Though I know what you mean about abysmally dull bullet-point type courses, I must say I see it differently – as there being good elearning, mediocre elearning and bad elearning – whatever its provenance. Both traditional “big-beast” elearning and rapid elearning have produced some shockingly poor, some mediocre, and some excellent output, technically and instructionally. Both traditions continue to do so, though the poorer is perhaps getting rarer.

Both traditions can and do learn from each other, and though one is more mature than the other, both are maturing nicely and adapting to changing tools, platforms, uses and expectations. This can only be a good thing all round.

It’s true that there still lingers, unfortunately, the sort of backward-looking loyalty to traditional elearning among some traditionalists that I alluded to in my earlier post, and this feeds a sort of us-and-them mentality (taken up on both sides) that can become entrenched as a dichotomy that is, at heart, a false one. The only sensible dichotomy should be the one that distinguishes good from bad.

To be fair to the traditionalists, the sheer cost and outrageous time-scales (by our standards!) of their development cycles, of necessity meant highly professional workforces. (This didn’t always preclude poor output, of course!) So it was no surprise that when rapid tools liberated access to the market, there would initially be a period of relatively poor quality courses, educationally and technically. And wonderfully liberating though the rapid tools were, it’s also true that initially there seemed to be a certain lack of instructional design savvy in a lot of the early “rapid” output. I think it’s healthy to acknowledge this.

Perhaps this was inevitable, when one thinks back to two similar technology-based revolutions – when mid-80s DTP tools liberated access to typographic design; and again when early-90s web tools liberated access to commercial graphic design. But just as those areas matured very quickly, mainly as skilled professionals shifted from resistance to adoption of the new technologies but also from a professionalization pe se of the new tools, so, in the main, there seems to have been a professionalization, a convergence and seeding across the elearning traditions, accompanied by more balanced outlooks, so that it’s only, dare I say, on the margins that the extreme us-and-them mentality seems to remain, and to no good purpose.

Thank goodness. This mutual acceptance and seeding can only do the industry (and the poor learner) good!

@Tom – I hope you’re right about the tools moving in the right direction (wrt my point about thinner, less confusing interfaces), and I think you must be – you’re in a good place to tell (and bring some influence to bear).

@slhice – I enjoyed your holiday album, Stephanie. If only mine were as creative!

Bruce

@Carolyn – nice job recreating the tv! I just wanted to mention to you, in case you plan on using it for professional purposes, that the reflection image of the tv during the video is showing the colored lines from the beginning tv image.