CHEATING THE LEARNER !

PowerPoint adaptations that are passed off as E-Learning are counterfeit!

Two insightful sayings will suffice for illustration. The first deals with college lecture classes: “That which passes from the notes of the professor to the notes of the student without engaging the minds of either one.”

The second references opinion-radio and the opinion-cable television networks: “Noise which passes from the mouth of one person to the ears of another without engaging the minds of either one.”

So it is, too often, with E-Learning today. Those organizations that convert PowerPoint presentations and written procedures into an E-Learning environment are guaranteeing that few minds will be engaged. Consequently, precious little learning will occur.

Rather, your workforce will be bored, disinterested and, worse of all, will not even complete the assigned courses. (Statistically, more than 70% of E-Learning lessons that are based on the written word are never completed.)

We live in a television learning culture today. Media is as much a part of the learning culture as magazines, newspapers and books were a half-century ago.

Unfortunately, today the decisions regarding E-Learning are made by an organization’s leaders who, themselves, are often unaware of the learning culture evolution and the power behind well-designed multi-sensory media instruction.

Since more than 40% of our workforce does not assimilate and comprehend above a 4th Grade reading level, throwing reconstituted PowerPoint and adapted written procedures at those individuals is doomed to failure.

Full-motion video, animations, optional word-for-word audio, music and sound effects are the necessary components of effective E-Learning. And, the retention results are, often, even greater than they were in the days of that older learning culture — the one that dominated when I was in school.