Forum Discussion
Are We Designing for Learning or Just Adding More Clicks? ๐ค
I've been thinking a lot lately about how we approach interactivity in e-learning, especially with all the amazing tools and features available to us in Rise and Storyline.
As instructional designers, we have so many creative ways to engage learners, but I sometimes wonder if we're making things interactive because they genuinely support learning or simply because we can.
For me, the goal has always been to move beyond presenting information and create experiences that help learners actually apply what they've learned. Sometimes that means a scenario, a decision-making activity, or an opportunity to practice (I would love to hear ideas about how you do this one). I'd love to hear how others approach this.
What's your personal rule of thumb for deciding whether an interaction truly adds value to a learning experience?
And even better, have you ever removed or simplified an interaction and found that the learning experience actually improved? I'd love to hear your experiences, examples, and lessons learned. One of my favorite things about this community is how much we can learn from each other's approaches!
11 Replies
Dr. Michael Allen once said something like this:
Alternate navigation is not interaction.
In other words, someone clicking the screen just to reveal additional text isn't an interaction. It's still a one-way information transfer.
A true interaction involves the 3 Cs: a context (here's a situation), a challenge (what would you do at this point?), and a consequence (feedback based on the choice). As you mentioned, this includes scenarios, decision-making activities, and any other ways to practice what the learner needs to be able to do.
Of course, most folks do refer to click-and-tells as interactions. And I think those are still useful, because they can help divide the info into more easily digestible chunks and/or indicate connections.
I think one thing that gets overlooked when building any kind of "interaction" is what happens when the user revisits/reviews the content. For example, I've seen elaborate slides with layers connecting to other layers yet with no way to return to the info on a previous layer. That kind of interaction definitely needs simplification.
I love the idea of teaching with Scenarios and reinforcing what they don't know when they get the challenge wrong, but Storyline doesn't make it easy to do this unless you use their preset graded questions or freeform questions and results slides. Triggers and variables get tricky to keep up with. If you add a path choice (clinical vs non-clinical) to make the material relevant for their role, it gets even harder to keep up with. Storyline's player menu can't branch along with the learner. It presents both paths. Now you have to know JavaScript to customize a menu, so the learner only sees the slides that pertain to the path they chose. What if they do poorly on the scenarios that you're trying to keep score of? Do we let them go back and start all over again? What if you decide to let them redeem themselves by answering quiz questions at the end? Now we have to track two assessments and ignore the questions in the path they did not choose. Instead of focusing on the material and creating the scenarios, we're busy researching how to make all this happen with limited knowledge of variables and coding. If this indeed is the best teaching and learning formula for e-learners, why aren't authoring tools better equipped with templates to support this?
Why aren't authoring tools "better equipped with templates to support this"? Consider how many types of scenarios there could be, with different numbers of potential responses and different numbers of slides the user might visit based on the chosen response. Add in the option to retry everything or only what they missed. Oh, and add multiple paths based on the user's role. How does anyone program a "template" for that?
As I've said in other posts, it helps to map out what you want to do before you start developing. In other words, "focusing on the material and creating the scenarios" is the vital first step. That helps determine the complexity of the programming.
For the easiest scenario building, graded-question and results slides are, in essence, the templates, especially when tracking is needed. So it makes sense to use those. And the slides could be designed however you want using Freeform questions. Those actually allow for quite a bit of customization while still taking advantage of built-in functionality.
I also think it's worth it to learn how to use variables and trigger conditions, because those provide the real power in Storyline.
Yes, JavaScript would be needed to customize the built-in Menu based on a chosen path. Personally, I wouldn't show the built-in Menu in that type of course. IMHO, the built-in menu isn't all that helpful when there is a lot of branching and custom navigation.
FYI, here's my post about branching paths in Storyline. It includes a file that demonstrates and explains how to use variables for branching. It also links to a comment with details about how to customize the built-in menu if desired.
BTW, I do sympathize with how difficult all this can be. When I started in eLearning (back when it was known as computer-based training), there were specialists for each part of the job. At a minimum, a team would include a writer/ID (that was me), a graphic designer, and a programmer. Often, there was also a program manager to oversee the logistics. And, of course, the SMEs. When authoring tools like Storyline came along, lots of folks became a team of one...
I explored this idea in my post on ๐๐ฒ๐๐ ๐๐ ๐ ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ ๐ก๐ผ๐ ๐๐๐๐ ๐๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐ ๐๐ผ๐ป๐๐ฒ๐ป๐, ๐ฏ๐๐ ๐๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐ ๐๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ป๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ ๐ฝ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ.
My rule of thumb is this: Does the interaction turn the user into a learner by engaging their brain in meaningful thinking?
For me, meaningful interaction should help learners:
- Understand concepts more deeply
- Retain what they have learned
- Apply that knowledge in real work situations
And the design thinking doesn't stop once we decide an interaction is needed. Even when choosing between interaction types, I consider what kind of thinking I want learners to engage in and which interaction best supports it.
For example, a click and a drag-and-drop activity may serve very different purposes depending on the cognitive process we want to support. The choice isn't about making the course more interactive. It's about designing the right experience for the intended learning.
It's not about adding more interactions. It's about creating opportunities for meaningful thinking and learning.
I just remembered I made this earlier this year as a gag for some fellow designers: Labor, Not Learning | Review 360. Many interactivity. Such amaze.
๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ ๐คฃ
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Great question! My rule of thumb: an interaction earns its place only if it helps the learner think, not just click.
A book that shaped how I see this is Art, Perception, and Reality (Gombrich, Hochberg, Black). One of its core ideas is that perception is never passive: we donโt just absorb an image, we complete it with our expectations and prior knowledge. For e-learning, that means a well-designed visual can do a lot of the work on its own, without a click-to-reveal to โunlockโ it.
I experienced this a few months ago while developing a course. I used custom blocks to add visuals instead of forcing learners to discover the content through interactions. It worked as a quick schema for reading the softwareโs functions, without adding โfatigueโ along the way. Colored visuals help learners see and understand things at a glance, with no extra clicks.
So before adding an interaction, I ask: what is the learner actually practicing here? If I canโt answer, I simplify. And when I do want practice, I save it for scenarios and decisions, where the effort really pays off.
Curious to hear what others do! xx
Early in my career, I was invited to train a team on how to use Storyline.
I started with my usual introductions, asking everyone around the table to introduce themselves (although I've never quite understood why I do this, as I can never remember anyone's name!).
About halfway around the table, one of the attendees introduced himself and said:
"I'm the manager of this team. I'm not here to learn the software. I think e-learning is where you take a PDF, chop it up and make it difficult to read."
Lovely moment! It was said partly in jest, but there was definitely a point being made.
That comment has stayed with me throughout my career. Every time I design something, I can almost hear him sitting on my shoulder, questioning whether I'm genuinely improving the learning experience or just making something more complicated than it needs to be.
A bit like my old driving instructor, who still occasionally appears in my head to offer advice or tell me off when I'm driving!
It's a useful reminder that just because we can make something interactive doesn't mean we should.
I am also thinking only about the benefits of learning for the participants. If the objective is somehow achieved and the learner manages to obtain an outcome or an "aha!" after doing the interaction, even if it has maybe a bit more clicks than usual, I would rather apply it instead of cutting down the number of clicks.
I think there's an important distinction between an interaction that requires effort and one that creates unnecessary effort.
Cognitive load theory is useful here. Some subjects have a high intrinsic cognitive load because they're inherently complex. We can't always simplify the subject, but we can design interactions that help learners understand and apply it.
What we should be trying to minimise is extraneous cognitive load, the effort learners spend figuring out how to navigate an interaction, what they're supposed to click or what the designer expects them to do.
For me, it's not necessarily about the number of clicks. If those clicks involve meaningful decisions, exploration or practice that leads to an 'aha!' moment, they're probably worthwhile.
