Leonardo ENERGY’s Impact

This excellent book [1] on e-learning summarises the state of knowledge in the field from a scientific perspective. A few highlights (including a few surprises):

1. The market for professional training is approaching 60 B$ annually in the US. About a third a delivered by technology. Over the past 5 years, e-learning has grown 200% at the expense of classroom learning.
2. The first media comparison study dates from 1947. A classroom was divided in 3 groups, with one group given a lecture, the second watching a movie and the third reading through a text. Subsequent tests showed no significant difference. Hundreds of media comparisons have been conducted meanwhile, confirming that the medium has no influence. Quality of instruction (and interest of the student) is a much more important factor. (our own Cracow experiment confirms this finding)
3. The contiguity principle: Integrating text & graphics is much more effective than separating text in captions.
4. The multimedia principle: using words combined with graphics is much more effective than using words alone.Interestingly, it appears that a sequence of static graphics is more effective than animations. Unless there is a compelling reason, best practice is the use of static sequences rather than animations.
5. The modality principle: words as audio narration to graphics are more effective than on-screen text. We only have a visual and and auditory channel to process information. Using both channels in parallel increases processing capacity.
6. The redundancy principle: explaining visuals with words using both audio and text hurts learning. (we’ve all been exasperated at times by presenters reading their slides). Use one or the other.
7. The coherence principle: adding interesting but loosely related materials hurts the learning process.
8. The personalisation principle: a conversational style and virtual coaches improves learning.
9. The segmenting principle: manage complexity by breaking a lesson into parts.

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This post from Relevant and Valued gives us a few hints about quite a few issues:

• Why Leonardo ENERGY receives limited comments
• Why LE3D develops slowly
• The interest in EPQU magazine

It also forces us to re-think our value proposition to our users.

Above chart distinguishes 7 stages in the user conversion process, and identifies which content carriers and channels to deploy at each stage. We can see a number of clusters:

• Printed media & e-mail marketing are for the converted, i.e. for the ones who already know us
• From eBooks to seminars, a number of tactics that can be used at any stage
• 3 tactics for the early and later stages

The article describes a 6 stage recruitment process, to which it adds evangelism.

Applied to our initiative, we do quite well on acquisition, but need to have more processes for the later stages. A forum such as LE3D provides quite a few barriers to access, so it clearly addresses the users in the later stages. The fact that the forum is a difficult sell is consistent with the fact that we’re weaker in the later stages.

No doubt we’ll have a web session in the near future on this.

Link
[1] Content marketing tactics and when to use them

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