Changing stlyes of message design in eLearning

So this blog entry has been rewritten at least 4 times now. I know that defeats the purpose of a blog, but I wanted to try to have it make a sensible point.

Message design applied to eLearning, especially WBT or CBT certainly has its differences from traditional methods of training and instruction. I've had many conversations recently about our practices of message design in our training output. One colleague of mine in particular has shown resistance to many of the ideas discussed in team discussions from what we have learned this semester. He feels that reducing the message output on the screen reduces the value of the training, and learners aren't really getting the whole picture of the topic. While I see value in his points, as we do have a certain amount of detail to get across, I think there is a lot of misplaced resistance that will result in many challenges in the future.

Numerous readings we have explored this semester have all talked about no more than 200 words or less on a screen at any time. In many ways, I would argue for even less. When I personally approach a training module on my own time (as our users are required to) I am very resistant to sitting and reading several paragraphs worth of material. I (and many others like me) am not comfortable reading that much text on a screen. Furthermore, it also brings into question the value of using the medium to present lengthy text (harkening back to Tufte's ideas).

On the flip side however, I am cautious from totally "drinking the kool-aid" of Duarte's ideas. Much of what she and Reynolds present deals with a traditional stand up presentation. Given that our eLearning is taken in an asynchronous manner with bandwitdth, content and time issues that prevent us from extending into too much detail, I am not sure how to bring it all together.

At the least, it is important to keep this information in the forefront when you design instruction, even if you cannot follow them all the time. As our audience and the technology changes, the two will certainly converge to make greater use of the methodologies in a happy medium to make for effective message design and training.