Here is the table of contents for E-Learning by Design, Second edition:
- Designing e -learning: Effective e-learning starts with sound instructional design. Instructional design requires selecting, organizing, and specifying the learning experiences necessary to teach somebody something. Good instructional design is independent of the technology or
personnel used to create those learning experiences…. - Absorb-type activities: Absorb activities inform and inspire. Absorb activities enable motivated learners to obtain crucial, up-to-date information they need to do their jobs or to further their learning. In Absorb activities learners read, listen, and watch. These activities may sound passive, but they can be an active component of learning….
- Do-type activities: If Absorb activities are the nouns, then Do activities are the verbs of learning. They put people in action. They elevate learning from passive reading and watching to active seeking, selecting, and creating knowledge. Doing begets learning….
- Connect-type activities: Connect activities help learners close the gap between learning and the rest of their lives. They prepare learners to apply learning in situations they encounter at work, in later learning efforts, and in their personal lives. If Absorb activities are the nouns and Do activities the verbs, then Connect activities are the conjunctions of learning….
- Tests: Educational experts underrate them. Instructional designers disregard them. Course
authors overlook them. Learners fear them. We may cloak them as games or puzzles. We
may put off writing them until there is not time enough to do them well. Whether we call
them tests, assessments, quizzes, drills, examinations, competence monitors, or demonstrations of mastery, they, nonetheless, remain essential for gauging a learner’s progress. And they represent an opportunity for clever designers to engage learners and provide objective feedback…. - Topics: Topics accomplish individual learning objectives. They may consist of a single page or
many. They may center on a single activity or may span multiple complex activities. They
may mix text, graphics, voice, music, animation, and video. They may take minutes or
hours to complete. But each topic accomplishes one learning objective and accomplishes it
fully. That’s what makes them topics. This chapter will show you how to design
e-learning topics to accomplish your learning objectives…. - Games and simulations: Games and simulations allow learners to practice tasks, apply
knowledge, and infer principles—all while having fun. Games and simulations may provide a complete model of a realworld system or just a rapid-fire series of questions to answer.
Games and simulations can be individual Do activities, tests, whole topics, sprawling lessons, and even entire courses…. - Social learning: Social media are changing the way we get news, entertain ourselves, and even find mates. Blogs have scooped national news networks and debunked their lead stories. Wikipedia challenges established commercial encyclopedias. Facebook and Twitter are necessities for many in today’s society. No surprise, then, that social media and techniques are transforming learning and leading to another branch on the e-learning tree….
- Mobile learning: Mobile learning frees people to learn at the place and time they choose and to learn from a world of teachers. This learning may be part of a non-mobile form of learning, such as a field trip during a classroom course. Or the course of learning may be entirely mobile….
- Design for the virtual classroom: Virtual classrooms bring the medieval classroom into the 21st Century. Virtual classrooms use collaboration tools to re-create the structure and learning experiences of a physical classroom. When well designed, they preserve the orderly structure and rich interaction of the classroom while removing the requirement for everyone to be in the same location….
- Conclusion: E-learning is not just a change of technology. It is part of a redefinition of how we as a species transmit knowledge, skills, and values to younger generations of workers and
students. I will end this book by daring to make a few predictions of how e-learning and
the functions it serves will continue to develop….