WHITE PAPER

CREATING e-LEARNING
THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE

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by Ethan Edwards
chief instructional strategist
allen interactions
CREATING e-LEARNING THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
Table of Contents

An Interaction is a Terrible Thing to Waste. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

The Failed Opportunities of Online Learning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Obstacles to Designing Online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Instructional Interactivity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Typical Example of the Failure of the Content-Centered Approach. . . . . . . . . 3
Engage the Learner – One Possible Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Context. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Add Visual Appeal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Build a Relevant Contextual Setting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Tell a Story . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Create Suspense. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Challenge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Consequence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Difficulty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Risk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Outcome. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Activity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Limited Range of Learning Activities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Practice Makes Perfect. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Two e-Learning Approaches Compared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Drag-and-Drop Interactivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Value in Creating Effort Around User Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Judgment vs. Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Feedback as a Tool for Content Presentation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Using Intrinsic Feedback. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Delaying Judgment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Presenting Consequences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Bringing it All Together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference 1

 CREATING e-LEARNING THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE
An Interaction is a Terrible
Thing to Waste
e-Learning provides well-documented advantages to
the corporate learning arena: reduced costs, improved
tracking, global access, immediacy of updates, etc. Given
the attractiveness of these benefits, it is not surprising
how little attention is paid precisely to the training that
is being delivered via the web. Learning requires more
than access and simplistic measures of comprehension
to have any lasting effect. The real benefit of e-learning
will come to those who can design learning that actually
changes learners’ skills while still achieving the opera-
tional advantages that e-learning offers organizations.
Yet much e-learning is composed of largely wasted
opportunities for useful interactivity. This article provides
a framework to guide the design of e-learning that has
some chance to achieve lasting performance change.
e-Learning modules need to be intentionally designed
for online delivery. Training designed for other delivery
channels and simply transferred to the online environ-
ment fail to take advantage of the opportunities made
possible with online technology.
Here are a couple things that instructional designers seem to
forget when designing e-learning:
1. The mere presence of technology in a learning en-
vironment does not change the essential aspects
of how people learn. We know with little doubt that
learning does not occur passively. In live teaching,
lecture formats with minimal activity on the part of
the learner do not work very well. Yet somehow de-
signers create e-learning lessons that are little more
than exercises in sitting and listening or reading.
2. Learners need to be intellectually engaged for
learning to happen. Lasting change requires mean-
ingful and compelling mental engagement and
interaction with one’s surroundings.
2 Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference
The Failed Opportunities of Online Learning
It’s easy to point out what’s wrong with blind transfer of
instructor-led training to online learning. It’s somewhat
harder to know precisely what to do instead. There
are three really important capabilities of e-learning
that unfortunately are missed in many online lessons,
greatly reducing the impact they should have.
1. e-Learning can provide an individualized experience.
This is a powerful idea that goes well beyond the
simplistic ideas of individuals working alone, working
at a time of their own choosing, or working at their
own pace. Certainly, these are all important features,
but the idea of “individualization” means much more
than this. It means that each student gets precisely
the instruction he or she needs. This is largely impos-
sible in group learning environments. To achieve
this, the instruction needs to adapt to individual
differences, providing more practice for those who
need it, and less for those who demonstrate mastery.
Such adaptability has to be part of the design.
2. e-Learning can provide a safe harbor for learner mistakes.
Learning has a difficult time happening unless the
learner is free to make mistakes. When in a class of
one’s peers, a lot of activity (or more often, inactiv-
ity) is spent trying to NOT make mistakes so as to
not look stupid in front of the teacher of classmates.
e-Learning has the potential to create an environment
that encourages exploration (and the consequent
mistakes) and vital learning. Of course this is defeated
when every single online interaction is immediately
judged, scored, and reported.
3. e-Learning can be a continuing source of reference infor-
mation. Training rarely happens at the time that skills
will be needed. Sometimes success depends on the
learner re-learning course content weeks or months
later when it becomes useful. When a classroom
experience is finished, learners rarely have access
to the instructor for follow-up, and the materials are
 often created to really only make sense in conjunc-
tion with classroom presentations. e-Learning, on
the other hand, can provide continuous access to
learning content for learners to review, access as
reference, relearn, etc. as their own needs dictate.
If we as designers would embrace the challenges
offered by these three amazing capabilities, e-learning
could begin to live up to the grand expectations that
have grown up around the field.
Obstacles to Designing Online
Unfortunately, we are at a severe disadvantage when
trying to design instruction to be delivered online via
computer. Training is all about communication, and
effective communication relies on a rich network of
tools to exchange information between mentor and
learner. A live teacher has a wide array of mechanisms
to convey information to the learner: speech, gesture,
proximity, inflection, pacing, humor, improvisation,
body language, and all sorts of classroom media, such
as printed materials, video, audio, etc. The learner has
a similarly rich menu of ways to send information back
to the teacher, making it possible for the teacher to
monitor the learning process.
But consider when instruction is separated from
face-to-face contact and placed in the context of com-
municating through the limited methods available via
computer. The “telling” part is still reasonably rich, with
text, audio, graphics, animation, and video available to
deliver a message. But the return channel is ridiculously
limited. Except for the rare cases where specialized
control devices are available, the only communication
paths available to the learner are pointing at, clicking on,
or dragging an image, or pressing keys on a keyboard.
This is a considerable disadvantage to overcome. Only
a small portion of what we try to teach via e-learning
actually involves pointing at images or pressing keys.
So our real challenge as designers of e-learning is not
so much how to best convey information (that part
is relatively easy), but rather, it is in designing experi-
ences that engage learners in meaningful activities
— activities in which the otherwise trivial activities of
pointing and pressing of keys take on a significance
that represents meaningful thinking.
Instructional Interactivity
The idea of instructional interactivity (as opposed to just
interactivity) is an important design focus to capitalize
on the potential presented by e-learning technologies.
Instructional interactivity is defined by Dr. Michael W.
Allen as “interactivity that actively engages the learner’s
mind to do those things that improve ability and
readiness to perform effectively”. While this definition
is direct and complete it may not be precisely clear
what it means to a designer. It means that the interac-
tivity we design for e-learning must require the learner
to do something that is cognitively demanding, and
leads to improved performance. At a practical level,
then, this means we need to begin designs at a point
different than most designers are accustomed to. Most
designs begin with content — what the learner needs
to know. Instead, design needs to center around what
the learner needs to DO.
This is a significant but crucial paradigm shift. We are
easily misled by our subject matter expert colleagues
to focus almost exclusively on getting the content right
and complete. That is not enough. We have to create
an opportunity for the learner to apply the content to
solve some problem or achieve some meaningful end.
Typical Example of the Failure of the
Content-Centered Approach
Many organizations have adopted SMART objectives
in their performance evaluation process. SMART is an
acronym to indicate five key qualities of performance
objectives:
S pecific
M easurable
A chievable
R elevant
T ime-bound
I have seen a number of e-learning lessons that provide
thorough definitions of these elements (including
snazzy graphical presentations of the concepts) and
then assess the learner’s ability to restate these qualities.
Success in the lesson may indicate gained knowledge,
but there is little reason to feel confident that the result
will be significantly better objectives because there is
Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference 3
 so little attention paid to what the learner must do. The
result is something like the useless trivial interactivity
displayed below (Figure 4.A).
Figure 4.A
The “S” in SMART objectives stands for:
A. Successful
B. Specific
C. Simple
D. Scalable
Typical trivia recall interactivity
In a good class experience, a learner would be expected
to write some sample SMART objectives and then get
some specific coaching from the instructor. This is what
the learner must do in performance environment, so
learning will be incomplete unless the task of writing a
SMART objective is actually included. Unfortunately, this
is not a practicable approach in most e-learning systems
due to the challenges in judging free-form responses
from the learner. Abandoning the desirable, though, does
not mean we must revert to the trivial. There are a num-
ber of ways to engage the learner in meaningful tasks that
will lead toward skillful writing of SMART objectives.
Engage the Learner –
One Possible Approach
• First, the lesson could provide a range of pre-written
objectives and let the learner judge whether each
statement satisfies the SMART criteria or not. The
power in this teaching moment comes when the
learner must justify his answer. This would be done in
a number of successive steps of graduated complexity
(Figure 4.B).
Figure 4.B
Is this a SMART objective?
Reduce telephone expenses within the first
half of the fiscal year.
YES NO
Simple yet effective use of judgment and justification
4 Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference
• The learner could be required to specifically identify
the five required components in each objective (by
dragging the five letters to words or phrases or tabbing
through the sentence and pressing the corresponding
letter to indicate functional relevance), demonstrating
comprehension of the applied meaning of each of the
five requirements.
• For objective statements lacking one or more of
the key elements, the learner could be asked to add
phrases to transform the objective into one that
satisfies the SMART definition.
• After this application practice, it would be entirely
fitting to then ask the learner to create a personal-
ized SMART objective and type it online. The learner
could then apply the same judgment process used
previously to meaningfully assess the completeness
of the objective and fix it. Ideally the learner could
print these personalized objectives to take away
from the e-learning.
• With network connectivity, the learner could finally
submit the objective for review by a live instructor or
even for posting in a group bulletin board where the
work of cohorts could be shared.
These simple activities provide meaningful engagement
with the core challenges associated with the learning
task in a way that parroting back the literal meaning of
SMART will never accomplish. But also, this plan does not
require any especially challenging technical obstacle. All
the literal interactivity could be created simply with stan-
dard interactivity styles: buttons, hot spots, key-presses,
option drag-and-drop, and text entry formats.
The beauty of an approach such as this is that it takes the
learner right up to the performance level that is required
Press the letter of the SMART
component that is missing.
Reduce telephone expenses within the first
half of the fiscal year.
S M A R T
in the job. Transfer is the degree to which skills learned in
the learning environment carry over to the performance
environment. The closer the training tasks are to
real world, the greater the likelihood of transfer. The
traditional content-bound approach leaves an enor-
mous gap between its limited learning tasks (identify
definitions) and performance tasks (write a complete
SMART objective). In the engagement-focused approach,
the lesson at least approximates what the learner will do
on the job — transfer is likely to be much greater.
So the first step in maximizing the effectiveness of
e-learning is to find those tasks that enable proficiency
and then build interactivity that focuses attention there.
If the real world environment is too complex, then
simplify or create an alternative context in which to
practice the skill. But as you simplify, always ensure that
the performance tasks are retained as other elements
are streamlined.
Achieving instructional interactivity in a lesson requires
a holistic view of the design. Rather than just stringing
standard questioning formats together in a logical
sequence, the design must create a meaningful
experience in which the learner operates. That
experience requires four integrated components:
Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback.
Context
Context is the first element that a learner encounters in
a lesson. The message conveyed by the context begins
in the first seconds of exposure and very quickly sets
the learner’s attitude for the learning that will proceed.
At a very basic level, the learner decides if a lesson is
going to be boring or interesting based on immediate
impressions. The value of starting out with relevance,
pleasure, or even suspense, cannot be underestimated.
Great writers know this. One of my favorite writers,
Charles Dickens, was a master of this. Not unlike authors
of e-learning, he had a strong intent to teach his readers.
Dickens’ learning objectives just happened to be moral
messages rather than skills. But unlike e-learning authors,
he knew enough to not expect his readers to be intrigued
by statements like, “After reading this book, the reader
will be able to act selflessly in human relationships.”
Instead, he wrote about a small boy encountering a
mysterious, threatening, escaped convict in a cemetery,
and created the context for Great Expectations that carries
the reader through hundreds of pages of “content,” and
in doing so, makes the moral lesson at the heart of the
work, unforgettable.
Most people recall successful learning experiences
not so much by the content learned, but rather by the
circumstances in which it was learned. So when all
e-learning looks the same, an important teaching tool
is effectively neutralized for the designer. When the
immediate impression of an interface or presentation is,
“This is exactly the same as everything else you’ve already
been bored with,” it’s no wonder that learners tune the
message out. Relying on the content itself to engage
the learner is usually too little, too late. By the time the
content message is delivered, learners have already
decided if the piece is going to be interesting or not.
So how does one create compelling context? It is a fine
balance. Context can easily overpower content. I’ve
seen this when an intricate game framework is super-
imposed on top of content without regard to meaning
or relevance, or when the complexity and accuracy of a
simulation obscures and complicates the delivery of a
simple message. The more common problem, though,
is simply the lack of any meaning or memorable context
for delivering the message and creating interest. While
there is an art to creating good context, it is not particularly
difficult. The discussion that follows outlines four simple
ways to establish context.
Add Visual Appeal
Long before words or content can have an impact, the
visual impact of the piece communicates interest or lack
thereof. Half of our brains are focused on processing
visual imagery as opposed to verbal information. Using
shapes, color, and images quickly draws us in. Look at
the screen shots on the next page regarding (Figures
6.A and 6.B) two lessons that teach the same banking
content. You don’t even need to be able to read the
screen text to feel an immediate attraction to one as
opposed to the detached neutrality of the other.
Many authoring tools and productivity add-ons to script-
ing systems attempt to simplify by creating a uniform,
Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference 5
 Figure 6.A
Figure 6.C
Figure 6.B
Figure 6.D
completely neutral context in which to dump all content.
Templates, which suggest that e-learning is best devel-
oped this way, are really only useful if context is irrelevant
to learning. Even if time and skill constraints force you to
use standard, linear lesson structures as a starting point,
figure out how to create distinctive context through
adding custom backgrounds and visual elements.
Build a Relevant Contextual Setting
It’s a cliché to state that “A picture is worth a thousand
words,” but the statement is no less true just because it’s
overused. Creating visual representations of the perfor-
mance environment can make an enormous difference in
quickly immersing the learner in a real situation. The visual
cues will be more appealing, but more importantly, they
will convey information more quickly and fully. Consider
the two treatments (Figures 6.C and 6.D) of the same
content. The task is to evaluate 5 possible statements
made by employees and select the one that represents
the greatest threat to workplace security. The content is
identical, but the degree of engagement is worlds apart.
6 Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference
Tell a Story
The context should create an environment that the
learner doesn’t wish to leave. Too often, e-learning
copy is written in the style of documentation. Technical
writing is measured a success if it is accurate and
complete. But accuracy and completeness are of little
value if the text is never even read. Creative narrative
writers and storytellers know that the success of a piece
depends on how information is carefully delivered (and
even withheld) from the reader.
The same ideas need to be applied to writing e-learning
copy. Just as in a good story, an e-learning piece needs
to lead the learner through a compelling journey. Some
basic tools in storytelling are plot and characters. These
elements can be easily added to content just by describing
situations with real details. Consider the example on the
next page (Figure 7.A) that teaches a corporate diversity
policy. An unengaging treatment would state the policies,
explain them, and ask comprehension questions. In
the example (Figure 7.A), the same policies are taught
compellingly by presenting an email from a specific

Figure 7.A
named colleague with a juicy problem. The teaching
lessons are identical, but the contextual factors create a
presentation that is hard to resist.
Create Suspense
Closely related to storytelling is the creation and
resolution of suspense as a way to draw in the learner.
It may seem in some ways ironic, but a great way to get
people to continue to listen is to withhold information
from them. As long as there is something that the
learner values that the lesson promises to deliver, the
learner is unlikely to disengage. This can be as complex
as actually creating a mystery of sorts where the lesson
works toward some kind of true resolution, or it can be
as simple as grouping tasks together and delaying the
time that judgment is finally given.
The example below (Figure 7.B) deals with something
as simple as teaching kitchen workers the fresh fruits
that should be dipped in lemon juice before serving to
prevent browning. That doesn’t seem like a topic rich
with suspense! But the simple interaction below uses
Figure 7.B
context to present an environment of mildest but still
effective suspense. The learner has to create an attrac-
tive and nutritious fruit tray. This could easily have been
a tedious set of true/false questions. It still is at its heart
seven true/false questions, but the empty tray presents
a tantalizing challenge for the learner to fill and learners
feel suspense, or at least enhanced anticipation, to see
what will happen when the tray is full.
Sounds simplistic? Indeed it is, but using these contextual
design tools — appeal, real situation, story details, and
suspense — create the groundwork on which interactions
that are compelling, satisfying, and effective can be built.
Challenge
The great benefit of creating a powerful and meaningful
context is that it creates an opportunity for engaging the
learner in a compelling and non-trivial challenge.
When we talk about challenge in the context of an
e-learning course’s instructional design, we’re considering
the part of the experience that creates in the learner
some desire, some urgency, some willingness to perform.
The e-learning simply provides visual (and sometimes
auditory) stimuli to which the learner must respond.
But we want our learners to be actively engaged in
carrying out the most successful responses to the tasks
presented. And this is mainly a function of the sense of
challenge embodied in the e-learning.
The common reaction to most e-learning as being boring
is more about the lack of a challenge than some intrinsic
boring quality of content. Learners need to know that
there’s something personal at stake in the training. They
need to know that what they do actually matters. When
the learner makes forward progress equally, whether
an answer is correct or incorrect, he or she learns that it
does not really matter what one gives as an answer. If
appropriate tools are not available to help learners reason
out an answer, learners assume (correctly) that more or less
random guessing is as reasonable a strategy for success
as thinking out the answer. If there is no real chance for
the learner to fail, then failure or success is a matter of
indifference. And if the performance required of the
Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference 7
 learner seems pointless or irrelevant, there will be little

Figure 8.B
motivation to work toward that end.

Designing meaningful challenges, then, is a critical skill

in creating instructional interactivity in e-learning. The
challenge can be overt or just implied. The main thing is
that the learner knows that success is possible, but that
it is not necessarily guaranteed without some exertion
of mental effort and personal investment. Consequence,
difficulty, risk, and meaningful outcomes are four
specific elements that designers can manipulate to add
challenge to interactivity.

Figure 8.C
Consequence

Consequence is simply the dependence of an outcome

on what has come before it. We are all generally tuned to
heeding consequences, and in almost all cases, try to do
those things that result in better consequences, avoiding
negative impacts. When no consequence to a choice
exists, there’s no real reason to invest any time pondering
the options. Below (Figure 8.A) is an example of typical
e-learning interactivity that provides no meaningful
consequence, even though each question is judged. The
same thing happens whether the learner is correct or not.
soda versus baking powder. The initial question is an
Figure 8.A

easily-guessed true/false variation: look at the recipe and

choose if it calls for baking soda or baking powder.

The instructional consequence becomes apparent,

though, in the follow-up question: What makes this a
baking soda recipe? The learner must identify those
ingredients that contain acid ingredients and thus
indicate that baking soda is required. Guessing is no
longer a viable strategy. The challenge requires that
the learner very specifically pay attention to the critical
aspects of the content.

One effective way to build consequences without

punishing the learner is simply to have them justify
their answers. When the learner knows that he or she
will have to demonstrate why a particular answer is
correct or incorrect, it is unusual for answers to be given
thoughtlessly. “If I am going to have to do the work to figure
this out eventually anyway, I might as well do it now,” is the
way the thinking goes. This is illustrated in the example
to the right (Figures 8.B and 8.C), a culinary techniques
e-learning series that teaches the different use of baking
Difficulty
A common strategy to add challenge to e-learning is
just to make the questions harder. If the answer is not
obvious, learners will think harder and learn better, right?
Well, not exactly. It’s really difficult to write good test
questions in a standard multiple choice format. Often
irrelevant rules, such as “Always choose the longest
answer,” or “Always choose ‘All of the above’,” or even

8 Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference

 “Always choose ‘C’,” can be surprisingly effective ways to
pass many e-learning assessments.
But many attempts to make the questions harder
just vary the irrelevant aspects of how the question is
constructed to make it difficult. I’m thinking of those
questions starting, “Which one of the following is NOT
Figure 9.B
true:” and then present options laced with negatives and
complex conjunctions. Questions of this ilk so often test
reading comprehension and test taking instincts more
than actually assessing performance gains.
Difficulty — at least difficulty that enhances learning and
engagement — can be used very effectively if it focuses
the learner’s attention on critical aspects of the skills
being taught. A basic multiple choice question is used
in Kaiser Permanente’s Motivating Change for Pediatric
Weight Management course below (Figure 9.A). The
“content” of the course is to teach health care counselors
to use open-ended questioning and a collaborative
conversation style when speaking with young people.
The questions are hard, not because of some trick of
writing, but because the learner must read very carefully
to make correct choices. The differences in the choices
are exactly those things that characterize open-ended
questions or collaboration.
Figure 9.A
Visit alleninteractions.com/e-learning-demos to view this course.
Risk
Risk sounds like a bad thing, but in the context of creat-
ing a spirit of involvement in an e-learning activity it
is one of the most effective tools available. Designers
often admire the appeal that games hold over their
users and dream of building that level of dedication in
users of their e-learning applications. Designers often
get it wrong, though, in inserting only the superficial
game-like aspects into an e-learning piece. Cute graph-
ics, game boards, avatars, and scoreboards don’t create
lasting urgency on their own. What gives a game its
drawing power is the fact that the player could actually
lose. Creating the possibility of failure, while still making
sure that success is possible, will keep learners involved
for as long as it takes to achieve success.
Visit alleninteractions.com/e-learning-demos to view this course.
There are a number of simple ways to create this risk. One
of the simplest is to demand error-free performance. In the
Union Bank of California Front Line Loss Prevention curricu-
lum, each module ends with a ten-item test. The learner
must earn 100% or do the assessment over again (Figure
9.B). What helps, of course, is that the test is composed
of real-life performance challenges presented in a
visually stimulating context. But the risk of failure based
on even a single mistake heightens the concentration
and active learning undertaken by the learner.
It is vitally important when introducing risk into a
learning environment to build in varying degrees of
risk. Risk should change based on the learner’s skills.
There are sophisticated models of adaptive testing that
can be difficult to implement, but a simple strategy to
achieve a similar end is the technique of leveling: start
with easier levels and work up to higher levels with
greater risk. This technique was used in the training to
teach cooking times to restaurant short order cooks. Early
levels practice with relatively simple challenges (Figure
10.A); later levels present much more difficult tasks (Figure
10.B). Keeping all activities at the entry level would fail,
because the training fails to account for the challenge in
the real world. But starting at the hard level would not
work because most learners would have no chance of
success. Leveling adjusts the level of risk as the learners’
competence grows.
Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference 9
 Figure 10.A
Figure 10.B
Outcome
A final and slightly unexpected way to add a compelling
challenge is simply to have the learner work toward an
outcome that has some meaning and offers some sense
of completion when accomplished. Learners rarely
abandon a process in midstream if they are involved in
completing a challenge in which they are engrossed.
The Corning Substance Abuse module of a larger
Supervisor Effectiveness curriculum involves negligible
risk, yet creates a challenge that never fails to capture at-
tention. It’s a simple challenge: Someone on your team
is inappropriately using alcohol at work; figure out who
it is (Figure 10.C). Learners will not abandon the activity
until the outcome (identifying the likely guilty party)
is achieved, even though no other scoring or reward
structure is in place.
Figure 10.C
We’ve talked about the importance of context, but the
real value of establishing a context is to build the environ-
ment in which a meaningful challenge will seem natural
and motivating to the learner. Intelligent manipulation
of consequence, difficulty, risk, and the outcome of
10 Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference
learning activities is the key to making a difference in
expanding learner’s skills through engaging interactivity.
Activity
Activity in an interaction is defined by the physical respons-
es and actions that the learner is required to perform to
achieve success. Unfortunately, most personal computers
provide a ridiculously restricted range of possible activities
for the learner to engage in. The two activities relied on
most frequently are reading and listening — activities
which the e-learning program has no effective way of
monitoring whether they are even being done! Learners
know this full well, and so, in many cases, they choose to
skip these activities and simply move through lessons,
neither reading nor listening in any particularly productive
way. It’s hard for learning to occur when the primary
designed learning activities are being skipped.
Limited Range of Learning Activities
Recognizing this, most e-learning designers realize
that specific questioning must be inserted into
the learning modules. One of the challenges in
designing activities for online learning, is that most
learning workstations provide such a limited range of
possible activities for the learner. Without specialized (and
often expensive) auxiliary input devices, an application
can really only tell if the user has pointed at something,
moved it on the screen, or typed some letters on the
keyboard. These activities on their own have very little
relation to actual behaviors in the target performance
 of most training programs. (Probably the most common
testing activity in e-learning is the standard multiple choice
question in which the learner presses on the keyboard or
clicks on the screen buttons labeled “a,” “b,” “c,” and “d.”
Virtually nowhere in life is this useful behavior — except in
other e-learning programs.) There’s very little to be done
about these technical constraints, but it does mean that
we need to be particularly dedicated to a smart design
approach that creates value around these potentially
meaningless core actions.
There will always be portions of training where the
primary focus is simply the delivery of information to
the learner. Traditionally, these are the highly-criticized
page turning applications where the activity is chiefly
limited to clicking the “Next” button. This is particularly
problematic because it is tempting for the learner to
mindlessly click to advance without reading anything.
In desperation, designers add narration, hoping that the
voice will be more compelling, and then even disable the
navigation functionality until the narrative is complete.
This rarely accomplishes the goal of gaining the learner’s
attention. Instead, it encourages the learners to check
out until the “noise” stops before clicking “Next.” In fact,
it actually makes it more convenient to be multi-tasking,
reading email or surfing the Web, while waiting for the
e-learning to proceed on its way, unheeded.
A simple strategy that can add significance to these
situations is simply to incorporate the navigation
functionality into the information being presented,
rather than keeping it completely unrelated in some sort
of arbitrary navigation shell. This technique is apparent
in the car loan learning module shown below (Figure
11.A). The learner is to read about seven components
of the car dealership. Instead of clicking “Next” seven
Figure 11.B
Figure 11.A
times, the learner identifies each section to read about
through the stars placed on the context-setting image
of the car lot. This breaks the unnecessary linearity of
the traditional page-turner, disrupts the monotonous
reflexive action of clicking the same button repeatedly,
and provides user control of sequence and review.
Of course, most activity should be focused on
demonstrating mastery rather than on navigation, but
it is important to be mindful of exactly what the learner
is to master when devising activities. People tend to
remember what they do more than what they read or
hear — so it is important to have learners do those things
that are most important. Most traditional activities
direct the learner to remember content, when the
focus should really be on using the information to
perform successfully.
Practice Makes Perfect
The most basic approach is the make the learner
perform the same activity, or a close simulation of the
activity in the learning module. For example, a major
car manufacturer wanted to use e-learning to teach
technicians how to diagnose faults in automotive
electrical systems. This is done in the real world using
a digital volt-ohm meter and placing the probes. The
learning module shown below (Figure 11.B) provided for
the learner to perform precisely that activity — dragging
probes and placing them in meaningful test locations.
The greater the fidelity of the learning activity is to the
performance environment, the greater the likelihood of
lasting transfer to on-the-job performance.
Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference 11

Two e-Learning Approaches Compared
Of course it is not always possible to create such a faithful
representation of the target performance behaviors.
A core concept in bank teller performance is ensuring
the negotiability of monetary instruments presented in
exchange for cash. A typical e-learning activity associated
with this content would be to ask the learner in some way
to validate a listing of the six requirements. One approach
is shown below (Figure 12.A).
Figure 12.A
The activity, clicking check boxes, has nothing to do with
ultimate successful performance. The question format,
itself, by cuing the desired target items, ignores the fact
that the learner could be nursing a large number of
“alternative” misconceptions that are not even addressed.
Further, the only item in the list not to be checked (the
second option) is really more of a “trick” question to
trip up the student for carelessness rather than actually
helping the learner internalize this content.
Compare this approach with the activity illustrated in the
alternative approach below (Figure 12.B). Here the learner
Figure 12.B
Figure 12.C
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12 Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference
is looking at an actual representation of a check to be
evaluated in terms of negotiability and must select the
element that is missing. There are no artificial cues to
pre-digest the content; the learner must pick out the six
requirements from the myriad other features of a check
(in this case, the cursor doesn’t even change to a hand
cursor to provide unrelated hints as to possible answers).
The real behavior that the lesson is to teach is for the teller
to visually investigate every check that passes across the
desk (including physically turning each check over). The
lesson activity is to point to the part of the check that is
missing for negotiability. Does the teller on-the-job actually
have to point to the check components? Of course not.
We really just want the teller to look carefully at each
check. But the beauty of this meaningful pointing is that
the learner can’t do it without looking at the checks. So
we take the measurable but otherwise arbitrary action of
“pointing” to indicate the more vital behavior of “looking”
that we’re interested in. When the learners succeed at
this activity, we know that they have done exactly what
we want them to do on the job — visually inspect every
check for the requirements of negotiability.
Drag-and-Drop Interactivity
Designers often think that simply creating actions of
greater complexity, the learning will be improved.
Actually, the reverse is often the case. Drag-and-
drop interactivity is frequently hailed as a “better” or
“advanced” action around which to build a question.
True, drag-and-drop does require more senses and a
higher level of attention, but that challenge can backfire
if misused. For example, the screen below (Figure 12.C)
illustrates a common matching exercise. The user must
drag letters from the right to the empty boxes on the
 left. While matching activities can be a useful method
of testing knowledge, this format actually creates an
unnecessarily difficult challenge. Placing the letter in
the relatively small target box requires such mental
and motor control that the actual content is almost
immediately forgotten.
Figure 13.B
This is not to say that drag-and-drop functionality can’t
be really effective. In the example below (Figure 13.A), the
learner is to identify security breaches in a workplace setting
by dragging the magnifying glass to the offending images.
Again, the visual-spatial nature of the task reinforces
the visual focus desired in the ultimate performance
behavior, but it also creates an immersion in the context
and the challenge that is very engaging. Put more
simply, it makes the action fun while still maintaining
appropriate attention to the core lesson objectives.
Figure 13.A
Value in Creating Effort Around User Response
Finally there is value in creating effort around a user
response. One of the weaknesses of many traditional
e-learning activities is that they are simply too easy. There
is virtually no physical effort required in producing the
responses for multiple choice questions and so it is easy
to understand how so many users exert no corresponding
mental effort in choosing a response. An interaction that
requires user effort accomplishes several important goals.
First, it simply slows things down a bit. In most training
situations (except those involving pure rote memoriza-
tion) we want the learner to pause and engage in critical
thinking, something that doesn’t happen when the learner
is simply clicking buttons at whim. Second, an interaction
that requires effort usually creates a much larger set of
possible responses for the learner, which in turn makes
it much less attractive for the learner to use guessing as
the preferred first strategy. Finally, more complex actions
make it reasonable to delay judgment, thereby giving the
learner a chance to think about his or her answers, and
self-correct when needed. The example below (Figure
13.B) illustrates this principle. The content is a content
quiz in a culinary techniques lesson about identifying the
components in the types of flour encountered in a typical
question. The interaction manufactures a whimsical flour
mill mechanism where the learner manipulates concrete
controls to select the contents of each bag of flour. This
makes the choices of the learner far more intentional and
memorable than would be possible with a purely verbal
format that tested this same content.
Too many instructional designs rely on a relatively small set
of arbitrary activities as the core of their instruction without
realizing how critical the specific activities the learner will
perform are to the ultimate outcomes of a training piece.
Creating activities that focus the learner on the content,
mirror the real world, require the learner to engage in
the expected outcomes, add a level of physical challenge
matching the anticipated outcome, and require a level of
thoughtful effort, will greatly enhance the engagement
and long-term effectiveness of e-learning modules.
Feedback
OK, we’ve got the learner actively involved in a context-
rich challenge. This is just the right place to communicate
effectively with the learner through FEEDBACK. Feedback
is the wide range of messages and information given
back to the learner in response to some user action.
Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference 13

Judgment vs. Feedback
Before exploring the way in which feedback can teach, it is
important to be clear about the distinction between judg-
ment and feedback. Judgment is an evaluative assessment
of the correctness of a user’s response — whether it was
correct or incorrect. Judgment usually signals some scoring
and reporting. Feedback includes judgment, but also
includes any other messages, text, or media that provides
useful information back to the learner. Most e-learning
tends to focus more on judgment than on feedback.
Feedback as a Tool for Content Presentation
One of the biggest traps e-learning designers fall into is
the idea that their job is mainly to deliver content. The re-
sults of this design focus are the tedious, content-heavy
page turners that no one wants but that everyone ends
up with anyway. This content-centered design approach
focuses almost entirely on the way to divide up content,
with interactions tacked on as accessories. Instead, the
best e-learning is created with a learner-centered focus,
in which primary attention is given to creating the learn-
ing experience — letting the content flow through the
activity and its consequences. In other words, get the
learner into a task quickly, and then provide content
instruction through the feedback.
Content-centered design is problematic for several
reasons. The first is that all learners do not actually need
the same level of content delivery. Front-loading all
content to be read by all users, regardless of individual
differences, will always waste time for some portion of
the audience. Second, learners usually have little ability
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Figure 14.A
Figure 14.B
14 Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference
to determine the relative importance of new content.
Often they do not pay much attention to what they read
until the questions that highlight what the designer
thinks is important are encountered (and then they de-
cide whether it is worth going back and actually reading
or if they are just as likely to be successful by guessing!)
Learner-centered design puts challenges in front of the
learner as an initial step in teaching. Then, based on
how the student performs, the instructional content is
provided to each learner through feedback based on
demonstrated need. This tends to make the instruction
more relevant, motivating, and quicker.
In the Corning Inc. Employee Security course (Figures 14.A
and 14.B), the learner is asked to evaluate a situation
regarding what constitutes a “troubling situation.” The
learner encounters the “definition” of a troubling situation
in the feedback, only after having reasoned through
what is the most pressing security threat in the scenario.
Using Intrinsic Feedback
Intrinsic feedback is status information given back to
the user that is naturally part of the task, or intrinsic to
the learning activity. The contrast to intrinsic feedback is
extrinsic feedback — feedback that is applied to judging
or correcting the user without any particular specific
connection to the task at hand. A classic example of
extrinsic feedback is the statement, “Incorrect. Try again.”
It judges the response but is not connected in any
specific way to the action or thinking the learner is
engaged in. It is completely extrinsic to the question.
Intrinsic feedback is integrated seamlessly into the task
itself. A simple example of intrinsic feedback can be
 found in the Do the Dip exercise in Cooking with Flair,
developed for the National Food Service Management
Institute (Figure 15.A). The task is to create a nutritious and
attractive fruit plate. If the learner drags a fruit without
first dipping it in lemon juice, it may turn brown. In
the interaction, the primary feedback is that the fruit
actually does discolor — intrinsic feedback. Intrinsic
feedback tends to be visual, context rich, and quick.
Figure 15.A
Of course, there is also extrinsic feedback in the presence
of the text that is displayed after each response. The
extrinsic feedback is important to provide early in the
sequence; but as experience grows, learners may tend to
skip extrinsic elements while they continue to attend to
the intrinsic elements.
The Sales Training course created for Manpower com-
bines intrinsic and extrinsic feedback in a wonderful way
(Figures 15.B and 15.C). Learners engage in a simulated
conversation and then get intrinsic feedback through
responses and body language from the client. Extrinsic
feedback in this e-learning course comes from a coach.
To ultimately get full credit, learners must perform
With intrinsic and extrinsic feedback
Figure 15.B
Figure 15.C
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successfully without the coach feedback. In other words,
the learner must perform using only intrinsic feedback
elements. Since the intrinsic elements are also exactly the
same sources of feedback the learner will encounter in the
real world, this increases the likelihood that the new be-
haviors will transfer to actual performance environments.
Delaying Judgment
A commonly-held design principle among many
instructional designers is that immediate judgment and
feedback is a great benefit of e-learning. A more useful
position would be that e-learning allows appropriate
delay of feedback. When the subject matter is simple
fact learning that primarily involves memorization, it is
probably correct to give immediate judgment. There is
little instructional benefit to be gained by allowing the
learner to hold false information once that problem is iden-
tified. However, once learning objectives start requiring
conceptual, procedural, or problem solving learning,
much can be gained by actually delaying judgment.
With multi-step, higher order skills, immediate judgment
after every step can trivialize what could otherwise be an
interesting challenge. This can be seen clearly in many
e-learning programs built to teach software applications.
A common model is to give the description of what the
next step is and then show a big arrow pointing to the
target spot with the instruction “Click here now.” The user
clicks there and is judged (“Great job!”) and continues on
to the next step. This effectively has changed the task
from trying to manipulate the software to making sure
the learner can click on arrows. The immediate judgment
Intrinsic feedback only
Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference 15
 has created a series of trivial, meaningless tasks out of the
extended procedure that is intended to be taught.
A better approach is to give the learner the necessary
information through instructions or demonstration
animations of an entire step or process, and then let
the learner try it, chaining together the steps, but with-
holding the judgment until a significant milestone has
been reached. This puts the responsibility on the learner
to self-assess his or her success before the lesson itself
stops all critical thinking by an immediate judgment.
It is important to note that this does not apply to all feed-
back. Even when final judgment is delayed, immediate
feedback through simulated actions and intermediate
content rich messages is necessary for the learner to ben-
efit from delaying judgment. Delaying judgment without
also providing other immediate feedback and cues to
assist the learner in continuing to perform would be plain
mean. But the interval between when the learner starts
performing and when the interaction is brought to a close
through judgment, is a critical time of immense mental
activity. When judgment is presented immediately, the
opportunity for that active mental engagement is lost.
Presenting Consequences
A major goal of most training and e-learning is that
the performance change created in the learning
environment transfers to the performance environment.
This is possible when the most salient aspects of the
performance environment are also part of the learning
environment. It is relatively easy to achieve success in
e-learning by following simplistic, extrinsic, immediate
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16 Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference
judgmental feedback. Unfortunately, very few performance
situations involve any of those characteristics. By building
e-learning with those traits, we encourage learners to
depend on artifacts of the learning that have no real coun-
terpart in the real world.
If the learner is performing tasks in a meaningful context,
then it is relatively straightforward to provide feedback
embedded directly in that same context, usually in the
same way that proficient users get feedback from their
performance surroundings to monitor their performance.
In the sales example depicted on the previous page
(Figure 15.C) the learner does not have arbitrary
statements judging the correctness of their choices.
Instead, the learner monitors user responses, emotional
responses, and body language to assess successful sales
strategies. These are exactly the same consequences that
an experienced expert salesperson uses on a daily basis.
Bringing it All Together
Feedback completes the circle of design components
necessary to create instructional interactivity. FEEDBACK
is the best opportunity for communicating content to the
user — after the user has been placed in a meaningful
CONTEXT, presented with a relevant CHALLENGE, and
performed an ACTIVITY intended to meet that challenge.
Ideally, feedback contributes further to the meaningful-
ness of the context, providing even more incentive for the
learner to be immersed in the instructional challenge pre-
sented. This cycle of engaging instructional interactivity is
truly the unique role that e-learning can provide in mak-
ing a difference for both the learner and to the success of
the overall organization.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ETHAN EDWARDS | CHIEF INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIST

Ethan Edwards draws on more than 25 years of

industry experience as an e-learning instructional designer
and developer. He is responsible for the delivery of the
internal and external training and communications that
reflect Allen Interactions’ unique perspective on designing
and developing meaningful and memorable e-learning
programs. Edwards is the primary instructor for ASTD’s
e-Learning Instructional Design Certificate Program. In
addition, he is an internationally recognized speaker on
instructional design and e-learning.

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