Designing for Learners, Designing for Users
I recently conducted some online course usability reviews for a client when I came across a strange but, I suspect, not unusual phenomenon that I have encountered elsewhere in the past. Threaded discussion areas are one of the mainstays of the traditional online course and one expects to see a high level of interaction there, yet I was dismayed to see that a considerable proportion of the online discussion in these courses was focused on troubleshooting the technical failings and logistical flaws of the course, with very little discussion about the actual course content. In one example, students attempted over a period of two weeks of asynchronous discussion to arrange a time for a synchronous chat.
What were these students actually learning? Looking at this course, I was beginning to wonder if at the end of the session the only thing the students learned was how to use the technical features of the course, and even that was borderline!
Learners, Users: Who's Who?
The example above illustrates a problem with online course environments that I've seen too often in my experience as an online instructor, course designer, and—perhaps most important—student. While considerable time is rightly devoted to the development of learning outcomes, goals, activities, and assignments for the online environment, there is little or no consideration for making that environment transparent enough so that learners can engage in the learning activities instead of having to take a crash course in overcoming idiosyncratic interface design. The trouble comes from not recognizing the distinction between the roles of user and learner in the online environment.
Online courses that are designed for learners without any thought to users invariably results in frustrated students who can't figure out how to negotiate an online course. It's all very well to provide forms of interactivity, such as discussions and collaborative assignments, but if students can't understand the information architecture of the course in order to move efficiently from one section to another, then the learning activities are in vain. The poor usability of the online course, therefore, inhibits the students' ability to learn, as they end up spending the majority of their time on the phone to the Help Desk instead of to their instructor or fellow students, or with their noses in the Help manual rather than a textbook, journal article, or discussion thread.
Making the Distinction
MIT caused a stir in educational circles by announcing their open courseware initiative, in which all course documentation will be made freely available online. This idea butted against the prevailing trend of locking everything up behind a tightly guarded firewall and only allowing passage through the main gates after paying the entrance fee. MIT's point is, rightly, that genuine education doesn't exist as a collection of online content—static, interactive, animated or otherwise. Rather learning is something much greater than a simple transmission of information through the process of downloading.
What MIT has done, in fact, is separate the needs of the learner from the needs of the user in an online context. Open courseware is an environment for users. Learners aren't part of the picture because, as MIT maintains, learning occurs elsewhere (i.e. on the MIT campus, with students and faculty). That's not to say that you can't enjoy a successful learning experience sitting in your office or living room, connecting with others via the Internet. Yet, as online courses from institutes of higher education have flooded the marketplace and become a constant source of criticism for their poor design and high drop-out rates, it is clear that the rarely made distinction between learners and users is problematic.
Form vs. Content
The difference between users and learners can be boiled down to the issue of form versus content. This is even more apparent in the online course environment. Users, for the most part, are interacting with the form of the Web course—that is, your interface, navigation, information architecture, and visual design both of your screen layout and of the actual content. By navigating their way through the form of your Web-based environment, users can access the content, at which point they can don their learner's cap and get down to the business of interacting with the content, communicating with the instructor and fellow students, and—surprise!—learning.
