The Perfect Online Stranger

Walking into a hall full of eager learners is a heady experience. Irrespective of their biological age, the learners are always young. You are welcome to disagree, but I feel that there could be nothing more youthful than a mind that is curious and that wishes to discover. So, when you walk into such a training hall, you feel real, your fingertips tingle and your heart skips a merry beat.

Now imagine this. You, with a spring in your step, reach the threshold of your classroom and you look within! You find that the classroom is vacant! You panic! Perhaps there’s been a mistake. Probably the class was scheduled for another day or…possibly you entered the wrong classroom! What if you were wrong – the classroom, the date, and the scenario were all correct?

Eager learners are a mercurial lot. They want to get everything fast. They don’t want to wait. They make split-second decisions. They enter a classroom – they take it all in with the first breath in the classroom. If the room smells musty, or if it’s dusty, they begin to lose interest. If the trainer isn’t present, they feel unattended. If the arrangements aren’t comfortable they begin to rethink. After all, what they’ve paid to attend the training was money…attending the training would put a dearer commodity to risk – their time! Eager learners rethink as eagerly as they think.

The only thing that keeps the eager learners in the classroom is the learning effectiveness, which is the sum total of the trainer’s/facilitator’s personality, attitude, skills, knowledge, and the design of the training program.

Now imagine a classroom that is virtual and not real! The learner is the same, but there is a distance between the learner and the trainer. In the virtual environment, especially in the online learning environment, the trainer often doesn’t know whether the classroom is deserted!

Does it expand the problem beyond its current, containable dimension? A real classroom has real walls, it has real learning tools, and it also has a real trainer. In the virtual classroom, often, only the learner and the learning are real. All the rest is bits and bytes.

Consider this –
Ravi was eager to learn. He registered for an online course on Palmistry. He earns Rs. 45,000 a month and Rs. 12,000/- for a 2-Month online course didn’t really burn a hole in his pocket. The online course suited him fine, as despite his busy schedule, he could easily access the course through his Notebook computer. After receiving his login id and password, he logged into the course. Although he hadn’t expected the course to be as interesting as a classroom training program (A misconception, as most of us know,) he wasn’t ready for what awaited him in his “virtual training hall.”

The course content was presented in nearly the same manner as presented in a textbook. The black and while illustrations, similar to those in the textbooks of yesteryears appeared on the right side of the screen while the corresponding text was displayed with scrollbars at the left. The only interactions that he could do were the end of the topic MCQs or Match-the-Following, which were implemented as drag-n-drops. The language was convoluted and the course didn’t talk to him.

The course content began with the topic objectives, and then the content was presented along with the illustrations showing the palm. This was followed by textual MCQs and that was that. It was stated in the course calendar that the final quiz and the test would open at the end of the course.

Can you see what went wrong?

Oh yes! All of us can – the course wasn’t made for the remote learner. A course isn’t just drag-n-drop activities and MCQs…it isn’t just graphics and animations! These are only the containers of the content. Content is what rules the virtual world. Think about it. In the virtual world, we are what we write – in fact, we exist in the virtual world because we write. Everything is content – websites, blogs, chats, portals, courses, web searches…everything is content – and the online learner or the virtual learner needs the content to be treated differently.

We will discuss the treatment in a little while, but before we do so, let us understand the factors that make it important for the online learner’s fare to be treated differently.

What is so Different About the Online Learner?

The simple fact that he or she is online.

Implications:

• This makes the online learner more mature and self-directed. The online learner believes in directing his or her own learning, and hence is more adult in approach.
  
  
• The online learner may be better read, as he or she is comfortable with the Internet. Generally speaking, this also means that this learner’s expectations would be much higher.

The online learner is Alone.

Implications:

• This learner isn’t trying to impress people around and so this learner is free. He or she can make faces, stomp feet, and even use swearwords in front of the computer – there is no societal harnesses controlling the online learner.
  
  
• This learner doesn’t have the usual classroom distraction (other learners, uncomfortable seats, dislike or like for the trainer’s face/attitude, and so on.) However, this learner may have other distractions that we may not be aware of (a sweet little child trying to get some attention, a spouse wondering when the learner’s interest in the screen would wane, a pot of rice boiling over, and so on.)
  
  
• This learner has ample time to go through the content, but no one to answer the queries right away. This learner has to no opportunity to practice the skills or improve the learning through team activities and the usual query sessions. This learner’s attention is like a slippery eel that isn’t easy to catch and sustain.

The online learner is Unknown.

Implications:

• The online learner is not known to those who design the course, or to those who implement the course. The online learner is a silhouette with his or her mind as the identity. The only person who may learn something about the online learner is the facilitator, and even the facilitator may learn only what the learner would reveal.
  
  
• So when we deal with the online learner, we deal with a new kind of audience. Through online courses we connect with an audience who doesn’t pretend to be interested in absence of genuine interest, and who also doesn’t pretend to be uninterested if the content is interesting.
  

What should be Different about Online Learning?
When we create content for this learner, among many other important points, we need to also consider the following:

• The content has to be intelligently interactive. What this means is that the activities and exercises shouldn’t insult the audience’s intelligence, which they begin to do if they are built to address a low cognitive level. Activities shouldn’t be thoughtlessly strewn about in a course. They should always be introduced at instructionally apt points, where the learner also feels the need for practice or reinforcement.
  
  
• The content has to be presented in a manner that it comes alive for the learner. It cannot be presented using a distant, textbook-ish tone. The indifference of the medium should be over-ridden through content that breathes, and to make your content live, try any or all of the following:
  • Create content-specific stories.
  • Create activities that give the learner an important role to play.
  • Initiate reflection through inquiry arousal.
  • Connect activities with the generic day-to-day experiences that the learner may have had.
    
    
• Encourage the learner to go beyond the course, generate questions and find their answers. Try to visualize some of the questions that the learner may have and try to answer them beforehand. Use the SME-Method to determine such questions and answers.
  
  
• Use the online components of the course cohesively with the content presented. Everything, including little information bits should integrate with the content. This will make the learner flow with the current of the course.
  
  
• Always provide constructive feedback.
  
  
• Keep the learner’s possible state and environment in mind. Try to visualize the learner’s physical state (tired, sleepy – oh yes! Keep the worst in mind and then create your courses. If your course is designed to interest a sleepy learner it would definitely interest a fresh and eager one,) mental state (stressed, over-worked,) and the immediate environment. Think how you would speak to a person in such a situation. Model your language accordingly.
  

Well, the list is long and the list is substantiated by the instructional design principles. With the assumption that you, my elite reader is quite conversant with them, I hope that you will build your own list and create courses that will ensure that online learning finds its rightful place in the learner’s priority list.

Author: Shafali R. Anand