One of Steve's points was around the fact that eLearning was seen as a money-making machine, and then told the horror story of a course where over 200 students enrolled and only one graduated. There was little feedback around why the course wasn't working. There was QA but the process often becomes a bottle-neck (zombified) that stops change happening. ELearning cannot be managed as a machine because it is more organic, and has a lot of variables that have a lot of different purposes and create a wide range of outcomes.
Image via Wikipedia When they did MUD they had a million users. Richard Bartle "Designing Virtual Worlds" is a recommended book that looks into how Bartle and his crew increased their income substantially - their model was charging a small fee per month, collecting large amounts of data, and then acting on it. Russel and Norvig (2003) "The Intelligent Agent" (neuroscientist who says we are not quite as clever/complex as we might think we are).
Steve handed around some little gizmos to demonstrate a few key points around design, and some central questions that we need to ask about things such as common goals and outcomes. People are essentially flawed and will often be working toward a common goal, but may have private agendas and be doing other things as well. He suggested that many resource developers have a central script "read, paraphrase, write".
The general message was to evaluate, pay attention to feedback, and question the systems that are established.
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