Absorb activities enable learners to obtain crucial, up-to-date information they need to do their jobs or further. Even though learners may seem physically passive, they are actually mentally active in Absorb activities. They read, listen, watch, perceive, consider and judge the information. In Absorb activities, content is in control and they are good partners to other kinds of activities in terms of preparing learners Do and Connect activities.
Common type of Absorb activities are Presentations, Readings, Stories by a teacher and Field trips. Presentations supply needed information in a clear, well-organized, logical sequence. They allow the designer to control the sequence of learning experiences. The types of presentations can be classified as slide shows, physical demonstrations, software demonstrations, informational films, dramas and discussions.
Slide shows are alike classroom slide shows and primarily rely on text and graphics to convey the information. In a physical demonstration, learners see a person performing a procedure. A software demonstration let learners watch a clear sequence of actions explained by a commentary. However a software demonstration is not a software simulation. In demonstrations, learners watch and listen as someone else operates the software. In simulations, learners perform the operations. Informational films are used to present a logical narrative for which the order of images and experiences is important, for example to convey cause and effect relationships or to follow a chronological sequence. A drama is a fictional counterpart of informational films; learners watch a fictional scene among people. Discussions are events wherein people interact and we learn from what they say and do.
Reading activities are an important part of a new definition of learning. Instead of teaching people to memorize and recall the information, today we should teach them how to find, read and understand the information when they need it. Reading activities for e-learning typically provide access to reading in three ways: Individual documents, libraries of documents and predefined searches to find Internet sources. Creating an online library by integrating libraries into e-learning courses has advantages for e-learning designers. Thanks to online libraries, reading activity does not fail if a single source of information removes from the Web or an individual server goes down, research and reading activities can be combined easily as well.
Stories by a teacher activities relate individual human experiences , they make information real and personal. Even though stories are often what learners remember best, designers leave out them when converting classroom courses into e-learning. Stories are useful to demonstrate the applicability or importance of what is being taught, give concrete instances of the subject matter and humanize a subject by showing its effects on people. Hero, love, disaster and discovery stories and tragedies are some of story types. Stories must be short and focused, credible, dramatic, up to the point and clear.
At last, online Field trips take learners on educational excursions to places where they can observe concrete examples of what they are learning. The essential aspect of the field trips is not walking from example to example, but examining the examples and seeing relationships among them. They let learners experience a variety of real-world examples the way they might on a physical field trip or visit a well-stocked museum. Types of fields trips are guided tours and museums. The guided tour orients the learner in a virtual or real environment. There are variations of guided tours such as personal travel diaries, Web tours in an online meeting and tours of imaginary worlds such as a human body, an atom or a cave. Virtual museums let learners create their own tours and displays. In order to integrate museums into e-learning, designers should create a learner’s tour of the museum, create research activities or combine a museum with a presentation or reading.
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