In a previous blog post, I talked about the problems with eLearning and provided criteria to measure them. Here I’m going to share the good news that some eLearning providers are beginning to address and rectify these problems.

The criteria I had proposed for achieving the nirvana of rapid and effective learning (what I’ve called ‘lightning learning’) are: Focused, Adaptive, Complete, Consistent, Reinforced and Validated.

Some of these criteria can be easily met. Problems of diffuse focus and incompleteness are easily solved when an education company creates a BOK (Body Of Knowledge). A BOK represents a complete map of everything a student should learn about a topic. This fills in the gaps and, coupled with a curriculum map, also shows the student where they are headed.

Solving the problem of inadequate validation is really just a matter of will. Many eLearning providers do have placement tests or opt out tests that allow students to avoid spending time on areas that they are already familiar with. There just needs to be more of it.

Other criteria, however, like reinforcement, are nearly universally lacking. For example, research has shown that to optimally learn something you should spend approximately three hours actively practicing, solving problems and question answering for every hour spent passively reading, reviewing or watching lectures. Today, however, most eLearning systems are the opposite: 90% watching a video and less than 10% reviewing or practicing what was learned.

Some pretty good eLearning systems are here

There is progress. Though far from the standards of lightning learning, there are glimmers of hope in a variety of eLearning systems. Here are some of my personal impressions on current solutions and how they fulfill the criteria required by lightning learning (see Figure 1). These ratings are directional and meant for relative comparison but are not quantitative.

• YouTube - Though it is mostly used for entertainment, YouTube is also a powerful eLearning tool. It is where you go to become a refrigeration repair technician when your freezer fan stops working or an expert in Instagram marketing when your boss asks you to research it for tomorrow’s meeting. Because it is a crowd-sourced marketplace it can appear to have broad coverage but it lacks consistency, is massively redundant and doesn’t make any attempts to encourage learning mastery.
• Linkedin - Linkedin’s acquisition of Lynda was a brilliant investment in matching the task of finding a new job with building career skills. If Microsoft handles this marriage of learning and career correctly it could become a dominant source of new revenue growth. Being a product company, Microsoft needs to take extra care to make sure the educational content is of the highest quality. Content and curriculum are key in eLearning. Microsoft has ample room to grow this platform to provide better validation and reinforcement.
• Coursera – This is where you’ll find videos with quizzes from professors at well-known universities. The online courses are interactive and have a pretty good format for learning. However, quality can be inconsistent as famous professors don’t always know how to teach or to teach online. They also may not have complete content or be sufficiently focused as the curricula were developed as part of 4 year college degrees not specifically for eLearning or lightning learning.
• Udemy – This is a marketplace of over 100,000 online courses that are relatively inexpensive (like the Great Courses company, these are often discounted at 80% or more). They do a good job of formalizing the format but quality can vary greatly between courses based on the instructor. Since it is a marketplace the courses are fairly fragmented and without a consistent body of knowledge.
• edX – Has some 2,500 courses that are often just videotapes of the lectures of professors in 140 recognized universities. They do provide degree programs and courses of study that can take a fair amount of time to complete (up to 10 weeks at 10 hours per week). It is hard to use for lightning learning as the expectation is that learning will be broad and take a reasonably long time.
• eLearning Curve – This eLearning provider has a laser-like focus on courses on database management, data warehousing, and data science. It is more expensive, but you get what you pay for. It has a well thought out curriculum and body of knowledge for its courses. This is invaluable for making sure the learner is not wasting their time wading through topics they have already mastered. It also had credibility as it was rated by CIO.com as one of the top 7 certifications that will pay off for MDM (Master Data Management).
• Duolingo – It’s not really fair to put a foreign language learning app on this list as it is solving a much easier problem. Language learning is a well-defined subject area that people have been learning how to teach for over a century. But, all that being said, Duolingo delivers an exceptional eLearning solution from the ground up and has paid attention to the research. The smart choices and simplification of spaced repetition, gamification and recall practice research are very well done and very effective. It will be a challenge to extend its format to more complex domains like learning new AI technologies but new eLearning providers might be wise to start fresh with Duolingo’s structure and build from scratch rather than try to shoehorn existing courses into it.

Figure 1: Overall low scores for eLearning solutions but progress is being made.

There are benefits in adopting these criteria

There will be many benefits that accrue to the eLearning providers that take these criteria seriously. These companies are well aware of the benefits of implementing these changes. They are just hard to do. But they will happen in time.

Here are some of the benefits for the learner as we move closer to realizing the goal of true lightning learning:

• Efficient. Students won’t waste their time. They’ll get exactly the right instruction when they need it.
• Fast. Employees will learn rapidly and remember what they learned. No more wasted weekends at sales training.
• Validated. Managers or anyone paying for the learning will have validated proof that time and money was well spent. Students will gain a legitimate feeling of accomplishment.
• Enjoyable.  With techniques like gamification and recall practice, students will enjoy learning and seeing consistent progress without being overwhelmed or bored.

Some predictions: eLearning four years from now

Four years from now we will look back and see that we have made rapid progress in deploying the principles of lightning learning. Here are some specific predictions:

Learning gets more help from video games. Lightning learning will continue to benefit from game mechanics developed in video games, where reward-based learning will provide a good balance between overwhelming and boring the student. Video game techniques will keep the learning from becoming too hard and presenting material that the learner is not ready for. It will also keep the learner from wasting their time on skills they have already mastered.

Learning paths and personalization will be key breakthroughs. Rather than being disconnected pieces of a giant ‘learning puzzle’ that the learner needs to put together themselves, the learner will be quickly assessed and put on a path towards a viable learning goal that is efficient for them and complete. Learning paths will also become automatically optimized as more and more learners traverse the learning path. AIs will construct AB tests to determine which paths produce the best and fastest results.

Microsoft / Lynda could be really big. Keep in mind that employees really aren’t spending time learning and upskilling for personal satisfaction or even so they can do their job better. They are acquiring skills so that they can get their next job. Thus tying LinkedIn with upskilling from Lynda could be a huge win.

Goal setting will become more critical. Some research, that has not yet been well applied, shows that when students have clear and compelling educational goals they learn much faster. There is currently a lot of confusion concerning intrinsic versus extrinsic rewards and the balance of reward and punishment (aka “the carrot versus the stick”). Look for rationalization of what extrinsic and intrinsic rewards really mean and a solution based on good structure and rewards embedded into the learning. For a primer on the philosophy of low-stress practice being its own reward see Doug Lemov’s book “Teach Like a Champion”.

References: 

 “Why MOOCs Don’t Work”, Doug Lederman, www.insidehighered.com