Putting The Interaction Back Into Interactivity

Putting the Interaction Back into
Interactivity
Dinesh Warrier
If it’s online, it must be interactive. Well, not quite. If much of what passes for interactive learning
falls into the page-turner category, it’s because e-learning takes a limited view of interactivity and
of learner needs. So what can e-learning designers do to win over increasingly restive learners—and
clients?
Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly Victoria materials. The learner designs the learning
Terminus) is, perhaps, Mumbai (Bombay) city’s and the learner implements it. Does this defy
busiest railroad station. In a hectic corner of this
conventional instructional thinking? No, our
nineteenth-century “Bombay-Gothic” structure theories are too smart for that. But it does
stands a snazzy tribute to India’s IT revolution. challenge the way we approach learners, learner
Forever surrounded by users and gawkers is interaction, and interactivity.
an interactive touch-screen kiosk that provides
information on trains, routes, available seats, and
It’s been a few decades since a term such as
the status of wait-listed bookings. The people interactivity tiptoed out of journals and into
for whom this terminal is intended are not mass training consciousness. And it is, arguably,
India’s legion of code warriors and IT brahmins.
the most abused term in e-learning after
Plumbers, electricians, laborers, daily-wage constructivist pedagogy.
workers, people who are encountering a GUI
—or even a computer—for the ﬁ rst time in their
Interactivity once described a certain approach
lives, are the audience. Watching them learn to to learner empowerment, and to pull out a
use the service is a revealing experience.
deﬁ nition from the many that make up the
woodwork, it stood for “the active involvement,
The ﬁ rst-timer almost always keeps a measured
participation, and engagement of the
distance. There is curiosity, awe, perhaps even a
individual in the learning process.” Educators
bit of wonder. And there is enough trepidation and education theorists have seen interaction
to prevent the person from trying to use the (and its derivative interactivity) as the deﬁ ning
terminal, even if she is willing to hang around component of the learning process. John
and watch it being used. Thus, the initial learning
Dewey, writing in 1916, regarded interaction
is, most often, “vicarious.” In about a quarter of as indispensable if the learner has to take inert
an hour, when the person has seen a few people
information and construct it “into knowledge
use the computer, the reluctance gives way to a
with personal application and value.” Interaction
wary conﬁ dence. And soon, she ﬁ nds that using
as an idea has always been valued, even in the
the terminal is not half as difﬁ cult as she thought.
context of distance learning. Garrison and Shale
This is not because the interface is super-
go so far as to describe “all education (including
intuitive, or the operations simple. But because that delivered at a distance) as essentially
there’s real-time help available every step of interactions between content, students, and
the way. Onlookers, whether pros or vicarious teachers.” But computers seem to have changed
learners, freely dispense advice, encouragement,
all that.
and even the odd shortcut. The gap between
technology and the user is, thus, bridged. Not Computer interface design has long borrowed
through intelligent design, but through very from the ﬁ eld of education—the ideas of Piaget
human ingenuity and collaboration.
and Bruner are known to have inﬂ uenced UI
theorists such as Alan Kay—and it did not
What does the e-learning designer take away take much for the term interactivity to be
from this? This is learning without instructor appropriated. Or for its sense to be attenuated.
intervention and in an environment lacking Computers opened up a world of possibilities in
in learning objects, conventional interactivity, self-paced and distance learning, but interface
elaboration, or progressive disclosure. This is and bandwidth limitations have also had the
learning that does not even depend on learning
effect of curbing the instructional designer’s

imagination. In the e-learning context, interactivity has from leveraging technologies such as instant messaging
primarily come to mean “the interaction between the user
and bulletin boards that facilitate interaction between
and the computer.” Gloriﬁ ed navigation, in other words.
learners.
What should bother us is not this “loss of meaning,” but The other reason learners’ interaction with instructors
that a once-radical approach to education has become an
does not feature in our calculations has to do with the way
excuse for lazy instructional design. Consider the results corporate training is now organized. Ever since computer-
of a 2003 eLearning Guild survey titled Interaction with based teaching became the “cheaper” alternative to the
Instructional Content in eLearning Programs or Courses.
omniscient trainer, there has been a tendency to view
A whopping 84.4% of the respondents—all e-learning instructors as mere facilitators, and therefore dispensable.
practitioners—have put down “click on object or text to With PCs replacing both the trainer and the classroom,
reveal information” as a type of content “interaction” they
the vital element of human interaction has begun to
routinely use. Other such choices include, “hypertext links
disappear from corporate training.
to other pages inside the course or program” (75.4%),
“hypertext links to other pages to resources outside And learners are complaining. Here’s what a senior
the course or program” (73%), and “choice of path and executive of a large corporation had to say about an e-
sequence of information” (66.4%).
learning course he took: “With no interaction with a course
tutor or other delegates, I found the subject matter tedious
As the results of the survey suggest, what often passes and hard going. I appreciate that I need to complete
for “interactivity” in many e-learning courses is mere complete [the course] but this did not ‘make it live for me’
information retrieval. On-screen navigation and clever and with no opportunity to check my understanding with
devices such as hotspots and pop-ups have long been an expert, I felt I could [have] achieve [d] the same level of
used to elevate garden-variety page-turners to the status
understanding by reading a workbook. Sitting at my desk
of “interactive” learning. But the learner—and crucially, the
in an ofﬁ ce environment was not conducive for learning.
e-learning buyer—has begun to see through this feint.
I’ve got nothing to refer back to in terms of… interaction/
group discussions, which I would recall later…”
A Forrester analyst group survey, quoted in The eLearning
Developers’ Journal, showed that “the most common Self-paced learning is not easy, and the lone learner is a
response to the question, ‘What obstacles limit online lonely learner. However, trainer-less training is here to stay.
training?’ was simply lack of interactivity. Most respondents
Much as we would prefer it, clients are not going to change
likened their Web-based learning experience to a their stafﬁ ng policies to suit instructional approaches
workbook or manual with a few quizzes added.” And this
that privilege learner-instructor interaction. But, we still
is no voice in the wilderness. Listen to barroom e-learning
can mine the rich vein of possibilities that “collaborative”
talk and you will often hear dismay at user-feedback learning has to offer.
reports that complain about the lack of interactivity in a
program that had more than its fair share of progressive
E-learning courses that encourage collaboration between
disclosure devices and multiple choice quizzes.
learners enjoy many advantages. Perhaps the most
valuable aspect of learner collaboration is that it can make
The drums of disquiet have been getting louder and up for the lack of immersiveness in an e-learning program.
the industry has been forced to respond. The current When learners fail to complete e-learning courses, it is
enthusiasm for simulations, avatars, and game-based rarely because they think the subject matter is not relevant
learning is a sign of this. By itself, the development and to their experience or will not deliver value. It is because
dispersion of these “technologies” is a positive thing. the course in itself does not motivate learners to carry on
It suggests a greater involvement of the e-learning from topic to topic and module to module. As e-learning
industry with learner requirements and adds to the array
developers and buyers know only too well, immersiveness
of instructional tools at a designer’s disposal. But, as often has a directly proportional relationship with the cost
technologies go, these don’t go far enough.
of developing an e-learning product. One does not require
even the back of an envelope to realise that developing
Interaction has traditionally been classiﬁ ed into learner-
a multi-path simulation will cost very much more than
content interaction, learner-technology interaction, creating a traditional Web-based training program.
learner-instructor interaction, and learner-learner Collaborative learning, especially in the e-learning
interaction. As designers of computer-based learning, we
context, is a great deal cheaper than programs that are
have dwelt more on the ﬁ rst two types of interaction and
high on immersiveness. As value-conscious corporations
often neglected the latter two. The reasons for this are seek to economize on their training, there could not be
both deﬁ nitional and historical.
a better reason than this to opt for collaborative learning
methods.
“Self-paced” learning—by deﬁ nition—does not require
us to take either instructors or other learners into account.
Learning in collaboration with other learners is no
This habit, developed over the last decade-and-a-half of different from working along with other people. Learning
designing computer-based learning, has been hard to groups that proceed by discussion and by helping each
shake off, and applications such as virtual classrooms other clarify ideas and concepts gain from the multiple
and e-tutoring have found few takers, especially in the perspectives brought to the table by different members
corporate training domain. Security concerns and the of the group. This doesn’t just enable faster learning, but
“sensitivities” of corporate clients have prevented us by making the learning more meaningful it ensures that

the motivation levels of learners remain high. As studies not about putting the learner in touch with the learning
have shown, more learners complete the courses they material, but with herself. Learners, especially those in
take when a measure of collaboration has been thrown the corporate context, are often smarter at determining
in. Contrast this with a “self-paced” learner who says that their own learning needs than we give them credit for. We
she “found that I wanted to just click quickly through the
often tend to over-estimate the “learning” that the content
screens without reading them thoroughly.”
needs to deliver in order for learners to assimilate it.
However, collaborative learning, especially in the Motivation, engagement, and immersion, the noble triarchy
e-learning domain, poses unique challenges for that govern our business, are all to be found within the
instructional designers. While the tools of collaboration—
learner, and collaborative learning is as good a means of
online forums, chat rooms, virtual classrooms—have long
exploiting these “resources” as any. For e-learning design
been available, instructional designers do not have much
to fully address the learner’s needs, we must leverage
experience in harnessing these tools for the purposes of
technologies that unlock the richness of learner-instructor
training. However, the greater challenge designers face and learner-learner interaction. As many e-learning
is in the blending of learner-content interaction with developers have found, satisfying the online learner is
collaborative interactions. Traditional e-learning gives not an easy proposition—it requires imagination and the
instructional designers much greater control over the willingness to relinquish a degree of instructional control.
learning material and the learning delivery process than But give her the opportunity, and she can be as ingenious
collaborative learning techniques do. To cede a part of this
as the swirling crowd of “learners” at the Mumbai railroad
control and to allow learners to “construct” their learning
station.
will be a difﬁ cult act.
But, we need to remind ourselves that interactivity is
Dinesh Warrier is a Senior Instructional Content e-learning solutions for 300+ clients across the US, UK,
Designer at Tata Interactive Systems.
Europe, Australia, and Asia. Its client roster includes names
such as British Airways, Citibank, Colgate-Palmolive,
Tata Interactive Systems is a pioneer in the design and GlaxoSmithKline, HP, McGraw-Hill, ntl, Orange, Pearson
development of e-learning solutions. Set up in 1990, it has
Education, Qwest, Royal Mail, Swiss Re, UNICEF, University of
15 years of experience in creating innovative and cutting-
Phoenix, and Vodafone. Tata Interactive Systems’ processes
edge solutions for corporations, educational institutions, have been assessed at Level 5 in both the SEI CMM and
and government bodies. Its service bouquet includes the SEI P-CMM frameworks by KPMG—the only e-learning
Simulations, Systems Training, New Hire Training, Business
organization in the world with this distinction.
Processes and Skills Training, Regulatory and Compliance
Training, Sales and Customer Service Training, Adaptive Tata Interactive Systems is part of the $14 billion Tata
Assessments, Story-based Learning Objects, and EPSS. Group, one of India’s largest and most trusted business
Tata Interactive Systems has bagged eighteen prestigious
houses, with more than 91 companies in diversiﬁ ed sectors
international awards—including the Brandon Hall such as steel, automobiles, cement, telecom, and IT.
Excellence in Learning Award 2004 and Training magazine’s
More information about Tata Interactive Systems may be
APX Award 2003 for Best Courseware Design—and
obtained at www.tatainteractive.com.
nominations for the WOLCE Awards.
With a global team of 850 multi-disciplinary specialists,
Tata Interactive Systems has developed more than 950