Occasionally I amuse myself by contemplating how one topic leads to another through the course of a conversation. My morning readings often follow a similar path. I start on one website, click on a link that takes me to a new article, and then a sidebar catches my eye so I click on that. Thus I follow the white rabbit down the hole. I learn and see many interesting and strange things in this fashion.
Through my adventures today, I read and discovered two specific sites that have me thinking about the way I enjoy learning new information and how it could apply to training. I know that I am not the only person that prefers learning through self-discovery, jumping between topics, and scanning content for the important nuggets instead of reading word-for-word. So why aren’t there more learning opportunities out there that encourage this type of learning? Why are there still eLearning courses that have voice talent reading the content of text-heavy pages, and which do not allow you to advance until the audio has finished reading everything?
Clark Quinn and his post Ch-ch-ch changes started my tea party musings this morning and while I was enjoying the topic of what L&D is and what L&D could be I noticed a badge in his credentials with the words Serious eLearning. I was intrigued and clicked on it to find out more. Quinn is an “Instigator” for the Serious eLearning Manifesto, so I found myself reading even more on creating a “uniquely valuable learning experience” and focusing on the learner. The manifesto does not offer anything that we have not already heard, but it serves as a reminder of what we should be doing as creators of training. It also invites you to sign the manifesto thus embracing the Serious eLearning Principals and hopefully applying them more often to create effective and powerful learning and development experiences.
I’m not going to restate everything on the websites I visited, but I invite you to follow me down the rabbit hole by exploring them yourself.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where –” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland