Instructional Design: What Not to Do

Shifting gears for a minute to explore how bad instructional design can just make a mess out of things.

The past few months, I’ve been getting a lot of use out my medical insurance. (Spoiler alert: everything’s OK.) On the plus side, I’ve been learning quite a bit about human physiology — and putting my (admittedly rusty) high school biology to good use. (On the minus side, navigating any health issue can be scary—doubly so when it involves either the heart or the brain).

Background

So, lately, I’ve been learning a lot about the human heart, specifically:

• How it typically functions,
• How doctors monitor it, and
• How various interventions work to improve outcomes.

The heart is a marvel of design and consistency. The vast majority of the time it functions as expected for ~80 years of continuous, rhythmic beating; roughly 60 times a minute, the heart coordinates the contraction of four chambers to circulate your blood supply throughout your body in two separate loops: one from to the lungs and back to oxygenate your blood, and the other to…well, everywhere else to deoxygenate your blood. Even when something goes wrong, it generally gets back on track so quickly that you wouldn’t even know something was wrong…

Unless you happen to be monitoring your heart at just the right time.

The Problem

While reading about ways doctors can monitor the heart to identify any abnormalities in its regular, rhythmic beating, I came across two acronyms: ECG, and EKG. Curious about what each meant and how they differed, I wound up at a blog post from NeuroSky, a company making biosensors—in this case, a chip for monitoring heart health that’s embedded in various wearable devices.

The post is titled ECG vs EKG: What’s the Difference?, and includes the following introduction.

When investigating applications for biosensors—particularly electrocardiograms—you’ll eventually come across two very common abbreviations: ECG and EKG. If you’re not familiar with these abbreviations, it can be tricky to determine which is which. However, once you know the difference between an ECG and an EKG, you’ll be well on your way to discovering what makes them increasingly valuable tools for device manufacturers that want to create revolutionary products for consumer health and wellbeing.

ECG vs EKG: What’s the Difference? (2015, May 25). Retrieved from https://neurosky.com/

So far, the post seems pretty promising, right? The intro advertises a discussion of the two abbreviations. And the last sentence hints at discussing the difference between them. (Note the use of the plural, “them”, which reinforces the interpretation that they’re two distinct terms.)

The post is divided into five sections:

1. What Do ECGs and EKGs Do?
2. The Evolution of ECG and EKG
3. The Benefits of ECGs and EKGs
4. What’s the Difference Between ECG and EKG?
5. The NeuroSky CardioChip^TM Enables ECG and EKG

And there’s the immediate red flag: why is the subject all the way down in section 4? That’s the main point of the post, right? (I gave them a pass for the commercial aspect of section 5; they’re a business, selling a product, and the article was sales literature, after all.)

So, I worked my way through sections 1-3, anticipating the big reveal: the difference between an ECG and an EKG. The result?

The fact of the matter is that an ECG and an EKG are the exact same thing. That’s right, the most surprising difference between an ECG and an EKG is that there is no difference at all.  Both ECG and EKG stand for electrocardiogram.

So, if an ECG is the same thing as an EKG, then why are there two different abbreviations? It’s actually quite simple—when the word electrocardiogram is translated into the German language, it is spelled Elektro-kardiographie. EKG is just the way some people choose to say ECG based on this translation.

“ECG vs EKG: What’s the Difference?” (2015)

That’s the surprise, that there’s no difference? They’re the same thing, just spelled differently based on the original language (English vs German).

A big, fat nothing-burger. 5 minutes wasted.

Building a Better Topic

So, what’s the instructional design takeaway here?

First, let’s go back to the introduction.

When investigating applications for biosensors—particularly electrocardiograms—you’ll eventually come across two very common abbreviations: ECG and EKG. If you’re not familiar with these abbreviations, it can be tricky to determine which is which. However, once you know the difference between an ECG and an EKG, you’ll be well on your way to discovering what makes them increasingly valuable tools for device manufacturers that want to create revolutionary products for consumer health and wellbeing.

“ECG vs EKG: What’s the Difference?” (2015)

In that last sentence, “them” is a completely unclear reference. At first glance, it would seem to refer to “ECG” and “EKG”, reinforcing the notion that the two are distinct items. Once you get far enough, it becomes clear that it’s a reference to the word “electrocardiograms” instead, which occurred two sentences earlier. Clarify references—in this case, the pronoun “them”—to avoid any ambiguity.

Second, when you write about something, stay focused. The point of the article was supposed to be the difference between ECG and EKG. The first three sections have nothing to do with the difference; only the fourth section is relevant. Lead with that, and off-load the rest to another topic with a more accurate title.

Respect the learner’s time, or they’ll just go somewhere else the next time they need information.