Domain experts and instructional designers working together, in close proximity, in both time and space, produce the best educational content in my opinion. Without iteration and feedback loops between these groups we end up with the shallow content that is so prevalent in the e-learning industry.
> Domain experts and instructional designers working together, in close proximity
I dream of an online community encompassing science researchers, instructional designers and education researchers, software developers, and teachers. So "my students are struggling with" -> "the underlying idea is" -> "maybe represent that as" -> "here's a strawman web interactive" -> "tried it this afternoon, mostly worked, except for" in tight iterative churns.
Agreed. Check out all the popular historical war documentaries on YouTube. They are labeled "simplified, learn in 10 minutes etc", also use childlike cartoons. Never any interviews with real world experts.
It's almost like the concept of making technology easy enough for a child to use has spread to other areas.
Better technology doesn't seem to improve education. The quality of the content is 99% the skill of the teacher.