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 […]