In any eLearning project, it’s the instructional designer’s job to create something that delivers a learning objective as effectively as possible. In most cases, they are creating learning content on behalf of an organisation to help them teach their employees something important. The chances are pretty slim that the instructional designer will have the qualifications to understand the learning objective in all of its nitty-gritty detail, so they need the help of someone on the inside. Enter the subject matter expert! This often-reluctant hero didn’t become an expert by accident. They’ve worked hard to become the chief authority on whatever the subject happens to be and, as such, they’re always very busy people. Throughout much of the instructional design community, subject matter experts are often seen as a challenge to be overcome or a necessary evil. That’s no way to kick off a fruitful working relationship! To help instructional designers and subject matter experts create a great piece of learning content, here are 10 top tips to getting the most out of the ID/SME relationship! 1. GET SOME PERSPECTIVE Contrary to rumour, SMEs aren’t corporate fossils who refuse to understand or accept the point of eLearning. SMEs don’t get stamped out of a mould in the SME factory - they’re people too! They are extraordinarily busy people who already have a lot to do, and the chances are that the eLearning project is yet another task on their already-full schedule. It’s important for instructional designers to take a step back, appreciate the SME’s challenges and try to accommodate them as much as possible. 2. PREPARE If you’re an instructional designer on the cusp of your first meeting with a new SME, preparation at an early stage will give your project the best possible start. Before dealing with the SME, make sure you’ve done your bit to meet them half-way. Read up as much as you can beforehand so that you can hit the ground running. Write down any questions that occur to you - This will get your project off to a flying start and it’ll impress your SME! 3. REACH OUT Make sure you give your SME a chance to prepare as well. Send an email setting a clear agenda prior to the first meeting. Briefly highlight the key points that you want to cover so that there are no surprises! 4. GETTING TO KNOW YOU Introduce yourself and try to find out more about your SME. They’re probably incredibly busy, so avoid talking about what they watched on TV the night before - you want to find out things that will help you both stay on top of deadlines. Things like: How do they prefer to be contacted? When are they most likely to be available? Do they prefer tackling clarifications one by one, or is it better to batch them and send them in a weekly update email? Build a rapport and find the sweet spot - just the right level of professional formality. If the topic of last night’s TV comes up by itself, it’s up to you to decide if you have time to talk about it! 5. DEFINE THE MISSION Nothing sets a mission up for success like a clearly defined goal! Once you’ve both covered the practicalities, the next step is to define what success looks like. Make sure your goal is SMART and it’s something you can both agree on. This is also the best time to clarify your roles. Generally speaking, the instructional designer is designing the course and the SME there to provide the essential knowledge. Make this distinction as clear as you can and avoid straying from the path. 6. BUILD A STRATEGY The eLearning is the link between the subject and the learner. The ID wants to get as much knowledge out of the SME as they can so that they can give that knowledge to the learners. At this stage, the instructional designer needs to learn the important points from the subject matter expert and the subject matter expert needs to have an idea of how their knowledge will be used. Remember what you’ve learned from Instructional Design 101 - most people won’t learn very much from reams of text, so don’t rely on a trailing thread of emails or a statement of works to get the message across. Make sure to show a few examples of the ways you might approach the project. Go through all of the options available and highlight the pros and cons of each. 7. AGREE ON A BATTLE PLAN Decide on a clear plan with dates and deadlines, making sure to build in some buffer time to make up for the inevitable delays and setbacks. Ensure that all parties know how important it is to deliver each step on time. It’s important that they understand that the quality of the eLearning depends on the plan. If you have time, carve the plan into a stone tablet and place it in a shrine at the top of a mountain - whatever you need to do to convey how important it is! 8. DON’T BE A STRANGER During the eLearning project, you might need clarifications on various aspects, or you might need to follow up on review deadlines. Since the SME has a whole world of responsibilities outside of the eLearning project, it’s down to the instructional designer to keep in contact as much as possible. If you’ve already agreed on the best method of contact, this shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re lucky enough to have an authoring tool that supports cloud-based collaboration, this can be a great way to give everyone in the team an up-to-the-minute account of the status of the project. With the right tool, SMEs can log in, view the progress and even create quiz questions! 9. MAKE IT FUN! There’s no law stipulating that eLearning production has to be a chore. Find a way to turn it into a game. You could offer awards for reaching various milestones in the eLearning project. You can even create a leaderboard for everyone involved and let their competitive spirit take over. Using game mechanics like these in a non-game scenario is known as gamification and the principles behind gamification are proven to increase engagement in various fields. Find out more about gamification here. 10. SAY THANKS At the end of the mission, when the most engaging piece of eLearning possible is blowing the socks off of the learners, make sure to acknowledge the SMEs for their efforts. A little recognition can go a long way! If you want something to help the ID/SME relationship blossom, check out Genie. This game-based authoring tool has been built to deal with the realities of collaborating on an eLearning project. It’s fun, it’s quick and it’s easy to pick up - just what you need when time is of the essence!  The post 10 Tips for Subject Matter Expert Harmony appeared first on Growth Engineering.

While doing some routine upgrades to our Academy LMS recently, we were ever so slightly surprised to find that it seems to have developed sentience, a mind of its own! And what is our system using its new-found consciousness for? Discovering the meaning of life perhaps? Nope. Turns out it’s taken a liking to online dating… Still, we couldn’t let this go to waste, so let’s share this particularly saucy exchange: Online learner’s profile Hello dating world! My name is Louise, but you can call me Lou This is my first time doing something like this, but I’ve just been burned too many times by everyone else out there on the market… So, what to say about little old me? I’m an online learner and, well, I love learning! Like, REALLY love learning! I just want to take all the knowledge in the world and cram it into everybody’s heads! But judging from everyone else I’ve been with, a lot of people seem to think that loving learning and being the mayor of Dullsville go hand in hand. Well, they don’t! I actually happen to be something of a social butterfly. I’m happiest when I’m hanging out with my mates. I just feel like you take everything in more easily when you speak about it with other people. I’m also a bit of a game geek! Whether it’s playing cards with friends or getting engrossed in an online gaming session, I just love a bit of healthy competition. I feel like it’s a fantastic way to fire up my brain and really get engaged with something! I just want to find someone who really understands me, and who is willing to adapt to my needs. If you think that might be you, then please get in touch! Lou Kingford Iversity Academy LMS response Lou, what an absolute pleasure it was to come across your profile! It always touches my heart to find someone who shares my passions. As a Learning Management System, I share your love of passing on knowledge. In fact, I’ve made a career out of it. I was thrilled to see that you value having an active social life! I agree with you completely that discussions help the learning process, so that’s why I come equipped with a Facebook-style social feed, topic chatrooms and even live-chat features, to make sure learners always stay connected. And finally, to see that you live and breathe games has me more excited than a caffeinated squirrel! I’m a huge fan of gamification, particularly when it comes to learning. I offer badges to learners, and let them level-up as they learn. I even encourage the healthy competition you talk about, by letting learners race each other to the top of leaderboards. It’s just about the best motivational tool around! My good friend Genie insisted I show you this photo. Plus, I have a feeling that you’ll get on perfectly with my friends. I have one in particular who loves nothing more than bringing a little magic into other people’s lives. His name is Genie and he’s spent the past few thousand years trapped in a lamp of all places. Now that he’s out, he’s itching to help people easily author game-based learning content. He’s also helping teams collaborate on projects, so he can satisfy both your social and gamification needs. You can see why I thought you two might also get along. On top of that, he looks cool with that beard of his! I really hope to hear back from you, I’d love the opportunity to learn more about you! And if there’s anything you’d like to change about me, you’ll find I’m pretty easy to tweak to your liking. Academy Learner response: Wow Academy, I’ve never come across anyone who completely gets me like that! I can’t wait to meet you and get to know you better! It sounds like there’s a high chance I’ll get engaged Lou xx After that the messages get a little too raunchy to publish… But luckily for you, our Academy LMS isn’t monogamous, so you can get to know it too! To find out whether you’d be a good match, why not take the grand tour?  The post An online learner’s dating profile appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Some things, it must be said, are inherently dull but there’s no reason in the world why your eLearning should be one of them. Even when you’re dealing with a less-than-interesting topic, you still have a wealth of tools at your disposal and guess what - we’re going to tell you what they are! 1. RAID YOUR RESOURCES First thing’s first - get your toolbox open and have a look inside! Which resources are available to you? Are you an independent instructional designer, or do you have a team of developers and designers available? If you want to get the most out of your eLearning project and really get the learners engaged, you need to use all the tools available to you. 2. FIND YOUR FORM It might seem like a minor point, but the form of your eLearning can make all of the difference between learning that sticks and learning that slides off like the proverbial water off of a duck’s back. Miller’s Law states that we can only hold between 5 and 9 pieces of information in our minds at one time, which means that if you try to crow-bar anything in above that, the learners will more than likely forget it. Don’t waste your efforts! Split that content into more manageable chunks. This won’t just help your learners absorb the information better, but from a project management point of view, you could find it easier to deal with several small projects than one enormous one! 3. TWEAK THE TONE Know your audience! You need to know who you’re talking to if your message is ever going to stick. Luckily, most of your learners will be human, and there are a few sure-fire ways to capture a human’s attention: Tell a story. Put the eLearning in a context that your learners can relate to. Try to identify the major pain points and deal with these in a hypothetical scenario. Keep it natural. Try to avoid corporate jargon and other mumbo jumbo. Pretend you’re describing the issue to one of your friends and put it into terms that a relative novice might understand. Einstein said that if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough. And who are we to question Einstein? Make it funny! Add some personality and let your sense of humour show. You might not be eLearning’s answer to Jerry Seinfeld, but even a groan is better than a yawn when it comes to engagement! 4. SET YOUR STYLE If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing amazingly! It’s not 1996 anymore and most people have developed pretty sophisticated tastes when it comes to design. If you produce something ugly, clunky and difficult to use, you’ll turn your learners off before they even get past the introduction. Spend some time considering the fonts, images, graphs, etc. that you plan to use and run them through your ugly-filter. If the words "Teletext" or "Clipart" pop into your mind, it might be worth reconsidering. Now is a good time to dig into your instructional design bag of tricks in search of interesting ways of displaying the information. Perhaps that massive block of text would work better as a voice-over with a few eye-catching images? You could also consider gamifying the eLearning. Adding some badges, points and leaderboards can significantly boost engagement, even for dry topics! Even something as minor as a progress bar can make all of the difference! 5. TAKE IT TO MARKET It’s a step that’s often overlooked, but it can boost engagement on your eLearning project before it’s even launched! If you want to have a successful training roll-out, put on your marketing hat and start generating a buzz for your upcoming learning extravaganza! Does your company have an internal social network? If so, pull out all of the stops, design an awesome flier and start promoting your new eLearning a couple of weeks in advance. You could even offer rewards (anything from a special badge to a lavish gift voucher) to the first learners who engage with the course. When the launch date finally rolls around, everyone will be itching to see what all of the fuss was about! This is just a small selection of tips that you can start using today to get a measurable increase in engagement. If you want to get the full scoop on creating truly engaging content, click the button below to download our new white paper!  The post 5 Ways to Make Boring Content Irresistibly Engaging appeared first on Growth Engineering.

See on Scoop.it - Blended Learning Lab Over the course of my time as a student, I have been lucky enough to see technology evolve from dial-up Internet and floppy disks, to high speed wireless and pocket-sized mobile computers. Now, as a high school student, I couldn’t imagine not being able to access any resource […] The post Five Things I Want Teachers To Know About Edtech (EdSurge News) appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Moodlicious Our latest release puts a nice Moodle hat on top of six months of planning, conversations via every medium, meetings at all hours, arguments (usually constructive), worry, long coding sessions, organisation, chaos, conferences and mojitos among developers, teachers, administrators in many countries around the world, integrated by Moodle HQ.  About 104 […] The post Moodle 2.7 is released! appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Moodlicious This document summarises the various development processes used in developing Moodle. There are four main processes that overlap. See on docs.moodle.org The post Moodle Development Process appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Moodlicious A short overview of assignment improvements in Moodle 2.7. Learn more about other new features and improvements in Moodle 2.7 at http://docs.moodle.org/27/en... See on www.youtube.com The post What’s new in Moodle 2.7: Assignment improvements - YouTube appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Moodlicious A short overview of assignment improvements in Moodle 2.7. Learn more about other new features and improvements in Moodle 2.7 at http://docs.moodle.org/27/en... See on www.youtube.com The post What’s new in Moodle 2.7: Logging - YouTube appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Digital Fluency Is it possible for our students to be both digital natives and digitally unaware? Young people today are instant messengers, gamers, photo sharers and supreme multitaskers. But while they use the technology tools available to them 24/7, they are struggling to sort fact from fiction, think critically, decipher cultural […] The post How Do We Teach Digital Literacy to Digital Natives? - Edudemic appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Blended Learning Lab At first the #edtech skepticism seemed to be formed around the utility and effectiveness of these new learning tools, the same way we might question a new assessment form or academic standards. It seemed to be more singular—this learning tool or that learning tool. Now "technology" seems all […] The post Why Some Teachers Are Against Technology In Education appeared first on Patric Lougheed.