Designing Successful e-Learning: Forget What You Know About Instructional Design and Do Something Interesting, Michael Allen's Online Learning Library

Part One

Real-World Contexts

Believing that learning experiences are most interesting when they begin with a challenge—not a daunting challenge, not a potentially embarrassing experience, but a challenge that immediately focuses learners on the task at hand and shows them they have applicable skills (if they do) and that there’s still something to learn (if there is)—we begin Part One with a set of very modest challenges.

 

The first three challenges are embedded in scenarios drawn from experience with organizations that are searching for ways to be effective with e-learning. For each scenario, I’ve listed design principles these organizations have put forth to guide their work. Some of the principles obviously came from traditional instructional ...