More on Design - PI

It's important to address the science behind instructional design. For reasons unknown, programmed instruction (PI) in eLearning seems to be all but abandoned in much of the learning content I review. In my opinion, this is a flaw in instructional design and worse, is only supported by popular eLearning development tools, because they omit this capability.

Gagne actually pioneered this mode of instruction in the mid 1960s. For those unfamiliar, programmed instruction models assess a learner's needs through some form of testing and loop back, branch-forward, or multi-path based on performance to pass/fail criteria. More robust PI models incorporate both pretesting an posttesting. The biggest advantage to this design model is that delivery of content is customized to a learner's needs because only filtered content is delivered (based on what the learner did not pass). In essence, a form of needs assessment is built into course delivery and the user experience. How cool is that?

Development tools like Macromedia Authorware or CA KnowledgeTRACK were great at facilitating this mode of design. Unfortunately these tools are no longer available, (in all honesty - they were cumbersome to use.) Meanwhile, social and Learning 2.0 suites like Q2 Learning's eCampus currently bake PI functionality into a learning path (Check it out at: http://www.q2learning.com/). None-the-less, this is a methodology we should revive. Take another look at the process illustrated above and decide for yourself.