Input desired from professional Instructional Designers and eLearning developers
At our organization we employ web-based distance learning courses through an LMS. Many of the courses we develop in-house are not developed by people with degrees in Instructional Design. Instead, as is often the case, they are developed by people with no special educational accolades, but who do have years of experience within the organization. These courses are often very rich in information.
This is where the dilemma occurs. An instructional designer once told me that lessons developed for distance learning courses should be “self-contained”. That is to say, the content developer should limit (url) linking to additional materials outside the actual course. (These “linked to” materials might be within the domain of the training, but not necessarily and might be anywhere on the web.)
Additionally, the instructional designer mentioned that if material (to a lesson or course) is important enough to a lesson or course, the material should be incorporated into the course, not just linked to from somewhere within a course lesson.
Instructionally, what are considered “good practices” in regards to linking to outside materials? (I would really appreciate links to any white papers on the subject).
Obviously there are several pros and cons to including URL links to information outside a web-based course:
Pros:
1) Make the lesson “richer” by adding links to additional information.
Cons:
1) Links need to be periodically checked for validity and correct content/context.
2) Report metrics (student time viewing material) provided by a LMS can be invalidated if reading outside material is elective. (Some students do and some don’t read the material, how to tell using LMS reports?)
3) Outside material may allow the student “drift away” from the core lesson (especially if linking to outside material that might contain additional links.)
I would really appreciate any comments (pro and con) from Instructional Designers or seasoned developers in the community. If anyone knows of any white papers that address this issue, please include links to the resources.
Thank you,
TPK
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