eLearn to Drive Defensively

Just recently, I decided that I wanted to take a defensive driving course—under the guise that I would be bettering myself, when in reality, I just wanted a decrease in license points and a reduction in my insurance rate. After this essential decision was made, I next had to choose how I would take the course—in a classroom or online.

Courses on driving defensively have historically been given in the classroom setting, requiring students to sit through 5 hours of having automotive information tossed their way. Though I have not personally taken one of these types of courses, my imagination runs rampant on the types of things that could be going through these students’ minds during the class time—“has it really only been 20 minutes,” “when is the next break,” “I wonder if I need reservations for P.F. Changs to eat there tonight,” and my favorite one that happens to me all the time, “aw, man, my foot fell asleep again”.

With these conjured thoughts in mind, I eagerly opted for the online course. As far as I’m concerned, anything that is elearning has to be more exciting.

After spending 6 hours taking this course online—it’s 6 hours for the online course versus 5 hours for the in-class course—I realized that maybe I made my decision too hastily. I certainly learned a lot about automotive rules and regulations, which is obviously the main point of taking the course, but I now know that not all elearning is engaging.

For this particular course, there was definitely room for improvement, but to be fair, there’s always room for improvement with any elearning course as far as I’m concerned. Certain factors that I tend to take for granted like audio, graphically pleasing icons, exciting animations adding some motion to the screen, appropriate chunking of topics within a module or lesson, and so forth—I was really missing all of these components by the time I completed the last topic, topic 30, of the first of 4 modules. With approximately 5 hours of course remaining, I came to the conclusion that I may end up falling asleep at the elearning wheel at some point. So much for my theory that all elearning is engaging.