Over at the Learning Circuits blog, the big question for July is “How do you make eLearning fun?” They are not asking for much there, are they? As my grandmother used to say, Uff Da…
Before I write myself into a tips for fun eLearning quagmire, I think it would be prudent to back up a little bit and ask “Should eLearning be fun?” My answer to that, in classic consultant fashion, is it depends. It depends on the topic, the audience, the organization and a myriad of other considerations. If you are creating an eLearning course on interpersonal skills, then sure, it can and probably should be fun. On the other hand, if you are creating a course on end of life considerations for terminally ill patients, fun is likely not the appropriate treatment for that subject.
Now, subject matter, audience, and organizational issues aside, I do believe that all eLearning courses should engage and challenge learners. I also believe that engaged and challenged eLearners can be having fun, just by virtue of being engaged and challenged.
So, what is the difference between a fun eLearning course and an engaging eLearning course? For an eLearning course to be fun, it has to be amusing, entertaining, or enjoyable for the learner. But, for an eLearning course to be engaging it must occupy, attract or involve the learner’s interest or attention. When I compare those two definitions, it seems to me that fun is 0ne effective weapon in the arsenal for creating engaging eLearning, but engaging a learner does not necessarily equal entertaining them. Besides, I don’t think learners really expect to be entertained by their eLearning courses, especially in a work environment.
There is also the pesky little problem that one person’s fun can be decidedly unfunny for the next person. Last night, my 8
year old daughter wanted to show me a video on YouTube that she had deemed “the funniest thing ever.” Ten seconds into a 4 minute video of fruit and vegetables with superimposed mouths spouting truly random dialog, I was gritting my teeth while she was laughing hysterically. Yes, you might say, but she is 8 and no adult would find that video entertaining. That may be true, so let me give you another example. A few weeks ago I found a post with a list of things no one tells you about motherhood. I had tears running down my cheeks from laughing as I read the post and immediately thought a good friend who is pregnant with her first child would find it amusing too. Wrong, wrong and wrong. She found the post to be rather dark and depressing from her pre-birth perspective. Oops. I’ve made a note to myself to resend her that post in about 5 years…I have a feeling it will get a different reaction by then.
My point here is that adding a joke or some other “fun” element to your eLearning course could easily end up amusing some learners and irritating (and thus disengaging) others. In my mind, finding ways to engage learners is a little less fickle. Most people like to have choices and some measure of control when it comes to learning. This is part of the reason for the popularity of increasingly complex video games. Players have control over their character and can keep trying different strategies until they finally beat the level or the entire game. Each failure teaches the player something more about the game and, as that learning takes place, the chances for success increase. Periodic success followed by a new challenge keeps the player engaged, often for much longer than you might want!
The thing I find most interesting about this is that if you turn off a player’s game in the middle of their 28th attempt to complete a task, they very well might feel the game overall is frustrating, irritating or even stupid. But, if you turn off the game just after the player has completed that wildly difficult level successfully, the player is more likely to feel the game overall is fun and challenging. It all comes down to perspective and timing.
So back to the big question, how can we make eLearning fun? My answer is to focus on learner engagement rather than learner entertainment. An eLearning course that engages and challenges the learner will ultimately deliver better results than one that seeks to amuse.
Thanks for the article, Andrea.
As someone who works in the e-learning industry, this is one of my pet peeves. There is so much boring, dry and unengaging content out there that it has given e-learning a bad name.
People associate e-learning with badly-designed sites featuring walls of text that you have to wade through to get to some sort of MCQ quiz at the end.
Here is my list of what e-learning should be:
1 Enjoyable – learning is an enjoyable experience, it takes a teacher or a school system or a badly designed course to make it otherwise
2 Engaging
3 Aesthetically pleasing – no walls of text
4 A multimedia experience – video, quality graphics, flash, animations, puzzles and challenges should be used effectively
5 Learner-centered
6 Social – learners should be able to connect with other learners on the course.
Thanks for your comments Emile. I couldn’t agree more!
As a whole I agree with Andrea’s summation that eLearning need to be both fun and engaging. As someone who worked in both the banking and retail arenas, I found eLearning activities foisted upon us to maybe be one, the other or neither. I found it easy to feel my mind wander through tedious activities and definitely not learning anything. Does everything we need to be fun, definitely not, but at least somewhat easy to digest and that requires a lightness and a sense of humor to help buffer the info provided. ELearning must definitely be engaging because our attention spans are becoming shorter and our need for obtaining information, greater.
Andrea,
While I appreciate your position in this topic, I’m willing to bet that if more people truly had FUN when learning, more people would seek to learn new things. Truth be told, most linear educational experiences are dull. Of course the exception is the many Edutainment programs available for kids, which as you know, have been highly effective. So the notion is that when we get to be in our teens, that learning must be regimented, linear and tedious. Human nature is such that we all like having fun; so why not have fun learning? I think there are many ways to keep a learner engaged, laughing at times and yet still accomplish the goal of educating in the areas of ‘lifestyle learning’ or even in the corporate training arena. Needless to say attempting to teach software updates to thousands of corporate employees is at the least, boring, we can keep the learner engaged by letting them have a little fun, too. My two cents.
I love your article. it goes with my point of view about fun in e-learning as well as any other learning setting. Lately there are many discussions about making the educational experience \”fun\”, which the purpose of the fun is to engage participants, so I appreciate the fact that you clearly state that experience.
Furthermore, people people seem to forget that we are trainers and educators, not jesters or stand up comedians. Education can/should be fun and engaging, but it\’s still education. Going overboard with the \”teaching should be fun\” creates a culture of \”if it isn\’t fun, it\’s not important\”.
I am all for being engaging and fun, but I\’m very against taking it to the point that people forget that it is education, does require people to, I don\’t know, study and learn, and that the main purpose of engaging students is to educate not entertain.