JD Dillon asked this question on LinkedIn last week.
It’s a question I’ve asked often during my Train the Trainer sessions, but I’ve rarely answered this question myself. My answer was immediate. As I reflected on what made it so good, I think there are three fundamental things my experience shared with most memorable, impactful learning experiences. Continue reading
If you talk to anyone who attends Crossfit for more than a few minutes, they will likely try to convince you to join. Despite the incessant need for its members to recruit everyone they know, Crossfit is not a pyramid scheme or a cult. Yes, I happen to be one of those annoying people, and I have a theory as to why so many of us are evangelists of our sport. Continue reading
When a long-time friend and I decided to leave the safety and comfort of our respective jobs to start our own instructional design company, Endurance Learning, we made a conscious decision that we were going to be different. We didn’t simply want to bring our clients’ initial ideas to life, we wanted to make sure our clients ended up with the best learning experience possible.
It was a nice theory. In reality, it proved to be a risky proposition. After all, pushing back on a client could mean that they take their training project (and their budget) to someone else who will do exactly as they say.
Recently, Michelin presented our Endurance Learning team with their Dealer Experience Partner Award. As he presented this award, Tim Cunningham, Michelin’s Director of Customer Training and Development, cited our ability to be a partner with his team and to push back as necessary as some of the reasons he found our instructional design contributions to his team so valuable.
Following are four takeaways from our experiences with Michelin that could be applied by instructional designers everywhere – whether you’re internal to the organization or coming to work on a project from outside the organization. Continue reading
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
A week or so ago, Shannon Tipton posted a link to this article on the Learning Rebels Facebook page: Donald Kirkpatrick was NOT the Originator of the Four-Level Model of Learning Evaluation.
It’s interesting food for thought and I encourage you to read the article in its entirety. The bottom line of the article is that Donald Kirkpatrick based his 4-level training evaluation model on the work of someone else, but save for one article written many, many years ago, he never credited the other individual.
At the end, the article’s author, Will Thalheimer (who does an amazing job debunking common learning myths), asks: Knowing now that this model is not an original thought or work product, what should workplace learning professionals do when referring to this model? What’s ethical?
Personally, I don’t think I’ll change how I talk about the model all that much, but I do wonder what the bigger point of this seemingly academic argument could be. Continue reading
Earlier this week, Brian outlined his top ten tools for 2018 to vote in Jane Hart’s top 200 of 2018. I’d also like to take a chance to share my list. While there is frequent overlap in our job roles at Endurance Learning, my tasks can be a bit different with my focus on instructional design of Instructor-led and eLearning course. I use several tools to work remotely as an instructional designer. Here are the top ten I am using this year. Continue reading
Each year, Jane Hart at the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT) compiles a list of the top 200 digital tools used for learning. She compiles this list by asking for people from across the world to submit the top 10 digital tools for learning that they use on a regular basis.
Below, you’ll find the 10 digital tools I’ve found most useful over the past year (in no particular order) as well as a link for more information if you’d like to submit your own list to C4LPT. Continue reading
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
Last month I had an opportunity to write a 20-page booklet for ATD entitled PowerPoint: Your Co-facilitator.
Since then, a number of friends and colleagues have asked me to boil the booklet down into the top five or ten tips that lead to effective PowerPoint presentations. As I reflected on that question, I think there are three guiding principles that can make any PowerPoint deck better. And these principles have very little to do with conventional advice such as “bullets kill, so eliminate bullet points” or “only use three lines of text, no more than 8 words per line, and no smaller than 36 point font”. My principles have little to do with the need to hone your graphic design skills, either. Continue reading
On Monday I asked readers to share their thoughts on the most compelling of twelve training evaluation metrics. Whether you’re trying to create a case for funding for a training program you feel is essential or you’re trying to market the value of your existing professional development offerings, using qualitative and quantitative training evaluation metrics will be an important part of your argument. Continue reading