The web is a brief and casual medium. Users want to get what they want and move on. In their own time and in their own way - not locked into someone else's idea of the "right" way to do .... well, to do whatever it is.
And then we see elearning or training thrown up on the web that requires the user to invest hours and hours in a formal progression. This is not using the medium properly. It would be like running a classroom session by reading a textbook -- people do it, but it's the wrong approach.
Yes, this is done for tracking purposes - but if the goal is to make sure the user has learned something, why not just record their scores on an assessment? If you've thought through your curriculum - and if you have some idea of what you're doing - you ought to be able to come up with a valid assessment to measure whether or not you've been successful. And that is the only thing that needs to be tracked - because that's the only thing that matters.
And if the web is a brief and casual environment, mobile is much, much moreso.
More on that soon.
