Getting Around

Our most recent class topic was Learner Control; specifically, how navigation schemes can help or hinder learning. Not only do poor metacognitive skills cause learners to make poor choices, but poor navigation can achieve the same result. If the learner doesn't know where to go next, he or she might just close out of the course and never come back if the experience was frustrating enough. One of the key reasons that some learners do not complete online learning is because of technological issues. This could be due to a variety of reasons: the course froze up; the data didn't transmit properly; or the navigation wasn't clear enough. An easy way to ensure clear navigation in an e-Learning course is to use a program such as FlashForm to help you build a template. It includes many of these things.

On a side note, I did a post for our wiki on Mystery Meat Navigation. This is a subject close to my heart because our department made an ill-advised move a few years ago and designed our website with a classic example of mystery meat navigation. Users had to click on unlabeled images to find out how to navigate through our site. It was a resounding flop and created a good deal of ill will that it took us over a year to resolve. We went back to a more standard navigational format within a year, but I've kept a screen print of the problematic navigation on my cubicle wall ever since as a reminder to keep our users in mind. It's not hard to see the allure of navigational styles where the user navigates through a series of images and mouseover menus. It is cool at a conceptual, "gee whiz" kind of level, but if it doesn't help users navigate, it's a lot of work for nothing. My favorite example of MMN (I think it deserves its own acronym) is the web site of a certain restaurant famous for its delicious burritos. It's better than it used to be, but when you load the site, you get a lone image in the upper left-hand corner. Hint: You click on that image to display the navigation. :-)