A lot has been said about how we can learn from our mistakes:
· “All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.”
- Winston Churchill
· “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.” - Mahatma Gandhi
· “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” - James Joyce
Many instructional designers also believe it’s valuable for learners to be allowed to make mistakes so that they can learn from them. In e-learning, branching is one way to enable learners to make and learn from their own mistakes. Depending upon the answer given or choices made by the student, the user is taken to another area on the page, another page or even another web site. The learner can see the consequences of their choices and learn from their mistakes.
On the other hand, some designers question whether branching wastes the learner’s time by letting them go down “rabbit holes.” Folks in this camp argue that many learners are only taking the course because they have to and just want to complete it as quickly as possible. Still another consideration is the extra time it takes to build in branching.
If you’re trying to decide whether to use branching in your e-learning tools, consider first the training’s purpose. If the content is primarily informational, you probably want to keep it simple and avoid unnecessary branching scenarios. If the e-learning course has time constraints, you may want to focus solely on how to do something correctly. If you are trying to teach good decision making skills, then perhaps branching is the tool for you.
