What is your go-to course navigation style?

Hi, Amanda:

I think that most learners won't complain with a menu on the left and Next, Next, Next.

My go-to style is some type of graphic menu. It's not great for every application, but it has worked for me a lot. Here's an example from a module on vehicle safety. (Once the learner chooses a topic, there's a zoom effect that creates a feeling of moment. Also a vroom-vroom sound effect. Once they've gone through all topics, they gain entrance to final test. No left side menu. )

And here's the slide view. You can see where the entrance to the knowledge check appears once learner has gone through all sections. It ain't complex, but it's kinda interesting. Again, especially when coupled with a judicious zoom and motor-accelerating sfx.  

So beyond the menu, do you use a linear style?

For most content, yes. Though, menu choice has much to do with how linear a course is. 

Amanda, I think it's helpful to distinguish between interactivity that is fundamentally oriented to presenting information and interactivity that is fundamentally intended to challenge learners to put information to use in a realistic job situation. The former is somewhat low value, and I can see how too much of it might become annoying to learners: Why make me click-click-click to reveal each little nugget of  information? Why not just let me read it at my own pace?

To take a topic from Daniel's menu as an example, if my module on Inspection and Maintenance consists largely of pages where I click each thing I need to inspect or maintain and, in response, get a block of text or a pictorial diagram or video or whatever that tells me how to do it, is that really much different than just putting that content linearly on a sequence of pages I can page through by clicking Next?

On the other hand, if my Inspection and Maintenance module puts me in front of a car that is experiencing a set of problematic symptoms and I have to inspect, diagnose, and fix the problem(s), that is likely more engaging and more relevant to my job. It is more performance oriented than information oriented, and therefore the clicks I use to interact with this content are indeed fundamentally different from clicking Next. With this kind of interaction, learners are less likely to complain about "all the clicking" (assuming the interaction is well-designed, and the challenge presented is truly relevant to what they need to be able to do on the job).

The bottom line is, not all clicking is the same; and not all interactivity has the same instructional value or ability to engage.

Cheers!

    -Ray