I love Tom's new post, over at the Rapid eLearning Blog:

9 Ways to Encourage the Adult E-Learners   (click above to read it all) The core of the article is a listing of these nine points, and from my experience in the worlds of both higher education and workplace training, I can see that he's right on target.  He includes some very good suggestions and comments on each:

1. Set clear expectations and objectives Let them know why they’re taking the course and what they should be learning.  People like to get oriented and know what’s expected of them.
2. Adult learners don’t like to fail, and they don’t like to fail publicly.  Make it clear when they are being tested and when they aren't.  (His article says a lot more about this, and I think it's a crucial point. Click above to read the whole thing.)
   
3. Create an environment where they have as much freedom as possible.  Let them click around and explore.  I know that many customers want to lock navigation so that they “get all of the information.”  This is faulty thinking.  If they need to confirm their grasp of the information, then give them exercises to practice applying it so they can demonstrate their understanding in a real way. (The more a learner interacts, the more they're probably learning)
   
4. Give them ways to collect information.  This is a great way to counter the locked navigation issue.  Create situations where they need to make decisions and then free up the navigation to collect the information needed to make decisions.  This is a much better way to assess understanding than viewing a screen full of text.  ( See above.  Dito)
5. Focus on relevance.  I’ve worked on plenty of projects where the learners are never considered.  I recall one company I worked for that wouldn’t let me talk to any potential learners, even though we were rolling the training out to 3500 people across the country.  If you’re content isn’t relevant to the learners, they’ll just tune out and you’re wasting time and money.  You can guarantee that little learning will happen.  (So true.  They have better things to do than waste their time on something that they do not think will help them do their job better.)
   
6. Create a visual design that is friendly and inviting.  This helps with the initial engagement and sets the tone of the course.  I’ve had customers tell me that they can’t do that because the subject matter was real important and serious.  So they needed to have a very serious tone (read boring).  If it’s important, than it makes sense to create a course that’s as visually inviting as possible. (Metaphors really do help people understand complex concepts.)
   
7. Elearning is a multimedia experience so it makes sense to leverage as much of the multimedia as you can (in context though).  You don’t want to add multimedia for the sake of it, but you do want to use all of your resources to create the best course possible.
   
8. Free Willy!  People are like orcas with floppy dorsal fins.  They yearn to be free.  One of the worst experiences in elearning is when the course navigation is locked.  There are better ways to help people learn.  Focus on relevant, decision-making scenarios.  And if you’re building a compliance, click-and-read course with no performance expectations, then make the course as simple as possible so that they learners can get in and out.  Don’t frustrate them or waste their time with a bunch of extra branched scenarios.  Tell them what they need to know and let them go.  (Get them involved.  Use graphical metaphors.)
   
9. Do you need to test everything?  Every day we take in all sorts of information that is critical to meeting our goals.  When my boss sends an email detailing new plans, he doesn’t follow it up with a quiz.  Assessing a person’s understanding is an important part of learning, but do we need to always have a test?  In many ways it retards the learning process. As soon as people find out they’re being tested, they quit learning and focus on how to pass the test.  If you don’t need a test, don’t include one.  If you do need to assess their understanding, perhaps there’s a better way to do so.  (Game Shows!!  Actually, if you are required to test [often the case] little game show-like quizzes along the way will help keep them from failing and build their confidence.)