Elearning programs have been faulted in some quarters as not being up to muster because they have a low completion rate. Various reasons have been given for this, from not being sufficiently interactive or entertaining to being too long. While there is validity in such criticism, it doesn’t hold across the board.
I’d like to suggest another possibility – the learner learns what he or she needs and stops. All other information in the program is either irrelevant or already known!! If this is the case, why would we expect the learner to waste his or her time with the remaining content when his/her learning goal has been achieved? Bailing out of a structured learning situation (e.g., walking out of an instructor-led workshop or seminar) when learning is complete is not always easy or convenient. But how many of us have wanted to do just that when we’ve achieved our learning goal. With elearning it’s easy!
If there is any merit to this explanation, elearning has received a bum rap. Bailing out of elearning situations says more about the design of structured training in general than the design of elearning per se. In reality, many times learners need only a portion, sometimes a very small portion, of what they are given in structured learning situations. If this is case, are we wasting time and money on developing and maintaining many structured learning programs?
