cogdogblog: Beautiful, Textbook Instructional Design… I Yawned All the Way to the Post Test

cogdogblog: Beautiful, Textbook Instructional Design… I Yawned All the Way to the Post Test::Alan Levine compares his experience with a beautifully designed, technically perfect piece of online instruction with the way he really learns what he needs to do in order to do his job. I appreciate his lament that there is a lot of technically very well constructed instructional design that, for all its technical perfection, is nothing more than an electronic textbook or some variety of programmed instruction. His own informal, on-the-job learning is somewhat different:

There is no next-next-next path to my everyday informal, experimental, iterative learning and I rely in my circle of online experts to help out when they can, or to dig until I can find an answer or an alternative approach. I repeat this almost every day, and my own dynamic form of learning as doing makes learning by lockstep lesson, well, painful.

I wonder if the tendency to produce electronic textbooks is a result of the training of instructional designers, or if the clients paying for the work, despite claims that they may want something new and innovative, really want a very shiny and flashy textbook? Comments on this question are welcome.