Substance Abuse: The Danger of Superficiality in e-Learning

 “In quantum gravity,as we shall see, the space-time manifold ceases to exist as an objectivephysical reality. Geometry becomes relational and contextual; and thefoundational conceptual categories of prior science – among them existenceitself – become problematized and relativized.”

This is an excerpt from an article on quantum gravity writtenby Alan Sokal, professor of physics at New York University. Mr. Sokal submittedthis article to a leading academic journal, which published it quickly, withoutmuch scrutiny. Because the information appeared sophisticated and intelligent, the editorsfailed to notice that the article was in fact a parody meant to test and trickthem. You can imagine the controversy. If you Google “Sokal hoax,” you canlearn more about lack of intellectual rigor and the “anything goes” approach toinformation distribution.

In an era of excessive information, you have to wonder: howmuch of it is real or matters? The Sokal affair, as labeled by Google,prompted me to reflect on the concept of superficiality and how it relates toe-Learning. How often do we create courses that look and sound good but are infact cognitively opaque? How often do we design learning by staying near thesurface? How often do we sacrifice depth and rigor for the sake of expediency?If you took down 80% of your e-Learning courses for one day, how many people inyour organization would complain?

After creating and completing hundredsof e-Learning products, I am noticing a trend towards substance abuse: wesometimes provide too little information, thinking we are doing users a favor,or we provide too much… thinking we are doing users a favor; or content is notreally that important as long as it looks good. And most of this superficialityhappens because we are often in a rush to deliver and don’t have the time orthe energy to devote to thorough analysis.

Substance abuse in training can haveserious consequences: on-the-job performance suffers, Help Desks get busier,and e-Learning gets a bad rep. How do we stop providing the mirage ofe-Learning? What are some practical cures for superficiality? Read on.

The reality of less

Sometimes we oversimplify e-Learningcontent for the sake of brevity. And who is to blame us? We are addressing aculture of students with increasingly shorter attention spans; a generation oflearners who wish to avoid inconveniences of prolonged training periods …learners who are after pleasant, instant stimulations, shortcuts, and quick fixes.As designers, you might be thinking: why clog output with unnecessary argument?Thorough treatment is for the academics.

Media and advertising, with theirmelodramatic sound-bites and slogans, are not helping our cause. You see adsthat persuade people to believe they can get high gains with minimum effort.Look at slogans that promise a complete meal in three minutes, tax submissionin two steps, and better abs in one move or less. If people are convinced theycan get results without effort in most areas of their lives (family, fitness,entertainment), why not expect the same from e-Learning? Why engage ineffortful pursuits when instant, comfortable chunks are so much easier tohandle? Superficiality has become attractive to many corporate students whoseek instant gratification and effortless training. How often have we seene-Learning along the lines of Figure 1?

 

User interface displaying: step1 of 4 steps to handle stress. Understanding

Figure 1: Is it possible to manage stress in onlyfour steps? Were this true, Prozac and psychiatrists would be out ofbusiness.

 

We’ve become too gentle with ourstudents. We spare them the feeling that a training package may be too long ortoo difficult. In attempting to protect frail psyches, we often produceattenuated e-Learning. We fear that users, who are so stimulus-hungry andhurried, might close the browser and reach for the Wii. So we encouragelearning by casual grazing. If we keep going at this pace, trapped and provokedby the 140-character culture, the future of e-Learning will be the blurb.

Do this exercise. Go to any of youre-Learning courses in your LMS (Learners Made to Suffer?) and count the numberof screens where detail is sacrificed for the easily digestible. How many didyou find? If the ratio is alarming, reflect on this: forced brevity breedssuperficiality. You can’t simplify something by applying a few quick formulas.In some fields, you have to admit the frustrating complexity. Students mighttell you that they are looking for are a “few simple rules” for a procedure. Insome areas, there are no simple rules. Many topics are complicated andsituational. Don’t oversimplify them.

Think of it this way: if everything ina training program was simple, users would not get much out of it. Ifeverything was complex, users would not get much out of it. But if you balancedsimplicity and complexity, users would learn better and appreciate your effortsto simplify. Simplicity and complexity need each other. It’s the contrastbetween them that shows your skills and provides students with substance andease of learning. Just as we need the dark sky to appreciate the moon, we needcomplexity to appreciate simplicity. Consider Figure 2.

Including complexity in e-Learningscreens assumes that you organize it well (any Edward Tufte book would helpwith that) and you distinguish between complex and complicated.

 

2 diagrams, both conveying same data with left side more complex than the simpler right side version.

Figure 2: We appreciatesimplicity when we know the complexity that fed it.

 

If you tend to oversimplify becauseyou’re worried about the length of an e-Learning product, keep this number inmind: empirical research shows that adult learners’ attention span startsfading after 30 minutes. The key word is adult learner; for adults in other circumstances, attentionspan may be longer. The movie industry can keep our attention for more than twohours, and so can a good stand-up comedian. Learning situations are morecognitively taxing, especially if you’re asking students to retain and applyinformation rather than simply browse.

You may hear casual anecdotesproclaiming that e-Learning modules offered in chunks of 15 minutes, 7 to 8minutes, or even 2 to 3 minutes are optimal. If you abide by these untestedstandards, know that you’re doing it not because adult learners cannot handlesomething longer, but because you recognize they are tied to digital leashesand are easily distracted. To create e-Learning for people with fickleattention but yet provide them with enough substance, we need to ask adifferent question. The question should not be: can students handle this30-minute module? The question should to be: how can I create my e-Learningprogram so it competes with an engaging iPhone app that typically tempts mystudents or with a rewarding chat they have with a co-worker via IM? You will enjoythe challenges but also the rewards of the answer.

Another danger of offering a superficial e-Learning insimple chunks is that students may miss the overall context of the information.Learning objects – discrete and focused pieces of content– empower students toestablish their own path by allowing them to draw from a knowledge repositoryonly the information they need at a given time. That’s all good. Let’s assumethe best case: students know what their path is. Even in this optimalsituation, chunked and overly simplified learning objects may prevent studentsfrom seeing the bigger context. Incomplete schemas may cause trainees to haveonly a partial frame of reference related to a particular topic, which may leadto misunderstanding and inadequate performance.

Learning objects may be the modern bible of instructionaldesign, but they ignore relationships and holism. I read an old Sufi teachingonce about the importance of understanding the whole, not just the parts:”You think because you understand one you must understand two, because one and one makes two. But you must alsounderstand and.”Superficiality often occurs because we fail to understand or bring importanceto “and”. Beingable to see connections between what is typically thought of as separate partsis the sign of the designer who thinks critically, not superficially.

To avoid the traps of cursory e-Learning, start with smallsteps. For topics that are extremely salient to your business, find three tofive areas where it is important that your students gain in-depth knowledge.Inform students that accumulation of real skills and knowledge requires effort.Include enough substance that can keep them engaged for 30 minutes at a time,and show them how those different areas are interconnected. Don’t spoil theidea of depth with words such as “complete” or “everything you need to know.”Substance does not necessarily mean exhaustive information. It just meanshaving enough to feel intellectually satiated. If you want students to returnto your content repository, leave them on high notes, with the promise of moresubstance during their next trip.

In the areas where knowledge is meant to be brief, use wordssuch as “overview” or “general information” or “getting started” or “outline”or “synopsis”; inform users of the type of depth they should expect and whereto go if they would like more. Don’t compensate for lack of content byproviding links to a lot of additional information. An e-Learning screen thathas 15 additional links to more information can feel disheartening. A smallamount of references, displayed in an organized and moderate fashion works.

And avoid going to the other extreme. Don’t turn somethinginto a deep topic when the content is not that critical. If you had to teachhow to insert pictures into Microsoft Word, the instruction is better served witha .pdf document that lists a few steps vs. a full-blown e-Learning course withterminal and enabling objectives, interactions, and summary.

The reality of more

A German philosopher once described boredom as the hot breathof nothingness on your neck. I have a similar image in mind when a studentlooks at an overwhelming e-Learning screen. I can almost see that hot breath ontheir necks. Does Figure 3 look familiar in terms of content volume in ane-Learning screen? Have you seen or created screens that look like this?

 

3 examples of overly busy and overly crammed with information.

Figure 3: Providing too much information rescuesus from responsibility (everything is there) but leaves students at bestuntouched, and at worst annoyed and bitter towards e-Learning.

 

The typical excuse I hear from designers when asked, “Whythe information tsunami?” is, “The client wanted it that way.” I am amazed athow little accountability we assume. Are you noticing that we live in timeswhere individual accountability is eroding? Someone else is always to blame.This is such an easy technique to adopt because if we believe it’s just theenvironment that needs fixing, then we are absolved of any personalresponsibility.

It’s so easy to blame an institution, isn’t it? We speakabout e-Learning programs failing, but how often do we speak of designersfailing? The problem with this victim mentality is that the more we believe wedon’t have control over our environment and the substance we provide ine-Learning, the more undisciplined we become. I strongly urge you: do not jointhe generation of “whatever” designers. Those are people who spin awayincompetence by blaming a system.

Take responsibility for information overload and educateclients on what constitutes manageable training. Any modern field you crafttraining about (finance, health, or technology), rests on petabytes ofinformation (and that’s just for the overviews). The first step towardsavoiding information overload, but still providing substance, is to impose someconstraints on youand the client. It may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out.

It is tempting and fairly easy to add everything you haveaccess to in an e-Learning program. Users can’t complain they don’t have accessto all the information, and the development process is faster. But learning ishindered. To manage excessive information, decide which areas are worthwhile toaddress and complete these steps:

  1. Review decisions you’ve made recently when including content in an e-Learning course (how you collected information, how many people you interviewed, how much documentation you reviewed).
  2. List the steps you took, along with the amount of time and anxiety that went into each step.
  3. Reflect on how it felt to do that work, how much the final course benefited from your effort, and how your students received it.

This exercise will help you realize the costs associatedwith the volume of information you decide to include in your courses, and mayprompt you to have some rules in the future. I am certain you currently haverules for different areas in your life (e.g., no more than two glasses of wineat dinner or no more than three bites of chocolate at a time). Imagine creatingsimilar rules for your training design habits, such as talking to no more thanthree SMEs for a course, or interviewing no more than four end-users, orcreating no more than 25 screens per lesson. When you start having such rules,you save time. You can devote this time to other areas where rules don’t applybut are substance opportunities, such as how to create a meaningful interactionfor a challenging instructional objective. Restricting your options, eventhough it implies fewer choices, benefits everyone.

I remember a cartoon by Peter Steiner, in which he showedthe father fish in a fish bowl telling his son: “You can be anything youwant to be — no limits.” Even though the fish bowl is so constrictive, theadvice was sound because it invited the little fish to explore and grow withoutbeing concerned with dangers of other larger environments that may not evenhave water.

Look at constraints not as restrictive but as liberating – away to take the time reserved for volume and transfer it to building substance.

Festina lente

Time is tricky in training design. We often give ourstudents too little or too much because we are in a rush and so are ourstudents. Patience and restraint are not qualities of our generation. Becausestudents and clients see waiting as uncomfortable, we end up with dilutede-Learning programs that have either selective detail or programs that includeeverything and the kitchen sink, along with the bedroom window, and links tothe neighbors’ house.

Client pressure is predominant in corporate training. “Canyou do it by Thursday,” they announce on Monday. “Just put something out there,anything.” If Professor Sokal were a SME and worked with corporate training, wewould probably be pressured into publishing a module on quantum gravity once aweek without blinking. What the bleep do we know? We’re just doing our jobs.

Because of time constraints, we bypass discipline and lookfor shortcuts. Who has time for reflection anymore? The hurried lifestyle ofour users pushes us to compress and deliver quickly, often sacrificing balanceand validity. Immediacy is the enemy of profound thought.

More or faster does not lead to better. When you’re in arush, you do not have time to descend into depth — and developing e-Learningtoo fast is like vacuuming too fast: you miss stuff.

Here is how it works in real life. Let’s say you come acrossthis statistic: 40% of business practitioners use software X. Theinterpretation of this statistic can be misleading: first you would have toknow how many people in business use software and then how many of those use that particularsoftware (and is it only software they use?). But how often do we stop andthink critically? Background information is often ignored, yet it can be asimportant as the conclusion. Selective evidence can lead to poor knowledge andsometimes manipulation. Ironically, the abstract is often more enticing thanthe body of the article to the time-thirsty corporate student.

How do we balance expediency with depth of argument?

  1. Keep in mind that facts matter but the principles behind them may be equally important. Take your time to study and understand the content, at least for the courses that are really important for your business.
  2. Follow immediate action with quiet reflection, because even more meaningful action will follow, as Zen masters would agree (might be nice if there was a Zen e-Learning school we could all attend).
  3. If you have to create something quickly, divide content creation and production into separate parts, and get help for the latter. This way, instead of spending time on deciding what graphic to include on each screen, you have more time for critical thought and the buildup of an argument.
  4. Lack of a rigorous QA process allows superficial thinking to pass unchallenged. Establish guardians for depth of thought, content validity, and reliability.

“Festina lente,” the title of this section, in Latin meansto “hurry slowly.” I like this sentiment because it reminds us to maintain asense of urgency, yet take the time to contemplate and not rush into thoughtsand conclusions and sound-bites.

The container and the content

I read the story of a woman who was unwrapping her iPod andexclaimed: “I did not care whether it worked or not. It was that beautiful.”Sensuous design and appeal dominate the consumer business and often precedefunctionality. Luckily, Apple knows how to balance style and substance.Unfortunately, this balance does not exist in some of our e-Learning packages.

In training design, we sometimes place more value on thecontainer than we do on the content. Plagued by show and seduced by flash, somedesigners are too often preoccupied with how the training looks rather than howit functions. Clients buy into this plastic paradise we offer in somee-Learning products because we live, after all, in the Age of Aesthetics. Ifappearance serves, why bother with depth?

Have you ever been guilty of spending too much time frettingon how to create a flashy presentation with slick programming and multimediaglitz? Has the medium ever killed your message? Screen dressing is dangerousbecause it leaves room for poverty of thought and reason. When we insist toomuch on the beauty of the container, we sometimes create pseudo-learning thatis expensive and glossy. In such cases, the multimedia noise is the cognitiveequivalent of fast-food.

 

half a dozen of very visually appealling templates

Figure 4: An abundance of templates providesvisually appealing interfaces. Fill them with solid content so you offer bothsubstance and style.

 

As you know, there is more to e-Learning than arrangingbinary code in an aesthetically pleasing fashion.

You can color e-Learning screens with the latest programmingand layout techniques and authoring tools but don’t forget business and studentneeds for substance and depth. (Figures 4 and 5 attest!)

 

visual: nail sandwich

Figure 5: Offering style without substance islike offering a sandwich with non-nourishing ingredients.

 

I often hear this request from clients: “I want you todevelop an e-Learning package for my employees that is really stimulating, andfull of engaging activities and effects that attract the eye and keep theminterested.” And designers start stressing and obsessing over how to make thetraining full of engaging and eye-catching opportunities. Here is what you needto tell clients: Not all courses scream out for motivational and glittertechniques.

According to several theories of cognitive arousal, thefollowing considerations apply when establishing how much stimulation isnecessary in a training program in terms of substance and style:

  • If students consider the subject matter as critical (e.g., safety measures or mandatory training), then aim for a low stimulation level. In the case of mandatory training, students do not really care about the learning process, but about its consequences. All they want to do is remain relaxed, alert, and complete the training quickly so they can move onto other things. For example, if you develop online training about a mandatory topic, such as the code of business conduct of your company, you should not waste a lot of development hours adding glitz and humor and sophisticated interfaces. Students know this is an obligation. All they want is clear content, instructions on what to do to complete the training successfully, and that’s it.
  • If students consider the subject matter as freely chosen and avoidable (e.g., a training package in improving communication, developing creative thinking, or improving time management skills), then use a higher stimulation level. In such circumstances, students are not necessarily mindful of the consequences of the e-Learning program but wish to enjoy the learning process and consider high levels of stimulation as pleasant and challenging.

Linguistic laxity

Imagine you’re in love. You could tell your lover: “Iappreciate your love. You make me feel good and I really like you.” Or youcould say: “If you caught me one day and kissed the sole of my foot, I would limpa little, afraid to crush your kiss.” Which words would have a bigger impact?

How often do we take time to offer substance throughspecific language? How often do we include the radiance and expressiveness ofthe English language in our content? Not often. Our courses are drooling withnon-sentences. Our language is often missing nuance and detail. We throw aroundphrases such as “paradigm shift,” “thinking out of the box,” “unparalleledtechnology.” Unpack these words and you see a sad reality: we often write indiluted sentences and transmit obscure thoughts. If we are on a mission to makeour courses shorter, yet still offer substance, language analysis andlinguistic scrutiny is definitely one of the solutions.

Beautiful language that has brevity and depth is becoming avanishing luxury. There are several reasons for this trend. First, we tend toexploit and trivialize words; we use adjectives such as “wonderful” and“fantastic” for the most insignificant concepts (“fantastic toenails”);“terrible” or “tragic” show up in structures such as “terrible pen.” Whatsuperlative can you think of that really denotes tragedy or wonder in its truesense? We’ve slowed down prose for the sake of lazy language (“lunch wasawesome”). Whatever.

The language of Twitter is superficiality incarnate. If JaneAustin was using Twitter when she wrote Pride and Prejudice, this is what wewould be reading: “@janeaustin Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible.He turns out to be nice really. They get together.”

The cure for this is more commitment to the appreciation andusage of language. Read more; take notes of expressions that are brief butpotent. Take a creative writing course. That’s when you learn to appreciate thedifference between writing sentences like “He hit me” vs. “He decked me” vs.“He Steven Segal’ed my butt.”

Specifics mobilize the brain; by selecting words that arespecific (vs. corporate clichés or generic words), you can enable students tofocus on your content for longer periods of time. And when you choose just theright word, you can achieve brevity as well, which means that your training canbe a bit longer and it can have more substance (since statements are craftedcarefully and free of non-words). I recently learned the Portuguese word saudade. On the surface, itmeans longing for someone who is not around. But when you study it more, youdiscover additional texture and touch. The tiny word is a summary of all thatmatters: profound feelings for someone whose picture may be in black and white,yet you still retain the colors; someone whose existence has redesigned yourdaily choreography; someone who earned the right to open your bedroom window inthe morning and whose absence triggers all the senses … Imagine all thesefeelings in one little word! That’s the power of language. That’s how muchmeaning we can pack in a few letters, if we just took the time to look. Festinalente.

Getting specific with words means acquiring a bettervocabulary. Word power does wonders to substance because language has thepotential to shape thoughts. When I was researching information for thisarticle, I came across the word sciolism,which means claims of knowledge we don’t have; instead of saying we don’t know,we pretend that we do. While I would not use the word sciolism in aconversation (imagine the looks at a cocktail party), it did prompt me to thinkof one area that I included in this section concerned with using words to makethe discourse appear in a more positive light. Language can often shapethinking; acquire more of it.

Another reason we turn our discourse into empty sentences isbecause of too much insistence on political correctness. I was recently goingto interview a well-known presenter on a topic I am passionate about: beginningsof presentations. Amongst questions such as what constitutes a good beginningand where could we find inspiration for them, I was also going to ask: is therea difference between the way men and women start their presentations? I wasadvised not to ask this question for politically correct reasons. Such a shame,as the question was genuine and could have led to good conversation and deeperthinking. Do men open with a challenge? Do women open with consensus? Or is itthe other way around? I don’t know and I was afraid to ask.

The zeal for PC (“politically correct”) speech is leading tooverly sanitized phrases that are meant to take the sting out of reality andprovide a palatable but superficial impression of what happens around us. Wedon’t travel “economy,” we travel “coach.” We don’t “fail”; we experience“deferred success.” Some hospitals do not talk about “death” but “negativepatient outcome.” On the other extreme, we adopt an over-the-top linguisticstyle, created to provide an inflated sense of importance of the content andconceal the shallowness of ideas. Obscure language is meant to impress. We usewords to create positive auras and bolster egos. Everyone is a Vice Presidentof some sort.

How excited would you be and how much substance would youexpect to get out of the e-Learning program in Figure 6? Would Figure 7 giveyou a different set of expectations?

 

two winners holding a trophy next to cliched text

Figure 6: The enigmatic, clichéd text and theunrealistic picture reduce the credibility of this screen (the picture would bemore appropriate for a CSI movie).

 

steps on it are various colorful pillows that serve as chair cushions

Figure 7: Clear, simple, and honest wordsannounce a training program with worthwhile substance.

 

One cure for linguistic laxity is to design courses aboutcontent you’re familiar with and you’ve experienced directly. Actors tend to bemore successful when they act what they know. It’s the same in e-Learningdesign. When you write about what you know, your language is crisp, clear,fresh, and precise. There is a difference between knowing about something vs. knowing itdirectly. Thebotanist knows about the flower, the bee knows it directly. You might notbecome the bee, but you can do diligence to depth by constant research, solidinterviewing skills, and critical thinking skills. The more you stay the busybee, the better the results and the student satisfaction scores.

Doing something about superficiality

In order to apply the cures suggested in this article, youmust ensure that you have enough energy. There is a link between superficialityand our physiology. We are quickly turning into a society of tired people. Howcan we run an intellectual marathon, when our mind can barely run 5k? I am sureyour New Year resolutions include at least one about your health and energylevel. Place it at the top.

I recommend Richard Paul’s book on the topic of criticalthinking, which reminds all of us that we should be engaged more often inconstructive skepticism and in the art of in-depth approach to information thatmatters. And avoid the type of thinking that keeps one’s ego captive and isfree of social conditioning and is on a constant rush. This way, when a SMEpressures you into publishing content on quantum gravity, you know better.

The overall plea of this article is to convince you to avoidsuperficiality and engage in more critical thinking. Keep in mind that when weprovide superficial e-Learning, we are not transmitting knowledge, but ratherthe illusion of it. And illusory e-Learning can be corrosive and regressive. Bemore thorough in your approach to e-Learning and do not engage in substanceabuse.

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