Blogs

With On-Demand courses there are obvious things that make them beneficial from the stand point of learning. There is the convenience aspect, having access to the course anytime from anywhere – yes; Starbucks can be a great place to learn. The visuals and interaction in these types of courses are also nice and they help break from long paragraphs of text to read page after page. The Knowledge Checks and Final Exam questions are obviously helpful and fun; most of us like a little challenge of our whit. But what I think is coolest about On-Demand courses is the ability to stop, start, and review; to learn at one’s own pace.

Being able to stop, start, and review is a great way to solve the “cognitive load” challenge we all have when learning new things. Cognitive load theory basically says that we can only handle so much information at once while learning. We have to have time to process the information and get it “downloaded” into our heads, to take it from short term memory to long term memory. Often, during a live learning experience, we don’t have time for this; we can be overloaded and end up missing things we might have liked to have taken away.

With an On-Demand course, even the recorded lectures, you can stop, think about, reread, back up and review material, or even log out and come back later. This ability to stop, come back later, and review when needed helps break the learning into digestible chunks. It helps avoid things from “going in one ear and out the other” and allows more to be downloaded. Basically, you can get more of what you paid for: knowledge. When it comes to learning, I don’t think there’s anything cooler than that!