The other speaker I really enjoyed was David Merrill, a professor in the Instructional Technology Department at Utah State. He has been evaluating computerized courses using a five star scorecard. And he is right. There were a few good uses of computerized instruction tools, but they were few and far between. For example, Dr. Merrill showed us a very nice looking course that was centered around a medieval theme and was supposed to teach auto body estimation.
Knights emerge and joust with automobiles and the students score the damage, or some such nonsense.
The problem is that these are two totally different mental images, so the students have to juggle both in their heads. I have a mental picture of one of these trainees keeping a sword in his office at the auto shop - a thought almost scarier than driving through a Utah snowstorm. Dr. Merrill's advice was that you should never allow the graphic artists on your team to design training materials. Unfortunately, graphic artists also have the last word in product development. I am not talking about fancy little bells and whistles that developers love to add to their code to show off.