Rabid Authoring

I attended a short session yesterday on Rapid Authoring, run by the eLearning Alliance in Glasgow. The main speaker was Bill Ward, whom I'd seen before, an engaging and animated presenter. His topic was 'Rapid Authoring - friend or foe?'.  Bill's a big flag-waver for everything web 2.0, so there wasn't much 'foe' in the presentation. And it's hard to argue with the idea that it should be possible to produce useful learning material faster than ... well ...  than what? Than we used to produce it?  That was one suggestion. Than the big elearning vendors produce it? That was another. Bill mentioned how one large and well known UK firm completely dismissed the idea of rapid authoring several years ago but is now offering a rapid authoring product.

When Bill had finished there were questions from the floor trying to probe what he meant by rapid authoring. He'd mentioned only 'Adobe' (I'd previously seen him speak at an Adobe roadshow) and 'Powerpoint on steroids' . The initial suggestion seemed, therefore, to be  the familiar one of Subject Experts Create Own Learning Material. But very soon the suggestion came from the floor that the tools are easy but you need some pedagogy/instructional design/learning psychology to make it effective.

So if RA means just the current glut of new software tools, there's nothing new in this idea. As long as I've been in this business software vendors have been saying ' no need for messy programming, our product will have you creating effective and engaging elearning as easily as ...' - well, they tend to say Powerpoint now. (I'm old enough to remember TenCore Producer!).  They'll always be saying that and I'll always be not quite believing it.

But if it isn't the tools, is it the process? Is RA simply the dropping of ADDIE in favour of quickly reiterated prototypes or indeed of making it up off the top of your head and getting it out there same day? If that's the case why are we saying it needs instructional design? For years ADDIE was the cornerstone of instructional design (and people have been abandoning it in practice for just as long) - if we're dropping that particular aspect of ID but we need other aspects what are they? Maybe Clive Shepherd's 30 minute master is all the ID you need? Or maybe (as in 'get it out there' ) you don't need any? I recently attended a 'beauty parade' of elearning vendors for bespoke material creation, and they were all, in their various terminologies,  100% committed to ADDIE, and nobody mentioned any concept of rapid authoring!

I spent some time looking at a lot of the 'how to ' video sites that are springing up giving useful tips on everything from how to tie a tie to how to undo a bra one-handed (that's a good one, actually).  I was interested in what guidance they might give to someone putting together an instructional video. The only site that seemed to have any instruction at all stated, very simply and clearly, (a) list everything your audience is going to need for the task and (b) break it down into a small number of steps and (c) plan and practice what you're going to say for each step.  I checked quite a few on a wide range of topics by a wide range of people and - guess what? - they all followed the same principles and they all seemed simple, effective pieces of learning material. Maybe - for procedures at least - that is the necessary and sufficient instructional design?

Comments

[Clive Shepherd]

Thanks, Norman, for an interesting review of the hype, false claims and general confusion surrounding the topic of rapid e-learning.

[Barry Sampson]

A very good summary of the biggest 'so what?' subject in learning. It seems to me that the vendors are still desperately trying to turn what they do into something that appears to be web 2.0, and isn't.

[Tom Kuhlmann]

Personally, I'd drop the "rapid." When I switched from my typewriter to MS Word, I didn't become a rapid typist. The software automated a lot of my production process. In the same sense, the software is automating the production process. In the past steps like ADDIE were needed because of the commitment required to build the course. Today, you can virtually build them on the fly and make changes and corrections as you go.

There is still a need for ID and building good learning ecology. What I liek about the REL tools is that it makes it easier to blend the training. I built a course once on how to run a machine. Part of the course was an REL module that walked a person through the production process and what the machine did (this saved the mentor time and made sure the material was delivered in a consistent manner). After the online portion, the peer coach was able to ask specific questions about info from the course and was able to reference to material in the course. If I (or the peer coach) had to make changes in the course content I was able to do so in minutes. Prior to this we used Authorware and it would have taken weeks to get someone to make edits to our courses.

[John]

And the link to untying a bra one handed is......

[Norman]

It's on VideoJug (honestly!)

http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-undo-her-bra-with-one-hand

I hope it's useful for you :-)