Is PowerPoint Destroying ELearning?

By: Justin Ferriman • May 23, 2013
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ppt-stinks-jpgI was messing around with Articulate Storyline and found myself wondering: are the popular rapid elearning development tools being held captive by the learning industry’s past?

Don’t get me wrong, the major players all have very nice and robust offerings. Every year they are adding new features, which is great, but at the same time these new features are all built upon the same foundation – and in many cases this foundation is Microsoft PowerPoint.

Funny enough, it seems like most elearning courses can be traced back to PowerPoint in some capacity. Heck, most of them allow you to import PowerPoint. But does using PowerPoint as the base for our learning pigeon-hole us into thinking about learning from a PowerPoint perspective? You know what I mean: Linear. Bullet points. Display mode. Slides. Clipart.

It just seems… lacking.

This industry seems poised for some major disruption. Someone who can come in and buck the status quo, to make instructional designers forget about PowerPoint for a second and focus on learning that doesn’t live by the same PowerPoint rules. Learning is dynamic and flexible – so should be the tools and thought processes we have when creating it.

PowerPoint is just fine for many situations, yet “death by PowerPoint” is still creeping into elearning. A tool that can remove these walls, and prevent us from getting dizzy (I’m looking at you Prezi) will have an uphill battle, but if marketed properly, could have a profound impact on the entire rapid course development industry.

Justin Ferriman

Justin started LearnDash, the WordPress LMS trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide. He is currently founder & CEO of GapScout. Justin’s Homepage | GapScout | Twitter