Schank, Roger (2002). Designing world-class e-learning.  New York: McGraw-Hill.

PREFACE

Note: This is an update of the 1996 book Virtual Learning.

In theory, thanks to e-learning, every employee is only a mouse click away from improving his/her skills; in reality, e-learning is often derailed by flawed content and procedures.  But it doesn’t have to be.

History

In the old days, people learned on the job by doing. Then, job training became like school, with manuals and tests.  However, telling people how to do something is a poor substitute for doing it.  Today, however, we have the potential for not just telling people how to do something, but letting them practice in simulations.;

PART I: E-LEARNING BY DOING

Ch. 1: Get Smart: The Problems with Traditional Training and Education

• People can’t absorb the avalanche of information that comes with training.

• Our systems are so new that we haven’t had time to identity likely failures and how to avoid them.

• Telling doesn’t work as well as doing.

Disadvantages of Learning by Doing

• It can be dangerous
• It can be expensive
• It can fail to provide relevant cases.

Why is Training Just Like School?

• If we pull a Biology test from you school and make you take it, how many questions would you get right?  The poor results underscore that school, for the most part, isn’t about learning how to do anything, it’s about short-term memorization of information largely meaningless for performance of practical skills.  Yes, that’s a jaundiced view, but then we’re talking about training, not general education. 

• The educational model used in most schools dates back to about 1892.  The real world has changed a lot since then, but schools haven’t.

• People who do well in school tend to be intelligent and also tend to do well in business.  What worked for them should work for others, shouldn’t it?

• Even though they’re quick to embrace other money-saving innovations, people are quick to object to new training approaches.  Does that make sense?

Common Objections

• It will take too long and cost too much.
• It won’t be effective.
• It can’t be measured.

Good News

When learning isn’t engaging, it’s not learning.  Doing tends to be interesting, so education that involves doing tends to be engaging.

Ch. 2: The Secret to Success: e-Learning by Doing

John Dewey first complained back in 1916 that schools persist in learning by telling even though research suggests it doesn’t work very well.

How Kids Learn

• By trying and failing and trying again.

• By having a goal so that you’re interested in learning to achieve that goal.

• The same way you get to Carnegie Hall in the old joke---by practice.  Specifically, by practicing enough to internalize procedures.

Do We Know What We Know?

There are some things (e.g., multiplication tables) we learn by telling and memorizing.  But we learn most things by doing. Learning by being told produces conscious knowledge; Learning by doing produces unconsciousness knowledge, which leads to “gut feelings” that are nonrandom and more likely than average to be correct.

How Do We Understand?

By being reminded.  Reminding helps us compare new experiences to old ones: if different, the new one becomes a new case; if not, it becomes a part of the previously-existing case.

Four Steps to Take Before Creating an e-Learning Course

1. Start with a job in your organization that requires well-defined, repeatable skills.
2. Figure out your most pressing training issue.
3. Identify the best subject matter experts in your organization.
4. Gather Stories.

Learning Can Be Simulating

• Good simulations are like good books or movies---they promote suspension of disbelief and promote belief that the simulation is real.
• Good e-learning allows for mistakes.  Given the above, when mistakes are made, they pack a punch because they don’t just feel like a computer exercise---they feel real.
• Good e-learning builds in some of the same kind of ambiguity that exists in the real-oife situation.
• If there’s more than one right answer in the real world, there should be more than one right answer in the simulation.
• Sometimes simulations, like real life, need to throw people a few curves.
• Helping People Learn to Do Just About Anything
• Allow people to act naturally; that is, take care not to signal the behaviors you want. Otherwise, students fall into “student mode” and give you what they think you want to hear instead of actually thinking.
• E-Learning won’t work if learners lack motivation—the simulation must help them achieve a goal they want to achieve.  Therefore, use goal-based scenarios.

Ch. 3: e-Learning by Doing at IBM, A.G. Edwards, Enron, and Wal-Mart

Putting all of one’s training on the web is “sexy” right now. Why?

1)       the people pushing for it don’t know training and they don’t know the web

2)       the web lets you do things in training you couldn’t do without the web.

3)       Money (Schank thinks this is the real answer).

IBM

According to an IBM study, a key factor in being a good manager is being a good coach.

GROW Model

• Goals
• Options
• Realities
• What needs to be done

They created four scenarios.

Example: “I’ll be in this weekend”: about micromanaging and failure to delegate.

A.G. Edwards

Edwards aimed to put it’s basic-level training on the web. Analysis showed that what was needed wasn’t to train on the best answers, but rather he best approach. They created ten scenarios like “Estate Planning for Clients Who Don’t Think They Need It”.

Enron

An internal survey identified five problems with communication at Enron, so it set out to improve communication skills. They picked five trouble spots for scenarios. Testing identified two major problems: people used the wrong communication medium (e.g., email when a phone call would be better) and they didn’t get across what they meant to communicate in face-to-face meetings.

Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart’s hourly supervisors didn’t see the “big picture”. Wal-Mart wanted its hourly supervisors to think and act more like management.   They also wanted to standardize best practices across stores. Existing training consisted mostly of PowerPoint and online manuals.

Based on lots of interviews, they created twelve scenarios where the actors act on the basis of the supervisor’s advice (they found this less threatening). Trainees also have access to a “tool box” full of resources like video clips from founder Sam Walton.

PART II: INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR E-LEARNING

Ch. 4: Expectation Failure: The Engine that Powers e-Learning

• People who make mistakes tend to either want help or want to figure things out for themselves.  Good training should accommodate both.
• For real learning to take place, there must be expectation failure.
• “Real thinking never starts until the learner fails”.
• How do you recognize expectation failures?  It’s easy---people insist on explaining them.
• People tend to remember stories better than facts.  When people fail, they create a “reminding strategy” that takes the failure, names it, stores it, and retrieves it in similar circumstances.
• People also learn from exceptions.  Include occasional worst-cased scenarios where everyone is likely to fail, at least at first.

Fail with Dignity

Computer simulations let people fail with dignity because:

• The failure can be controlled
• The failure is private
• The failure can be explained by experts

People need to be motivated by real goals in order to learn from failure.

Ch. 5: Ten Powerful Design and Delivery Principles

1)       You remember best what you feel the most

2)       Dumb employees aren’t born; they’re made

3)       Deliver training just in time (Or when a person has just failed and really needs help)

4)       Failure can teach just about anything

5)       You will teach yourself better than the world’s best trainer or motivational speaker

6)       Memorization without corresponding experience is worthless

7)       When you buy and e-learning system it should come with all the options (e.g., accommodate personality differences)

8)       Open your e-learning course with a bang

9)       Trainees should be learning from the world’s best

10)   Simulation-based e-learning is best suited for large training populations.

Ch. 6: The Building Blocks of e-Learning: Scriptlets and the Learner’s Personal Goals

A scriptlet is a procedure or group of actions performed so frequently as to be almost “mindless” (capable of performing without thinking about it).

 We naturally acquire scriptlets in the course of repeatedly performing tasks that are meaningful to us.

Skills As Scriptlets

Don’t teach abstractions, teach scriptlets.  For example, don’t try to teach “customer service”; instead, teach how to handle unruly customers, how to handle complaints, and the like.  If you do a good job of teaching this, good customer service results.

Practice makes Perfect

In order for behaviors to result in scriptlets, you must practice, practice, practice. Since not every scriptlet will be intrinsically rewarding, you can motivate by linking it with the results of a bad performance or put it in a fun context.  One way to do that is to let people see how each scriptlet melds to create successful performance (e.g., in baseball, catching, deciding, and throwing are not very interesting in themselves, but combining them to throw out a runner IS interesting).

Ch. 7: The e-Learning Instructional Design Process

1. Create a teaching points document, which will address the specific training need.

2. Analyze: understand what makes up successful performance.  You also have to “find the gaps”---places where performers tend to be held back by mistakes.

3. Choose a design theme.

4. Review prior courseware.

5. Create a design timeline.

6. Create a task skeleton and some sample content.

7. Do a text walkthrough.

8. Create a slide show.

9. Implementation Review

10. Functional Specification.

Notes

• The key step in instructional design is creating your plan for interaction with the learners.
• Be concrete first, generalize later.

 Well, that’s it for the summary.  Here are the other chapters.

 PART III: E-LEARNING IN ACTION 

• Ch. 8: Bad e-Learning: Five Examples
• Ch. 9: e-Learning by Doing at Deloitte, Cutler-Hammer, and GE
• Ch. 10: Designing e-Learning for Frontline Hourly Employees: Stories from First Union and GE Card Services
• Ch. 11: e-Learning at Harvard Business School
• Ch. 12: Web-Mentored Courses: How Columbia University Uses Live Experts to Enhance e-Learning by Doing

PART IV: ASSESSING AND MEASURING E-LEARNING

• Ch. 13: Let FREEDOM Ring: Seven Criteria for Assessing the Effectiveness of an e-Learning Course
• Ch. 14: How to Apply the FREEDOM Criteria
• Ch. 15: Postscript: e-Learning Does Not Mean Copying School