Basically physics describes everything that surrounds us, including the properties and laws that allow us to explain and/or forecast what is going to happen to a specific environment or object. In the next few paragraphs I will try to explain some complex elearning concepts by relating them to physics laws and principles!
Dynamics:
If you don’t apply forces, the body will persevere in its current state (of motion, or quiet).:The first step is always the hardest, but you have to take it in order to make your training program come to life. If you have some kind of knowledge and you wish to share it with your company or sell to potential customers, you will have to take some action in order to make it happen. Start getting your ideas down, and develop your strategy.
On the topic of how to get started, check out this blog post entitled “The Top 10 E-Learning Activities to create a successful project” then activate your Docebo free trial, and start putting your ideas into practice!F=M x a : this is the most important law of mechanics.:
This is a lot more meaningful when inverted, i.e. F/M = a. Using this formula we can understand that the acceleration (a), which we can interpret as the efficiency or quality of our training program, is equivalent to all the efforts we make (the Force F we apply), divided by all the obstacles and difficulties that makes our program more complicated (the mass M).
For example, if you employ a top graphic designer, a world class instructional designer and your HR team to assess the gaps in your employee’s knowledge and address those gaps via engaging content and top class user experience, you are going to apply a great “force” – on the other hand, failing to create a good user experience, sticking with legacy LMSs or providing boring content will effectively weigh you down. The key to high quality and efficiency is to make the “forces” behind your elearning program greater than the “masses” that slow it down.
Thermodynamics:
First law of thermodynamics: efficiency is probably the most sought after property in all systems.:
Efficiency is affected by the natural losses of energy that we can measure during any process, mostly due to things like friction and air resistance. During the creation and delivery of your learning program you will find many elements of friction that will affect the end results of the program such as completion rate and retention. Your goal is to reduce the elements of friction by removing potential obstacles to the learner experience, such as unfriendly interfaces, poor IT infrastructure or inadequate training content.
For example, 40% of people will abandon a web page if it takes more than three seconds to load (Source: Econsultancy) and 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience (Source: Customers 2020 – The Future of B-to-B Customer Experience). These 2 statistics clarify just how important it is to “reduce friction” between the user and the content itself in order to achieve an optimal learning experience.
Electromagnetism:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
This is a very famous quote from Thomas Edison. In order to create the best product Edison tried 10,000 different materials until he found the perfect ‘ingredient’ for his light bulbs.
When thinking about your elearning program, you should be very careful in choosing the (learning) materials, the platform, the strategy you need, depending on what your goals and audience are, as every audience has different requirements and needs.