodes of series” and that “we are empathetically engaged. We are treating this as if it is our real family. We can’t help but care for these people”. So, there you have it. Proof that I’m not really that sad. I may have an addictive personality but the only drugs I may be addicted to are serotonin, oxytocin and dopamine! Although I’m not sure whether I’d like to think a serial killer blood-spatter analyst as family.

Every now and then I drop in a post about creating engaging eLearning. One of my passions is to help improve eLearning’s reputation by encouraging people to create better quality material. Here is another as part of the series.

Increasingly those of us who are involved in putting together any sort of visual material whether it’s slides for live sessions, eLearning screens, Slideshares, classroom presentations are finding it necessary to have a reasonable knowledge the basics of graphic design and marketing. Graphic design because we need to make an impact with visuals appropriately but marketing because we are actually ‘selling’ our content through visuals.

One simple rule but a very effective one that will help anyone starting out on their journey to engage with visuals is the ‘rule of thirds’. As a little task to my readers out there, just do a little Googling on the subject and you’ll be amazed what you find and perhaps it might explanation why we’re drawn to some photos and not others. Those photographers out there may already be aware of it or perhaps you have a natural eye and didn’t even know the principle your were automatically applying to your compositions. I often recommend those on my courses to take a closer and more analytic look at those adverts as they take the morning bus ride. Note the composition. How have the people in the pictures been placed? How much text is displayed and what influence does the font style (typography) have on the message being conveyed? How much ‘white space’ is there and how does it help the message? We can learn a lot from advertisers and photographers.

We can also be creative in how we combine text and images. Have a little think for a moment….. as we go through our daily lives, on what objects do we see text written? Where are they positioned and how is colour being used to ‘gel’ the composition?

In an office environment there are notepads, folders, computer screens, laptops, diaries, labels, post-it notes.
In a kitchen there are cans, menus, order pads, jam-jars, packets of food.
In a hospital there are prescription pads, medicine bottles, medical record sheets, signage, x-ray panels.

No matter what our topic is for either presentations, live online sessions or eLearning screens, we have a plethora of objects to choose from. Taking a piece of eLearning for example, if our topic was about chairing meetings the agenda for the session could very appropriately be displayed on an image of an official agenda sheet. We could, perhaps, type a question in a handwriting font on a spiral notebook or even use a post-it note to display each possible option in answer to a question. Next time you look at the news on TV, pay more attention to the graphics they use when presenting any statistical information and pinch any ideas you can.

Ditch those PowerPoint templates and our only limitation is our imagination.

For previous posts in this series see:

Can eLearning designers learn from retail designers
Putting the learning back in e-learning
Creating engaging eLearning – as easy as CSI
What hope is there for eLearning?

What hope indeed!

We need to rise up and join the revolution – the e-learning revolution. I am always keen to keep up to date with what is going on in the world of technology. I love how clever programmers can be when creating amazing ‘special effects’ on screen. And yes – the visual design is important but not at the expense of the learning.

When is information just information and why do we think by adding a multiple choice quiz at the end makes it learning? All this does is test immediate recall of the facts. What it doesn’t do is test how this information or knowledge can be transferred to performance. I explored this in my second of this series in creating engaging e-learning where we talked about putting the learning back in e-learning.

Today I received a usual e-mail alert from an award winning e-learning software provider after making an enquiry some time ago. I don’t often have time to look at these alerts but, tonight I decided to take a look at their news. It included examples of e-learning they produce for customers. I must say, I was very impressed with the clever graphics, special effects and novel ways of taking you through screens etc. As I worked through the examples of their portfolio, a question came to mind….

Does flashy programming, great use of graphics and clever special effects equal engaging e-learning? My answer? – No! I totally support that care has to be taken when designing the visuals (more of that in later posts) but what really engages the learner is how they use their brains, not their fingers on the mouse.

If only the e-learning companies asked their learners what they hate about e-learning they will find out they can’t stand clever ways of dressing up information where they just click or roll over to reveal more information. What learners are crying out for is to be able to think for themselves, to solve problems – realistic, work-based, relevant problems..

There is an example of a timeline where the ‘interaction’ is merely moving the mouse back and forth through the timeline ribbon and rolling over images for more information about key events. Again, I loved the graphics, the colours and the visual design but in my opinion, this is just e-information. I have already differentiated between e-information and e-learning: Now e-information certainly has its place but there’s no cognitive application involved. It’s just pure exposition.

As a result of looking at these examples I thought I would re-think some of them to give you some ideas of how to make your own designs more engaging by incorporating the right sort of interaction.

There’s one example where I love the visuals and clever programming– they’re superb. The user clicks to turn the pages of a book where they read a case study (the producer refers to it as a scenario). This is a super, visually engaging way of displaying information. But that’s all it is – oh and guess what? It is followed by a really long multiple choice quiz where learners are ‘tested’ on the content. A lovely idea initially, but why not use the case study to act as a problem solving activity where the learners have to make the decisions as they go along on behalf of the people in the scenario? The story could be told in instalments and it is unlikely we will ‘lose’ our learners along the way.

Let’s think about another example:

Here the learner is shown a beautiful image of a coral reef. Again the visuals are superbly set with clear thought to relevance and placement. To the right of the photo but set within an aquatic template is a whole bunch of text. What is the ‘interaction’ planned for the learner? Well, the learner has to grab the [thin non-standard?] scroll bar to read more text because there is too much to go on the screen. What does this text give us? A heap of facts telling us about the threats faced by coral reefs from man and the environment! And, yes – you’ve guessed it – another obligatory multiple choice quiz. Does this put the learner at the heart of the coral reef? Does it help the learner understand the consequences of their actions? Not really – just regurgitating facts again.
Unfortunately, for those starting out on the e-learning design journey they take these examples as best practice and replicate them.  ’What would I do differently? No…. I’m not going to tell you…. What would you do differently???? I would love to hear some of your own ideas of creating real interactive learning activities. C’mon let’s start that e-learning revolution

Keep visiting – I’ll soon be considering how we can structure our e-learning so we start with questions and conundrums and do something else with the information.

I’ve never been really interested in computer games in the past but then, what I classed as computer games was PacMan! The only box I was interested in sitting in front of was the TV – that seemed much more fun and engrossing.

Moreover, my imagination was captured more by superb writings of great authors. I was whisked away into a dark world of love and torment of Cathy and Heathcliffe in Wuthering Heights; cryptic clues, excitement and intrigue of any Tom Clancy novel; to the zany adventures of Arthur Dent in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy …… “so-long and thanks for the fish”. I was totally absorbed and read for days on end – often into the early hours. That’s how absorbed I was. I really couldn’t see what all the fuss was about in computer games.

That was until recently. Now – I’m a big CSI fan, so when I discovered a CSI game for my Wii, a team of wild horses couldn’t stop me from grabbing it. I know CSI is far fetched but it is fascinating. Well….. that was it ….. for that weekend the remote had to be prised from my hot sticky hands. I couldn’t wait for my husband to go to London so I could play unhindered and un-chastised. One time right up until 3am! Now that’s sad!

What kept me so engrossed? So engrossed I didn’t notice how long I was actually playing? It was the pure fact that I became part of the CSI team. I searched scenes of crime for any piece of possible evidence. I interviewed suspects by choosing from a selection of questions. I put the clues together, reviewed the evidence and asked Brass for search warrants. Sometimes, these warrants weren’t issued because I hadn’t enough evidence – so I had to go back and search the scenes again, interview again, review the evidence again.

What can e-learning designers learn from this? Looking further into how we can put the learning back into e-learning let’s consider that for a moment.

Well, firstly, I was dropped in at the deep end immediately. I wasn’t sat in a virtual room with pages upon pages of rules and regulations, examples and theories before I could get out at the scene. I worked through the problem, analysing and making decisions as I went. I didn’t get all the answers right and had to revisit some, occasionally having to start again. But, hey, I could afford to make mistakes – it was a safe environment.

My new skills came from my own hard work and from the feedback from my CSI mentor who was there for any assistance I may have needed (although, the stubborn competitive streak in me meant it was rarely sought). I was able to remind myself what suspects said from the personal profiles built up as they were interviewed. I was given encouragement and praise where needed which built up my desire to succeed. What I didn’t get was a multiple choice quiz at the end – phew!

Now I’m not saying this has made me a fully qualified member of the CSI team to be let loose on real scenes of crime. After all – it is only a game. Just think what we could do if we took this across into realistic work situations and absorb our learners as deeply. It CAN be done. With a little imagination. Oh, and hard work of course. But – wow – what a difference it would make.

So how can we do this if we haven’t got access to simulation gaming technology?

More and more people are realising leaving that multiple choice quiz to the end of the e-learning doesn’t exactly test application. All it does is test immediate recall. So we chop it up a bit. What tends to happen now is e-learning is divided up into smaller chunks of information followed by a little practice quiz. Yes, it is a little better but it is still providing information up front with no opportunity to analyse and apply.

If there is one thing to learn from gaming it is to allow people to think for themselves first and try things out. “That’s all very well and good” I hear you say, “but learners still need information to work with and learn from”. This is true but it will be as feedback. More about feedback in future posts in this series.

Using normal rapid authoring tools such as Adobe Captivate, Articulate or Lectora, we can tell a story through pictures, voice-overs and/or speech bubbles. It is important to bring your learners into the heart of the action. Make them believe they are living the situation.

Your scenarios can built up over a number of slides while you introduce characters in the team. Give them a voice and make them ‘real’ with real problems to work through. Still images work perfectly for this. Your learners’ engagement will be with their minds as the visuals bring the situation to life. Short scenario-based questions can be like building pictures in your learners’ imaginations.

Stories have always worked well in the classroom so come on people – you can use them in e-learning too.

What does this do? It makes it real. It makes it believable. It makes it relevant and it will help people remember what they are supposed to do to do their job – not to regurgitate a piece of legislation.

Let’s rise up and rid the world of boring e-learning where we put the learner at the heart of the action. Stay tuned for future posts in this series on creating engaging e-learning where I will share some tips on learning through feedback.

Last week I compared retail design to e-learning design. In this article I am going to explore more about what we need to consider when creating e-learning so it’s a great learning experience.

What do most people complain about when faced with the prospect of ‘doing a bit of e-learning’?
Boring – mind numbing and tedious. Slide after slide of text – why do we do that? Why do we reproduce pages of text in an authoring tool when that same information has already been produced and is sat in a Word document or .pdf somewhere on the intranet? Are these walls of text there just to provide an excuse to have a multiple choice quiz at the end to ‘test’ their knowledge? Why do we give ourselves that extra work?

If we decide that it IS important for them to read the company policy then why not provide a link to it or make sure they know where to get to it and save the duplication? Better still, if it’s ‘e-information’ you want to create – be up-front about it and, please, put a little more thought into how engaging it looks for readability on screen.

A lot can be learned from all those remarkable SlideShare presentations and YouTube snippets. But if we are talking e-Learning – now that’s a whole different ball game. Learning is about experiencing, thinking, doing and making connections.

Before we even start thinking about e-learning, perhaps we should first remind ourselves what good learning really is. Let’s think about classroom learning – and I mention classroom learning because that’s what most learners cite as a preference instead of ‘doing some e-learning’.

Why is It they prefer classroom?  Is it because a good classroom experience no longer consists of ‘death by PowerPoint’? Good classroom design and delivery involves the learner from the beginning. It includes critical thinking, scenario activities that are realistic and work related with a good balance of questioning and information.

All these are delivered skilfully by the facilitator drawing out learners’ opinions, thoughts and ideas. It involves opportunities for learners to apply their knowledge with practice and checking activities on work based projects or case studies. It allows them to apply critical thinking – not just answering multiple choice questions. Great classroom learning provides learners with the opportunities to collaborate discuss and share experiences as well as providing each other with support.

My question is why does this have to stop when we are designing e-learning? Why is it that all we know as learning specialists is forgotten or ignored when we are tasked with creating e-learning? It seems the learning has been taken out of e-learning (if it was ever there in the first place). Instead, we have been focussing too much on the ‘e’.

As learning designers, we can easily come up with superb, engaging activities that make the learners think critically such as scenarios, role plays, analysing data, and exercises. We know how to ask the right sort of guided questions to help our learners think more carefully about their answers. We know it is important to break down the activities in the classroom to bite sized chunks so they refocus and are able to work with each other in teams. The good news is we CAN make this happen in e-learning. We just need to be a little more creative in our thinking.

What would happen if we sat our learners down in a room and made them sit through dozens of screens of bullet points spewing out copious amounts of information? Or worse: being read to by the tutor?

Although that still happens (from what I still hear anyway) it is improving greatly. Ok, so what if we give the learners the power to stop us and rewind as many time as they need? Will that help them? I think not! How soon would they fall asleep? Pretty likely if you ask me! If we are lucky, they may stay to the end only to be faced with a few pages of multiple choice questions. That hardly tests their application of the theory to anything meaningful.

Any good learning professional wouldn’t dream of doing this. Why, then, do we insist on this torture when producing a piece of e-learning. So what do we do?

Most of us know how frustrating this experience can be so we try and improve it. We know that interaction is the key to good e-learning but our idea of interaction is clicking a button to move a screen forward.
We might go a little further and acknowledge that learners don’t want to see copious amounts of text on a screen all at once. So we hide it behind roll-overs. Now the interaction is a click combined with a slight movement of the mouse to reveal……. wait for it …….. more information.

Whilst this is acceptable in small doses it is still only information. True – it does make it more visually interesting but there is no real critical thought. Ok, ok, some people can learn like that but where is the application?

We think that by ‘tarting’ up the slides so information is hidden behind cleverly thought up graphics or charts, this makes it ‘engaging’….. think again. It is a little like handing out envelopes in class for learners to open one by one just to discover a few more facts. Admittedly, it’s a little more fun than death by PowerPoint – but only just.

There is, however, light at then end of this e-learning tunnel. If we would normally ask guided questions in a classroom to gain an opinion we can do exactly the same in an e-learning module. The difference being that instead of waiting for someone to answer, we may have to give some realistic options for the learners to choose. In part three I’ll be looking at ideas for creating exciting and engaging e-learning and continuing on I’ll explore ideas on how we can think more creatively when introducing activities in e-learning, how we can help get the most out of our learners and encourage motivation. The series will also look at how we can improve the aesthetics of the screen.

Value their leisure time more than their older colleagues do
Desire an easy pace with lots of holidays
See work as less central to their lives but as a means of just making a living

Research by The Association of Graduate Recruiters also echoed this and identified young graduates seemed to expect everything to fall into their laps. The situation has resulted in a good number of firms employing those with a stronger work ethic through overseas recruitment.

If this is what we can expect from the Generation Y born c1980, what can we expect from the even younger generation leaving school now? Well, also reported in an adjacent article in The Daily Mail, employers are experiencing young workers regularly turning up late for work and interviews and a seemingly lack of respect in their dress and working relationships.

What implications does this have for the L&D profession ? How can we encourage more enthusiasm for hard work and a little humility to succeed in business?

Although the report was less about pride and more about self-belief, the experiment that followed was an interesting one. A presenter gave a problem solving task to a group of people. The instructions were to spend a specific amount of time thinking about the problem to make plans and he left with the words ; “it should only take you a couple of minutes”. There were 5 people in this group and immediately, 2 of the group took the lead making decisions and, essentially, resolving the problems. Here comes the second part of the experiment. The group was then tasked with counting dots on a screen in a very short period of time. To cut it short… the presenter returned and asked two of the group to leave.

The remaining 3 were praised for their exceptional results and that, in fact, they had scored higher than he did earlier. Their reaction was superb. They all expressed surprise and, I guess, just a little pride in their results. Impressive – how good must they have felt?

Wait – there was a third task. This time the group reconvened and was given another problem to solve. Guess who were the three who improved the most? Yes … it was the three people praised in the second task. In fact, they hadn’t scored that exceptionally, and the presenter hadn’t done the task himself at all so there was nothing to compare. However, the three who were given such positive praise were the three who naturally took a back seat in the first task while the other two quickly took the lead and made the decisions.

What was the result? The three who took a back seat in the first task, gained confidence and became more involved this time round. Now why does that surprise everyone? This is the power of positive feedback and what effect it has on our performance and motivation. This can be linked to all aspects of our lives:

Children whose parents praise them when they do well rather than scold them when they do not will find their behaviour improve and grow;

Employers who especially give recognition for work well done and hard work reaching goals will likely see an improvement in their workers’ and motivation and performance;

L&D professionals who build their learners’ confidence by boosting their confidence with positive phrases and
encouragement will result in more motivated learners, better quality work and improved rates of application back in the workplace.

None of the above need cost a thing – the right words are often enough. It’s amazing what effect positivity has on our whole world.

Let’s make a better start to 2010 with a pledge to have a more positive affect on those around us.