An important question that business leaders should ask themselves about a Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network is:"Why should a business like us care about making connections or even having a role in establishing such a network? Isn't this more for the academics in research departments at institutions of higher learning?"  In order to honestly answer those questions, you really have to ask yourself  a number of very pertinent questions with respect to your organization:Is being on top of advances in technology that could impact the performance level of our work force have strategic value for the company in a highly competitive global digital economy?In an information and knowledge society, does an ongoing process of mentoring employees in their learning advancement and nurturing the development of new skillsets that are germane to the changing nature of our part of the business sector of value to the healthy growth of our organization?Is collaborative real world problem solving on the part of employees and innovative thinking keys to increasing our organization's ROI?Do we desire to have a healthy balance of servicing our current markets and creating new ones?Cross Disciplinary Learning--What is it? Cross disciplinary learning is an approach that suggests that when we need to find and solve real world problems, that no single set of skills will enable us to detect, analyze, and solve problems in the 21st century.In the past with regards to the instructional designer and trainer for a business organization, these individuals were expected to not only design and deliver effective learning experiences for employees but also to keep up with new knowledge and skillsets that may need to be addressed that could improve performance and compliance with respect to employees."However, when the World Wide Web came along with the ability to share and create new knowledge in all the disciplines, the game changed dramatically for business! It is naive to believe, given the exponential growth in knowledge and technology, that the instructional designer and trainer are able keep up as they did before and still maintain the expected level of performance. The myth of multitasking especially in regards to this issue will lead to mediocrity for business performance against other organizations more in tune with the realities of growth in the global economy. Something else that fits the requirements is needed.Business organizations have stated very clearly that what they want in the way of the primary quality in future employees is that they are problem finders and then problem solvers. They want employees who can act proactively rather than reactively in this regard. They want employees to be able to analyze a situation, detect potential problems and then arrive at preemptive solutions. As pointed out earlier, the instructional designer and trainer can not be expected to meet the new requirements of the roles they play. They need to empower employees to engage and have access to a network where these requirements can be met.So, given the rationale for change, why are some companies so resistant to what needs to be done? Perhaps the actor, Jack Nicholson, said it best in the movie titled: "A Few Good Men":Could this be in part the explanation?Next....A description of the functions of the Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network

Business organizations need access to the latest research that impacts products and services as well as a mentor network that engages employees and empowers them to be innovative and collaborative real world problem solvers. This type of network recognizes that no one individual whether instructional designer or trainer have all the necessary skillsets in order for an organization to move forward. The previous role of the SME and his or her uneasy relationship with instructional designers and trainers needs to be reshaped because it is based on a paradigm from the industrial economy that no longer fits. In the past, your organization's collaboration efforts may have been similar to the pattern below.In re-visioning the pattern of the learning portal, there are also collaborative relationships with a principle difference being that employees are engaged, empowered, inspired and feel that they are making meaningful contributions to the well being and future health of their organization. The ongoing learning of employees in an age of information and knowledge has to be a focal point of each organization's learning culture.When we look at the re-configuration of the Global E-Learning Hub, you will notice that the directional arrows displayed in the diagram represent paths of feedback and responsibility.You will note in the diagram that the Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network reports and advises the Business and Education Innovation Council and provides big data to the Global E-Learning Hub. Keeping in mind that the Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network also collaborates with the Global Higher Education and Teacher Mentoring Network, you can start to understand that in order to keep up with the advancement of knowledge in multiple disciplines that collaborations have to be cross disciplinary in nature. The following are some of the responsibilities and roles that Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network entails:Work with educators, corporate trainers, instructional designers and Learning Principles Experts in the design of irresistibly engaging learning experiences that would then be provided to the Global Learning Hub.Collaborate with educators, corporate trainers, instructional designers and Learning Principles Experts in the design of assessment tools and also take part in the assessment of the learner's (employees) efforts from the perspective of their discipline. This would involve them in providing ongoing feedback to the learner and especially to mentor-learner groups.Be willing to identify promising employees and higher education students who have the right aptitudes and skills in order to recommend appropriate mentor matches. This type of relationship will help develop employee skillsets needed for the growth of the business organization. At this point, the question that probably comes to mind is:"Why is there such an emphasis on education with respect to the health of our business organization?"To answer this question, it is important to remember a few points:Effective performance of employees of an organization is tied to how well they are able to unlearn, adapt, relearn, problem solve and innovate. Unlike in the past, in a global age of knowledge and learning, the relationship between business success and the ability of employees to use formal and informal learning can no longer be considered as separate issues.A term often used as a synonym for mentoring in business organizations is "coaching". For the record, when I speak of mentoring I mean in the fashion as what existed during the times of the craft guilds. The reason is that I believe that if we want to see "exceptional performance" of employees, superior products and services, we have to re-discover the crafts person's mindset for a standard of quality that a master crafts person expected and developed in his or her apprentice. The industrial era and the onset of mass production broke that exemplary work mindset. To accomplish this type of a breakaway from the status quo will require vision and leadership.  In looking at the networks represented and their relationships, "systems thinking" is the key to understanding the dynamics involved and what that might mean for the health and future of business organizations.Next...The influence of global higher education and a teacher mentoring network on upcoming employee skillsets

Put your learner in the action! How? Add a scenario to your online training course, which allows your learners to make choices and experience a simulation of the content they’re learning. Lectora® Inspire 12.1 makes it easy to add scenarios and characters with the new eLearning Brothers integration, and Brother Sean explains how in an awesome video tutorial. Watch the video over on the eLearning Brothers Blog: Scenarios and Characters in Lectora: Have Your Cake and Eat it Too. In case you aren’t familiar with the eLearning Brothers Cutout People Library, it’s full of thousands of character images that are ready to drop right into Lectora. Each character has a transparent background and comes with multiple poses and emotions. You can choose from different industries—business people, industrial people, medical people, etc.—to make your course unique and engaging. (And this is just one part of the eLearning Brothers Awesomeness now included in Lectora Inspire!) Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more helpful tips, eLearning news and resources. The post Engagement Made Easy with eLearning Scenarios and Characters appeared first on Trivantis e-Learning.

I’m a visual learner—that’s what some eLearning professionals would say—because I prefer memorizing from an outline rather than a lecture alone, or reading about a new topic instead of listening to a podcast about it. But how significant really is my "learning style" (visual vs. auditory vs. kinesthetic) in the learning and development community? Many studies from the last few years suggest that learning styles are a myth, a fad, a waste of time, etc. I did some more research to read (visual learner here) about both sides of this learning theory in the education and eLearning communities. Here’s what supporters of learning styles are saying: "There’s nothing restrictive about a learning style," says Dr. James Witte, Auburn University Associate Professor of Adult Education. He actually believes there are several types of learning styles, including cognitive, affective, and perceptual. The perceptual category is based on the five senses and includes the following learning modalities: Visual (viewing photos, film, etc.) Auditory (listening) Kinesthetic (movement) Print (seeing written words) Interactive (verbalization) Haptic (sense of touch or grasp) Olfactory (sense of smell and taste) Hmmm. According to Witte, and if learning styles are true, then I’m more specifically a print learner—not simply a visual learner like I previously thought. Witte takes a more conservative approach to learning styles than other researchers (and some suggest that there are alternate styles such as verbal and mathematical); however, some psychologists argue that learning styles are unlikely and that this learning theory is a waste of time. "We have not found evidence from a randomized control trial supporting any of these," says Doug Rohrer, psychologist at the University of South Florida, after examining studies of learning styles more closely. He advises, "And until such evidence exists, we don’t recommend that they be used." Researchers and learning professionals like Rohrer recommend to instead use training strategies that have been proven to work for all students. On ATD Learning & Development Blog, instructional design specialist Ruth Clark says that instead of learning styles, "let’s invest resources on instructional modes and methods to improve learning." According to professionals like Rohrer and Clark, while I might prefer to learn by reading, eLearning course designers can use training strategies that are proven to be effective with all learners. So, as an eLearning developer, what should you do? Design courses that are audience-focused. Whether you’re a fan of learning styles or you think they’re a myth, you can design training that is successful and focused on the learners taking your course. Here are a few tips for creating successful, audience-focused eLearning: • Get feedback. Do a post-training evaluation to find out what learners like and what they don’t like, so you can make adjustments for next time. • Provide choices. Studies show that learners like to be in control. They like options and personalized training. By offering the choice between watching a video on the subject and participating in a real-life scenario experience, you empower your learner to succeed—the way he or she wants. • An authoring tool like Lectora® Inspire can help you add interactivity and engaging elements to your training. Sign up for a free trial today. • Track your training results to see which strategies are providing the best ROI on your training program. Then use those results to direct future eLearning initiatives at your organization. For more articles on instructional design theory and creating successful training courses, subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog. The post Learning Styles in Training Development: Truth or Myth? appeared first on .

Voting for Jane Hart’s Annual Top 100 Tools for Learning is now open. Lectora® made the list last year and we need your help to stay there! Voting closes at noon GMT on Friday, September 18, 2015 and the 2015 Top 100 Tools list will be revealed on September 21, 2015. To make it easy for you, Jane and the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (C4LPT) have provided several different ways to submit your vote: Use the online form on the C4LPT website. Email your 10 tools to jane.hart@c4lpt.co.uk using an organizational email address (i.e not webmail like Gmail or Hotmail). Specify your role as a learning professional, and whether you work in education or workplace learning or both. Note if you are happy for your comments to be quoted or would prefer them to stay private. Tweet your 10 tools to @C4LPT from a Twitter account that can be used to validate your role as a learning professional. Write a blog post about your choice and tweet or email the link to Jane. Here at Trivantis, we’re all about helping our awesome users, so we wanted to make it EVEN easier for you to vote. I drafted this email template with a few—okay 15 because I’m indecisive—of my favorite learning tools listed to help you get started. Feel free to pick and choose or add your own tool suggestions. Subject: My vote for Top 100 Learning Tools Jane, I work for (company) as a (education/workplace learning/both) professional. My LinkedIn profile is: (link). Here are my top 10 learning tools: ReviewLink Lectora Online Lectora Inspire Lectora Publisher CourseMill® LMS CourseMill Mobile CourseMill Wave Snap! by Lectora eLearning Brothers Template Library eLearning Brothers Interaction Builder Snagit Camtasia GoAnimate BranchTrack TechSmith Fuse Go ahead and quote me/my choice of tools on your site. Thanks! OR Please don’t quote me personally on your website. Thanks! (Your name) Thanks for supporting Lectora and CourseMill! The post What Are Your Top Learning Tools? appeared first on .

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) became popular around 2011 - 2012. New York Times columnist and best-selling author, Thomas Friedman, described them as an educational "revolution." The Washington Post praised them as a way to provide "elite education for the masses." Even our own Stephanie Ivec, published in eLearning Industry, cited the opportunity to reduce costs on courses and better take advantage of certifications by integrating MOOC content. Today, we’re seeing that the growth of MOOCs has slowed from the rapid pace at the beginning of the MOOC craze, according to TechCrunch writer Danny Crichton. In the Google Trends graphs below, he shows stalled search traffic for two well-known MOOCs. (Source: Danny Crichton, TechCrunch) Crichton explains, "We failed to ensure that motivation and primacy were built-in to these new products, and in the process, failed to get adults to engage with education in the way that universities traditionally can." This issue mainly applies to the higher education use of MOOCs. When learners aren’t students on a physical campus, they don’t have social incentives that motivate learners. They don’t have the influence of friends encouraging them to attend classes or a need to avoid the shame of poor performance. If students stop participating in a free MOOC, no one will know. If students stop putting effort into a MOOC, they won’t lose money—which means quitting doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Are MOOCs better suited for corporate training? But these examples are largely from higher education. What about corporate training? One UK-based company that helps people plan vacations, Much Better Adventures, spends the lull during Friday afternoons learning about sustainability. Its employees use MOOCs to drive business benefits, says TechRepublic writer Erin Carson. "For the team at Much Better Adventures, ‘productive’ is an apt description for how they’re using what they’re learning in sustainability." Some workplace learning experts like Jeanne Meister argue that the larger goal is to "use the MOOC movement as the impetus to re-think and re-imagine how your organization designs, develops and delivers learning." So where can MOOCs fit into your company’s training program? Maybe you’d rather create your own training courses that are specifically customized for your employees, simply using MOOCs as a source of content or to supplement their custom training programs. In a world where companies spend millions of dollars to build or buy all types of training, companies can save a great deal of money by leveraging MOOCs or accepting their certifications. Want to get started? Try using the authoring tool Lectora® Inspire to create custom training courses that are interactive, motivating, and engaging. Trivantis CTO John Blackmon suggests using Lectora to create "a course high on video content that has a comprehension test at the end, and gives the user a badge or certificate for their accomplishment." Video-based, MOOC-style content like this is easily supported within Lectora’s authoring tools (sign up for a free trial.) And you can use a system like CourseMill® and CourseMill® Wave to create a knowledge-sharing hub around the content of your MOOC. Comments? Enter them below. The post MOOCs: Hype or a Revolution for Corporate Trainers? appeared first on .

In a recent #GuildChat sponsored by the eLearning Guild, the participants were asked "How is an organizational ecosystem similar to / different than an ecosystem in nature?" The first response was from learning and development professional Mark Sheppard, who said, "An ecosystem is something that is always under threat—whether we know it or not." As budgets get tighter and tighter, learning and development programs often go the way of the dodo. But without the expert knowledge needed to build a learning and performance ecosystem, will your organization still perform well? Or will the weeds take over? Your office likely already has its own ecosystem—one built around the people, workflows, and technologies that support your day-to-day work. According to noted eLearning expert Marc Rosenberg in a Learning Solutions Magazine article, you can build on that. "A learning and performance ecosystem introduces new capabilities that integrate learning and performance solutions into the work environment, where the vast preponderance of learning actually takes place. While training is still important, the overall strategy minimizes the need for workers to leave work in order to learn, reducing work disruption, and placing more learning opportunities directly into the workflow." A good learning and performance ecosystem is built on: Talent management Performance support Knowledge management Access to experts Social networking and collaboration Structured learning Clark Quinn, Ph.D., Guild Master, and founder of Quinnovation, is very firm on the need to support learning. "Learning is no longer a ‘nice to have’, or even an imperative, it is the only sustainable differentiator.  The question is: are you ready?  Are you making the new learning a strategic priority?" he asks on his blog, Learnlets. In Rosenberg’s follow-up article, he says, "a learning and performance ecosystem is not just technology or merely a set of features and functionality. Ultimately, it must be active, alive, and thriving. It lives through its use by people. Without people using, interacting, connecting, and deriving value from it, the ecosystem becomes useless and dies. There will be no learning and performance ecosystem if there is no real change in our views about learning and performance, and about how we practice our craft." All this makes having a performance ecosystem sound pretty important, right? But wait… The eLearning Guild asked later on in the Twitter chat, "When is striving for a performance ecosystem not the correct approach to take?" That’s right, the organization that has an entire white paper on learning and performance ecosystems is now suggesting that you don’t need one? Don’t worry—the other Twitter chat participants were equally shocked and stumped. However, some ideas emerged as the discussion deepened. To me, it’s clear that a performance ecosystem is only as valuable as the effort you put into building and maintaining it. It takes the right tools—like social knowledge sharing platforms and mLearning solutions—and a commitment to making sure the system you’ve built is getting the results you want. Done correctly, a performance ecosystem will help you perform better. Done incorrectly, it’s just another example of that "red tape" everyone loves to hate. Do you think your company has a learning and performance ecosystem? How do you measure results? Share your thoughts below. The post Can You Perform Without a Performance Ecosystem? appeared first on .

"I don’t get variables! I’d rather be nibbled to death by ducks than try to deal with them!" Are you a Lectora® user who cringes at the mere mention of the word "variable?" You are not alone! The concept of variables is very simple, but for whatever reason, is difficult to grasp for a lot of people. So I thought I’d begin this blog series with a topic that isn’t even specific to Lectora. It’s just a concept that, once understood, opens up all sorts of new possibilities for things you can do with Lectora, like custom navigation and branching, simulations, swapping content based on user input, gamification… Pretty much anything you can dream up! In trying to think of how I might describe what a variable is to people new to the concept, I did a web search for "variable definition." Most of the resources I found use a lot of technical terms and get way into the weeds before they even tell you what it really is! And while all those details and terms may be important eventually, they are not needed to understand the basic concept. So to verbally define it as simply as I can think to, a variable is a container! It’s just a boring old container—like a basket, a bucket, or a beer mug. And like most containers, a variable can contain just about anything you want to put in it, or contain nothing at all. (Ok, so you can’t put real beer in a variable, but you can put the word "beer" in a variable! We’ll talk more about that in a minute.) To be a little more specific, a variable is a named container. And to create one, all you have to do is pick a name, like basket, or bucket, or beer_mug. The name can be anything you want as long as you stick to a few simple rules: • Use only letters, numbers, dollar signs $, and underscores _. (No spaces, which is why I put an underscore in beer_mug.) • Begin the name with a letter, a dollar sign, or underscore. (A variable name cannot start with a number.) • Don’t use names that are already used by JavaScript. (JavaScript is the programming language underlying the functionality of what Lectora produces. You can find a list of JavaScript Reserved words here: http://www.quackit.com/javascript/javascript_reserved_words.cfm.) • Don’t use names that are already used by Lectora. (You can see what names are already used by Lectora on the Reserved tab of the Variable Manager.) Best practice for variable names is to choose something that describes what you plan to put into your variable/container. Use names like totalQuizScores, or popup_is_open, or numberOfTries, or currentVocabWord. Like I said before, you can’t put real beer in a variable, but you can put a representation of beer in a variable by using the word "beer." So when I said you can put anything you want in a variable, the catch is that it has to be represented by characters or numbers or both. Some of us are visual thinkers and hands-on learners. I am definitely one of those people and did not catch on to the abstract concept of variables until somebody actually showed me what a variable is. So I built this little interactive piece (in Lectora, of course!) that may help those of you who are like me to see what a variable is. Play around with it and see if it starts to become clearer. So that’s it really! A variable is just a named container, a place to store stuff for later use. In my next blog, I’ll explain how to make a variable in Lectora, how to put stuff into it and get stuff out of it, and why you would even want to use your own user-defined variables in the first place. Liked this article? Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for more Lectora Basics, free resources, and product news. Lectora Basics is your intro to eLearning authoring with Lectora. In this blog series, Wendy Miller, Lead Content Developer here at Trivantis, will introduce you to fundamental concepts in Lectora. Wendy is a visual designer and computer programmer with extensive experience developing software, courseware, web sites, games, and multimedia. Other Lectora Basics articles: • Lectora Basics: Using User-Defined Variables The post Lectora Basics: What Is a Variable? appeared first on .

You may have already heard the big news. If not, I’m pleased to announce that ReviewLink™ 3 now allows you to upload Captivate® and Storyline® courses in addition to publishing Lectora® titles for review. We know that our users have many different tools in their eLearning development toolboxes, and we wanted you to be able to enjoy the timesaving features of ReviewLink—no matter how you created your course. In addition, we’ve made ReviewLink responsive. You can view mobile courses from your smartphone or tablet, along with desktop courses. How does ReviewLink make course review more efficient? Your manager, stakeholders, and subject matter experts can provide feedback directly on any page of a course. Each comment has a status—New, Fixed, OK, Not OK, or Archived—so you can easily keep track of your progress. One of our clients, Axcess Financial, saved 80 maintenance hours and 12 weeks of client review per year—just by using ReviewLink! They shared their tips and tricks with attendees at the 2015 Lectora User Conference. Below is a snapshot of their presentation—and no, ReviewLink 3 does not come with a motorcycle! What else can ReviewLink do for you? The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention used ReviewLink to run a course pilot. By using ReviewLink, the CDC could allow multiple reviewers to share their opinions, while keeping their comments hidden from each other. This prevented one reviewer’s opinion from influencing another’s first impression of the course. ReviewLink is an extremely useful tool for an eLearning developer, and we’re so excited to let you use it on even more courses. Ready to start reviewing? ReviewLink comes with Lectora Inspire and Lectora Publisher when you purchase a Lectora Maintenance plan. In addition, you can buy it separately starting at just $29/month. Subscribe to the Everything eLearning Blog for all the latest product news, free resources, and tutorials. Captivate® is a registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Storyline® is a registered trademark of Articulate Global, Inc. The post Why You Need the New ReviewLink appeared first on .

Creating effective eLearning courses requires good design—even if you don’t have a design background. In this new blog series, "Design Dos & Don’ts," we’re asking designers to share essential graphic design tips and suggestions, along with what not to do in your eLearning courses. For this post, I asked two of our design experts here at Trivantis—Tony Cavalier and Anthony LaQuatra—to share design tips that eLearning developers could use to create effective and professional-looking courses. Take a look at a few important design dos and don’ts that they recommended for eLearning developers: Do: Use custom photography. "Invest in a camera and take your own stock photography," says Trivantis designer Anthony LaQuatra. "It will add a personal element to your course and will set you apart from those using standard paid stock imagery." While quality stock photos can save time, custom photography has its own advantages. For example, seeing a familiar coworker’s face can help to engage learners. For some tips on taking your own stock photos, read this post: Be a Stock Photography Model! Do: Follow web design trends. To make your training look fresh and current, stay up-to-date on web design trends. Anthony says, "Normally, web design sets the tone for the year’s creative trends. Sites like thenextweb.com usually come out with projected trends for the year in January. These can be carried over into courses and other learning materials and can keep your learners interested and your courses up to date." Don’t: Use low-res images. Even if you don’t have the time to do your own custom photography for your course, Trivantis Art Director Tony Cavalier recommends avoiding low-resolution images. "Find an image that is print quality or high-resolution web quality," he explains. "This will make a huge impact in the visuals you use." High-res images will keep your course looking professional, and then your learners are more likely to take it seriously, which makes the training more effective. For more tips on using images in your course, check out this post: How to Choose the Best Images for Your e-Learning. Don’t: Get designer’s fatigue. Tony says, "Sometimes when looking or working on a design for a long time, you tend to bend your perspective to fit your design." For those course design moments when you’re stuck, he suggests: Taking a step back from your desk and looking afar Changing your perspective to look at your design as if you are the user Taking a break and returning to the design later on or the next day can also help change your perspective. What are your biggest design dos and don’ts for creating professional-looking eLearning courses? Share them in the comments below. The post Design Dos & Don’ts: Images and More appeared first on .