ARCS Model

According to John Keller’s ARCS Model of Motivational Design, there are four steps for promoting and sustaining motivation in the learning process: Attention, Relevance, Confidence, Satisfaction (ARCS).

Attention
For any learning to happen you must first gain the attention of the learners. You can use various methods to gain attention. It can be as simple as a game or a humor activity to get the learners involved with the subject matter. You can also pose questions or problems for them to solve.

Relevance
Only if the learners find relevance in the content they would be motivated to learn. You can tell them how the new learning will help them build on their existing skills. You can also inform the learners how the course will help them in the future.

Confidence
You must help the learners to gain confidence that they can succeed. You need to provide them objectives and also help them feel that they can achieve those objectives. You also need to ensure that the learners are aware of the performance criteria on which they will be evaluated.

Satisfaction
Learning must be rewarding or satisfying in some way. You also need to provide feedback on their performance. When they are satisfied with the results they will be motivated to learn more. You must be also take care that you don’t exaggerate the learner’s performance by over-rewarding easy tasks.

Benefits and Drawbacks of e-learning

The reduced overall cost is one of the main advantages of e-learning. These can include the salary for instructors, transportation, boarding and lodging for the students, etc. Also if you are a working professional you can learn a new technology right at your desk without spending too much time away from your job. Also the e-learning courses are available on demand. You can take them at flexible hours or even at home. Sounds good, doesn’t, it?

The other major advantage is that you can take up the courses at your own pace. So if you are an expert you can skip few sections and get ahead, a novice can take the course at his own time to avoid any frustration. I don’t think that is possible in the traditional classroom method.

E-learning courses are a lot more interactive, thanks to technology. So the learners are now more engaged rather than getting bored over loads and loads of text. Most e-learning course provide a quick assessment or evaluation at the end. This would give a satisfaction to the learner that he has indeed retained some learning.

Now let us see the disadvantages of e-learning. The magical classroom bond between teacher and student, and among the students themselves, cannot be replicated through communications technology. Also some technology issues during learning can prove a bane in e-learning. The existing technical infrastructure may not be able to achieve the training goal. It can be as simple as a slow net connection or non compatible software.

Also the reduced social interaction can be a big drawback. There is no peer-to-peer communication or learning that is happening. Though there are few drawbacks e-learning is here to stay, and is rapidly growing as an efficient form of delivering learning content.

ADDIE model

There are more than 100 different learning models available in ISD, but most of them are based on the ADDIE model. Though it’s criticized for being too systematic, it is still popular.

It’s an acronym that stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation.

Analysis – In this phase you will understand and identify the gaps in learning. You will also analyze the audiences existing knowledge and skills.

Design – Here you will finalize the learning objectives, assessment instruments and the actual content.

Development – The actual creation of the learning materials is done in this phase.

Implementation – In this phase the training materials that you created are delivered to the learners.

Evaluation – In this phase you will evaluate the effectiveness of your training material.

The ADDIE model can be very constraining and linear in its approach. So whats the answer?

Keep waiting........

Instructional Design - An Overview

Instructional Design is a method of arranging content in order to achieve maximum knowledge transfer. You need to determine the current state of learner understanding and also define the outcome of your instruction. The outcome of this instruction may be scientifically measured or completely hidden.

There are various instructional design models available.The most common among them is the ADDIE model. Learning theories play an important role in the design of instructional materials. Theories such as behaviorism, constructivism, social learning and cognitivism help in defining the outcome of instructional materials.

More of theories and models coming your way..............