For as much time as we spend talking about learning management, companies do not seem to spend a lot of time thinking about learning and managers. This creates huge blind spots within organizations because managers play critical roles in every aspect of learning and development — from strategy to design to delivery to measurement. As […]

In Implementing E-Learning, Jay Cross and Lance Dublin suggested that implementing eLearning was an organizational change. That is, the introduction of any such program requires change management. And, it turns out, this is true for training and likely all organizational learning interventions. In a recent article, The Great Training Robbery, Harvard professor Michael Beer and […]

Analytics are generally used to market and attract new customers to your brand. Big Data can also help you determine how your corporate learners are faring and if the online training content is on target. In this article, I’ll share six tips to measure online training with the help of LMS metrics. How To Measure […]

Things have changed Today's workplace has changed and there are many references to the "Modern Workplace" in a variety of publications. Yet, we as an L&D industry are still designing training from a central point - that of the "learner". This is not a bad thing; however, it is not the only view we should […]

Don’t expect better results from your training programs if you aren’t willing to change how you think about corporate training. If you have specialized in online learning or eLearning for your entire career, it’s time to get back to the human side of your chosen profession. Get back into the classroom. And if you’ve always […]

I usually start my posts with a short intro about the topic, to entice you into reading more. But today I'm going to admit it up front - this is less of an article and more a collection of my recent musings on how we should be using instructional design. Enjoy! Exploring e-learning examples Over the past […]

Shannon Tipton, Learning Rebels LLC Have you ever been in front of a group who are training "captives"?  Either people told to be there by the boss, or perhaps the training is part of some punitive action (You turned left instead of right...now you MUST go to training!)? If you've been in training longer than […]

Learning is a long term process. Traditional training is mostly approached from the content perspective. People need to learn how to do something, or how something works. We define the "something" and design the best method in which to present it. Historically, instructional methods have been designed around a singular event. Even if the course […]

Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected.  - Steve Jobs We all want to be excellent at what we do. And pushing the boundaries and expectations of quality is admirable. But be careful to measure the quality of the right things. And measure the right things against […]

The strong result being seen in elearning is that our designs are not reflecting what’s known about good elearning.  This is problematic to the extent that several esteemed colleagues joined me in scribing a creed about what elearning could, and should, be: the Serious eLearning Manifesto. In it, we pointed to eight values that differentiate […]

  Why has the interest in instructional design declined over the last 12 years? Some say it's dead, others say it has evolved. But into what, nobody really knows. One thing is clear, the work we do as instructional designers has been disrupted. And there is no clear path to what is next. We hear about and […]

Why instructional design? Why not just design, period!? I would encourage everyone to engage with others who work in design oriented disciplines. If you've never done it, it will be an eye-opening experience. I've engage with designers of all sorts throughout the years and have discovered that there are far more similarities across fields than […]

For many of us who design e-learning, the multiple choice question is the default question format we add at the end of a chapter or module. But where did it come from? Is there any proof that multiple choice is effective? Are there alternatives that we should be using to test our learners? In this […]

Do you make teaching part of your learning strategy? Probably not. It might be on HR's list of things employees at higher levels should do.  But I'm not sure we take teaching into consideration as part of a learning strategy. The typical instructional design process separates these roles into subject matter experts and learners. It's an […]

  "Storytelling is ultimately a creative act of pattern recognition. Through characters, plot and setting, a writer creates places where previously invisible truths become visible. Or the storyteller posits a series of dots that the reader can connect." Douglas Coupland Storytelling is popular topic amongst L&D professionals. It's the type of thing we all talk […]

As I work with training professionals, I often hear of the difficulty in taking various training assets used in a classroom setting (presentations, technical documents, scripts, etc…) and converting them into a comprehensive e-learning course. This process can prove especially tricky when the individual doing the converting is the in-house expert on the subject. Every […]

Elearning courses are becoming more popular every day. They are a great, cost effective way to deliver messages to an internal or external audience; improving their skills and aligning them to core brand ideas. However, there is one question that is often on the lips of many who are looking to develop elearning courses – […]

One simple way to amplify and extend classroom training, or SME presentations, is to record the live event. Many will balk at this suggestion for one of two reasons: We don't have the budget. We don't have anyone on the team that knows how to do it. There is nothing I can do about excuse #1. […]

In 2012 I was introduced to the Business Model Canvas at a gathering of creative design thinkers. Recently I discovered that a colleague in the corporate training community had modified the canvas slightly to be an effective for learning & development. And the Learning Model Canvas was born. The creative mind behind the LMC is John Delano, CEO of […]

The eLearning industry loves to hate powerpoint. However the hate has mostly passed, and isn't as bad today as it used to be. We've all come to grips with the fact that bad design isn't the tool's fault. We've all endured plenty of poorly designed powerpoint presentations. But I'm sure you've all experienced at least one […]

"80% percent of life is just showing up" - Woody Allen We love to make jokes about why taking attendance is so useless. But showing up is important. If you are still creating courses, then it just makes sense to know who showed up. And showing up applies to courses delivered in a classroom as well […]

Introduction Today I'd like to highlight some posts from last year. It's my version of Throwback Thursday, or #tbt, in blog form. Back in April 2014 I shared these 5 tips after just leaving my job as Director of Training. So the realities of corporate training were fresh. As I reread this post I notice […]

You're a training professional in a SMB and you have few resources to achieve high expectations. The product team needs you to help train the sales channel, and the customer service team needs regular training sessions as well. There is new hire orientation to manage and annual compliance training requirements that need to be met. […]

Everyone is looking to solve this problem. The ultimate solution rests in a partnership between designers/developers and technology product providers. Design alone can only be effective to a certain point. At some point designers must rely on technology to scale up their designs.  But technology can also only do so much. No technology product will […]