INSYS 411 Susan Hawke

INSYS 411 Susan Hawke

Summer 2009, Session IIAugust 6, 2009

Initially, I considered e-learning as an on-line course to discuss a topic of interest or requirement for a person’s job. So, for my prototype, I needed to know what the topic would be andwho would be taught.

The topic was easy to determine because I am the point of contact to help my coworkers with the implementation of an online software tool. The staff is required to use this software to complete the state mandated forms. From the significant number of calls I get, it was easy to limit the content for the e-learning tool to a small task many people require assistance to complete. I didn’t need to do much of a performance analysis because I knew the requirements needed to complete the task. This left thinking about ‘the who’.

Working with and training my coworkers, I was fortunate to have an intimate knowledge of the group as learners. They are mostly women (77 women, 3 men), generally not comfortable with using the computer, have little time to complete tasks, know what they have to do but not how to do it, will access this when their stress level is high, will be accessing this course because they didn’t have a person or a paper manual to look at and they would probably be needing this tool at the last minute.

So, now I have the ‘who’ and the ‘what’. This should be pretty easy – I have done this training in the classroom – so I will be able to quickly put it in a PowerPoint and put it online. Easy “A” in this class …

… That was my thinking 7 weeks ago. Then I started reading the book and the information presented in class sunk into my thick skull. I started applying what I was learning to my thoughts for my prototype. My view of e-learning was changing from the thought of it being ‘an online training’ to a process of developing a teaching tool that will assist the learner in acquiring knowledge or a skill. I determined that the e-learning goal for my prototype would be a program to teach the learners to perform a procedure. This procedure willproduce state mandated documents by using an on-line software tool. All staff members have been trained on this software, although some features are used less often andforgotten. There are other features that are not intuitive and need repeated instruction and practice for mastery. Since the learners (staff/coworkers) have already been exposed to the software, I felt that using screenshots would be the best images as it would assist in transfer. This would also decrease the cognitive overload since they were familiar with the screen and wouldn’t waste brain power trying to learn what the screen looked like.

I spent a lot of time thinking about and developing the look and feel of the master slide. The learner characteristics significantly influenced the ‘look and feel’. I needed to develop something that did not require complex computer knowledge so it did not intimidate the learner. I needed to make it engaging for a group of special education teachers who work with preschoolers and like ‘cute’. It needed to relaycalmness while guiding them through a task they find stressful. I used a calming blue background with a wavy line to say ‘we will flow thru this easily’. I incorporated a girl since most of the staff is female. (Idea for the future – have the user pick male or female and have the same e-learning tool, one with a woman and one with a man) (I know – I didn’t stop and go to the prototype) To personalize this training and to grab the learner’s attention, the movie of Ellie’s dilemma was developed. It is common for the staff to wake up in the middle of the night in a panic because of incomplete work, so many can relate to Ellie’s situation. I also attempted to personalize it by talking in a conversational style.

The next dilemma I pondered, for many hours, was the amount of learner control and interaction. I know that there is a sequence of actions to complete the tasks that were being taught. So, how do I give the learner control without having them skip the important steps? I decided to segment the learning topics which correlate to the two processes; inputting the transition goal and inputting the objectives into the software. I gave the learner the ability to jump from one topic to the other, but they were not able to skip over large sections within a topic. The larger topics were segmented into smaller chunks making it easier to learn each step. To increase the learner interaction, I wanted each of these smaller segments to require the learner to interact with the prototype to continue. While I knew I wanted to incorporate this tactic, it took me many hours to come up with the way to accomplish this. While driving to a class, two weeks prior to the when the finished product was due, I had an ‘ah-ha’ moment and figured out how to set it up in PowerPoint. I was able to edit the prototype so the learner would proceed to the next slide by an instruction to click on the button discussed. This provides practice and will improve the transfer of what they have learned.

To incorporate the use of multimedia, I included both graphics and audio. The graphics remained in the same location on all the screens (except the quiz questions) to limit extraneous processing. There is animation to guide the learner’s attention to the important locations on the screen. I attempted to limit how many types of animation so there was some predictability. For example, buttons would grow (and shrink), typed fields rolled in from left, arrows would guide to an area being discussed. The speed of these animations is set to a constant throughout the training. I considered including a header, but with the master slide format, felt it would be visual overload. While the idea of contiguity was kind of a no-brainer, syncing up the audio with the visual animation proved more difficult than expected.

The method to introduce the skills included an animation with the explanation, and user input to go to the next slide. Having the learners click on the button that was discussed in the slide provided not only practice but also gave the learner the opportunity to control the training andto proceed at their own pace.

Overall, this process was not only eye-opening, it was fun. Someone commented that the process of putting together the prototype was tedious, yet another aspect of this process I enjoyed. Acquiring a couple new PowerPoint skills is always helpful and I was happy to be exposed to Adobe Presenter. I hope to incorporate e-learning tools into my ‘bag of tricks’ when I am required to train coworkers. I also hope to continue to learn new techniques in e-learning as the field evolves.