Practical Ways to Reduce Development Cycle Time for Corporate Learning

One of the most reported challenges in corporate learning is time management—specifically, how to reduce development cycle times for new training. Time is inextricably bound to money, so the longer a project drags on, the less cost effective its final product will be. In today’s on-demand world, there’s a heavy incentive to do things quickly without compromising quality and learning effectiveness. In fact, today’s learning professionals are expected to do things more quickly and better than ever. Is it possible? Absolutely—with an investment in upfront preparation and an ability to be flexible.

Three Must-Haves for Optimal eLearning Effectiveness

It’s becoming a widely accepted fact that eLearning platforms are as effective as—if not more effective than—traditional in-person learning environments. But that doesn’t mean that eLearning course design is easy. In fact, improving learning effectiveness is one of the top challenges facing training and development professionals today. But don’t stress—there are a number of design elements in your online course that are proven to increase learner retention and learning outcomes. Today we’ll talk about three.

Asking The Right Questions at the Right Time

Soliciting helpful feedback after a course is over is a crucial step in the design process, because it lets you know what worked well for learners and what needs to be revisited. But there are plenty of factors that affect the success of course evaluations, including the questions asked, learner enthusiasm, and timing of the feedback process.

Be a L&D Expert, Be Invaluable

Danni Designer’s morning had been a doozy. Minutes after finishing her green shake, the Vice President of Sales rushed into her office, having just returned from an Educational Technology conference. “I know what I want for our New Hire Sales Training,” he breathlessly exclaimed. “It needs more video examples, gamification, and I want everything to be accessible via smart phone. Everyone is moving their training to mobile.”

Challenges (and Solutions) for Developing Global Workforce Training

With the past decade’s focus on the importance of employee learning, the training industry has grown significantly, and many companies are now faced with the challenge of developing large-scale training for a global workforce. This is excellent news for both companies and designers who develop their training—but designing for a multi-cultural, geographically expansive audience has its challenges. With such a diverse audience, is it possible to develop training that has a consistent impact for everyone? Let’s examine some of the challenges—and solutions—for a project of this magnitude.

5 Secrets for Increasing Employees’ Product Knowledge

Starbucks is doing something right. In addition to brewing a good cup of java, the coffee chain has become an industry standard for excellent product knowledge and service, as well as employee satisfaction. How do they do it?

The 3 Writing Skills You Need to Create Effective Lessons

No course can be successful without quality content, and good course developers know that learner engagement and instructional effectiveness depend on how coherent and appealing the lessons are. This means that you need to polish off your writing skills—you want your learners to be engaged with your text, not distracted by it.

Augmented Learning: What’s the Big Deal?

The more we understand about the process of learning, the more sophisticated our learning tools need to be. Most instructional designers will say that creating adaptive and dynamic courses, which put learners in charge of their own learning, is the ideal way to impart knowledge.

3 Unusual Skills for Your Project Management Toolkit

Want to run your next project smoothly, with great teamwork and a low risk of failure? Everyone tells you to work on your leadership, organization, and communication skills to get the job done right. But there are three ingredients nobody talks about that you really need to be a successful project manager: guts, compassion, and cat wrangling (being able to focus distracted people on a single aim).

The 4-1-1 on Section 508

The most important part of developing an online course is also the part most often overlooked: making the content equally available to all learners, including those who have disabilities that impact the way they use technology.

4 Ways to Use Social Media in the Classroom

Social media is not just for fun anymore—it has become a powerful instrument for teaching, enhancing instructor impact in both eLearning and classroom-based environments. In fact 41% of instructors report using social media as a teaching tool.

5 eLearning Habits to Break Now

You know successful eLearning when you see it—but when a course flops, you might find yourself wondering what went wrong. Many course failures are not due to bad designers so much as designers who have developed a number of short-cut habits along the way.