Years ago, I had a director who had perfected the art of what our team called the “drive-by”. A drive-by from this director involved him asking you for a “really quick favor” in which you would be asked to work on a pet-project of some sort that often involved a new technology or new industry trend he wanted to try out. These projects ranged from the latest video technologies, new StoryLine features, Moocs, gamification, leaderboards, performance support, etc… If ATD or other industry leaders had it on their radar, he had a pet-project targeted. Being asked to be involved was a compliment, even if other work had to be balanced when asked. Continue reading
Elearning
E-learning can be intimidating. This collection of articles looks at elearning as part of a learning and development strategy.
eLearning Principles
I am re-reading Multimedia Learning by Richard E. Mayer to refresh some of my eLearning principles. If you work in any facet of the multimedia learning world, it is an extremely useful book to have in your library. It is not a light read. I am on my third way through it and am only now understanding many of the principles that the author is covering. Continue reading
Critical Thinking in eLearning
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: 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
Periodic Table of eLearning
Brian introduced the periodic table of learning. In his post, he discussed this table from an instructor-led training perspective. Training isn’t isolated to instructor-led training (ILT) programs and I thought it might be fun to look at the application of the Elements of Amazing Learning Experiences from as the Period Table of eLearning. 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