Every Picture Doesn't Tell a Story

Must be my cranky season, or else the suppressed critic is rearing its snarky head...

As part of continued online learning, I've been taking a few SkillSoft courses. The first such course (probably not SkillSoft) I was required to do was many years ago, on something like sexual harassment in the workplace. It covered the basics, wasn't hard to complete, satisfied some law or other my employer had to comply with, and was unmemorable other than to raise general awareness of potential problems and the responsibilities of supervisors. If it had narration, I don't remember, and probably would have turned off the sound anyway. I do have a certificate to prove I passed.

So now, 10 or 15 years later, here is SkillSoft, looking very much like its courses were created 10 or 15 years ago. The supervisory courses contain useful information and reinforce skills and behaviors that make one a better manager. But to glean 30 minutes' worth of tips takes at least a couple of hours of listening and clicking through the lessons.

I'm not a particularly aural learner unless I can take notes, which is hard to do on paper at a computer when you are also trying to keep an eye on the screen. Somewhere during Course #3, I realized that what was on the screen wasn't really worth keeping an eye on. The photos of the models in their sterile offices and their identical suit jackets are a distraction rather than an aid to learning. By the end of the course, I simply abandoned the narration to read the captions, allowing me to avoid staring at the same cardboard characters who had populated the previous courses. It's also difficult to have the scenarios on the pop-up page and the questions on a separate one and have to flip back and forth to remind myself whether it was Randal or Teresa who was being overprotective of the fledgling manager.

Online courses do have the benefit of instant scoring, but is this the best way to actually teach? How might the visuals better illustrate what is being said? Why couldn't I just stare at pictures of flowers or cats instead? Or shut my eyes?

This reaction was reinforced by Kathleen T. Horning's excellent book "From Cover to Cover," on how to critically evaluate and review children's books. In discussing illustrations in nonfiction works, she writes: "It is important ... not to lose sight of the main purpose of illustrations in a book of information: to provide information by complementing, supporting, or extending the text. Look closely at a book's illustrations to determine what exactly they add to the work. How do they relate to the text? Are they merely decorative, or do they actually enhance the text in some way? Do they make the subject matter more appealing? Are they up to date?"

Good questions for the SkillSoft designers to ask themselves.

The courses also could use a script doctor to make the lessons memorable. A novelist would make the stick figures in the role-modeling sessions three-dimensional and bring the scenarios to life. And a novelist might come up with better names for the fictitious companies and employees.

I tried to include a vastly abbreviated form of this general criticism in my course evaluation only to find I had exceeded my 1,500 character comment allotment. Better than Twitter, but still...