Stop Explaining in E‑Learning (Do This Instead)

Key Takeaways

After spending 12 years helping instructional designers gamify their training, I've noticed something. People who struggle with learner engagement usually say that their content just isn't interesting or it's downright boring. Maybe, but what I've learned is that the boredom isn't coming from your content, it's coming from being told your content. Being told things is boring, figuring things out is fun, and that matters a lot more than what the content actually is. And letting learners figure things out isn't hard, you just remove explanations. And today I'm going to show you exactly that. I'm going to go through an entire course and just remove explanations from it, nothing more, and you'll see how much more engaging that makes it. By the end of this video, you'll be able to apply this to any boring topic to turn it into something fun. And I promise that's easier than how you're designing right now. >> [music] >> So, let's get into it. Okay, so let's say I've been given a PDF about the dry topic of radio triangulation, and let's say my client wants a course about that. The first step is to figure out the ultimate goal of this course by asking a whole bunch of questions like, who is this for? Like, who's the learner? What are they not doing that they should be or what are they not doing well enough? What problem is that causing? How do we measure that? Basically, what should people be doing by the end of this course? And let's say the client is a national park with a population of moose that wear radio collars, and they find that their rangers are not accurate enough at locating these moose in the field. That's the problem. So, the ultimate goal is locate a tagged moose within a 1 km radius using radio telemetry. Next, I do a little bit of action mapping to find the right behaviors, and this is what I get. To locate a moose, you need to tune the tower frequency to the specific moose's collar, sweep the antenna from tower one and stop when the signal is strongest, repeat that for tower two, and then tower three, and then pinpoint the coordinates where the three lines converge. That's it. So, those are the behaviors, and of course my PDF explains a lot of the knowledge that goes into those actions. What's a bearing? How do you find the right frequency for the moose? Why is it called triangulation? Why isn't one tower enough? Why aren't two towers enough? So, given this action map, the worst e-learning would give you this content dump of information and then quiz you on it. A slightly better e-learning would give you the information, but then let you apply it. So, first we explain that the radio signal is strongest when it's pointing at the moose and that that direction is called a bearing. Then we get you to actually try to find the bearing. Then we explain that a second tower gives you a better read. Then you get to try and you see that. But how much of this do they actually have to be told and how much could they actually figure out by just doing the thing? Well, let's start removing explanations one by one and see how far we can get before learning starts to break down. The PDF says a bearing indicates direction. So, instead of explaining that, we put a ranger at a virtual tower with a rotating antenna. As they rotate it, the signal gets louder or quieter. There's only one direction where it's loudest. They stop there. My activity is giving them immediate feedback so that they know it's the right spot and it says bearing right there. So, they've just learned what a bearing is by finding one. Then the PDF says one bearing is not enough to determine location. So, they found one bearing from tower one and now I ask them, "Find the moose." They look at the line stretching across the map and they guess, but it could be anywhere along that line. So, even if they guess, they're not likely to get it within the 1 km radius. That's why one bearing isn't enough. The limitation teaches itself because I gave them a goal and they can't reach it yet. Then the PDF says, "Adding more bearings improves accuracy." But instead of saying that, we're just going to add another tower and have them sweep with both. So, first they sweep with one radar and then they sweep with the other and now instead of a line, they get a point on the map. So, their accuracy improves a lot, which is how they figure out that more bearings is better. We didn't have to say a word. But even if you get a point now, it's not always perfectly accurate to within 1 km because radio signals get distorted, so each signal has some error. So, we add a third tower and when they sweep with all three towers, they get a triangle. Hey, maybe that's why it's called triangulation. We didn't have to tell them that. Next, the PDF says the most likely location is near the center of the triangle, but we don't have to say that. We can have them guess. Some people will pick the center, but some people will pick one of the intersection points. But, over multiple rounds, they'll see that the moose is actually usually near the center of the triangle. We can let them discover that and feel smart. And this right here is the entire reason why games teach you without you realizing that you're being taught. loop called probe, hypothesize, re-probe, rethink. I see a triangle, I hypothesize that one of the corners is the right location. I re-probe by committing my answer, and from the feedback I get, I rethink my hypothesis. Five explanations from the PDF, none of them needed to be told in order to reach the goal. Couple things to mention at this point. First of all, not every explanation in the PDF is a good candidate for elimination. But, if you have an explanation that A is essential to the ultimate goal, and B can be easily deduced, then you should turn that into a discovery by removing the explanation and giving them a goal instead. Second, what I've shown you so far is either or. You either explain it or you don't. But, you're about to see that you have a whole spectrum of options between these two extremes. At one end, everything gets explained, but you don't really get to apply the behaviors, you just get quizzed on the knowledge. A lot of Rise courses out there are like that. If you're lucky, you'll get e-learning that has explanations first, but then they'll have you actually apply the thing. In what I just showed you, we've taken out the explanations, but we're still adding each piece one at a time. You'll learn to tune the frequency, find the bearing, then you'll see that one tower isn't enough, two isn't enough, and where the moose is in the triangle. So, you discover and integrate every piece of knowledge before moving on to the next one. But, there is a world where we get rid of all this scaffolding as well. In that case, you just give them all the towers all at once and say, "Go ahead, find moose number 35." And they click around, and maybe they even sweep with the radar, and nothing happens until they realize that they have to click on this book here and then they see that Moose 35's collar has this frequency. So, they realize that they first have to tune into the right frequency and then they'll start getting a signal and then they'll sweep until it's strongest. And they repeat that with tower two and tower three. So, at this extreme there's no explanation and there's no scaffolding of the discoveries. They're doing everything at once. This would work in a puzzle game where racking your brain is the point, but I'm not sure in the training context I would go that far, but I would definitely go farther than we usually do in traditional e-learning. We explain a lot of things that we just shouldn't. So, you've got two options. You can pull it back a little bit from this and break down the behaviors one by one like I just showed you or you can throw them in cold, but provide a lot of optional guidance. So, if they haven't figured out the frequency yet and they click the stuck button, the book lights up and they see that each moose has a frequency. If they ask for another hint, then they're told to tune the frequency with this button and so [clears throat] on through the whole process. You can do either of these things, but whatever you do avoid forcing help on people who don't need it because autonomy is a huge motivator. Don't take it away by front-loading explanations that only some learners will want or need. Give them a chance to figure it out and feel clever. So, the next time you ask yourself, "How do I make this content engaging?" try asking instead, "What's the minimum I need to tell them so that they figure out what they need on their own." How much of this information would they actually discover if you just gave them a simple goal and cut them loose. That's much more actionable for you because it's not about taking your boring explanations and coming up with a fun wrapper for them. It's about peeling back the explanations and leaving room for discovery. You're subtracting from the design, not adding. So, give the learner a goal, break it into steps they can figure out or don't break it into steps, but give them a lot of optional guidance and get out of their way. By the way, I use Storyline to build this simulator, so let me know in the comments if you want a tutorial about that and I'll make it in a future video. And if you want to build training like this, but you're not sure where to start, my program might be a good fit for you. So, book a free call with me at the link below. We'll talk through your challenges and your projects and your goals and see what the next best step looks like for you. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.