Dear Online Courses - You Stink

I'll admit at the beginning: I've sold online courses in the past and now that I've been on the "student" side of the fence, I have many regrets to what I've sold people. While the information was really good, the delivery? Oh poor you. I'm sorry. No refunds. It was years ago. But still. I'll be the first to admit that I now have new opinions on what needs to exist to make an online course better/useful/worth it.

First Off, Stop With Restrictions

I'm taking a course right now and I'm on the second little video module. THANKFULLY, I can speed up the playback. BUT. I can't fast forward. Here's the problem there: I'm watching a screen very slowly fill with ten rules. I know there will be ten because the graphic has room for ten. I'm on three. If I speed this guy up to the max, he sounds like a bee, but it's still way slower than I can read. I tried fast forwarding to the tenth rule so I could just pause and read them at my pace.

No. Restricted. You can't fast forward until you've consumed at least 80% of this module. Piss off. You're not my real dad. Let me do what I want. It's my learning method.

That's problem number one: if your course delivery mechanisms challenges my learning method, how well do you think I'm going to learn the lesson? (Hint: I paused my course to write this letter to you.)

Second, Stop it with Clip Art

Zero humans alive think your liberal use of clip art is interesting or helpful.

I'm watching this terrifying bastard slowly wave his hand around while a bunch of bullets populate the screen to his left. Boring bullets. Fine, we learn with those, I guess. But I don't have to watch this animation build. Just dump the information in front of me.

I had to take a mandatory security training the other day, and I had to do things like click on the briefcase or the printer or the monitor to get more information. I wanted to choke out Carmen San Diego or whoever it was trying to get me to be more security-minded. Did I mention "mandatory" course?

Just one more of these:

I just want to learn what I'm trying to learn. I actually get a "badge" after this is completed. I wish the badge read: "Endured horrific art."

Third: It's Okay to Be Human

I understand how this particular course I'm taking right now was made. Someone who was really smart probably spent a little time explaining all the core principles that they intended to teach me, and then, a "writer" got involved and wrote sentences. Real concise sentences. Like, very learnable sentences. The white rice with no salt or butter of sentences.

There's another problem with this writer trying to teach me: they write like a marketer. "...makes it possible to develop more robust products..." <- No one talks like this. The only time a non-marketer says the word "robust" is when they really honest-to-Buddha mean it. Like, "We thought of everything. Literally, we'd be stunned if you came up with something not in here." That's a great time to say robust. But a methodology doesn't inherently deliver "more robust products" unless there are actual steps built in that ensure that outcome.

And even then, no one talks like that.

Please train using human sentences that human people would say to other humans. "In a world where AI can write for you," don't let it suck the humanity out of information transfer.

I gotta do one more picture.

Get it. Expenses are reduced. Someone...someone designed this. Just think about that. They wanted to tell me that if I followed this method, it would lead to reduced expenses. And this is the graphic. It's not whimsical. It's truly horrific. I'm not learning better. (Okay, I'll stop about the graphics.)

Interaction is a Tool - It's One Tool

In the mandatory security training, there was a whole lot of required clicking: "Click on which parts of this email give away that it's a phishing attempt." That wasn't so bad, because it emulated an email. Then, there were "Click on potential physical security issues." I get it. Fine. Worst, though, Click on this thing that is a graphic made to look like something specific and then we'll just continue the narration. THAT stinks.

We don't necessarily learn or retain better because of interaction of the 'click here' variety. We learn through repetition, putting something into practice, emulation, etc.

Let Me Learn My Own Way

My own sin is that my courses were mostly talking head. I'd present information. You'd have to watch it (or at least listen) to absorb it. I'd give you my notes, but those would be useless without the talk track. See? I forced one learning style on you.

As a learner, watching someone talk in a video is probably my worst possible way to learn. I'm not that much better by just reading. I find that I need to be able to probe the information and query a lot before I feel I understand it. Then, I learn even more by sharing what I've learned with others, teaching them what I think I've learned, and hearing the questions they ask when invariably I don't teach it as well.

I have a GPT that I've trained to help me understand investment fundamentals. I've fed it things like Charlie Munger's writing, the Berkshire Hathaway annual letters, transcripts from several interviews from key financial minds. I can then query the gpt and ask it questions. I can have it help me study by making up quizzes for me to answer. I can have it create flash cards, if I want.

That's how I'm learning best.

Online Courses Need to Get More Flexible

That's the real message. In this super long rant. That's what I could've said instead of making you read all this.

But thank goodness this isn't a course. It's a letter to you. You can skim. If you want something to read it to you, copy this and paste it in here.

I want flexibility in online learning tools. Don't you?

Wouldn't that help?

Chris...