Sep 8 / David Hopkins

Presentation: "eLearning Sucks"

This will get you all out of your seats and screaming … I hope.

I found this totally by chance just as I was about to close the PC down for the day. I got my weekly email from SlideShare and in it was a list of people who’d bookmarked a couple of my presentations.

“Interesting, ” I thought, “I wonder who else they’ve been looking at?”

That’s when I found this … “eLearning Sucks”. I did not write it … but wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments contained within. Enjoy!

View more presentations from Red Magma.


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3 Comments

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  1. jra / Sep 9 2009

    Ah, another “e-learning must be fun” evangelist. Care to show any research that making “fun” e-learning produces better results? While some reasonable reminders are made in this presentation, I just hate the evangelism comparing e-learning to the gaming community. As Guy Wallace would say… where is the research?

  2. Caleb Stevens / Sep 9 2009

    Hey, what’s wrong with having fun? I agree with David on this one. In my company, LearningWare, Inc., that’s what we focus on. Though there may not be mountains of research saying “fun” learning produces better results, no one could argue that fun learning doesn’t produce better experiences. And there is research that shows that a better experience increases content retention.

    I urge people to check out products like AllPlay Web and Gameshow Pro. Your webinars don’t have to be boring; your classroom training doesn’t have to involve sleeping students. It’s OK to have fun and it’s OK to engage people and create competition.

  3. David Hopkins / Sep 9 2009

    JRA - I don’t have any research findings to present.

    I will turn this around to you … why do we have to have research results to prove what we can see each and every day in the faces of the students. Half of them are asleep during ‘traditional’ lectures, therefore not learning. Put them into a modern ‘learning’ environment and far more than half are still awake at the end AND have been more than active participants during the whole of the period. Isn’t that result enough?

    I don’t need research to know what I see, but I understand the mainstream ‘system’ requires it before they will believe it. But the mainstream system are the people / luddits who are reluctant to accept change, and it is these people who are being left behind.

    Mind you, saying that, I’ve just found this link (Twitter to the rescue again!) – US Gov Report on Online Learning – a must read, and I previously linked to this article Making the classroom a playground for learning.

    I also haven’t said “eLearning must be fun”, but now you mention it .. why can’t it? The more we enjoy something, the better we are it, and if we can get students (of any age) learning through enjoyment then can’t we say we’ve done our job? Who wants to sit in front of a boring lecture, or powerpoint presentation, or document, or book?

    David

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