Apart from taxes and straight black coffee little sucks as much joy out of the room as the dreaded word: E-Learning.

And can you blame people? I remember before teaching my backcountry cooking class at Cornell I was required to take a sexual harassment course—a crucial and sorely-needed concept for every workplace. The problem is it involved me answering multiple choice questions like these.

Amanda bends over at work and your boss slaps her ass. What do you do:
A). Remain silent
B). Laugh
C). Report him
D). Talk to the boss about it
E). Slap her ass too

This doesn’t teach me about sexual harassment. It teaches me about attention harassment, on me. Spoiler alert, the answer was C. But I wanted to put B, as in I would rather Be doing anything else.

If the e-learning course had been good, I might have gotten some valuable insights regarding this issue. Instead, it left me laughing more so than learning.

E-Learning doesn’t have to be like this.

After creating three+ online courses, 200+ educational YouTube videos, and reading Michael Allen’s book on effective e-learning, by Scott Young, How People Learn by Nikolas Shackleton Jones, and more, I’ve learned a lot about how to create effective e-learning. Let’s start from the beginning.

Chapter One: Can E-Learning Be Just As Good As Physical Learning?

Yes.

Chapter Two: When Is E-Learning The Way?

One of the reasons e-learning often sucks donkeybarnacles is because we use it when we shouldn’t.

The first problem (which applies to physical learning as well), is we use e-learning when a learning solution won’t fix the problem.

According to Design For How People Learn by Julie Dickson, there are seven types of gaps that a solution can solve toward a problem. Those are:

• Knowledge gaps: problem comes from not knowing what.
• Skill gaps: problem comes from not knowing how.
• Motivation or attitude gaps: problem comes from not wanting to.
• Habit gaps: problem is it’s not instinctual yet.
• Environment gaps: problem comes from not being in the right context or with the right resources.
• Communication gaps: problem comes from lack of communication or misunderstanding.
• Hunger gap: sometimes you’re just hungry.

Most if the time, there is a mixture of gaps creating a problem.

This is very important: any e-learning or physical learning solution should be solving a knowledge, skill, motivation, or habit gap—and especially a knowledge or skill gap.

If the problem isn’t predominantly one of those gaps, there’s no point creating a e-learning solution. That’s why doing a needs analysis of your audience is so important. Talk to the supposed people causing the problem. Talk to the higher ups. Ask why five times. Make sure it’s one of those learning related gaps above.

Once you’ve ensured a learning solution is the way to solve your problem, you still need to see if e-learning is the right way to solve it.

When E-Learning Rocks:

• Learners are distributed far from each other
• The gaps between learners is wide making a physical learning solution harder
• The learning can be transferred to the real world through e-learning
• Learners need to practice in a safe environment without stakes
• When learners need flexibility in where/when they learn
• There are lots of learners and a e-learning could solution could spread far
• There isn’t a huge budget
• E-learning would be possible to make fun, engaging, or motivating

When E-Learning Kinda Sucks:

• Learners are close together
• The gaps between learners is narrow making a physical learning solution easier
• E-learning wouldn’t transfer well to the real world
• There aren’t many learners
• E-learning wouldn’t be possible to make fun, engaging, or motivating

So you’ve got learning related gaps. And e-learning seems like the right solution compared to physical means. Now for the magic keys to creating great e-learning.

Magic Keys To Great E-Learning

Key 1: Get Them Motivated About What They’ll Learn

Okay here’s what you’ll be able to do after reading this section:

• Design effective, engaging, and fun e-learning experiences
• Apply the motivational theories of learning to increase learner motivation
• Individuate learning to the specific person to lessen time and energy wastage
• And on and on and on…

Makes you want to put your hand through a coffee grinder doesn’t it?

Learning objectives are important, particularly for the designer. They help guide what you should be including in your experience and how to measure there has been change. But objectives themselves aren’t motivational.

We need to find a way to grab someone’s attention. If someone isn’t motivated to learn, they won’t. But if they are super motivated, they will learn even outside of the E-learning.

Without motivation, everything else is pointless.

That makes motivation the most important aspect of your e-learning. For many, motivation is an afterthought. They might give it a few seconds reflection after the e-learning is done. But for the most part, they assume motivation.

This is a huge error, especially considering 70% of e-learning courses are left unfinished according to LXD Michael Allen. That means the majority of people don’t complete the learning… You need to account for motivation because motivation creates emotion.

And emotion is the glue that makes learning stick.

So, how do you motivate people?

One of my favorite theories is The Octalysis Framework by Yu-Kai Chou. You can read my longer article on it here but in essence try to prime learners to your learning experience by appealing to one of their eight core drives of epic meaning and calling, development and accomplishment, creativity and feedback, unpredictability and curiosity, social influence and relatedness, scarcity and impatience, unpredictability and curiosity, and loss and avoidance. The more you target these core drives using language relevant to the specific interests, wants, and fears of your audience, the better.

This is why knowing your audience is so crucial. The better you know your audience, the better you can tailor learning objectives to be exciting for them.

Another one of my go to motivational theories is [[Self-Determination Theory]]. This theory explores three things that make us intrinsically motivated to do things:

• Autonomy: our feeling of control over what, when, where, why, with who, and how we do something.
• Competency: the feeling we are good at and especially improving at something.
• Relatedness: the feeling we are important to others.

By making our learners feel even one of these three things we can vastly increase the intrinsic motivation they have for doing our e-learning. If you want to read more about how this theory works check out my video analyzing the way Elden Ring motivates its players through engaging them with self-determination theory.

Tying these theories together, a much better way to motivate learners to learn aside from vommiting learning objectives on them is to give them an emotional hook for why they should learn something. For example, you want to show learners the value of building a Personal Knowledge Management system inside of the linked notetaking app Obsidian. I could start by showing them a epic look into my graph view, seeing a visual representation of all the notes I have created over my three years using Obsidian and the insane amount of knowledge I have compounded over time.

This does two things. First, it signals to them I’m a still a virgin. Secondly, it shows them the power of building a PKM system themselves. Something much more effective then listing out a bullet point saying they will know how to compound their knowledge system by creating in Obsidian.

Key 2: Assess What Type Of Learning Is Right

Learning gaps can and often have unique learning solutions. It’s not enough to assess the problem as a knowledge or skill gap. The way these gaps are navigated are unique.

Learning Experience Designer Nikolas Shackleton Jones likes to differentiate between push and pull learning. Push learning involves pushing people to care about things they don’t already care or know how to do through experiences. Pull learning involves giving people resources they can pull from to help them with things they already care and know how to do.

Push learning is essential because as mentioned in the last key, if learners aren’t motivated, they won’t learn. Push learning is best done through creating experiences, creating learning that follows the motivational theories mentioned before, or giving external motivation for learning.

Pull learning, in contrast, leverages performance support rather than experiences. Performance support is meant to help with a task people are already motivated to do, and solely to increase performance. Types of performance support include, checklists, lists, maps, etc.

Performance support doesn’t necessarily lead to learning if by learning we mean a change in behavior or capability as the result of memory. Having performance support supplements the need for memory.

This is what makes it extremely useful and efficient for problems which people already care and know how to do. You don’t have to design a whole experience. You can simply create a resource and call it a day.

Knowing the difference between the two is essential, because if you try and give pull learning to someone that isn’t motivated, it’s doomed to fail. And if you give push learning to someone who already cares and knows what to do, it can feel like a waste of their attention. However, most of the time, it’s not one or the other but rather a mix of the two.

Key 3: Individuate Learning

One of the biggest faults of traditional education is its tell than test approach to learning.

Often, learners are all taught the same thing, through a presentation at the front of the classroom. Then, they are all tested using the same test. This completely ignores learner differences. Learners who are more advanced are at danger of being bored by material while learners who are farther behind are in danger of feeling confused and lost.

Instead, we should use the test then tell approach.

Learners are tested at the beginning of the experience in some way. It could be through a regular old test, or more interestingly through a challenge of some sort. Then, the subsequent experiences of the learners is tailored to how they did on the test.

One of the best aspects of e-learning is how easy it is to implement this approach. E-learning systems can save past user data as well as adapt the challenge in real time to the current users abilities. It’s like video games but educational.

For example, at the beginning of Nick Milo’s cohort course Linking Your Thinking, every student completed a notetaking personality quiz. Doing it, I realized I leaned much more top-down in my notetaking personality than bottom-up.

This gave me direction in which lessons and articles from the course I should pay special attention to and let me avoid a great deal of irrelevant information.

Now think about the amount of time wastage which we can avoid when an e-learning course distributes to thousands and thousands of people…

Key 4: Create Risk

One of the reasons video games are so addicting is because they put us at risk in a setting where we feel we can safely fail and grow.

Our e-learning should do the same thing. Many people are scared of making their e-learning challenging at fear of frustrating the learner. This comes from good intentions but it ultimately creates for ineffective learning.

Adding risk to our learning experiences does many things. It makes the experience more engaging, more effective for learning, and builds learner confidence. All we need to do is make sure we add risk while keeping these things in mind:

• Adapt challenge to learner abilities: the more a learner fails, the more help they should get.
• Compliment learners on their attempts instead of belittling them.
• Provide multiple levels of assistance: hints, information bubbles, and more are all options. The learner should feel it would have been possible to be successful.

For example, let’s say you want to teach people at a nuclear reacting plant safety precautions. You create a e-learning virtual reality setting where they are brought through various rooms of the nuclear plant and told to follow the safety precautions given. Every mistake they make increases a bar at the bottom of the screen called “danger of nuclear reactor malfunctioning.” If that bar get’s to 100%, they see a video reenactment of Chernoble.

Seems harsh to some. But this is exactly the type of emotional learning that will make those safety precautions stick. Create risk by leveraging people’s fears. You know what’s a lot harsher? A nuclear fallout caused by not following safety precautions.

Key 5: Create A Transferable Context

One of the biggest complaints against e-learning is it doesn’t transfer well to the real job context.

This can be true, but often it’s because the e-learning isn’t designed well. When designing e-learning we want to ensure it’s as close as possible to the real life context the learner will be applying that learning in.

There are two rules we can follow to make transfer as likely as possible.

Firstly, create a project for learners to apply learnings to. For example, a serious learning game which teaches chefs which fruits to put in acid before putting on a fruit platter to avoid browning. In this example, the project is the game itself.

But sometimes the e-learning doesn’t include a relevant project. In this case, the designer might suggest ways the learnings could be applied to the real world. Or the learner must create or adapt a project to work with the learnings.

Secondly, create a simulation in your e-learning. A simulation is simply a virtual version of a real world thing. Flight simulations, cooking simulations, customer service simulations, and more are all ways of making e-learning as transferable as possible to the real thing. When designing a simulation, you want to break down the essential elements that make the real world thing, the real world thing, and try and include those in your e-learning.

Key 6: Consider Not Starting With The Fundamentals

It’s common advice you should start with the fundamentals and build up.

It’s often a great idea, but can create that terrible b word: boredom. Lower order skills tend to be simplistic and mundane whereas higher order skills are often where the juice lies.

In your e-learning you should consider thrusting people into a situation requiring higher order skills as fast as possible. Then, change the challenge responding to their outcomes.

For example, let’s say you wanted to create a e-learning course teaching poker. Most people would start by explaining every rule, every combination of cards, and how to do a poker face (easy, just think of dead puppies). This would probably work out especially if you’re playing with friends.

But consider the alternative: thrust people straight into a video demonstration of a pro poker player in the final minutes of a tournament. Tens of thousands of dollars is on the line, and they have an average hand. You give players the option of what the pro should do by showing them all the hand combinations and how good they are through an information box on screen. You explain the two things they could do, bet or fold and their potential ramifications. If the player clicks on the opponents head they get an information box describing what they might be thinking.

This situation thrusts them straight into the fun, and adds a spicy dose of risk, while teaching them. It’s motivating, more transferable because it’s so close to the real game, and more memorable. Think about how you can do this with all your e-learning.

Key 7: Provide Intrinsic, Fast, Useful Feedback

Most e-learning courses do give feedback.

But they often do so in boring, irrelevant, or slow manners. What makes for great feedback?

Firstly, great e-learning feedback should be intrinsic.

Instead of telling someone they got something wrong in words, show them. Just like in fiction writing showing is better than telling. For example, the learner doesn’t follow the proper safety checks in a chemistry lab. The boring option is telling them they did the wrong thing. The much cooler and more effective thing is to show the entire lab blowing up in a hellish fiery extravaganza—if that would have happened of course. In this case, the feedback is intrinsic because it’s intrinsically obvious to the learner they did the wrong thing without telling them.

Secondly, great feedback should be fast.

This isn’t traditional education—we don’t want an essay given back to us by a professor after the heat death of the Universe. We want the feedback as fast as possible so the learner can immediately integrate it. Sometimes, this doesn’t mean giving the feedback right after doing something. It can be good to show the delayed consequences of an action as well. But often, giving feedback directly after something is done is a great e-learning principle.

Thirdly, feedback should be useful.

Most e-learning courses assess if learners have learned through a quiz at the end. The quizzes tend to ask questions like “how did you like the e-learning, and define x.” These questions can be useful to some degree, but they don’t ultimately show true change has happened.

True change comes through more than just remembering, or showing positive reaction. It comes through being able to analyze, evaluate, apply, or create using that learning. It shows itself through behavior change. The way this is assessed depends on the overarching goal of the learning but it should be actionable and measurable.

For example, customer review scores will increase by 20% as a result of this empathy e-learning training. This is a goal that can be directly measured and gives valuable feedback as to the value of your e-learning.

Key 8: Understand The Learning Journey You Are Taking Someone On

Where, when, with what, with who, and why people are going on a learning journey profoundly impacts how you should craft that learning journey.

For example, if someone is taking the e-learning at home they won’t have physical access to their colleagues. In this case, you probably shouldn’t include anything that requires physical activities with employees in your e-learning. If the e-learning is meant to be done in small increments over time as the need for it arises, don’t have 30 minute lessons.

Another reason understanding the learning journey is important is because you can assess when and where to give performance support. After someone has first completed an e-learning course, performance support for even a little time can be super helpful. For example, a doctor takes an e-learning course on basic safety precautions while on the job because people keep getting infected, injured, or dying to easy to prevent things. After they take the course, you give them a checklist to follow before certain surgeries or procedures to help them integrate it.

Key 9: Embrace Storytelling

Storytelling has been a cornerstone of our species ever since our caveman season. Though I imagine their stories were slightly less complex: "Grog hunt mammoth. Grog get meat for family. Be like Grog."

Stories helped create shared beliefs and cultural cohesion in early human groups. They helped pass down vital survival information across generations. Before writing and google maps, we had to store all our knowledge in our head.

As I explain in my article on why we read stories, stories tap us into the being mode, making us less analytical and tapping us into the perspectives of other people. This can be especially helpful in push learning when we want to make people care about things they don’t already care about.

For example, let’s say you wanted to make a e-learning course to help more people become Dungeons And Dragons game masters. Dungeon Masters are responsible for leading the story in Dungeon and Dragons and expected to know the rules the best of all the players. There is a shortage of DMs in the Dungeons and Dragons space because of how scary it can be to take the head role, gaps in knowledge about rules, worldbuilding, and storytelling, as well as a lack of motivation for doing all the work involved.

In the e-learning course, you could create an artificial story, describing a group of 25 year olds who want to relax from their work on Fridays through playing Dungeons And Dragons. But they don’t have anyone willing to take the mantel of Dungeon Master. One player has played quite a few campaigns but always as a player and scared of stepping up. Through going through the e-learning course, you can help this person, and yourself, step up to help their friends have a good break from work.

Integrating stories like this into your learning can make it more personal, engaging, and fun. See if your e-learning could be helped through it.

Key 10: Make It Multimodal

One of the great benefits of e-learning is it allows you to show multiple medias at once.

But often, people don’t know how to integrate the medias together. One of the best resources I have explored for doing this is Mayer’s principles of multimedia learning. Here are some of the most useful.

• Multimedia principle: if you can represent something visually in a way that enhances understanding, do it.
• Contiguity principle: describe things as they are happening and as close to what they represent as possible.
• Modality principle: describe graphics with narration rather than on-screen text. The idea is to use various channels for conveying information so as not to overload one channel. However, show words of you really want to emphasize something or if it’s complex or unfamiliar.
• Redundancy Principle: Explain visuals with narration or text, not both.
• Embodiment principle: use on screen characters and peers to give information instead of some abstract thing; People tend to empathize more with them.

When integrating these different medias you must follow good design principles as well which you can read by article on the 5% of principles for 95% of good visual design outcomes.

Pulling It All Together

E-learning doesn’t have to make us want to bleach our eyes. It can be a force for incredible good in the world. As long as we design e-learning with these principles in mind, we can make that change happen.

You don’t have to implement all these principles at once. In fact, trying to do so would be very difficult. But if you can begin implementing the principles into your Learning Experience Design over time, you can start making e-learning that is just as good if not better than physical learning.