eLearning is not a passive activity. It should provoke thought and reasoning, and we should believe in our participant’s ability to do so. One key element I believe is missing from a lot of eLearning is critical thought. As designers or developers (or in some cases both) we should be pushing ourselves to go beyond a simple question and move our learners to think through all aspects of the objective. Continue reading
eLearning Interactions
eLearning Interactions: Exploring Content
Throughout high school and college, I was a DJ at the college radio station. As technology improved around the turn of this century, our little radio station became much more automated, and the massive compact disk library moved to digital files. One thing that didn’t change before I left college was the soundboard that we used to fade music and microphones and do some light mixing. Continue reading
eLearning Interactions: Comic Strip Panels
Comic strips tell a story in a linear timeline that read from left to right. Anyone who opened a newspaper as a kid, read comic books or graphic novels, or has ever seen a panel meme is familiar with the style of storytelling.
One obstacle in eLearning is that our participants cannot tell us a story. Continue reading
eLearning Interactions: Puzzles!
Last week, we began looking at some of the limitations of eLearning interactions, and how to work within those constraints. Your comments and feedback indicated that this is a topic of interest to many of you. Over the coming weeks, we will continue to discuss effective ways to design eLearning interactions on the Thursday posts to this blog. Continue reading
Quiz Style eLearning Interactions
eLearning instructional design has different challenges and advantages than instructor-led training. Interactions are limited to the learner interacting with keyboard and mouse functions, and you have to shift your thinking of how an interaction is executed. eLearning design can be a challenge for those of us who spend most of our time designing instructor-led training. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be covering various eLearning interactions and how to incorporate them into your eLearning courses. Continue reading
Word Export for Storyline Reviews
Reviews and feedback are critical to making any project a success. That feedback coming in a meaningful and useful way can be challenging, especially when faced with timelines and with several content experts. By the time a project is at the development phase of an eLearning project, many decisions should be final. However, feedback is still very important at this stage, and not always easy to document. Continue reading
Tying It Together with Thesis Statements
Recently, our team developed an eLearning module and during testing, we realized it was overwhelming to take in all of the information. It started to feel a bit like cognitive overload, and we needed to find a creative way to present content in smaller, more pithy ways. The content was right, the subject matter had been reviewed, it just lacked a bit of clarity. Continue reading
eLearning Game Copyrights
A few weeks ago, I talked about video games in training. Since that post, I have been asked if there are copyright infringement concerns when creating a game inspired by another game. I was taken aback by this question at first. After playing Jeopardy in just about every high school Social Studies class, it wasn’t a question I had thought through, and honestly, I didn’t have an immediate answer. Continue reading
Video Games in eLearning
In a previous post, Brian talked about board games in training and why Chutes and Ladders is better than Jeopardy. Lately, my focus has been on eLearning, and occasionally I struggle to make the asynchronous training interactive and interesting. Continue reading
The Importance of eLearning Interactions
Each year, a friend of mine is required to take a multi-segment four-hour cybersecurity training with a required final assessment. He calls this training “Robot Cocktail Party”. Continue reading