I'm very curious to learn your thoughts on navigation techniques courses. Currently, we restrict navigation for compliance and regulatory training. For all other types of training courses, we leave the menu open.
This seems like a common approach but no one in my organization really knows why we do it like that. Every type of training is tracked and users must complete every slide plus a final quiz - there's nothing different about the training or tracking formats.
there are pros and cons to both approaches. my guess is that people don't like locked navigation. if you do lock it then it should be not based on listening to 5 minute sof someone rambling on.
I recommend unlocked navigation. Find some other way to ensure learning objectives have been met. Locked navigation is wrong on many levels. As already mentioned, no one likes it. But more importantly, the reason for locking navigation is usually to ensure that the learner sees all the content. But seeing the content and learning the content are not the same thing. To know if someone learned it, you have to have a test or a set of activities where the learner can demonstrate mastery. So I usually prefer open navigation, but require the learner to successfully complete some percentage of the job challenge simulations that I place throughout the course. Very often this percentage is 100%, but depending on agreements you reach with your client, it could be 90% or 80% or any other threshold value that the client considers acceptable.
This approach is more work, because it requires you, as the instructional designer, to create realistic work challenges for most or all objectives, which tends to result in a course that is much more interactive than is common in our industry (and interactive at a deeper level than just "click-to-reveal"-type interactions). However, the payoff for this extra effort is increased confidence that learning objectives have been met, and decreased need for locked navigation.
4 Replies
there are pros and cons to both approaches. my guess is that people don't like locked navigation. if you do lock it then it should be not based on listening to 5 minute sof someone rambling on.
I do what my client wants
I'm with Christine
.
I recommend unlocked navigation. Find some other way to ensure learning objectives have been met. Locked navigation is wrong on many levels. As already mentioned, no one likes it. But more importantly, the reason for locking navigation is usually to ensure that the learner sees all the content. But seeing the content and learning the content are not the same thing. To know if someone learned it, you have to have a test or a set of activities where the learner can demonstrate mastery. So I usually prefer open navigation, but require the learner to successfully complete some percentage of the job challenge simulations that I place throughout the course. Very often this percentage is 100%, but depending on agreements you reach with your client, it could be 90% or 80% or any other threshold value that the client considers acceptable.
This approach is more work, because it requires you, as the instructional designer, to create realistic work challenges for most or all objectives, which tends to result in a course that is much more interactive than is common in our industry (and interactive at a deeper level than just "click-to-reveal"-type interactions). However, the payoff for this extra effort is increased confidence that learning objectives have been met, and decreased need for locked navigation.
Cheers!
-Ray
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