The Instructional Designers Meetup organized by Instructional Desginers Community of India (IDCI) happened on August 22, 2009. Abhinava presented his own theory called the LH theory in public for the first time. IDCI is very happy and proud to have hosted such a thought provoking session.
If you are wondering what is LH theory, please refer to the slides of Abhinava’s presentation :
Sreya was the first to share her thoughts on LH theory in her blog post. She has summarized the theory really well and has some good thoughts. Archana also has an awesome post on LH theory .
Since we already have awesome summaries, I am going to put down my thoughts on the theory right away.
I appreciate LH theory because it drives home the point that Instructional Designing is beyond creating content and designing instructional strategies.
When you get started with an e-learning project, all that is there in your mind is to write the Analysis and Design document, create course outline, write learning objectives, think of instructional strategies, think about the content in terms of images, animations, interactivity and the list goes on and on.
All that you seek to achieve is exercise your Instructional Design skills and complete the project successfully.
Abhinava’s LH theory wakes you up and tells you “Think about Learners. Think about Learning”
LH theory stresses the need to love your learners, empathize with your learners, care for your learners and most importantly address their need.
If someone wants to learn and there is a need, he/she may learn by reading a wiki page. If the same person does not want to learn and there is no need, even a game based learning program cannot enthuse or motivate him/her.
I remember going through an e-learning course that was an induction program. That course was supposed to have won some excellence award. It had great visuals. To be frank, I got nothing out of the course. I got bored with the content. Though the course had brilliant visuals, it failed to meet the needs of the learner. The graphic designer may feel proud of his skills. But then the purpose of the course has not been met.
I liked the way Abhinava said that induction programs must not have information that is already available on the company website. You need to design the induction program in such a fashion that at the end of it, the new hire must feel enthused and get ready to add value to the company’s growth.
Abhinava had lot of similar examples to stress the fact that more than anything you need to think about the people for whom you are trying to create some learning value.
I would like to relate something slightly out of context, yet very relevant here. I have been trying to get people to write blog posts in the IDCI site. I also tried announcing the IDCI topic of the month. No one felt enthused. No one bothered.
Abhinava took a session on LH theory. His session was engaging, entertaining and got everyone thinking. Even before I called out to people to write blog posts on LH theory, posts were already out and people were already tweeting about LH theory. People wrote blog posts and tweeted about LH theory because they could feel the value in the theory. They wrote blog posts because they learnt something and they were sure this is going to be of great value to many others. They wanted to share LH theory because they wanted to and knew there is a need to understand LH theory.
I think LH theory rocks and you need to keep this in mind while designing any kind of training.
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