Instructor Element

Think of a class or seminar you’ve taken. Chances are you’ll remember something about the instructor. Some instructors are funny, others humorless. Some are formal, others informal. Some are engaging, others distancing.

Instructors play a role in learning experiences. Sometimes they draw attention to themselves instead of to the material, and sometimes they stand back, facilitating a person’s engagement with the subject matter.

As learning experiences slip beyond four walls and into cyberspace, this critical role of the instructor must not be forgotten. For eLearning to be successful, it must simulate the interaction of the student with an instructor. What does such simulation entail?

First, the eLearning experience should be designed to be as conversational as possible. When using an online training module, users should feel that they are conversing with someone. In short, the eLearning module must be more than just an online training manual.

If the eLearning product is nothing more than a Web-enabled training manual, it won’t be well received or successful. Every instructional designer knows that the success or failure of a training course is often in the hands of the instructor. eLearning, like instructor-led training, should involve more than just a one-way flow of facts, figures, and information. When used effectively, eLearning will stimulate dialogue and deepen interest and, thus, learning.

An instructor’s job is to facilitate interaction, to ask probing questions, to make students dig deeper into their understanding. This is exactly what custom eLearning solutions should do, and it means placing the success or failure of the eLearning course back into the hands of the instructional designer, where it belongs. It also means that, unlike instructor-led training designers, today’s eLearning instructional designer must infuse the role of the instructor into the materials he or she creates.

The role of the eLearning developer is similar to a public speaker. The speaker provides critical information that must be “pushed” to the learner, but the speaker also knows that the users will ask questions to “pull” information. Thus, the speaker’s preparations include not only writing the speech in a conversational and interesting way, but also anticipating the questions that learners will ask. Any eLearning solution trying to capture the “instructor element” should arrange information in the same way, not only by pushing information to the learners in an engaging and interesting way, but also by anticipating questions they
might have, providing a strategy for them to “pull” this information, and rewarding them by making answers readily available.

Letting users pull some of the information, rather than pushing all of it at them, is an effective method for increasing involvement and retention. An additional benefit of pulling information is that the users feel that by anticipating their needs, the training has really been designed just for them.

Caring is also a way to establish a sense of the personal, which can be a challenge in eLearning environments. However, this problem isn’t unique to eLearning. Even instructor-led training does not guarantee personal interaction, and, indeed, a very large audience can intimidate individual learners and prevent them from participating for fear of looking bad in front of their peers.

A sense of community can be created with eLearning through the use of tools such as chat rooms and discussion boards, which enable participants to interact with each other and even with a facilitator. Such tools can help those who learn best as part of a group, while still enabling the learner who learns best on his or her own.

The power of eLearning can be realized with a well designed product. When the instructional designer incorporates elements of live instruction into an eLearning solution, such as interaction, anticipation of questions, and high interest level, then the benefits of instructor-led training can be achieved in the eLearning medium.

Copyright 2005-2006 Resource Bridge. All rights reserved.
This document is protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of Resource Bridge LLC.