It’s that time when we should draw breath and think about what will be significant in elearning in the coming year. In this article, Steve Penfold pulls out his crystal ball and predicts some trends to watch in 2016. Rarely will a technology, product, or technique emerge from nowhere and become a game-changer overnight. These things usually take a while to mature and enter into the mainstream psyche, so it’s no surprise that many of the things to watch this year were also on the radar last year. That said, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the L&D zeitgeist so that when something does hit the mainstream, or you see an opening in your organization to implement something on the edge of mainstream, you’re ready to take advantage of it. With this in mind, here are six things to watch in 2016 . . . 1. Mobile learning Mobile continues to grow. As my recent article on mobile learning indicated, as the penetration of mobile devices grows (in excess of 90% in the United States), and sophistication of authoring tools matures (e.g., Elucidat’s responsive write-once-publish-anywhere capability), and savviness of elearning authors increases, mobile’s impact will become more widespread. And why wouldn’t it? The concept of learning at the point of need, regardless of when and where that is, is a powerful one. And what we consider to be mobile learning today will change as new mobile and wearable devices become the norm and content authoring methods change to take advantage of these. This will keep mobile learning on lists like this for some years to come, in one form or another. 2. Gamification Gamification is another one of those techniques that people have talked about for a year or two, but you can expect to see more of in 2016. I wrote about the motivation factor of gamification late last year in another article, Why gamification in elearning is important. The power of gamification is hard to dispute. And now that authoring tools like Elucidat make it simple to integrate branching scenarios and badges into their courses, and LMS vendors like Docebo have gamification elements like badges and rankings at the learner-group (organizational, team, group, or cohort) level, you can expect to see more gamified offerings in 2016 and beyond. 3. Data analytics LMS vendors have always given administrators reports based on course completion data. But increasingly, learning occurs outside of the LMS, and learning administrators want to know more than "Mrs. X got 85% on her last course attempt," or that "1,095 people have completed module Y since June." L&D professionals are realizing that detailed granular data can tell businesses a lot about their learners and courses. For example, knowing which paths learners are initially drawn to in a branching scenario can tell a business about learner contexts or preferences, which in turn can be extrapolated to determine other learning that should be delivered. This granular data gathered over time and with large cohorts may highlight other hidden patterns that can impact overall return on investment or help an organization to better understand the learning process itself. Like many things on this list, it’s the mainstream availability of sophisticated enabler tools that makes something go from being a theoretical nice-to-have to a realistic must-have. In this case, granular learning-event data captured via the increasingly common xAPI standard (aka Tin Can) or Google Analytics, coupled with ever-more sophisticated analyzing and visualization software will see data mining and analysis become more accessible and common in 2016. 4. Augmented reality Once the stuff of science fiction, augmented reality—the merging of the real environment with other virtual information in real-time—is becoming easier to achieve. Tools from Layar and Aurasma, for example, give L&D and marketing teams everything they need to create highly engaging and interactive augmented reality experiences for their users at very little cost and on a very shallow learning curve. In conjunction with the increased use of mobile devices, augmented reality will be something to keep an eye on in 2016. 5. Social media It’s taken a while, but the term social media doesn’t get the same negative knee-jerk reaction that it once did in corporate L&D circles. L&D professionals are beginning to see the benefit of peer collaboration and support in learning and the power of peer endorsement of corporate goals, learning events, and initiatives. Corporate-oriented social tools like LinkedIn and Yammer have given more credibility to professional social media, and increased corporate reliance on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies has meant that some of the corporate-mandated blocks on third-party sites aren’t as tight as they once were. These points, along with stronger integration of social elements into learning platforms—for example, how Docebo can harness and curate peer-generated content—mean that social media continues to be something to watch in 2016. 6. Personalization Personalization can mean different things to different people in elearning, but ultimately it’s about providing learning in a context that’s relevant to individual learners, rather than providing a one-size-fits-all learning experience. Two things already mentioned in this list will help facilitate personalization in 2016 and beyond. Firstly, leveraging social media is one way to personalize learning. Learners can voice their opinions, concerns, ideas, and solutions and discuss issues relevant to them, fueled by the concepts and information provided by learning events. This adds a dynamic dimension to learning and makes the course materials come alive and bristle with personal relevance. Secondly, data analytics that indicate why, when, and how learners prefer to access their learning will enable content vendors to tailor learning experiences in ways that meet the needs of learners. However personalization is implemented, it’s something that learners and businesses will benefit from and will be something that learning consumers will expect and demand. Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. In conclusion It’s an exciting time to be in L&D. The tools that enable you to do the types of things on this list are with us today and are getting less expensive and more sophisticated all the time. It’ll be interesting to see which of these are so common in 2017 that they don’t rate a mention, and what will emerge to take their place. Can you recall any Next Big Things that never quite made it into mainstream practice? Jot them in the comments below, so we can all smile and reminisce about them. The post 6 elearning trends to watch in 2016 appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

New elearning for the growing data centre industry is being launched aimed at helping employees and visitors stay safe, reduce downtime risks and avoid possible accidents in the mission critical space.The online training has been developed by award-winning elearning company Sponge UK for leading data centre training and certification provider, DC Professional Development (DCPro), and uses the latest learning design techniques to bring the subject to life.DCPro is raising awareness and standards within the data centre industry, enabling individuals and organisations to keep up with constantly evolving best practice and acquire news skills in a fast-paced industry with engaging cost-effective training.Simon Banham, Managing Director at DCPro, said:"Human error is the main factor in most cases of data centre downtime so providing effective workforce training in health and safety is really important."The global rise in demand for data storage space has prompted a growth in data centres with annual spending in Europe alone rising by 8.3% in 2015 to $63.3 billion (€56.1bn).Louise Pasterfield, Managing Director at Sponge UK, said: "This new elearning course is designed to be interactive to enable people to ‘learn by doing’, with clear, concise language, engaging images and short video clips to support key messages."Learners can choose their own path through the course, depending on their role in the data centre, so the training is a suitable introduction to Health & Safety for anyone working in and around a facility.It also includes regular knowledge checks with supportive feedback to help learners monitor their progress through the module.The one hour online induction course is available globally through DCPro’s website.The post Mission critical health & safety elearning for data centres launched appeared first on Sponge UK.

A new interactive video featuring actors with disabilities reveals what it can feel like for vulnerable people when a charity fundraiser knocks on the door.It’s been created by elearning company, Sponge UK as part of an online training programme for The Public Fundraising Association (PFRA), the membership body for charities and agencies carrying out face-to-face fundraising. Three actors play the role of homeowners who are unexpectedly disturbed by a door-to-door fundraiser.They all have disabilities that are not immediately obvious and the training video explores the rules on how fundraisers should behave when dealing with people with physical and learning impairments.Each video shows two different perspectives so people can see the same encounter from both the fundraiser’s point of view and that of the person answering the door.Peter Hills-Jones, CEO at the PFRA, said:"This is a ground-breaking approach that has never been more needed in the charity sector. Creating this innovative platform for fundraisers to learn on has been a huge leap forward for us. The interactive video is a powerful way to highlight issues of vulnerability and help fundraisers understand what it can feel like to answer the door to a stranger. Driving up standards in face-to-face fundraising using this online training will help to create better fundraisers and longer-term donors."Actor, author and disability campaigner, Lewis Adler appears in the interactive video as a homeowner with a hearing impairment.In real life, Adler has severe hearing loss and Dystonia, a progressive neurological movement disorder. He said:"I’m one of more than 70,000 known Dystonia sufferers in the UK. I truly value any opportunity to raise awareness of the condition, and that of hearing loss. Without a doubt, this initiative by the PFRA lifts the training of face-to-face fundraisers and disability awareness to a new level. Indeed, it has been a privilege for me to be involved in its production."The interactive video also features actors Di Cram who is blind, and Ellen Coulton who has Tourette’s Syndrome.The PFRA has invested in a state-of-the-art elearning training package, which includes the interactive video, to help fundraisers stick to the rules and follow best practice.The online learning is mobile-friendly and also includes elearning games to help make it as dynamic and engaging as possible.All PFRA members can access the programme for free and it’s expected to help supplement the training of hundreds of face-to-face fundraisers across Britain.Sponge UK is one of the Britain’s leading elearning companies and works with both private and public sector organisations to provide tailored-made online training courses, games and interactive videos.The post Interactive video helps fundraisers learn best practice appeared first on Sponge UK.

In this post, we'll be diving into the murky waters of eLearning video. Most of us agree that video is a wonderful tool for aiding the learning process. It's fun, visual, and appeals to more learning styles than a 'rote-learning-read-this-100-times' approach. What's more, according to KZO Innovations, 98% of organizations are predicted to use video by 2016 in their digital learning strategies. So video is useful, widespread, and fun - no downside, right? Not quite. Video comes at a cost, and not a metaphorical one. Staying in budget is a big concern for most eLearning professionals, and video is renowned for eating up that budget quicker than you can say "it's not that expensive!". A viable alternative is to produce your own video, cut costs, and personalize your eLearning program. But, before you put on your director’s cap and grab your iPhone, there are a few things you need to know first. So grab your notepads and buckle your seatbelts, let's get going. The Small Print: While DIY video is an option, it has to be taken seriously to have the desired effect. This means that if you shoot an eLearning video on your 2008 camera phone, you may have some very awkward meetings with your boss in the immediate future. Video has to be allocated the resources, manpower, thought, and rigor that it deserves. So while doing it yourself can cut costs drastically, make sure you know what you're getting into. So, without further ado, here are the five main steps you should follow for producing your own video for your eLearning courses:

What did you get up to in 2015? In between helping our customers to get started or stay current in all aspects of online learning, we wrote a bunch of great blog posts. Compliance was a particularly hot topic, especially when it comes to registered training organisations. The use of video to engage learners was […]

  Rural India is still struggling with widespread poverty, limited opportunity, and low teacher attendance rates in school. What role can the virtual classroom play in improving the quality of education and life?   In June last year, the Madhya Pradesh government took a leap forward by introducing an attendance tracking application on smartphones to tackle teacher absenteeism. The situation had hit at an all time low when a study found that some teachers were absent for 23 of their 24 years of service. A study done by the University of California pegged the fiscal cost of such absenteeism at $1.5 billion a year. Districts like Dhar and Burhanpur are beautiful, river-side, and have great historical meaning in our heartland. They can also be a bleak place to live.   The virtual classroom presents us with a great opportunity to tackle this problem. Willing teachers from around the world and the country can be tapped without their physical presence with the help of the virtual classroom. This would enable the rural children to get the quality of education they should be getting and their parents expect from schools.   When teachers, pundits, and theorists analyze our Educational system, they usually focus on urban and suburban schools and colleges, but rural schools make up for more than 50% of our country.  Unlike many of the urban peers, students here fight with generational poverty, low quality of education, a lack of awareness and limited job opportunities. Virtual classrooms could easily help these children get a better quality of education and ensure a bright future ahead. Interactions with their urban peers, guest lectures by leading industry specialists, virtual tours of various places all over the world, would open their minds to the possibilities that exist through education all through the medium of virtual classrooms.   A report released by the World Bank last year in October suggested that India might be overestimating the number of it’s poor, but it still doesn’t change the fact that nearly 7% of the rural population of our country is still facing extreme poverty. The government taking an initiative towards virtual classrooms shows that they are trying to take a step ahead towards building awareness through higher quality of education.   With the Modi government allocating close to 100 Cr towards virtual classrooms, let us analyze what could possibly be the benefits of such a system and how we could salvage rural India through them. We will be taking an in-depth look at the classrooms and schools in rural India and tackling all the problems they face with the help of virtual classrooms.   In the coming months, we will study the number of states with the highest rural population facing poverty, the quality of education and life in such areas and how virtual classrooms could be effective in providing students with the quality of education they require to uplift their lives and break out of poverty.   The post Salvaging Rural India with Virtual Classroom : An Introduction appeared first on Fedena Blog.

This week's challenge is to create an interaction to play video in e-learning, so I made a video slider using snippets from a recent trip to Turkey. Read more...

One of the main sources of employment and economic growth in the United States includes jobs that require skills and expertise in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), yet too few American students pursue expertise in these fields. STEM education has therefore become one of the focus points in the effort to maintain global leadership and competitive position. In order for American universities to produce the required quantity of graduates in the STEM fields to meet the present and future demand, the process of instilling an interest and developing the right attitudes and skills necessary for success in these fields must begin at an early age. According to the National Math & Science Initiative, 69% of American high-school graduates are not ready for college-level science and 54% are not ready for college-level math. One of the reasons behind these statistics is the dearth of trained K-12 teachers tasked with preparing students for success in college. To address this particular challenge, Excelsior College has partnered with Tata Interactive Systems and Questar III BOCES to develop a series of courses focused on best practices in teaching mathematics to students in grades K-8. To know more, click here: http://www.tatainteractive.com/whitepapers.html This joint initiative of Excelsior College, Tata Interactive Systems, and Questar III BOCES, earned a Brandon Hall Group Excellence in Learning silver medal honors in the Best Advance in Custom Content category, which recognizes self-paced, custom-designed online courses targeted to address specific workplace learning needs.

[Post by Karla Willems, Account Manager at GeoMetrix Data Systems Inc.] A recent post at Research Digest titled "Here’s a simple way to improve your work/life boundaries" discusses the affects of completed and uncompleted work goals on our home lives. The website, from the British Psychological Society, recounts the results of a study conducted by Brandon Smit of Ball University in Indiana. Smit asked participants to report on daily work goals and how much these goals occupied their thoughts in the evenings. Unsurprisingly, uncompleted goals took up more thought than completed ones. But Smit did not leave his study participants out in the cold over these worries. He instructed them to clearly plan where, when and how they would tackle each one. The Research Digest posts states, "By specifying the context for action, this helped the high-involved participants to put the goals out of mind during off-work hours, and as a result their uncompleted goals produced fewer intrusions, almost as if they had the same status as completed goals." Smit’s research is published in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology as "Successfully leaving work at work: The self-regulatory underpinnings of psychological detachment." In the article abstract, Smit writes, "Detaching from work - defined as mentally and physically disengaging from work during off-hours - is an important prerequisite to effective daily recovery and psychological well-being." In the article, Smit offers examples of specific goals and strategies for completion. "Creating plans at the end of the day that describe where, when, and how unfulfilled work goals will be completed is an effective, low-cost intervention that enhances psychological detachment among employees, which will ultimately improve occupational health and performance." To read the post visit: Research Digest The published study can be found at: Wiley Online Library Photo from Freeimages.com

You often hear the phrase ‘it’s a small world’; people and places are more accessible than they have ever been before and technology offers huge opportunities for global working. With a growing confidence in employees to look beyond their own country’s borders for their next job, employers are at risk of losing their best asset not just to competitors in the next town, but across the world. In an IBM survey, it was found that 71% of senior management identified their staff as their leading source of sustained economic value ahead of products, customer relationships and brand. 17% of UK employees say that they are very engaged in their job, which leaves 83% who aren’t.  You would think that all these disengaged employees would be seeking new employment, but according to CED who undertook the study of over 18,000 employees worldwide, 39% of those disengaged in the UK have a strong intention to stay with their current employer. They will apparently stay put, but in effect ‘check-out’ from their jobs. The damage that these employees can do to a business is literally catastrophic. So employers need to find a solution to re-engage these employees or face significant risks to their business. Skilled, knowledgeable and engaged employees enable efficiencies and productivity along with the confidence to embrace innovation and progress to sustain a business’s profitability.  In research carried out for the UK government it was found that businesses with low staff engagement achieved an operating income 32.7% lower than businesses with more engaged employees. When companies have an engaged workforce they can grow their profits up to three times faster than their competitors, according to a study of 50,000 global employees by the Corporate Leadership Council. Remarkably it was found by McLean & Company that a disengaged employee costs a business approximately $3,400 (£2,287) for every $10,000 (£6,727) in annual salary. This has massive implications for a company and something that requires immediate remedial action. So are employers aware of employee engagement in their business?  Are they succession planning to safeguard the knowledge and skills of those who retire or move on? In research carried out by ADP, it was found that around 50% of UK employers think that losing talent in their workforce is going to be one of their top threats in 2016 along with attracting new talent to their organisation. Without doubt, engaged employees are better for business and they are also more likely to stay with their employer. There are many factors that can contribute to having an engaged workforce such as good internal communication, listening to employees concerns and suggestions, but high up on the list is professional development providing opportunities for advancement in the organisation. Promoting staff internally is not only good for the employee, but it is also good for business bringing benefits such as reduced recruitment, induction and initial training costs. The IBM survey found that in top performing organisations 84% of employees are receiving the training they need compared with 16% in the worst performing organisations.  The most common reason for employers not delivering training is not because they don’t value it, but because of its cost, particularly when there is a squeeze on budgets. However, organisations such as the London Fire Brigade have cut costs and improved their training with the use of flipped blended learning; including online and classroom training. They have not only improved the consistency and quality of training but have also saved the Fire Service £700,000 a year. The main cost saving has come from not having to remove fire fighters from the workplace for four weeks to complete training. Instead, they complete most of the training online and in the classroom the trainer can then check understanding and move onto more advanced topics. Good quality online learning can start at as little as £10.00 at full retail price, quite a contrast to sending a member of staff on a day’s training at a few hundred pounds or more. Of course employers and employees are only going to want to undertake online learning if it develops knowledge and competency. In the Towards Maturity survey 2014, using technology to deliver learning was found to result in: >  14% improvement in productivity >  23% improvement in speed to rollout of new products/services >  12% reduction in time to proven competency A wealth of evidence tells us that the return on the training investment is significant when there is a blend of online learning with on-the-job practise and support. Delivering the knowledge online required to increase skills enables learning to be revisited, is an efficient use of time and is cost effective. Not only will staff feel valued if their employer provides them with training and opportunities for promotion, but they are more likely to engage with their job and, therefore, be more productive. The company will reap the benefits in so many ways and will also be taking action to safeguard their most valuable asset; knowledge and experienced employees. Author: Carolyn Lewis, Managing Director of Elearning Marketplace and Learning Technology Consultant Sources: http://www.hrgrapevine.com/markets/hr/article/2015-12-22-uk-workers-switch-off-whilst-19-look-for-new-career http://www.hrzone.com/talent/development/london-fire-brigade-uses-e-learning-to-improve-training-and-cut-costs https://www-304.ibm.com/services/learning/pdfs/IBMTraining-TheValueofTraining.pdf http://www.hrgrapevine.com/markets/hr/article/2015-12-23-top-5-hr-trends-to-watch-out-for-in-2016