Power of Internet for Learning

This week's class was on elearning which is the learning using digital tools and content. To bring in a more personal light, it's especially so for me as I am now doing an online course where my professor (MGO 302: Product and Operations Management ) teaches me through videos that she uploads in real time(albeit a bit outdated by a few hours, nonetheless, still very amazing that i can see her teaching even though she is many leagues away from me! :P) and students located in Singapore and London are able to watch her lectures. Personally, i do think this form of teaching is quite effective as she doesn't need to travel to Singapore to teach and YET is still able to teach us! Therefore, instead of having only 500 students from US, she has 200 extra students over singapore! And with the videos, it gives us the students the flexibility to pause and replay whatever material we missed while the lecturer was speaking! Now wouldn't we all wish that we had that in all everyday lessons where we can pause to copy notes and press play when our teachers talk too fast?? :P

HOWEVER(yes yes, there is always a "however" to almost everything!), there are some cons (at least for the students that are not "physically present" in class). For example, i ran into a problem with the videos uploaded. I discovered to my horror that I had been watching videos from last year 's curriculum!!! :( Apparently it was a technical error on the US side but due to the time difference, it took a while to fix (wasting some time on my part!). Besides that, there is always the problem of asking questions through email.. It's just that certain things are really hard to explain through email (especially stuff like diagrams!! OH MY!) and there's always the possibility that the teacher may misinterpret the question asked when trying to figure out what the email was asking.

Despite the pros and cons, i do find overall that im learning a vast amount from the course and im glad that i took up the course in my last semester! Really rewarding experience.. :)

Just a sidenote, i did manage to find out that there are some ways to make elearning more effective for those interested in it:

1) Add a face

Learners are usually reluctant to attend a soft skills training as they tend to think of it as being non-essential, as opposed to technical, work-related training. Already non-motivated, learners will resist a training that is imparted by a faceless, soulless monitor. 

Adding a friendly face to the course material will add a human dimension to the training. Introducing a coach, buddy, or a mentor at the beginning of the course will make it easier for learners to understand the learning objectives. Bringing him/her back at checkpoint and summary screens will be a good idea. Coaches can also help introduce scenarios in the training.

2) Answer WIIFM (What’s in it for me)

The most important question posed by the learners: What’s in it for me? (WIIFM)While most learning objectives address the question in concrete, technical terms, they fail to motivate and convince the learners how the training proposes to benefit them. An instructional designer or content writer should focus on responding to this question in a simple, mentor-like manner, explaining clearly the advantages of the training to the learner. 

3) Present scenarios

A soft skills training cannot be imparted with a series of dos, don’ts, shoulds, and shouldn’ts. A learner will not gain anything from the training unless the training responds to the corresponding whys and why nots. Well-illustrated scenarios can help explain the finer details of the soft skills.

4) Familiar territory

Use characters and situations closer to real life to present scenarios. A thorough audience analysis will help build strong and effective scenarios. Factors such as age, country, ethnicity, language, culture, even attire and food should be taken into consideration while creating scenarios. At times, non-familiarity with the audience could result in a well-meaning scenario giving offense to the learners.

5) Provide online help

This is the toughest challenge and is often not considered because of technical limitations. An always-available guide can help learners extract more from trainings. I am not referring to a physical guide here, but an online repository of information acting as an available facilitator.