Critique of E‑learning Simulations and Multiple‑Choice Training Methods

What Can’t You Teach? 3g If this stuff makes people happy, then build more of it, by all means. But if we want to address real issues, we need to discuss per- sonality and how to deal with it. I have insisted, as long as I have been discussing education,” that learning has to be experientially based. I proposed building complex social simulators 20 years ago, and this has come to be understood by the e-learning community as telling people they are in a situation that they may or may not relate to instead of actually putting them into a very realistic simulation of that situation. The reason they do it that way is money, of course, but something gets lost in the translation. What is the difference? Suppose that I tell you that you are a baseball player in the major leagues and your team is down by one run with one out in the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded. I then give you a set of multiple choices about what to do on the first pitch (like, a—take the first pitch, b—look for a fast ball, etc.). What is the problem with this? There are right answers about what to do, but they depend on many variables (Do you know this pitcher’s habits? How have you been hitting today? How fast is the guy on third?). Pretending that we can abstract a situa- tion with a simple description and then suggest there is a right answer, is absurd. But more important, if you have never actually been in that situation, if you have never played baseball, your comprehension of the unmentioned details is likely to be zero. Attempting to teach any- thing through short descriptions of situations followed by multiple choice answers is just dumb. Why, then, do e-learning companies keep on building courses that sound like that? Usually the answer is that corporations that don’t know any better asked them to. What does this have to do with altering basic behavior? I do in- deed play baseball, as I have said, and what I would do in that situ- ation depends on my personality in many ways. It also depends on an accurate assessment of my own abilities. What it doesn’t depend on is deep thought. Professional athletes do not become professional athletes owing to their superior cognitive abilities. They have superior physical abilities and rely on instinct for thinking. They do what they “know” to do. They don’t think it out. Coaches try like crazy to get them to think it out, but you often can find a 20-year professional vet- eran getting chewed out by his coach and being asked, What were you HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023785