- The biggest takeaway from this course, for me, was the idea of intrinsic vs. extrinsic feedback. It was a concept I had thought about before, but never had the words to explain to SMEs, stakeholders, etc. The idea is that, when possible, feedback should be intrinsic. It should be real life, or show a "so what" for getting it wrong. Extrinsic is just, "You're wrong, try again." Little value to the learner. Little reason for them to care about what the right answer actually is. Here's an example: We're training a person on how to talk to a customer on the phone. They choose the wrong answer. Should they get a pop up that says "That's not the right answer, try again"? Or, should they get a pop up that says, "The customer wasn't happy with that response and responds by saying that they aren't interested in the product. What do you do now to turn it around?" Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic.
- The other big positive from this course was the sheer amount of examples we were given. Really great, immersive scenarios and games that got the wheels turning on what I could be doing in my own courses. It got me even more excited about a large-scale game we're designing at work that I'm really energized about!
Cons
- The flip-side to those examples is the con: they weren't built in industry standard tools. As a developer, I came into this course wanting more information about the HOW to develop: ideas about how long it takes, what types of technical specs you need, good tools to build these types of eLearnings in, etc. The class actually asked many times about how something was built, how long it took, etc., but the response was usually that the instructor couldn't say how long it took and that it was built in flash or a tool no one had heard of. I was left feeling overwhelmed. Yeah, these were really cool, but do you know how many Storyline triggers I would need to build out that type of interaction? I don't, because they couldn't tell me.
- The virtual training wasn't as interactive as I would have liked. I know that is difficult in a virtual training. I get that. I build that. But, where were the polls? Where were the multiple breakout sessions so that we could discuss amongst ourselves? I wanted to meet the people in class in a conversational way that just wasn't presented.
- I wish the final project had been an individual project. Working as a group makes sense in a live class, but virtually, it was scattered and difficult. Communicating is difficult in ATD's portal and we all have day-jobs so adding on the added "okay, now I have to wait for feedback from the team and hope they see this message" was not necessary for what seemed like an easy project, to me.
- We did, finally, talk about technology to build out eLearnings on the last day. However, it was very brief, very rushed, and consisted of, "What do you use? Great, okay moving on..." I felt like myself and others in the class wanted more discussion about pros and cons of each, examples in each, etc. that we just weren't provided.
Long story short: I don't know if I'd call this "advanced." Most of these ideas are what I would call "best practices" rather than advancements. Should eLearning be true to life? Well, yeah, doesn't everyone know that? If you're a beginner in the eLearning world, or in your first year, I think this is a great course for how to take your eLearning from powerpoint-voiceover to the next level. But if you already do interactive, engaging courses and you're looking at how to take it even further, look elsewhere, in my opinion.
Anyone else taken this course? Disagree? Would love to hear what you think!