eLearning Rants

It’s the People, Stupid

In just about every presentation I do about eLearning, I include the following statement: “Human beings – and the knowledge, skills and experience that they bring to an eLearning project – are the ultimate determinants of success.” This may not sound blindingly obvious. But in my daily interactions with those in the training and development…

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Why I Hate Conferences!

I have attended many conferences over the years focused on eLearning and/or workplace learning. And although many presenters at these conferences spoke of the brave new world of training and the need to do things differently and to engage learners in new and innovative ways, each event was really no different than any conferences that…

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Combatting “Twitter Brain” Syndrome

We recently worked with university faculty members on the development of five online undergraduate courses (one Sociology course, two Philosophy courses, and two English courses) wherein students were required to read quite a few of the original texts of various theorists, philosophers, novelists and poets.  Nothing new in this, students have been doing this since…

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eLearning for Client Education

A friend, knowing that I work in eLearning, recently asked “what kinds of courses are you working on lately?” Well, I certainly am working on developing courses for some clients, but most of my current project list is centred on creating electronic performance support systems, or online job aids for clients. These involve creating embedded…

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Beware the Technology Police

I remember doing a pitch to some potential clients once, showing them how they could really bring their eLearning to life by including some rich, multi-media, case-based scenarios. They seemed genuinely impressed by some examples I showed them and I thought we were making real progress. They said they would like to have their eLearning…

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Kicking the RFP Habit

Recently, in a moment of weakness, I almost submitted a response to a request for proposals (RFP). It was for an eLearning development project for which I knew our firm could have done a terrific job. However, I remembered an earlier vow that I had made to myself never to put myself and my colleagues…

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Let’s Junk the Jargon

I received a press release about Thomson Learning and Tata Interactive Systems collaborating on a new project called the Thomson Learning Lot. According to the press release, “Tata will…develop systems for content-creation work flow, as well as for publishing and archiving objects, then rendering the learning material on the portal… The project involves combining such…

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