As trainers, we come to a project with a unique point of view. Not being the subject matter experts help us ask questions that may seem overly simple to the people who have been working with this content for longer than us. Those simple questions are great for getting to the needs of the learners. Continue reading
Your attention span is shorter than a goldfi… Squirrel!
The year was 2015. I was sitting in a breakout session at a training conference and the speaker was about to discuss ways to easily bring animation into an elearning course. As she introduced her topic, she shared a bit of research that was new to me: Thanks to all of today’s technology and distractions that surround us, the average human attention span had dwindled to under nine seconds, which is shorter than the attention span of a goldfish! She even cited this article in Time magazine as her source.
The problem with this eye popping statistic is Continue reading
Designing Milestones
It’s graduation season. While kids are tossing caps in the air and determining their next steps, I am reflecting on why and how we celebrate milestones in the first place. Continue reading
What are training professionals actually doing with their time?
Several weeks ago I introduced our presentation design tool — Soapbox — and asked for volunteers willing to test it and provide feedback in our Beta phase. This week we’ll begin Beta testing on this tool intended to save people time in the design of their training programs.
As our Beta testers have waited to get their hands on Soapbox, we’ve asked them to participate in several short surveys about how they’re currently spending their time. Following are some insights from their responses. Continue reading
Computer Tips for the Learning and Development Professional
In what seems like a former life, I worked in IT departments monitoring the health of Linux servers, and keeping people’s work computers up and running. While a gratifying choice of work, I soon came to find that people are rarely happy to see the computer repair girl because it means they are about to have a frustrating day/week. I also found out I like training people to use their computer more than actually fixing it. 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
3 job seeking tips from an L&D hiring manager
Several weeks ago I wrote some observations for job seekers after reviewing 50 L&D manager job descriptions. In today’s post, Mary Cropp, Director of Training and Development at Bluetooth SIG, writes this guest post to share some very blunt advice for anyone looking to land their next role on an L&D team.
Job-seeking advice from an L&D Director
As the hiring manager and in-house consultant for all things L&D within my organization, I am choosy about who will be on my team and who will be providing contract work for the organization. Choosy? Make that very choosy. If I lift the veil for a moment on hiring practices within the L&D realm, I want to prepare all you facilitators, trainers, and instructional designers out there with a bit of what a hiring manager looks for in a candidate. Continue reading
Leveraging Pinterest as a Learning and Design Tool
People have their opinions about social media. Believe me, I have my own. I do, however, play on Pinterest every so often and I have found a few useful things when searching for ideas for my kid’s school project or gardening tips. As a site that is geared toward the DIY mom type, there is a surprising amount of teaching resources. Continue reading
5 Out of Office Reply Ideas for Trainers
This morning as my blog post is sent out, I will receive hundreds of automatically-generated Out Of Office responses from people who are traveling. Most of them contain standard language about how long someone will be away from the office and who to contact in their absence. Every once in a while, I’ll stumble across an Out Of Office notification that makes me want to read the whole message.
Out Of Office messages are currently the “lecture” of the email world – lots of people send them out, but few people pay attention to them. With summer vacation season around the corner, why not use your Out Of Office message to bring a smile to others’ faces, give them some fun facts or even equip people with new ideas or knowledge?
Following are five ideas for training professionals to use for their Out Of Office messages: Continue reading
A Presentation Is Not…
A friend recently asked for some help giving a presentation to a board. She was doing this outside of work, and I love a good pet project. We started by working through her objectives, studied slide design, and I sent her off with what I thought was an excellent concept for her team. The group she was working with had a very different idea of what a presentation means and when she came in with her concepts, to put it bluntly, ripped them apart. Continue reading