Michael Allen's 2009 e-Learning Annual

4.8. SUMMING UP

To sum up, based on what she writes, Ruth Clark's approach to designing e-learning (or any other teaching or training) appears seriously flawed for many reasons. These include her reliance on one learning theory out of many (a theory that may or may not be true); her sterile and context-free laboratory approach that ignores motivation and the real world; her assumption that reflection needs to be verbalized; her thinking that efficiency is the principal goal of training; and her ignorance of the real motivators contained in the best video and computer games.

So, whenever you hear the terms "scientific" and "evidence based" thrown around in a teaching and learning context, be very wary. There's a lot more to being truly scientific ...