Long story short: I recently packed up my stuff and moved to Seattle. Seriously, as I type this, I’m still surrounded by boxes and bags and suitcases and piles of stuff that went into my closet years ago and I hadn’t seen since. With most of my material life sitting in disarray around me, I’m struck by how this situation parallels many basic rules for content creation in e-learning. Maybe I think about these things because it’s my job, or maybe it’s my job because I think about these things.
I have too much stuff.
It’s amazing how many boxes you need to pack up things that you don’t need. So, my wife and I are getting rid of whatever we can. To say that we’re only keeping the stuff that we need is probably too rigorous a standard, but we are trying to limit ourselves to things that we use and enrich our lives in some way, which still leaves plenty for the donation/craigslist/trash pile. Apparently, I have quite the talent for acquiring and keeping things that have no real purpose.
Many e-learning courses are similar (how’s that for a segue?). They have content stuffed in at odd angles because someone, somewhere, thought it was important for the learners to know. And that’s probably true; there’s very little objectively useless information in the courses we build. However, “useful” does not equal “relevant,” and I would argue that there is far too much irrelevant content or content that exceeds or complicates the purpose of the course. That can be a difficult argument to take up with a client. How do you tell a client that you agree that certain information is important, it’s just not important here and now?
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