Warren Buffet and E-learning

Well what can possibly be the connection between one of the richest, smartest, wittiest man in the world and E-learning. If that’s the question you want an answer for, just spend the next 3-4 minutes reading this article.

Warren Buffet has often been asked about the biggest mistakes he has made in life. His answer has always been “I have realized that errors of omission are much greater than errors of commission”. The simplicity and the profoundness of the answer define the man’s greatness. In simple words, when you know enough to make a decision, not taking a risk is way more damaging than the money you would lose in case you take the risk.

The e-learning industry may seem to be blooming for anyone who observes it. Instructional designers are well paid individuals and more companies have opened in house training teams than ever before in the history of the business. Rapid e-learning has made training an affordable commodity to even the smallest of companies. However, I would like to argue that rapid e-learning would be the precise reason why the e-learning industry would never be able to realize its true potential and be the game changer in the learning domain.

E-learning was introduced so that people could learn from desks instead of travelling all around the globe to attend classes. As technology matured, e-learning incorporated branching, non-linear learning, effective scenarios, interactivity and basic gaming. All of this enabled students to take interesting and effective curriculum at home or in office. Meanwhile a parallel revolution was taking place. Capitalism crept into the learning domain and the wise guyz decided it was not enough to make good training. It had to be made faster and cheaper. Notice I did not use the word “better”. Enter Learning 1.3 where Rapid e-learning entered the picture. The idea was to empower SMEs to create basic trainings by giving them easy to use tools, which converted PPT in e-learning courses.  These tools allowed various companies to hire IDs, train them on various technologies, and then get them to create PPT based trainings. Rapid e-learning, in a matter of few years became the McDonalds of the training industry. Every company worth its salt had a training team that used rapid e-learning products to create training. Rapid e-learning put entire companies into a low fat diet mindset. Training costs had to be cheap and the ID wrote the content, created graphics, and published the course.  In Warren Buffet’s terms, we made a huge error of omission and missed out on the ultimate commission.

Excellent e-learning can eliminate the need for instructors in many cases. Rapid e-learning ensured that the lure of low cost would force companies to adopt this model and e-learning would never act as a global change catalyst that it could have.  One off cases would not create a revolution. Some companies still create excellent training but most companies have now chosen the rapid e-learning path. The challenge is now to at least progress down this path with caution. We now have products that help add interactivity into rapid e-learning courses. This is a bit like cutting down a jungle and then planting a few trees in the shopping mall you create instead. Rapid e-learning is not bad. It’s great when you have to teach product based courses which would have a lot of screenshots. It’s even possible to add a few interactivities. Where it fails miserably is when you want to make up for the missing instructor. There is no way to add a virtual coach who can give corrective feedback when needed. You cannot consistently add pop up’s and create effective templates.

Rapid e-learning has taken the learning world by storm and changed the way we perceive training. Good IDs can still create nice courses. My only concern is, however good the chef, he can only accomplish so much at Mc Donalds. Give him a restaurant and the look at the delicacies he can whip up.

In adopting rapid e-learning we have opted to go the fast food way. Let’s just wait and see if we can do something great besides serving good burgers.

Instructional Design and WWE

I would not fault you for thinking that I am completely mad to try and compare wrestling and instructional design. What could possibly be the common between some testosterone filled muscular giants and suave, sophisticated ID’s trying to demystify cognitive sciences and create the optimal curriculum.

The answer to this question surprisingly lies in another question? What is the most important ability in an ID? I say that it is an IDs ability to tell a story. This story binds together an entire course/curriculum and entices the audience to sit in class for five days or stare at their computer screen for a few hours. The story also allows you substantiate every theoretical concept with a practical example that your audience can relate to and say “Ah! so this is how I should deal with such a situation.”

So how does WWE use scenarios? Let me give you some astonishing facts about WWE which will help you arrive at the answer:

1. WWE is the longest running show in history of American television.

2. The highest paid professionals in WWE are not the wrestlers, the referees, the support staff but the script writers who write fictitious situations, which simulate audiences, and give wrestlers a reason to bash each other.

3. WWE has significantly better ratings than its nearest competitor TNA which has better wrestlers. These two companies had a long feud and WWE came out on top because it recognized that the audience needed something more than just wrestling.

4. WWE is a billion dollar business. You can visit http://corporate.wwe.com/company/overview.jsp to learn more about their revenue.

So what did WWE do to achieve such successes and how is related to IDs?

WWE realized one simple fact that we IDs sometimes overlook. AUDIENCE IS THE KING/QUEEN. They knew it that the 20,000 people in the arena and millions watching from home are the most powerful people in the business. But what could they do with such a realization? They cannot make audience wrestle in the ring can they? So they hired some wonderful scriptwriters whose job was to create storylines around wrestling matches. Sounds simple isn’t it? But how do you write powerful storylines that millions world over can relate to and watch twice a week for 52 weeks in a year? Some of the common plots they followed were:

• A wrestler comes out and abuses the audience. Calls them weak, cowardly, idiots etc and then another wrestler comes out and tell him these are hardworking Americans who have honor and dignity. Guess whose side the audience takes? Then they fight and sometimes good guy beats bad guy else bad guy beats good guy by cheating for few weeks. Finally, good guy slaughters the bad guy. People scream for the good guy and hoot at the bad guy and are involved in these matches.

• People love characters that hate the establishment and break rules. So you have many pranksters who are breaking the rules, making fun of system, and winning affection of public in general.

• You have matches to decide who gets the beautiful babe, who gets custody of a child, who leaves the wrestling world, who wins a chance to fight champions, and finally who gets to compete in championship matches.

• There were episodes where a popular wrestler had to work for bad guy because he lost his money in recession like most Americans. Bad guy insulted him, kicked him around, and finally told him if good guy beats bad guy in match he can get money and walk away free.

These stories are called Kayfabe and you can read more about them from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe .

Compare this with TNA where big men routinely and senselessly bash up each other with vengeance to attract fans who love hardcore action. Imagine why WWE is better than TNA now.

This is exactly the kind of situations most IDs end up in. Some of your audience will love to read what you have written because they really want to learn. However many of them would be in class because training is something they have to take. Some people would want to learn but would get so bored in 20 minutes that they would start thinking about everything in the world except your training.

The only way to get the attention of all these people is to write a scenario that your audience can relate to and they can find answers to their questions in your training. It does not mean that you have to write over the top scenarios and include an example for every concept. It just means that you should focus on identifying real life tangible benefits people can take from the training and convert them into a scenario. The instructor or your e-learning course should constantly interact with learners, ask those questions and direct them towards the right responses. Most training sessions end up as one way conversations between the trainer/computer and the learner. The moment you effectively engage your audience like WWE does, the training session will be a roaring success.

So how do we create an effective scenario? Most of us use the scenario word very loosely. It basically means we have to give some fictitious situation in the course because it makes it interesting. It’s not our fault generally because aggressive timelines do not allow us to understand the entire content before we begin scripting or designing a course. We must remember that the content decides the scenario and it’s very difficult to make up scenarios as we script various topics. The ideal scenario is to read the entire content and then perform three activities:

1. Create a scenario that gives you the “big picture” for the entire course.

2. Divide the content into chunks (modules, lessons, topics) based on length, logical breaks, and scenario.

3. Write how the scenario would progress through each chunk so that you can reach a logical conclusion at the end of the course.

Most scenarios use the problem solution approach. You start the scenario stating the current situation of the fictitious element (person, company, team) in your course. Then you state the ideal situation the fictitious element would like to be in. The scenario should teach concepts to learners by showing how they can proceed from a disadvantageous situation to the most ideal situation for them.

Hence if we can create effective scenarios like WWE scriptwriters can nothing can stop your course from becoming a runaway success.