The Personal Learning Environment Can the environment you're learning in effect your learning? There is a lot of science out there claiming it makes a big difference. Granted, most of the research is based on K-12 students. But as training professionals do we take advantage of this knowledge? Should we include a best odors, sounds, and imagery section to instructor's guides? How about colors and fashion? Could what an instructor is wearing be as important as well crafted assessments? All of these questions may have you chuckling, or rolling your eyes, but if the science is legit why ignore any factor that could improve learning? Smellearning? Since industries are good at creating new words for their communities, I'd like to propose smellearning. The science tells us that smell has a powerful impact on memory and recall. Wouldn't we want to take advantage of that in our designs of instruction? Since I've not seen much of it in adult learning theories, I'll assume no. But let's just pretend the answer is yes. What would that look like? For me electro-mechanical smells trigger all sorts of memories that have proven useful in troubleshooting problems. I grew up in a family with lots of old Volkswagens and you could learn a lot about how those cars were running by their smell. I've also heard a lot about realtors baking fresh cookies in the homes they are trying to sell. They want the experience of walking around the house to feel like you're walking around your own "home". They want you to feel good. Musicalearning? Music can create all sorts of feelings. Do you have music playing while you work or study? According to Accelerated Learning's research, slow Baroque music increases concentration. The Barzak Institute also uses slow and fast Baroque era music to hold attention. What? Who knew? Get to iTunes and find your favorite Baroque jams when you're having trouble concentrating. And maybe you could have it playing quietly in the background of your classroom experiences as well. Colorning? What's you're favorite color? What color best stimulates the brain for learning? Mistupid.com has some simple explanations about color. And according to the site, Orange has the characterize halfway between red and yellow making it an ideal color for optimizing learning. It's not my favorite color, but I'll certainly think about it the next time I'm planning a learning environment. The site also says that for optimal learning choose yellow, light orange, beige, or off-white. Choose your colors wisely because some will also influence aggressive behavior. I don't know how legit the science is around any of this, but that's not the point of this post. My point is that there are a lot of people thinking about many many different elements that can/might influence learning. It would be unwise attempting to apply them all at once, but just knowing about them is a great place to start. And what we do know is that impacting our learners emotionally has a significant positive effect on memory. And all three of these stimuli impact emotions. The most interesting part is that the emotion does not need to be positive for the effect to work. Being scared, angry, sad, is equally impactful as positive happy feelings. But of course it all depends on what you're objective is during the instruction and the outcome you are hoping to achieve. I'm no expert on this but I find it fascinating. Let me know what color, music, or smell impacts you the most. Have you ever purposely used them in your instructional designs?     The post 3 New Factors to Consider in Designing Learning Environments appeared first on Litmos.

Most of us have been in that social situation where a couple gets in a disagreement; the "Bickersons" are oblivious to the awkwardness their argument is causing among those around them. If you’re the onlooker in that situation, a vortex opening in the middle of the room and sucking you up would be a welcome opportunity. What if that happened in your office, but the "Bickersons" were a physician and a clinical staff member? Your patients are likely hoping for a vortex. Many healthcare organizations are tossing around the term patient engagement—it’s very 2016. Or as I like to say, "The consumer formerly known as the patient." Most individuals are now shopping for healthcare in the same way they do nonessential items; the physician-centered model will no longer work in this landscape. So you want to engage your patients and you require your staff to put patient engagement at the forefront, right? Many insiders believe this is the key to reimbursement and return customers. I think patient engagement really starts with staff engagement. Extensive research shows that employees that feel valued and recognized work smarter and are willing to go that extra mile. Attitude is contagious, especially negative attitude. A recent article in Physicians Practice listed six keys to motivating medical practice staff. They were: Cross-train Encourage and fund offsite training Praise publicly, correct privately (Bickersons, this is for you!) Hire slowly, fire quickly Take some time to get to know your staff and their jobs. I have seen physicians belittle clinical staff in public and I have seen clinical staff treat certified nursing assistants (CNA’s) with disdain. However, this entire team has one common link: the patient. Patients may be sick, but most certainly aren’t blind. When there’s clearly a disconnection within the team, what sort of confidence can a patient have in them? I have an amazing friend, a plastic surgeon, who specializes in reconstruction for breast cancer patients. Oftentimes the people in his office are very sick and the atmosphere should be dismal. However, the opposite is true. You hear patients laughing. I see staff hugging people as they leave. They offer personal well wishes to family members, and people often leave with a happy, "See you soon!" Wait, what? It starts behind the curtain! My friend is passionate about his work, he is very selective about who he hires and he has surrounded himself with amazing people. What’s astounding is how they treat one another and the minuscule percentage of turnover he’s seen the last five years, despite the added complexities of ACA and ICD-10. The opposite has happened, actually. Several nurses and counselors have moved from other areas of the health system into his office. My friend really knows his staff. He studied to become a minister so he could marry one of his nurses and her fiancé. He’s won a variety of awards for patient care and his discoveries in medicine, but he always turns the focus away from himself and shines the spotlight on his staff. Although at times I know he gets frustrated with certain situations, he never airs those grievances publicly. We’re on the board of a nonprofit together (he’s actually the founder). When we suggest using him as our face for marketing, he always refuses because he doesn’t want the focus to be on him, but the women that need our services and the volunteers that provide the support. Many of our volunteers are current or former patients, who are involved with our cause because they love him, want to support him, and genuinely like being around him and his staff. The stories always end the same, "I got involved because I just love him!" His staff adores him, he adores them, and their patients—sometimes critically ill—leave his office smiling. His practice is flourishing, which is sad since many patients are there because of breast cancer. But they are also there because amidst a dark cloud, my friend and his staff can cause a smile, even on the darkest day. The post Patient Engagement Starts with Staff Engagement appeared first on Litmos.

Elearning company Sponge UK has won an award in recognition of the learning and development it provides for its own employees.The Plymouth-based provider of custom-made elearning came top in the category of Outstanding Commitment to Training for a medium-size business at the Excellence in Business Training Awards 2016, hosted by Cornwall College Business.The award judges were impressed by the company’s creative approach to staff training which includes the creation of an internal ‘Sponge University’ to help employees develop key skills and achieve their potential.Louise Pasterfield, Managing Director, Sponge UK, said:"As a company in the learning business it means a great deal to be recognised for the training we offer our own team. We’re committed to building an organisation where people can thrive and where everyone is constantly learning and developing their skills. As our teams continue to grow and push the limit of what is possible, we are able to offer our clients new and innovative solutions that are at the forefront of elearning." Sponge UK has grown rapidly in the past four years and provides internal and external training for its 60-strong workforce to help them develop as the company continues to expand.The informal and formal learning opportunities include business mentoring, leadership training, graduate development and social learning.As part of ‘Sponge University’ each department in the business has created a learning pathway made up of different sessions covering key aspects of the elearning industry.Sponge UK was able to demonstrate the positive impact training is having on the organisation including supporting business expansion, boosting innovation, maintaining the highest standards of customer service and helping to attract and retain talent.The Excellence in Business Training Awards is the South West of England’s premier award scheme for celebrating success in the training provided by the region’s businesses.The awards were presented at a gala ceremony at The Atlantic Hotel, Newquay on Friday, January 29, 2016.Sponge UK was recently named one of England’s 50 most creative companies and is on the Sunday Times list of the 100 best small companies to work for.The post Excellence in Business Training Award for Sponge UK appeared first on Sponge UK.

Pretty much anyone can present information, but an honestly good eLearning course designer knows how to make that information stick with learners even when that audience isn’t interested. Because that’s the nature of an eLearning course: sometimes your audience is enthralled with the subject and sometimes they’re just being pushed to learn because of a job or class. It should be your goal to make content memorable no matter your audience’s interest level.   One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate engaging and unique characters in your courses. A learner might not remember every piece of content you present to them, but they will remember an aqua aardvark appropriately named ADDIE. While that might be too cartoonish or "out there" for many courses, I think you can see the point of how using a character gives your audience something to visualize and hold onto in the sea of new information they are being immersed in.

Welcome to week one of the post-acquisition Rustici Software world. I just thought I’d take a moment here to discuss one of the reasons we agreed to sell Rustici Software to LTG, because it’s not all about the money. Mike and I were seeking investment funding for Watershed, but we really weren’t on the lookout for anything related to Rustici Software. It was a profitable business, I know very well how to run it, and we have several sets of work that give us cause for optimism. LTG, however, saw the value in both Watershed from an investment point of view and Rustici Software from a market and profitability point of view. After LTG’s first visit, Mike and I asked ourselves two questions. Did we believe that we would be able to maintain our strange and highly-valued culture through an acquisition? Having a place we want to come to work has always been a fundamental requirement for us. Did we believe that we would be able to serve our customers in the way we always had? Throughout the negotiations, due diligence, and these two long days as an LTG company we’ve consistently believed that we could do both of those things and still do. LTG is not an LMS provider like some of our prior suitors have been. We always used to worry that an acquisition of that sort might include aggressive interactions with our customers. With LTG, we’re going to continue to be agnostic, supportive of the standards, and generally the same company we always have been. We’re excited about it, and excited about continuing to support our customers and the industry in general in exactly the same way. The post More of the same appeared first on SCORM - .

You would think that more consideration would be given to mobile learning since most people carry one or more mobile devices. However, the reality is that mobile learning is usually an afterthought when publishing an online course. Increase the learner’s experience by considering strengths and weaknesses of mobile devices during the design phase. For additional ways to improve your mobile courses, read this post by TalentLMS 8 Ways to Enhance Your Mobile Learning Design.

Both in the education environment and the corporate environment, multitasking has been considered to be an efficient way to prove your own personal worth. After all, what leader would not value someone who could take on many tasks at the same time, all with specific deadlines to be met and performance goals to be achieved? A person showing this skillset was highly valued. This valued skillset from the the industrial economy allowed for creative divisions of labour.But then, the world changed!With the development of the world wide web and the advancement of technology came the exponential acceleration of the development of knowledge across the many disciplines. The idea of one person being the "fountain of all knowledge" quickly became an anachronism in age of exponential growth of information and the fact that access to such information became more and more instantaneous making it available "now".Credit: Industry Tap-David Russell Shilling (April 2013)    No more is this more evident than in the journalism industry where news that once took weeks to reach others on the other side of the world could now be accessed as it is happening.  Credit: www.dtspoint.com Multitasking based upon neurocognitive research has been shown to be a myth."The more divided your mind is among a number of tasks the more these tasks are performed with increasing mediocrity."Credit: www. stressfreenyc.wordpress.com (Scott Adams)As a result of the growing awareness of the inadequacy of multitasking, societies responded within the academic world by promoting specialization as the path to follow in tackling the various problems of society. Streaming learners into the created specialties of the various disciplines became the focus of education systems but this is not without problems. Even though collaboration within a specialty would occur, the idea of collaboration across the disciplines was still foreign to many practitioners. This brings us to a great problem which is:"Complex real world problems require collaboration across disciplines in order to come up with real world solutions." We are still trying to attack 21st century and beyond problems with approaches that create "silos of knowledge and skillsets" that have no useful interchange between them.  As a result, what we are faced with is the dilemma of "six blind men trying to describe an elephant".  Each discipline attempts to find a solution to a real world problem using their specific perspective and perseveres in the task believing that at some point they will arrive at the solution. This has been the "perpetual promise of science". However, there is the following nagging question they need to ask:" Could we have found a solution to a real world problem sooner, if we had collaborated with other sciences whose unique perspective could have given us a clearer picture of the problem and a more ready supply of potential solutions? "Some disciplines are just now starting to realize the benefit of collaborating with knowledge and skill set creators outside their discipline. As an example, using robotics in the service of surgical practices combines the ideas and skillsets of Engineering and Medicine. What can the science of Nanotechnology offer to the medical specialty of Oncology?One of the great barriers that needs to be overcome is what I would term "intellectual protectionism" in which the first priority is "to protect our turf from the barbarians at the gate".So, how do we overcome these barriers? It starts with the realization that we are challenged to put aside "professional glory seeking" in order to use our skillsets and knowledge for the greater good of humanity as a whole. Developing respectful acknowledgement of the skillsets and knowledge of other disciplines is the first step to opening the eyes of the six blind men.Next.....Cross Disciplinary Collaboration --Part of a New World Order

If you’re new to the Downright Sneaky Tricks series for Lectora®, be sure to catch up on the previous posts: Part 1: How to Build a Backdoor in Your Course Part 2: Create a "Hidden Entrance" to devMode Part 3: Add a devMode Indicator                                                                                                                                                           If you’ve played video games, you may be familiar with the concept of Invulnerable Mode (a setting which unlocks advanced features like special weapons and abilities and even invulnerability by granting the user access to a master control panel). Developers use this master control panel to make it easy for them to test their games without the inconvenience of dying or having to locate hidden weapons. It can be useful for testing to give yourself special powers, so that’s what we’re going to do in THIS tutorial. We are going to focus on 2 particular superpowers… The power to teleport anywhere (in your course) The power to KNOW ALL and SEE ALL (of the answers on the quiz) Best of all, you won’t have to go through the typical methods of getting super-powers… scientific experiments gone wrong, getting bitten by irradiated spiders, getting doused in chemicals, and so on. Ready? The power to teleport anywhere (in your course) This sounds impressive, but you already know how to do this… you will simply create a Table of Contents that connects to every page in the course. It will be hidden by default and only viewable in devMode. How to add a devMenu On the top level of your course, go to the Insert ribbon and click Table of Contents to add a Table of Contents item to your course. On the Properties ribbon, click Type and select Drop down list. Reposition the drop down list where you want it to be in the location and stacking order of the page. On the Properties ribbon, rename it devMenu and select Initially hidden and Always on Top. In the Properties ribbon, add the following action: Trigger: onPageShow Action: show Target: THIS OBJECT Condition: if devMode is equal to 1 So when you load a page, IF you’re in devMode, the devMenu will appear. If want it to appear the instant you turn on devMode, then you need to add ONE more action to your devEntrance button. Select the devEntrance button and add the following action: Trigger: Mouse Click Action: show Target: devMenu Condition: if devMode is equal to 1 Else Action: Hide devMenu Again, this action needs to occur AFTER devMode toggle. In essence, we activate the devMenu exactly like our devMode indicator: when you click the dev button, it turns on or off, and once it’s on, it stays on until you turn it off. The power to know all and see all (of the answers to quiz questions) When you are testing an online quiz with multiple questions, it can take time remembering all of the correct answers. Even if it only slows you down a second or two, it still takes time. But what if you could quickly see the answer? Better yet, if you need your SME to review your quiz to see if you have the correct answers coded, it can be much faster for them to see it onscreen than to read the feedback form at the end of the quiz. This magic trick is simple: you just need to provide a visual indicator that identifies the correct answer(s) to the question. These indicators are hidden by default, but devMode causes them to appear! I prefer to use bright orange arrows as my indicators, though some questions like matching or drag and drop require me to get a little more creative. The principle remains… the visual answer indicators are hidden by default and only show up in devMode. How to add a magic answer key For the purpose of this exercise, I will use a multiple response question with 2 correct answers as my example. Up to now, everything we have done with devMode has been inherited throughout the course. With the answer key, the answers will change on every question page, so this process requires a little more manual work. Go to your first quiz page with a question and add visual indicator(s) that identify to the correct answer(s). Optional: Add Transitions In and Out as desired. (I like to use a float right and fade out.) For example, add 2 orange right facing arrows. In the Insert ribbon, click Group to add a new group. Why are we adding a group? Some questions may have multiple visual indicators. Instead of having to show them each one by one, if you put them in a group, you only need to show the group. Rename the group answers, make it Initially Hidden, and move the visual indicators into the group. For example, move the 2 orange arrows into the group. Finally, we need a way to trigger these answers to appear. At the page level, add a new action: Name: Show ans if Action: Show Target: answers Condition: If devMode is equal to 1. Else Action: No Action In English, what we have programmed is as follows: "When this Page loads, show the answers group IF devMode is turned on. Otherwise, do nothing." Copy the group and action to additional pages as necessary Although you will have to manually add the visual indicators and the page action to every page where you want answers to appear, you can simply copy and paste. Since the page action refers to the answers group, you can add items to the group or take them away without changing the action. Copy and paste the show ans if action and answer group to additional pages as necessary. Two small points to note While the answer key can be marvelous, there are 2 things to keep in mind: Since the answers appear on PAGE LOAD, they won’t turn on immediately when you activate devMode. They turn on AFTER devMode is turned on and you move to a new page. Since you are indicating the correct answer manually, it’s up to you to make sure that it is the ACTUAL correct answer and that it matches the correct answer coded into the question. Go ahead and add answer indicators to your questions and see how quickly you can fly through your quiz! Tune in next time when we make our secret entrance a little more secret. Download the Lectora and Lectora Online files for this course in the Trivantis® Community. John Mortenson is the Online Learning Manager for The Fresh Market. He has been developing online courses for over 10 years and is a member of the Lectora Advisory Board. He is also an Adobe Creative Suite Guru and cartoonist. You can contact him on LinkedIn and Twitter. Previous Tutorial The post Downright Sneaky Lectora Tricks Part 4: Unlocking the Master Control Panel appeared first on .

In this article I will share 6 key benefits that blended learning can offer your corporate training. Key Benefits Blended Learning Can Offer Corporate Training  "To blend, or not to blend?" - is this your question? Or, perhaps, you ask it this way, "what training strategy is the most effective for our business needs?" Whichever way […] The post 6 Key Blended Learning Benefits For Corporate Training appeared first on PulseLearning.

This is the first post in a new series from EdTechTeam that is designed to help anyone get started with anything. I also hope that these posts might also serve as a refresher for those who might not have used a tool in some time. As we’re well known for our work in the Google Apps for Education space, we’ll be focusing initial efforts there. Other topics will find their way into the series in due time. I would like to point out that while we personally prefer to focus our efforts on classroom pedagogy and transformational teaching and learning, we acknowledge any change effort requires a starting point. If you’re reading this, and you’re just getting started with instructional technology, I welcome you. Under the Hood: Google Docs Revision HistoryOne of the best features of Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and Forms is the Revision History feature. This feature allows the editors and viewers to see the full history of changes made to a file. View this larger hereAs an educator, the revision history is invaluable for several reasons:No more unrecoverable mistakes How many times have you accidentally deleted an entire page of text by moving too quickly? I have. In fact, I have done it several times. Having access to the revision history means I can quickly restore the doc to a prior state. Students can too…Managing group projects more effectively When students are working on a group project, you can quickly use the revision history to see who has contributed content and edits to any given piece of text or presentation. I have used this as an opportunity to head off problems before the team gets off the rails. It takes no time to determine that a student has not been participating and I can have a chat with him to get him contributing to the effort. Understanding work habits On individual and group assignments, I have used the information from the revision history of a document to better understand the work habits of my students. Unsurprisingly, I found that many of my students tended to work late at night--especially those in middle school and high school. However, deeper investigation led me to discover that some of them didn’t have a choice and were working late at night because they had to care for siblings after they got out of school. This was why they were so tired when they came into class. Armed with this information, I was forced to rethink how I ran my classes in order to not put them to sleep. That’s how I found myself experimenting with Project Based Learning.What other ways are you using the revision history feature? Be sure to share in the comments below.