Part IVHOW TO ORGANIZE CONTENT IN e-LEARNING
MENUS, LINKS, CONTINUE BUTTONS, and other navigational devices offer many opportunities for different organizational sequences in e-learning. In this section we offer two chapters. One chapter describes ways to manage content overload by breaking down topics (segmenting) as well as sequencing some topics ahead of the main lesson as pretraining. The next chapter looks at evidence regarding when and how to give learners control options, allowing them to define their own progression through the lessons.
Chapter 13 on segmentation and pretraining summarizes evidence regarding the benefits of breaking down and sequencing content to reduce potential mental overload.
Chapter 14 discusses the tradeoffs between incorporating navigational features that allow learners to make decisions in the lesson (an approach called learner control) or that minimize learner options (an approach called program control).