Using The CAF model to design effective e-learning interactions

Ross Woods, 2019, summarised and adapted from Michael Allen

An eLearning course yields much better learning outcomes when is designed from the very beginning to incorporate students' active involvement with the content. The CCAF Model is very useful for designing eLearning interactions. The initials stand for Context, Challenging activities, and Feedback, and specify the factors for designing eLearning interactions. This article examines each factor separately, and includes some practical tips on how to integrate each one into instructional design. (And these principles apply equally to face-to-face teaching in vocational and professional education.)

Give a Context

A context helps students connect with the real world, to what they need to know and how they should apply it in real life. It connects theory and practical application. Offer a variety of interactions, such as context-related examples, case studies, simulations, and branching scenarios.

1. Solve realistic problems
   Give students the opportunity to solve problems that they may also encounter at work. Force them to make risk-free work-related decisions.
2. Consequences
   Use branching what-if scenarios and case studies to show them the consequences of their choices.

Give Challenging activities

Start by setting the right kind of activity:

1. Right level of difficulty
   Use activities that challenge students so that they can meet the goals and objectives of the lesson. Activities should neither be too easy nor too difficult for them. If they are too easy, students might underestimate their importance, but if they are too difficult, they might quit. It’s best to include activities of various levels of difficulty.
2. Urgency
   Create a sense of urgency to motivate them to complete the lessons as soon as possible. Challenges should always be linked to work performance goals and objectives. Successfully completion raises their self-confidence and increases the probability that they will apply what they have learned.

Challenging activities normally require the tutor to explore, usually with open-ended questions:

1. Consider factors
   Give students distractors to challenge them to consider various factors before making their final decision. Distractors are common misconceptions or easily-confused alternative options. Don’t make it easy for them, and don’t make solutions too obvious.
2. Find information
   Make students search for additional information on their own, so that they actively conribute to the learning process and take responsibility for their own learning. Guide them throughout the process by giving them tips on where to look in order to find the information they need. Isn’t this actually the case in real life?
3. Learn from mistakes
   Give students opportunities to learn from their own mistakes. They need freedom to navigate and experiment within a risk-free environment and see the possible consequences of their alternative actions and decisions. This improves their decision-making and critical thinking skills and allows them to learn by doing.

Give Feedback

Giving your students constructive feedback has always been essential to effective learning. For example, you can explain why a particular answer is correct or incorrect, advise them on what they could do better, or give them tips on where to search to find the correct answer. Feedback contributes to their active engagement, improves their retention of information, and improves their decision-making and problem-solving.

1. ASAP
   Give feedback as soon as possible after each significant interaction. Don’t wait until the final assessment to provide feedback. It’s probably too late to be most effective then.
2. Use templates
   Use ready-made templates. E-learning authoring tools normally allow content developers to add feedback comments to many type of interactivities by filling in the respective fields of the ready-made templates they provide. Although it’s a little time-consuming for instructional designers to add feedback comments for each option, it is undoubtedly the best way to increase the effectiveness of the course.

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Summarised and adapted from: Using The CCAF Model To Design Effective Interactions For eLearning by Michael Allen. Accessed 21 July, 2015 Link