Focus on Action in eLearning Design
My job involves coaching and mentoring a great many instructional designers – both within our own eLearning development projects and as a service for many of our clients. One of the biggest challenges I face in this regard is getting designers to get to the essence of a training challenge and cut out all extraneous…
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Instructional Design Malpractice
I came across an interesting online conversational podcast with Clark Quinn (Quinnovation) and Cammy Bean (Kineo) on the topic of “instructional design malpractice.” Of course there is no such crime on the books, but perhaps there should be. The upshot of the admittedly tongue-in-cheek conversation was that there is too much boring eLearning out there…
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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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The Pitfalls and Promises of Mobile Learning
If you are in any way connected with the fields of training, learning and development, or eLearning, you are probably regularly inundated with messages about the wonders of mobile learning. Mobile devices, such as smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and tablet computers are becoming ubiquitous and increasingly powerful with respect to their range of functionality.…
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Seriously – Stop Talking; Start Showing
Four leading lights of the learning business – Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, Clark Quinn and Will Thalheimer – released a call to arms. Their Serious eLearning Manifesto laments the sorry state of eLearning and asks those who agree to sign a manifesto pledging to commit to producing eLearning that is relevant, performance focused, contextual and…
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Deep Learning vs. Surface Learning
I have been in the adult education and training business for almost four decades and I still see an unfortunate fixation on content. So much of education and training is focused on ensuring that learners know certain things. So little is focused on providing learners with the ability to actually go beyond knowing, to being…
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