In his foreword to The Elements of Style, Roger Angell describes the plight of his stepfather, E. B. White who revised the original text of this famous book by William Strunk Jr. After a day of toil at his typewriter, he would emerge dissatisfied from his study, having sent off an editorial piece for The New Yorker, shorter than the article you are reading now. Invariably as the copy was sent off he would express dissatisfaction with his efforts…
“It isn’t good enough… I wish it were better.”
The chances are that this lament will either resonate with e-learning authors completely, or not at all. I must admit that I have a tendency to strive for editorial perfection, a mind-set hardwired from an earlier career in the academic publishing world. Regular readers of my column will know that I like to draw analogies, so here I’d like to pose the question: what can e-learning authors learn from the world of academic publishing to make their e-learning better?
The subject matter expert/instructional designer is often required to be a jack of all trades.
While the book publisher pulls together a myriad of skilled professions to get a book on the shelf, regrettably the subject matter expert/instructional designer is often required to be a jack of all trades, tasked with wearing many hats during the development process, and with a remit to produce high quality, on a low budget, oh, and with a rapid turnaround!
So, here are a few stages and tips that come to mind.
Planning
The analogy here is obvious – the author (guided by the commissioning editor) decides what content is needed, and a structure for the book. Similarly the instructional designer needs to know “what’s in” and “what’s out”. They need to know what the focus is – the learning outcomes, and how the module is going to be structured – e.g. in chapters, guided by the project sponsor. So far so good: both ‘authors’ are kind of on the same page.
Authoring
Here both types of authors use their subject matter expertise to create engaging content. (In the case of e-learning, the author has the additional challenge of engaging the learner with meaningful interaction, but that’s a subject for another post.)
The subject matter expert/instructional designer is often required to be a jack of all trades..
Copy-editing
While in the book publishing world copy-editing is a skilled profession, it’s typically the in-house e-learning author who is tasked with ensuring that the text-based element is up to scratch. Learners need to understand the messaging; they need to ‘get it’ first time.
“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” Robert McCloskey, U.S. State Department spokesman, citing an unspecified press briefing during the Vietnam war.
Like copy-editors, instructional designers can improve the clarity and effectiveness of their writing by applying the 5 Cs of copy-editing to ensure the copy is Clear, Correct, Concise, Consistent and Complete. In addition they need to ensure that the messaging flows from screen to screen and chapter to chapter. You know in your head what you meant to say …but is that really what the learner understood? Getting this right depends on the instructional designer’s ability to step into the shoes of the learner, exploring the module as if for the first time, interacting with and making sense of what they do and read.
To keep the learner engaged with the content, try to pull out certain elements that give a module a relevant, unifying theme.
House Style
For publishers, copy-editing is informed by a House Style, a set of rules for defining a consistent style across publications. By loose comparison, an e-learning designer might call this the ‘look and feel’ or the course ‘style guide’. It may be an idea to go for a level of consistent style across all of your modules (or maybe a series of modules), but to keep the learner engaged with the content, try to pull out certain elements that give a module a relevant, unifying theme.
Text wise, elements might include font sizes and colours, styles for headings, subheadings, emphasis words, notes on terminology and layouts for lists or other recurring items. Consistent visual themes might include styles for backgrounds, buttons, icons, picture borders, video players etc. Now…
Have you ever read a really good book that was hard to get into at first and then suddenly you couldn’t put it down? The chances were that the book was poorly typeset, which made reading uncomfortable until eventually you got used to it and focused on the story, not the type
Type should be “read and not seen”. If you find yourself noticing the type rather than the message, the page is probably typeset badly. Similarly, well designed e-learning screens transfer strong messages by using text that is simply and consistently laid out, and visuals that flow effortlessly, instead of jarring unpleasantly on the eye.
Design
A publisher will often team an author with a graphic designer who can select or create visuals and help give the work a consistent and professional visual feel. If you are lucky, your e-learning project sponsor will do the same for you! If not, authors can follow some simple guidelines, such as following pre-defined look and feel guidelines to keep the design looking professional and consistent, doing an in-house ‘photo-shoot’, sourcing graphics from good stock sites and using borders to create a unifying theme.
Peer review
With the content in place, a publisher will arrange for authored work to be subjected to scrutiny by other experts in the field. In the case of e-learning, ideally there’s a process for review among other experts or project sponsors. They will ensure the piece is on target, and meeting the needs of the organisation and the learners, while there is still time to make recommendations for changes.
While there is some overlap, peer-review goes beyond copy-editing as it challenges the editorial messaging. For example the author might carry out a thorough copy-edit, but engage with peers and management to validate the content. Where an e-learning publishing system has the capability for online collaborative working, this is an easy process to set up.
Proof-reading
No work is ready for publishing until it has been thoroughly proof-read. Here are some examples to illustrate why:
- After tea breaks staff should empty the teapot and stand upside down on the draining board.
- Only provide oil to people in plastic containers.
- We provide the lowest prices and workmanship.
Publishers employ professional proof-readers who are trained and practiced in spotting the kind of typographical errors mere mortals are likely to miss. These are often the type of errors that are also missed by computerized spell-checkers, such as missing or incorrect punctuation, missing words like ‘a’ or ‘the’, homophones or verb agreement. Ideally e-learning authors should find someone else to proof their work, before publication.
If any of the techniques I’ve discussed aren’t part of your end-to-end content creation process, you have:
1) an area of potential weakness in your service,
2): a real opportunity to make your outputs even better than they are now.
If these techniques aren’t part of your process, you have a real opportunity to make your outputs even better.
In conclusion, I’d like to come back now to my opening paragraph and recommend a short book that stands the test of time. The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White outlines a concise and lucid guide that promises to enhance the writing skills of anyone who does not already write for a living.
I decided to call my article “I can’t believe it’s not better”. Had I applied some of the rules explained in the guide (for example 15. Put statements in positive form, 16. Use definitive, specific and concrete language, 17. Omit needless words) I might have used E.B. White’s own words, “I wish it were better”, however; I thought my title would grab your attention. I hope it did.
If you have any questions, or suggestions for future articles please e-mail me at the address below.
Patricia Kyle, PhD
Director, LearnAbilityTM and Partner, Mohive
pkyle@learnability.net