I don´t need to read any stats to be aware of the massive adoption of mobile devices in recent years.  All I need to do is to stop for a second and see how mobile devices have almost instinctively become … Continue reading →

How to Leverage Mobile for Training and Learning  [Interview] Some days ago, I had the opportunity to share my thoughts on how we can use mobile usage data to design more effective mobile learning experiences. You can read the full … Continue reading →

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 43,000 times in 2014. If it were a … Continue reading →

"This book is dedicated to the hard-working creative learning professionals who want to make a difference." I must confess that Connie Malamed´s latest book grabbed me from the very first page :) Yes, I want to make a difference as … Continue reading →

In my latest post for ATD, I show you how to apply more than two decades of research in the fields of applied linguistics and second language learning strategies to e-learning design. Check it out here!Filed under: mLearning

My first post on Dribbble.Filed under: mLearning

On Tuesday 11th March at 8:00pm AEDST (UTC +11hrs), @OzLearn is having its next monthly twitter chat. The topic for the chat is based on this article written especially for OzLearn by Jonathan Kettleborough (@JKettleborough): Why L&D can’t ignore alignment anymore. The chat will be moderated by Helen Blunden (@ActivateLearn) and the questions will be around how aligned L&D is to business. To join the chat, go to Twitter at 8pm on 11/3, search for @OzLearn and join in the conversation (don’t forget to add #ozlearn to your tweets). There is also an OzLearn LinkedIn group where you can view the Storify of the chat afterwards. Hope you can join us for the chat!

At a recent L&D Meetup, we were talking to each other about what we’d been working on since we last caught up. A couple of friends were discussing changes to the Privacy Act and the e-learning courses that have been developed to communicate these changes to the employees in their respective workforces. The industries I’m talking about here are finance and insurance so I’ve no doubt each of the Legal Departments have been frantically enforcing the necessary amendments to the systems/policies/procedures across each organisation. It also sounded like the e-learning modules contain everything there is to know about the privacy legislation! They were saying that there hadn’t been too much direct focus on privacy for a while but these changes had breathed some life back into the area and now it was more urgent to make people ‘aware’. I was reflecting on this on the weekend (actually, I was vacuuming my place at the time and I was thinking about the night before) and I know these legislative/compliance type topics are generally quite dry - although it’s no excuse to blame your content  - and normally compliance means that employees will be ‘forced’ to complete the learning. So, we’re already on the back-foot because most employees won’t really want to do it to begin with. This highlighted to me two important and often neglected areas of learning design - motivating people and sustaining the learning afterwards. Motivation I’ve written a couple of posts about motivation and Ryan and Dec’s self-determination theory (SDT) of motivation before. At this point feel free to do one or more of the following: Click here and here to read the previous posts. Keep reading this post for a summarised version of the previous posts and some strategies for improving motivation in e-learning. Scroll down to the Sustaining the Learning section. Essentially, the SDT focuses on the degree in which behaviour is self-motivated and self-determined. We all have three basic psychological needs: Autonomy (a sense of being in control and having freedom) Competence (a sense of being able to do something), and Relatedness (a desire to be associated or connected to others). Contexts that satisfy these needs will result in more sustained motivation over time. If we apply this theory to e-learning and we use strategies to support these needs in the design of the course, we can improve learner motivation even if they are required to complete a course by their organisation. How can this be achieved in practice? Here are five examples, with some practical applications that I came up with: 1. Give people some control as they work through the module or course. Let them choose how they navigate through the course Give the option to skip parts that they already know Provide opportunities to explore different parts of the course. 2. Allow people to make meaningful choices and pursue challenging goals Use branching scenarios that have consequences for decisions made Increase the difficulty of challenges as the person works through a topic Offer rewards based on challenges completed rather than screens visited. 3. Provide opportunities for collaboration between learners Get people working together on tasks/activities that help develop competence Provide topic discussion areas and space to share resources or to ask questions. 4. Keep the stakes low and allow practice Provide multiple opportunities to apply the material they are learning to context specific situations Give them time to repeat practice activities until they succeed Provide tools and aids that can be used during the course and then back on the job. 5. Provide regular, meaningful feedback throughout the learning experience Let people know how they are going and where they are up to Motivation is important in any learning experience. If we can help satisfy the psychological needs of our people, we can improve their motivation towards the course they are completing even if they have to complete it. Sustaining the Learning Often when we complete an e-learning course (or classroom course, for that matter) it’s confined to a defined period of time. There may be a build up to the course but then once learners complete it, and are deemed ‘competent’ it’s back to work. Move on. They’ve been trained. The box has been ticked. Sustaining the learning after an event, be it online or classroom, presents a real opportunity for us in L&D. All too often, in my experience, after people complete a learning event they go back to work and it’s business as usual. Surely we can do more to sustain what has been delivered and bring about some meaningful change? If we just do things once in a course, it will be forgotten if the information is not reinforced. Last year, I read some interesting blog posts by Craig Taylor who implemented a campaign approach to compliance training in an organisation he worked for. I thought this was a wonderful idea so I floated doing something similar with our compliance program to our risk and compliance officer. It hasn’t been done before in my organisation and the good news is that I’m getting support from others and things are building (I’ll write a dedicated post about it in the next month or so). Using social tools and creating opportunities for networking and sharing knowledge are other powerful ways that can sustain learning over the longer term. Maybe if we did this, we wouldn’t need so many courses? How do you motivate your people towards learning and sustain it afterwards in your organisation?

learningsnippets:This is an amazing post from Andrew. Everyone working in the Learning and Development space should read it. Change is not always easy but it’s up to us to make it happen if we truly want to add value. Originally posted on Lost and Desperate: Photo Credit: tashland via Compfight cc I was struck by a post on the always interesting TeachThought again yesterday.  I’ve referenced their work before and the post didn’t just impact on me; Jane Hart also saw it and in the spirit of celebrating the positive, this post is my nod to what they’ve done.. The post lists 50 ‘crazy’ ideas to change education. Some easily transfer across to workplace L&D, some not so much. What I’ve done is use them as the basis of a new list of 50 big ideas. Our task is to take those 50 ideas and explain how and why we can/have/should make it happen. Alternatively, why they shouldn’t. So, the big 50… Make connectivity and sharing a catalyst for all learning. Stop claiming every person will be competent. Have people design their own quality criteria, and develop frameworks to help them understand… View original 686 more words

These were the two messages that stood out over three days in Sydney at the iDesignX Australian Instructional Design Conference (21st March) sponsored by B Online Learning & Articulate the eLearning Design Workshops with Tom Kuhlmann and David Anderson (22nd and 23rd March). I was fortunate to attend the sessions in Sydney last week and for me it was a dream come true to not only be in the same room as Tom and David but to hear and learn directly from them (I also got to meet them which was an incredible experience and a real highlight too). Practice As someone with a keen interest in learning generally, but eLearning in particular, I’m always looking to other experienced people in the learning field to find out how I can improve my own skills and knowledge. While it would be great if there was a magic pill you could swallow and voila! you’d be transformed into an eLearning whizz, the reality is that when you look at anyone who is successful in their field, the one thing they have in common is a commitment to developing their skills over a period of time. Tom and David are no exception to this. Over the years they have worked on many projects but they also make time to experiment and try new things. The speakers at iDesignX also showed that they have put in a lot of effort over the years to get to where they are today. Tip: a good place to start practicing your eLearning skills is in David’s Weekly Challenge. You can also learn more about building great eLearning courses at Tom’s Rapid eLearning blog. Sharing Tom and David are role models when it comes to sharing. Their jobs at Articulate along with their travel schedule must keep them extremely busy. However, they are extremely generous with their time and have a great willingness share what they know, provide advice and help anyone who needs it. It’s something all learning professionals can learn from and do more of. So, in the interests of sharing, here’s firstly what I took away from iDesignX (you can also check out all the tweets at #iDesignX): "Instructional design is about crafting the appropriate learning experience. We need to reframe content so that it’s meaningful and relevant. Then we need to give learners something to think about and have them make decisions." Tom Kuhlmann - VP Community at Articulate "Tips when using virtual training: prepare and support participants, consider cognitive load, design for different levels of engagement, have learners interact often, support facilitators, pilot the training and test, test, test, test." Brenda Smith - Medibank Health "When using video in learning experiences, authenticity is very important." Mark Parry - Parryville Media "Clean and balance (in graphic design) creates stability and can direct learner focus." Minh Nguyen - DEEWR "Using curation for learning design > collect, filter, evaluate, arrange, present, distribute." Anne Bartlett-Bragg - Ripple Effect Group "Before you gamify your eLearning course, make sure it meets the learning objectives." Ruth McElhone - B Online Learning "Learning experiences should be meaningful, memorable and motivating." Ruth McElhone - B Online Learning "Using video for manual or process tasks shows the correct way to do something." Tony Nye - Australian Red Cross Blood Service "Pictures clarify words and stories add context to content." Blair Rorani - Ever Learning BTW this is the ninja I drew during Blair’s session: "What makes an industry pro? Experience; Skills (practice your craft); Authority and Luck." Tom Kuhlmann - VP Community at Articulate "Luck is where opportunity and preparation meet." Tom Kuhlmann - VP Community at Articulate "You need to be proactive and look for opportunities. Sharing expertise creates opportunities." Tom Kuhlmann - VP Community at Articulate And from the workshops with Tom and David: On using PowerPoint for eLearning: PowerPoint is a really good tool to create an interactive eLearning course. While you can’t do everything that an authoring tool does, hyperlinking from one slide to another can create the feel of an eLearning course. PowerPoint is also handy for creating and editing graphics, just look at this photo frame I created using edit points and soft edges: Also, what I was able to do by modifying clipart images (before on left, after on right): On designing an eLearning course: Ask yourself: What content needs to be in the course? What is the right look and feel? What is the learner supposed to do? Be intentional, stick with a consistent design and don’t settle for defaults (colours, fonts etc.) On eLearning makeovers: Review the five common components of eLearning courses: Text - should be from the same font family Elements - the goal is unity not uniformity Colours - use colour for contrast and emphasis Background - it should contribute to the visual and not dominate People - if you use characters maintain unity On interactivity: Interactivity connects the user to content. There are two types of interactivity: Touch - the learner interacts with the screen (by clicking, dragging or hovering) Decision - the learner interacts with the content. On Learning Objectives: When thinking about learning objectives, ask yourself: Who is the learner? What is the situation? What do you want them to do? How can they prove it? On building interactive eLearning: Know your tools - don’t build clunky courses Create relevant content Use stories for learning especially if there’s a lot of content Remember the 3 C’s: Challenge the learner Give them choices Have consequences for decisions There were at least a couple of hundred people at the conference and about 80 people each day at the workshops. If everyone incorporates just one or two of the things they learned into their eLearning courses the quality would certainly improve. But if everyone also shared what they’ve learned with others in the field, it would help to improve even more courses and contribute to building a strong community of learning professionals! All in all it was a great three days of learning from the best in the field and also chance to meet lots of people that I’d only known via Twitter and make the physical connection. Let’s follow Tom and David’s example by practicing our skills and sharing what we know so that we can develop ourselves as well as others. If you went to the conference and/or the workshops what did you learn and have you shared it yet? Footnote: This post originally appeared on the B Online Learning website.