The dandelion in the room

I don’t often use examples from my own private life mainly because I don’t think people are that interested in hearing about how my weekend was. If I was Bill Gates or Nelson Mandela this would be different, but I’m not. Regardless of the fact I am still going to share my story with you. Actually it was more like a Eureka moment with a twist of humor.

Over the weekend I had every intention of spreading mass mayhem and destruction on all weeds that inhabit my acre of property. On the Friday afternoon I was out sizing up the battle field when my three year old came up and patted me on the leg. “Look at the pretty flowers”. I looked down to see her holding a massive fist full of white puffed seeded Dandelions that she was blowing a light consistent breeze over. She was delicately spreading millions of dandelion seeds across my entire lawn! She looked so happy and an awe with herself that I had to smile.

What struck me almost immediately was the ease with which this story could be transported across to the real world, you know the business world. Think of two departments/groups with differing objectives. Neither group has evil intentions, they just have different perspectives. Now think about the eLearning vendor, your IT department, subject matter experts, project sponsors etc… The dandelions have increased exponentially. In order to ensure success, we need to make sure that there are no dandelions in the room. Make sure that you analyze your objectives, goals and metrics for success. Now make sure that these stack up against other stakeholders.

See you thoughts it was just going to be a cute little story about my three year old. I guess there is a lot to learn, even from the youngest members of the human kind.

PowerPoint vs. Interactive learning

PowerPoint is a pervasive application used in many, if not most training settings. Sadly many of these PowerPoint presentations can be described only as ‘death by PowerPoint’ rather than being a good learning experience. The fact that PowerPoint is so pervasive generally means that it is used as a starting point for many of my discussions with customer related to developing customized and interactive eLearning materials. Some customers are happy with using PowerPoint presentations for eLearning and their interest in merely in outsourcing the production of these materials to an eLearning vendor. In this case it takes me some time to persuade the customer that there are more effective and engaging methods to teach people using an electronic method such as eLearning. The frustration from a vendor perspective for this example is that the customer doesn’t necessarily understand the complexity of developing a customized eLearning program and they may become frustrated by the amount of effort and time required to build a program. For this type of situation education of the customer is as important as the end user. On the other side of the perspective there is the customer who has tried using a PowerPoint training course deployed via the web which a lot of negative feedback from the user population. Sadly, many of these courses are not redeveloped due to budgetary or time constraints (something that I’ve heard numerous times). Although this customer understands that PowerPoint is not the answer, they also need to be educated on how eLearning programs are developed and how much time and effort is involved to develop a truly engaging and interactive program.

Having said all of this, I agree with Clive Shepherd that PowerPoint is not to blame per se. I think the main culprit is the business community, which has used PowerPoint in a lazy fashion. We are all used to the slides with terrible animation and thousands of bullet points and sadly this has become the accepted norm. Although I haven’t seen too many good examples of an interactive PowerPoint eLearning course I am sure there are examples out there. Although PowerPoint is not a great platform for developing eLearning materials it could very easily be used by a skilled developer to meet specific needs.

My point is that the technology is not that important, what really counts is how the training is developed. Understanding the objectives, content, audience, deployment method etc. is essential to developing a good training program. Blaming PowerPoint for not delivering is similar to blaming eLearning for not meeting its full potential. Ultimately, we should look at who creates the content, rather than what was used to develop the program.

What are your thoughts? What has your experience been with PowerPoint or PowerPoint-like training programs?

BTW, this discussion was stimulated by recent customer discussions, Clive Sheppard's blog post Don't blame PowerPoint as well as April's Learning Circuits' big question: ILT and Off-the-Shelf Vendors – What Should They Do? which addresses time-to-market and costs associated with developing custom content. Obviously cost is always a factor, especially when dealing with the customer that is satisfied or ok with the Powerpoint-type courses for eLearning.

Please also check out Learning Cicuits' big question in January which discusses quality vs. speed when it comes to eLearning development.

Let your objectives be your guide

Without fail I meet customers who focus on content and how content will be delivered during the initial needs assessment stage of an eLearning project. I regularly hear them mention that “it would be great to have some video of people working around a table”. Don’t get me wrong video is a great training tool, but have you thought about why you want to use it? How does this video segment fit into your overall learning objectives? Rather than focusing on content, start by focusing on why you are developing the training materials. What business challenges are you trying to solve by developing these materials? Who is your audience? What roles do they have in the overall process?

Start with your objectives and then decide on structure and content. Once you have a structure you can accurately assess what existing learning content you have and what new content needs to be developed. As simple as it sounds, start at the beginning. Many companies focus on content and deliver training materials that don’t meet their specific audience’s needs.