Maybe you saw the new movie Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice. Maybe you didn’t. Early reviews weren’t great—so it’s anyone’s guess. Just look at this video, and you’ll see how one of the main actors is feeling about early feedback.

However, when a comic book franchise releases a movie, the massive media blitz of previews makes it so that even if you didn’t go and see it, you get the basic premise of the film. In this movie, Batman and Superman face off—leaving major destruction in their wake.

The two heroes use their superpowers against each other rather than on external “bad guys”…which got us thinking about eLearning.

It raised the question: Can course features actually work against each other?

Like Batman and Superman who have a slew of handy super powers—courses with excessive bells and whistles can actually have a negative impact on the learner.

We’ve talked before about the importance of simplicity in eLearning, but let’s take a deeper dive into how overdone features can work against the learner. We’ll put ourselves in the learner’s shoes for a moment so we can relate with how they might feel about a course that’s overloaded with features (and working against itself like Batman and Superman.)

Cool Vs. Practical

One of the toughest things for new designers/developers to do is to show restraint.

Let’s use a budding Articulate Storyline developer as an example. As their skills grow and they figure out how to do new things, they get excited about including those into their course. Not because they have determined it will add to the learning, but because they think it’s cool.

For example, I was working with one of our clients recently and they showed me a sample where they added a slider function (one of the new features in Storyline 2) to an opening slide. I found it confusing and didn’t understand why it was there.

When I asked them why they added it, they responded, “It’s neat.” Unfortunately neat doesn’t equal beneficial. Added features need to be there for a purpose and that purpose is to further the learning. If it doesn’t, it probably shouldn’t be there.

Cognitive Overload

In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to how much stress is being put on the working memory of an individual by the stimuli around them. In the case of eLearning, everything happening within your course adds to the cognitive load of the learner. Too many things going on at the same time will overload the working memory and negatively influence the learning process.

This is particularly compounded by stimuli within the same “channel” such as the visuals. Simply put, if the user has to look at too many things, they’re not going to remember all the things you want them to.

So if you have a picture, and there’s text on the screen, they’re sort of splitting the learner’s visual attention. If you then add in animations while they’re trying to read the text, the learner has too many things to pay attention to and your course starts fighting against itself.

Intuitive Design

The bottom line here is that learning isn’t easy. If it was, we probably wouldn’t need the course we’re providing to our learner. Therefore, we need to provide as few barriers to the learning as possible.

Let’s go back to the slider example from earlier in this article. If something “cool” is confusing to the learner, they’re spending energy trying to figure out how to use your course that should be used trying to learn your material.

Anything that takes away from the learning process should be avoided because it’s obstructing the main objective. Pretty soon, you’re going to make your learner want to self-destruct. Like in the movie, your learner will be scratching his or her head, wondering what kind of a hero…I mean course…it really needs.

Be a Hero, Not a Bad Guy

The moral to this story? Overdone course features are distracting for learners—and take the focus off your major objective, which is to teach learners.

Now, your client may not have paid you a Hollywood budget worth to create a course—but even still—a well-done course often means more work down the road (and we know comic book movies are also skilled at setting up those sequels, too.)

Be sure your features aren’t working against each other with rounds of user testing before it goes live. This will help you spot any places where you’re getting into Batman V Superman territory.