The Masie Center reported that 60% of all new learning initiatives in large organizations are driven by legal compliance regulations. They are scrambling to meet the demands for training in a wide range of areas, including health and safety, environmental regulation, privacy, financial reporting, and human rights. And many see the advantage of reaching a…
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Marc Prensky, author of Digital Game-based Learning, delivered a keynote address at the Desire2Learn Users Conference titled “Engage Me or Enrage Me.” He talked about the great divide between digital natives (the kids who have grown up in the digital age) and the digital immigrants (folks like me who came of age well before the…
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There are many ways that even the best eLearning training interventions can be kiboshed, but I see the following two come up again and again. Firstly, many really good eLearning ideas do not even get off the ground because key stakeholders or gatekeepers in the organization have pre-determined that their people “are not ready for…
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I heard that an eLearning project that we had hoped to bid upon is on hold because of “internal resistance.” It got me to thinking about the various objections to eLearning that I have heard over the course of my ten years in this field. Here are some of my favourites, and my responses to…
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For the longest time I used to resist online synchronous learning. I’m not sure where this negative attitude to real-time web conferencing came from, but it may have had something to do with my long history in university-level distance education. I suppose I had a bias for asynchronous web-based learning because it freed learners from…
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Life is full of ironies. In preparation for our webinar titled Going Live: Best Practices in Online Synchronous Training, we had planned to stress that “going live” was much like tightrope walking without a net, and that things can and will go wrong. The point is to be ready for this and to work your…
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I’m in the unique position of straddling the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors and seeing the way that each approaches eLearning. I have worked in both sectors. I now serve clients in both sectors, and speak to prospective clients in both sectors. And what a study in contrasts this presents. It is like observing two absolutely…
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Elliott Masie is constantly polling readers of his Learning Trends online newsletter on interesting questions related to workplace learning. One survey asked “Can workers really e-Learn at their desks?” In other words, can they fit eLearning into their daily tasks at their workstations without having to do it at home, or before or after the…
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I read a report that came out titled Laboratories of Reform: Virtual High Schools and Innovation in Public Education. Published by the Education Sector, an independent education think tank in Washington, the paper provides an overview of online education at the high school level across the United States. Not surprisingly, the results are mixed; some…
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Our daughter was looking into what it takes to be an animator. She was checking out various computer animation and digital media programs. Interestingly, none of these programs really care about the applicant’s computer programming skills. They are looking for talented and creative artists. They will help them hone these skills and then teach them…
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