Chapter 1
What's New?

What's new in our field? What's new in this second edition of the Guide?

Useful world knowledge continues to advance by leaps and bounds. Along with the growth of knowledge comes the need for more effective access, communication, and aids to learning these ever-more-complex understandings.

Similarly, brain research continues to inform conversations across multiple disciplines (Blakemore and Frith, 2005) and appears on the edge of providing valuable insights for teaching, although we remain short of transferring knowledge instantly and bioelectrically as forecast in the movie The Matrix:

Neo:

Trinity:

Tank:

Trinity:

As technology transforms in amazing ways, often with unexpected consequences, I'm ready to think we will find effortless ways to transfer knowledge and skills at some point. But as appealing as that is, we need to accept the fact we're just not there yet. In the meantime, the question should be: while it's still necessary for learners to do their own learning, how can we best facilitate the process?

My observation is that we continue to look for unrealistically easy answers. We even hope simple access to information may preclude the need for any instruction or learning at all. It seems we want to avoid the work of creating meaningful, memorable, motivational learning experiences, even though there's no doubt they provide the best way for people to learn and improve performance. There's no evidence the fundamentals of human brain function have changed recently and diminished the value of effective instruction. But we seem to keep looking for signs that has occurred as an excuse for not doing the admittedly challenging work of instructional design.

Although there are frequent claims that succeeding generations learn in different ways, most are myths (Bruyckere, Kirschner, and Hulshof, 2015). I've seen no foundational changes in what we know about how people learn or in what we know about effective instruction. The critical principles remain valid and, sadly, unheeded. And yet claims abound that, with advances in technology, everything has changed.

This edition of Michael Allen's Guide to e-Learning was created to respond to the assertions that everything has changed and quality instructional design is no longer critical. Responses are provided through:

• New perspectives on the hyperbolical claims that everything has changed
• Additional efforts to simplify and clarify foundational principles that haven't changed (and aren't likely ever to change)
• A fresh, new, and expanded collection of examples of approaches that work

To get started, let's take a look at these opposing perspectives-that nothing fundamental has changed versus everything (or at least a whole lot) has changed.

Nothing Has Changed

Let's first consider the perspective that nothing has changed-at least not the most important aspects of learning and instruction. Take the process of human learning, for instance. The foundations of human learning have not changed, despite concerning attempts to excuse lack of instructional effectiveness by suggesting the human brain works differently now that we're in the digital age (Bruyckere et al., 2015, p. 142).

We're still quite certain that much of human learning is centralized in the brain and that information gets to the brain through our nervous system from our senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and through kinesthesia (awareness of the position and movement of body parts that is essential in coordinated activity).

We also remain confident that meaningful learning is a function of tying new information to existing, well-rooted knowledge and physical skills. And, we know most well-rooted knowledge and physical skills were established through experience and practiced application. We understand that it takes energy to learn and that learners must spend this energy themselves; we cannot learn for them. We know motivation behaves like a water hose to direct attention and release energy, and we know motivations fluctuate up and down in response to situations, such as rising scores in a game, an inspiring TED speaker, or boring e-learning.

We have considerable evidence that practice aids learning, and practice spaced over time leads to more enduring memory and behavior patterns. We also know:

• Examples are more effective when paired with counterexamples
• Worked problems provide clarity often missing from instruction
• Consequences shown in response to specific learner behaviors elevate helpful emotional involvement as well as understanding and do so more effectively than simple, right/wrong feedback

For decades now, the Successive Approximations Model (SAM) has been a remarkably effective process and alternative approach to designing and building learner-centered learning experiences. It has been less widely known and applied than it is today, so perhaps there's been some change here. Its value is now even more certain. Coverage of SAM in the first edition of this book resulted in a flood of appreciative feedback, so it remains a centerpiece of this edition as well, updated a bit from the work we've done to prepare for workshops and webinars on the process and from feedback from countless applications.

In summary, we really know quite a lot about human learning, effective instruction, and instructional design. These long-standing foundational concepts continue to offer valuable guidance. That's why we can say: nothing critical has changed, including the need for us all to pay greater attention to validated fundamentals. And, in this second edition, foundational concepts remain in the spotlight. They are covered as straightforwardly as I could manage.

Everything Has Changed!

An alternate perspective-perhaps the more commonly held perspective-is that so much has changed in the world of e-learning, we are almost starting from a clean slate. The one correct aspect of that assertion is that today one might not even recognize what's going on in the field of e-learning as an outgrowth of its origins.

In its infancy, instructional design for e-learning was taken very seriously, the paradigms we used were an outgrowth of learning science, and we carefully evaluated courseware before launching it to larger populations of learners. Today, the prevalent notion is, "thank goodness, instructional design isn't that complicated. It's not really a profession. Everyone can develop good instruction. You just need to remember the six steps."

Although I endeavor to help everyone attempting to design instruction to find ways to be effective, and I actually think many people complicate the process unnecessarily, it's very troublesome to see so many do-it-yourself lists presented as sufficient guidelines to genuine design integrity and excellence.

Let's look at some of the changes frequently noted-the good, the bad, and the very much unexpected.

Prevalence of e-Learning

One obvious change is that e-learning is no longer new or a novelty for most organizations and institutions. Its use has spread broadly, and there is a plethora of ways technology is used-all unfortunately lumped into the category e-learning. Today, 77 percent of U.S. companies offer e-learning in their professional development programs (Roland Berger, 2014). More than 80 percent of higher education institutions offer at least several courses online, and more than half offer a significant number of courses online (EDUCAUSE, 2013).

Low Expectations

In whatever capacity organizations have come to use e-learning, the way they use it defines what e-learning is and, very often, what they think it should and will be for them. In so many cases, initial unguided forays into e-learning reduce delivery costs in the short-term, but achieve little in terms of behavior change or performance improvement. e-Learning has so many more capabilities and advantages than most people ever recognize.

Lost Perspective

At the conception of e-learning, we tried to determine how effective instruction could be delivered via computer technology (Allen, 2008). Missing some of the capabilities of live instructors, but having its own unique capabilities-such as the ability to accommodate needs of any number of learners individually-we asked, Can e-learning be as effective as typical classroom instruction? Could the e-learning experience be even more effective than that delivered by an instructor? The exciting answers, proven now through decades of experiments and applications, are yes and yes.

There was another important observation, too-a broadly evidenced fact: There are many forms of e-learning that are not only poor substitutes for live instruction, but also painfully ineffective and wasteful. Not everything called e-learning has the same utility or capability. Just as not all instructors are effective with the techniques they employ, not all e-learning is effective with the instructional techniques implemented in it. And complicating matters, some forms of e-learning...