Godfrey Parkin has a great post, "Who says learning should be fun? "
In the post, he discussed an alarming trend that "fun" is required as a specified learning design requirement. Excerpt:
"E-learning’s rise has brought this issue to the fore. The constant admonition from instructional designers that e-learning has to be punctuated every couple of minutes with “interactivity” is one of the saddest mantras of our time. It’s like the American notion that food cannot be palatable unless you smother it with ketchup. If you are working with training that is bland and dry, by all means bring on the sauce. But would it not be better to make the training itself more engaging in the first place?
The distinction between engagement and interactivity is crucial, and it’s one that many instructional designers – and those who commission the development work – do not appear to understand. Engagement is intense mental absorption; interactivity is often just busyness or sugar-coating. It is vitally important that learners be engaged. Interactivity, entertainment, and fun can contribute to cognitive engagement. They can equally well distract from it. "
Now, because he is from the other side of the pond and may not know that much about the rich diversity of American eating habits, I will forgo the ketchup inference, but I do agree with his underlying premise.
I would also apply this in another context in regards to e-learning and learning management systems. Some of our industry's top pundits are preoccupied with need for over-the-top, latest and greatest, whiz bang, special sauce, functionality that must absolutely be applied to e-learning, especially in a corporate context.
No can argue that blog technology, pod casts, wiki's, text messaging....etc. are cool, fun tools that have expanded the way in which we can communicate and impart information. They make great fodder for articles and blogs and it is good to stay on top of the latest technology applications and uses.
Depending upon the program, the context, and the application of these tools, sure--its nice to use these things, but in an e-learning context, they themselves may actually add to the distraction if they are not used auspiciously, or as we would say on this side of the pond, with a grain of salt.
Dave Boggs, SyberWorks
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