Evaluating e-Learning Instructional Quality

By Mario Morales
Development Director

Over the last few years, e-Learning (i.e., on line learning) has become a very popular technology to effectively and flexibly train employees at a lower cost and using less time. This very popularity, however, has resulted in a large supply of e-Learning development services, making it very difficult for companies to find the best e-Learning supplier.

A key factor in evaluating an e-Learning supplier is the quality of its course instructional design, i.e., how effective the learning process in its courses is to improve employee performance.

Here you will find six key questions you must ask to assess the instructional quality of an e-Learning supplier. They are based on ASTD quality standards (The American Society for Training and Development—ASTD is the world’s most influential training association.) (www.astd.org). These are:

1. Does the course have enough practice/exercises?

2. Is practice based on real-life problems?

3. Is practice feedback specific enough?

4. Is student motivation maintained throughout the course?

5. Are the learning objectives defined in terms of improved performance?

6. Are audio-visual methods effectively used to support the learning objectives?

1. Does the course have enough practice/exercises?

Many people equate developing an e-Learning course to placing a PowerPoint presentation in the Internet. However, merely providing information on a topic does not guarantee that learning will take place. Effective courses require enough practice and exercises for the students to apply their newly-acquired knowledge and abilities. Textbooks, audio, or images provided in an e-Learning course do not ensure learning. Advanced research on adult learning shows adults learn by doing. The simplest way to understand this is Confucius time-honored statement: “I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand."

For instance, suppose students are given the information in the box below at an e-Learning course, but they are not given any practice at all

What is customer service?

Customer service is the ability to identify, meet, and exceed customer expectations by providing products and services which, as a result of their characteristics, benefits, and value added, are able to compete in the market for high-quality goods and services.

What ability can students develop from this information? How can they learn to provide good customer service solely on the basis of these data? To be effective, this course requires enough practice for students to develop the ability to provide excellent customer service. In other words, for e-Learning to be effective, a combination of presentation and practice is needed. As an evaluation standard, at least one exercise/practice must be given per every four course screens.

2. Is practice based on real-life problems?

An effective course must provide practice related to the real-life problems, cases, and situations the students will face at work. This makes for really effective training as cases help acquire new information and relate it to the working environment. Practice must be based on the organization’s performance problems and common work errors.

3. Is practice feedback specific enough?

Practice/exercise feedback must not only tell the students whether they were right or wrong, but also why and it must set them right. The students need to be clear about the reasons for their mistakes.

4. Is student motivation maintained throughout the course?

Effective courses must attract the students’ attention and maintain their interest in relation to the learning objectives. Different techniques exist to maintain these throughout the entire course, e.g., using surprise to avoid monotony.

5. Are the learning objectives defined in terms of improved performance?

The learning objectives must be defined in terms of tasks/problems the students will be able to solve/carry out rather than in terms of theories to memorize.

6. Are the learning objectives defined in terms of improved performance?

Effective courses require audio-visual aids (audio, animation, and so on) to contribute directly to help attain the learning objectives. Even though modern-day technologies allow incorporating a large number of moving images (animation) to e-Learning courses, scientific research has demonstrated that the use of media not directly connected with the learning objectives has the opposite effect on training, as it diverts the students’ attention. Even more, studies have demonstrated that a lack of music and sound favors learning, as media are sometimes included only for “decorative” purposes, but making no contribution to the learning process.

“Extra diagrams can have a distractive effect on the learning process. Recent revisions of math and science books revealed most illustrations were irrelevant to the main lesson topic, in other words, graphs and pictures were used just to decorate the page/screen rather than to boost learning.”

Colvin Ruth, Mayer Richard, e-Learning and the science of instruction, 1st. ed., 2003, page 120.

Instructional quality is not a synonym for more media. Remember that, in terms of the quality of the instructional design for e-Learning courses, you are assessing this type of learning’s effectiveness and applicability to improve individual performance. This means that, even if an e-Learning course is full of video, audio, and animation, it does not make it effective.

Conclusion

If you are about to adopt an e-Learning strategy, logically you will want to discover potential results in terms of company performance and productivity. To do so, chiefly in businesses with a competence-based focus, employees must display the behavior and abilities required in their competence profiles. These results can be achieved through e-Learning. However, highly effective training becomes essential, and this only can be achieved through good instructional design.

Remember: that, if a course is not effective, it will not improve performance and, therefore, it has no value at all.