Learn and Lead

Tony Karrer’s blog had this very hilarious take on technology adoption. Karl Kapp follows it up with another one. And there are many more that provide the humorous side of tech support calls. Sometimes I wonder if the incidents narrated in most of these conversations are actually urban legends. Do such users actually exist who would ask there is the “Any key” on the keyboard? And what assumptions do we make of our users when we create a learning module? I wonder if there are any foundation courses that use these tech support memes to tell the users that there isn’t any key labeled ANY (or NE for that matter) on the keyboard. In most cases elearning courses are expected to be designed and developed for minimum levels of audience knowledge, which can easily lead to the pitfall of mistaking about our audience's pre-requisite knowledge. The key is to understand your audience and build content that doesn’t insult their intelligence.