You’re a what? A Learning Consultant? One of the core services we offer to clients is learning consultancy. It is quite difficult to describe what a learning consultant can do for a client until a client actually uses the services. Today’s post comes from Mark Gourley, one of our very experienced learning consultants. Mark loves talking to clients about how people learn, learning technologies, getting the most from their LMS and how to create really good eLearning content that people actually want to complete. To demonstrate how beneficial learning consultancy is, we’re currently offering a FREE 1/2 day with one of our learning consultants.* Over to Mark… When people in my social circle ask me what I do for a living, I can generally predict the blank expression (or as I like to call it, the ‘what’s that?’ face!) when I reply ‘Learning Consultant’. If I wanted to explain it in short I suppose I could reply: ‘I work with clients to enrich their L&D offering’. But then what exactly does that entail? So (deep thinker that I am) it got me thinking about how I can better articulate what I think a learning consultant does and why, in the evolving world of eLearning, we can be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful L&D transition for your company! So here are five reflections from me that I hope will help you. If you want to drop me an email to ask any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. 1. We are ‘In The Know’! These days many companies want to enrich their L&D offering, and by enrich I mean truly modernise it. Modern learning is evolving at a fast pace and, if you want your company’s L&D offering to bear fruit, then it’s is probably time to add to your classroom and formal training offerings. It is not that all classroom training needs overhauled, but if you adhere to 70:20:10 as a guiding principle, then you will understand that less is better! For companies making these sorts of changes, it can be a daunting task. Where do you start? What’s the first major change you need to make? What direction do you take? This is where the learning consultant is key. A good learning consultant will be ‘ahead of the game’, so to speak, and fully aware of all the modern technological advances that make the possibilities for you and your employees endless! In short, we have the knowledge to start you on your successful L&D evolution. You can see an example of how we helped one of our clients - eircom business, to modernise here. 2. It’s all about you Being knowledgeable is one thing, but does that mean if you start working with a learning consultant they will just suggest all the latest modern technology and expect you to fit it around your L&D offering? A one size fits all approach? I say to that…absolutely not! The key, for me, is in the job title; Learning Consultant. The good learning consultant’s will work with you to discover how your current L&D offering functions, how it fits into the company’s overall strategy and where key wins and successes can be achieved in the short, medium and long term. Using your knowledge of the company and our knowledge of modern learning we will work toward a solution, in partnership, that works for and will benefit both your L&D team and, more importantly, the wider company. 3. Ask. Listen. Advise I have always wanted to devise my own tagline and in describing the role of a learning consultant I may just have managed it (if I do say so myself!) - Ask. Listen. Advise. ASK - The good learning consultant will begin any consultation by asking the key questions to get to the root of your L&D needs - we will exhaust the who, what, where, when and why until we have a crystal clear understanding of your requirements. LISTEN - We will listen to all your areas of need/pain points and take note of the key things that are important in developing your L&D strategy. We’ll also get to grips with any constraints we must be aware of. At heart, we are pragmatists and very agile in how we approach the challenges and solutions that your business needs. ADVISE - Finally, based on all the information gathered, we will advise on the best solution for you based on your key requirements and our knowledge of the industry. We will never be afraid to have those hard conversations, which others might shy away from; those coversations ultimately benefit your team and your organisation as a whole. Ask. Listen. Advise. A simple but highly effective method. 4. Implement So, with the solution firmly in place, it’s all about implementation. Time to put the words into action and start building the blocks for that shiny new modern L&D offering. It might be tempting, at this stage, to think that the learning consultant’s journey should stop and everything is handed over to the L&D team to put in motion. They have the solution, surely it’s up to them to implement it? I baulk at the thought! Implementation, for me, is only really the beginning of the hard work and the Learning Consultant should be on hand every step of the way to offer guidance and support to the L&D team through the implementation process. The relationship between the learning consultant and the L&D team is one of partnership after all. Only through solid partnership can we build that world class modern L&D offering that will be the talk of the town and that benefits your entire organisation! 5. Follow Up! So the L&D evolution is thoroughly underway and your team are firmly on the correct path. You might think that this is the jumping off point for the learning consultant and, in a way, it is. However, I am a firm believer in ensuring that things are never allowed to slip. Just because the house is built does not mean it still doesn’t need some TLC on a regular basis to keep it strong and sturdy. With the development of your new L&D offering, if you don’t consistently review the progress and give it some on-going attention, then you are in danger of letting things slide out of control - and you’ll be saying hello to your old friend ‘square 1’ before too long. So as a learning consultant, we are there to follow up with you and your team to ensure that those structures you have put in place are still working for you, and that new opportunities to enhance the L&D offering are consistently presented. The L&D evolution is truly an evolution….it continues indefinitely! In summary, when people ask me what a learning consultant does and what they bring to the table, apart from pointing them to this (hopefully) informative blog, I will compare Learning Consultants to the infamous Gordon Ramsey (angry shouting and swearing aside!). We will come in to help with your L&D nightmare (or slight challenges), we will listen to your concerns and have those hard but necessary conversations, and then we will set about helping you to transform your L&D offering to a truly world class standard! But remember, it doesn’t stop there…we will always come back from time to time to check in and offer the benefits of our industry knowledge so your L&D can continue to grow and prosper. What other work can a learning consultant do? As a final insight for you, take a look at a few of these L&D projects that our Learning Consultants have been involved with over the last few years. Client: Global manufacturing company Challenge: A new expenses and invoicing system needed to be rolled out world-wide. Based on traditional classroom methods, training costs were prohibative and would take too long to benefit the business. What we did: Our Learning Consultants outlined a a simple task simulation and demonstration solution to capture the screens of the new expenses system quickly and efficiently, and worked with our Instructional Designers to deliver the final solution - in both French and English. Client: Major telecoms and communications company Challenge: Our client had gone through a major re-organisation and re-structuring, reducing their L&D team to just one central person but still needed to deliver the same training and learning for all staff. What we did: Our Learning Consultants helped the central L&D person to re-organise their work so they were better at meeting the needs of the business; we introduced modern learning technology, taught key staff to create their own content and delivered a 95% learner satisfaction rate on eLearning content. If you would like to experience this service yourself, sign up for our FREE 1/2 day session with one of our learning consultants. Just click on the button below.  Thanks for taking the time to read our blog today. Feel free to comment - have you worked with a learning consultant before? What was your experience? Feel free to email Mark with any questions Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe.   *Terms & Conditions apply. The post Could a learning consultant help your business? appeared first on Logicearth.

Happy Monday, everyone! I wanted to jump in and share a quick tip this week on something simple you can do to help market your online courses to your existing network. Whether you’re launching a course for the first time or mentioning an existing course in an email out, it’s important to do a double take to be sure you’ve fully captured your existing contacts in your email list. My favourite way to do this is by exporting my LinkedIn connections. Even if I did this originally I’m always adding contacts and may not have captured everyone I want in my email list. Here’s how to do it: Visit the LinkedIn exporter at: http://linkedin.com/addressBookExport (it will prompt you to log in to your account if you aren’t already) Choose your export type (I suggest sticking with the default .CSV file for most uses) Hit Export. That’s it! Once you have your .CSV file of your LinkedIn contacts, you can import the list into whatever tool you use to manage your list. Here are the instructions for a couple of them: Mailchimp import instructions Constant Contact import instructions AWeber import instructions Many of our instructors find that their existing networks are one of their biggest assets when promoting new courses, but don’t realize there’s an easy way to export email addresses of these connections. When dealing with email, always remember to play nice by abiding by any applicable anti-spam legislation in your country, and giving subscribers the chance to opt-out. Otherwise, email is a great way to stay in touch with your network! Happy emailing! The post Updating your email list with LinkedIn connections appeared first on Thinkific.

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University. Each week, we are required to post three responses/reactions to queries posted by other … Continue reading →

How does your organisation view intercompany communications, knowledge sharing and learning? Today’s blog comes from Logicearth co-founder, Peter Carlin. Hot on the trail of finding more effective solutions to boost our client’s success, Peter talks about re-thinking workplace learning based on modern technlogies and learning techniques. And an astute observation on high performers! Over to Peter… The convergence of intercompany communications, knowledge sharing and learning has already happened. It is workplace learning, but not as we know it. To better understand this revolution, it is time we looked at how the most effective people in your organisation learn and develop their careers. Learning & communications, two sides of the same coin Courses and communication items are both written by wordsmiths and are designed to be brief, impactful and sticky. The learning community, however, always had a card up its sleeve because its systems were able to track distribution, completion and understanding. Although internal communications tools are starting to catch up, learning technologies continue to evolve at a rapid pace with many more modern and social elements. For these reasons, it is suitable discuss these topics from a heavily weighted learning perspective. There are two great frameworks in use today to help us understand how learning and communication really take place in the modern workplace. 70:20:10 learning model of all learning takes place formally (yet interestingly this is where 95% of all training and development spend takes place in most organisations), normally in a classroom but equally through directed online experiences.  is through exposure to others, learning and developing with others socially. is learning and developing through day to day tasks, challenges and practice. The exact split of the percentages, the 70:20:10 model, when used as a guide, provides us with a thought provoking reality check as to how we could engage with our teams in a more meaningful way. The other learning model is called the Five moments of need (Gottfredson & Mosher), providing us with a framework to help our employees improve their day to day jobs with "performance support" tools and content. Moments of need Again, this model provides a structure for knowledge provision at the exact moment of need. In particular, the "Apply" moment is key: "Apply is the sweet spot of performance support. There is much that can and needs to occur here. When people are at this moment, when they need to actually perform on the job, they need instant access to tools that will intuitively help them do just that—perform. This help must be immediate and tailored to the role and situation of the performer. The aid needs to allow the performer to dive as deep as necessary, depending upon his or her need to plan, remember, adapt, or reference information required for successful performance." The application of both models, using various tools, content, techniques and processes, ensures that we can deliver highly successful and high impact learning and communication programmes.  One aspect of workplace learning, we feel hasn’t been exploited yet, is the role of high performers. Let’s look at this next. Using the insights of high performers High performing people understand that knowledge is power, they are highly driven and efficient at managing their own personal development. They take control of their own continuous knowledge acquisition and goal setting. It is about skills development - the best want to improve their skills to become even better, so they look for ways to learn and grow personally that will also help them to help the company grow. Self-direction - the best employees are more likely to perform their own research and spend more time on projects than average performers. They self-motivate and self-initiate new assignments and challenges. They seek out those in the organisation who have the influence and the knowledge they need to achieve their goals and progress to the next level. In a world of tech, good people skills still rule High performers tend to have larger professional networks than average workers. They realize that "who you know" can often help advance a career. They will call on their contacts inside and outside the company for basic insights into how to approach a problem or for general support. They don’t have to be "life of the party" extroverts but they understand the value of nurturing professional relationships. High performers: High performing teams have the same traits and many are using social tools to work and learn collaboratively. Our challenge in the modern workplace is to help and support the remaining high potential members of our employee base to make it easy for them to emulate these high performing traits. A useful role, we believe for L&D is to seek out and better understand the high performers in their organisations. Building a team collaboration and social learning strategy (Thanks to Jane Hart for this excellent explanation. You can reference Jane’s full website of other excellent articles here.) If we believe in the concepts of the 70:20:10 model, then it is apparent that knowledge acquisition and learning is primarily a social activity. Therefore in order to execute an effective strategy, we need to develop a multi-faceted, managed and facilitated service to truly engender knowledge sharing across the teams. The user experience has to fully match the high standards of the world’s creative industries, it must be mobile, web responsive and fun to use. In summary, the solution must have the following core pillars: How is it for you? Does your organisation look at its high peformers in this way? Do you have an active plan in place to help people transition from high potential to high perfomer? With high performers contributing approximately 400% more to the organisation that an average employee, investing time in analysing this might just be a clever move. As always, we’d welcome your thoughts or insights below. Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe. The post The convergence of communcations, knowledge sharing and learning appeared first on Logicearth.

Anticipation, buzz, hype… whatever name you give it, one of the absolute best times to be marketing your course is before it’s available to purchase. Whether it’s the anticipation buildup of watching a trailer for an upcoming movie, commercials for the next season of Game of Thrones (we have to wait until APRIL!), or Apple’s latest product announcement, buzz is all part of the excitement. Your upcoming course should be no different. Marketing in advance and building buzz can not only lead to a truly successful launch, but also gives you plenty of opportunity to build an even larger list before you go live. Here are a few tips to get started: When you start putting together a course, begin marketing at the same time. A "coming soon" banner on your website, talking about what you’re up to on your blog and emails, and social media mentions are all great places to start Supercharge your existing website prompts to join your mailing list (or add this if you’re not doing this now). Rather than "sign up for my newsletter," change your call to action to something related to your new content, such as: "Join my VIP list and get 5 tips from my upcoming course right now" Talk about benefits, not features. The compelling message isn’t that your new course is going to have 27 lessons of content with videos and so on, the message is how your audience will be better off. Turn those messages into prompts for action - "5 days to the release of my course which will give you back 5 hours a week in lost productivity. Don’t lose another hour - sign up for early access" Let some people in on it early. Select tips to VIP audience members, signups for advance access, and early release to key influencers in your community (think review copies) can be a great way to get people talking about it up front Entire courses can be written on planning a successful launch, but these few tips should help inspire a few ideas that you can get started with, even if you’re still perfecting your content! Happy Monday!   The post Marketing before launch: Building Hype appeared first on Thinkific.

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University. Each week, we are also required to post three questions for the rest of … Continue reading →

I just watched Chef, the movie, and it reminded me why I do what I do. If you haven’t seen it, I’d recommend it. Chef Carl Casper, Jon Favreau, finds himself unhappy cooking under a restaurant owner’s yolk and with no time to spend with his ten year old son. He quits his job and starts a food truck with a friend and his son. They embark on a cross country road trip serving up Cuban sandwiches, and with the help of his son’s tweets, vines, and Facebook posts, they take America by storm. What really struck me was the power to take control of your life and your time with a business of your own. Working for yourself, whether it’s running a food truck or teaching online courses, can give you the freedom to spend time with your kids, go fishing, learn a language, or whatever you’re dreaming of. And we’re all dreaming of having a little more time and money to work with. I guess I identify with the Chef, as his move from a fine dining restaurant parallels my jump from one of the largest law firms in the country to teaching online courses. I loved law, but the freedom of teaching online is amazing. It wasn’t an over night success, but with a little time and attention my first course took off and left me with the time to pursue my dreams. If you haven’t seen it, check out the trailer. And if you haven’t started teaching online, think about it. Or think about a food truck. The Chef had a passion for food and wanted to share it with the world. What do you want to share with the world? What can you teach people? I’d love to hear about it in the comments! - Greg @ Thinkific The post Lessons from The Chef appeared first on Thinkific.

Good quality eLearning makes a difference to your staff Today’s blog comes from Helen Cassidy, one of our Senior Learning Consultants and lead Instructional Designer. Helen works directly with clients to help shape eLearning project requirements, and from the outset, she always has good quality eLearning in mind. Helen’s our workplace performance ninja - projects that focus on ‘awareness’ just don’t get past her! Over to Helen… What is the main challenge you want to address? How does it impact your staff and your business? "Well, we’d like our employees to have a really good awareness of the new product suite." Ugh. Years ago I became the proud owner of an altimeter watch - a top of the range piece of kit. I bought it because it would tell me how many meters I stood above sea level. And why was this useful? It’s so obvious! It would make me much more aware of where I was on the side of a mountain! Except that this new awareness of how many meters I stood above sea level meant little when I found myself on the side of a featureless munro, in the dark, in the mist, close to hypothermic, out of food and water and well past home time. What’s more obvious is the point I’m trying to make. An awareness of something is usually a vague knowing. It’s not enough to make you change your behaviour. I was aware of some navigational aids but didn’t have the skills to use them on the mountain when the need arose. And this idea forms the basis of many conversations we have with our eLearning clients. You don’t need an eLearning course to ‘create awareness’. Employees can become aware by talking to colleagues or scanning a document - both these options are much cheaper than developing an eLearning course (even a competitively priced Logicearth eLearning course!) So why do clients get stuck on the ‘awareness’ thing? Is it because: A. The objectives of the eLearning solution haven’t been well enough defined? B. The individuals we speak to don’t have the detailed knowledge themselves? C. The needs of the learners haven’t accurately been identified? D. The client hasn’t viewed eLearning as a tool for effecting behaviour change? E. The client thinks that IDs are magicians? At Logicearth, of course we’d like to think that our instructional designers are magicians - but that aside; for us as IDs, the key question is: What do you want your learners to be able to DO after completing the course? Once IDs get a clear answer to this question, the design can focus on ensuring that learners can DO this ‘thing’. This answer will help enormously to address points a) to d) above (we’re still working on addressing point e). The answer will help subject matter experts (SMEs) to understand that in identifying what learners must be able to DO, they can identify things that learners are currently not doing, which can be addressed directly in the eLearning. By identifying what learners should DO, SMEs can further identify the precise moments and situations of need. Knowing what a learner should DO helps IDs to give learners the words or the actions needed to succeed, so the eLearning can include opportunities to practice decision-making and action-taking which mirror their everyday challenges. Identifying what learners must DO can also serve to highlight any gaps in the content provided by the SMEs in the clearest possible way. Using awareness as part of the good quality eLearning journey So let’s look at an example - say your friend is learning how to drive. Would you get in a car with them if they only had an ‘awareness’ of where the brake, clutch and gear stick was? Or, would you prefer to drive with someone who had actually learned TO DRIVE? This is perhaps a ridulous example, but yet it is what many eLearning programmes try to do. How many of you, for example, have taken communication skills courses, without actual support, feedback and practice on how to listen or speak effectively in business? And there are countless other examples that I am sure you could bring to mind. Not only is awaress too vague a concept to make a difference to your staffs’ on-the-job performance, it is just unclear what it means and it is very subjective. How do you tell the difference between someone who is averagely aware versus someone who is fully aware? Awareness is more useful as part of the learning journey, or as what we would call an enabling objective. When you are plotting your learner’s journey as part of the overall project goal, you can look at barrriers to awareness and other issues like motivation and confidence. This refinement of requirements keeps everyone involved in the design process moving towards a common goal. The quality of the eLearning for learners will directly depend on the relevancy of each element of the course to the goal of DOing something better in their jobs. Back to the munros (We think Helen climbed this one) On a more recent mountain trip, I found myself on the side of a dangerous, crag-ridden munro, in the dark, in 100mph winds with a party of novice walkers, one of them injured and well past home time (I know, there’s another lesson in there somewhere). By studying the map, estimating time and distances, judging the terrain, taking a compass bearing, reading the ground and confidence-roping the injured/terrified, I managed to safely lead the group off the mountain and down to the pub for a nerve settling Glenmorangie. Key to the whole escape was my trusty altimeter - in the dark, I needed to be sure we didn’t drop below 520m above sea level in order to avoid a waterfall gorge below and yet stay beneath the vertical crags above. After working out where we were and where we needed to go, my altimeter was the tool I needed to follow the only path to safety. The difference this time was that I knew how and when to use the tool to achieve my goal. So, what do you want your learners to be able to do? Abracadabra! Kalimazoo! Through the dull cloud of awareness come bright rays of positive action and sound decision-making… good quality eLearning! Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe. The post What good quality eLearning really means to your staff appeared first on Logicearth.

Quality, inspiration and engagement - themes for June 2015 I often wonder what my colleagues in the wider eLearning community would like to see in eLearning content designed for them. If you are involved in eLearning or training design, you’ll have spent countless hours thinking about your target audience and the companies they work in. What motiviates them to learn, what might put them off? What do they actually need, beyond ‘awareness’ to help them to do their jobs better? Pratical, relevant eLearning content - scenarios and examples, inspire me!   Getting to inspiring eLearning So now, today when I think about what actually motivates me to learn, I think that perhaps it is much more simple than I once thought. The key word for me is inspiration, closely followed by relevance. On a day-to-day basis I get bombarded with so much information. Lots of ‘helpful’ ideas from colleagues, solving problems for clients and filtering through emails and instant messages. Then there is Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and reviewing other’s work - it is hard to make the useful insights stand out from the noise of the mundane crowd. If something inspires me, my ability to learn seems to be turbo-charged with energy and enthusiasm. Of course, the trick is to figure out what actually inspires you - and this can be different for different people. Today’s post brings you six sparks of inspiration, from a few of Logicearth’s blog posts this month and a few others that have caught my eye. Spark 1 - If content is king, it is time to overthrough the monarchy Great blog post by Will Thalheimer on the ATD blog. Will thinks that we may be teaching too much information- craming too much content into our courses. I think he is right! Will’s training maximisers should be part of the quality standards for all eLearning. Spark 2 - We need employees who think, not follow orders Interesting article from Harvard Business Review; if we keep to our industrial age processes and ways of working, how can we expect a different result? Spark 3: ATD 2015 Survey on training challenges Training re-inforcment is rated as the number one challenge - the forgetting curve is alive and well! There are lots of new products on the market to help with this - but bottom line is - we need to design training re-inforcement into our content. Spark 4: Inside the learner’s brain A blog post from Logicearth, thinking through what might make the learner’s brain happy. We outline seven attributes that are important to learning - insights, pacing, visual impact, relevance, scaffolding, practice and re-inforcement. What do you think? Is there anything here that you would change? Spark 5: The poetry of behaviour change Do you have learning in your soul or soul in your learning? A blog post on behaviour change by Scottish poet David Cameron, who reminds us that the unconscious mind needs to be part of our learning plans as much as the conscious mind. Some useful insights too from experienced Instructional Designer, Julie Dirksen. Spark 6: designing eLearning content a multi-device world An article in eLearningAge, UK magazine that explains new instructional design techniques for designing multi-device eLearning content. Embrace the scrolling people! (Page 38-39) Thanks for reading our blog today. If you have any of your own sparks of inspiration to share, let us know in the comments below. PS - if you want on-going sparks of insight, we’d love it if you’d sign up for our monthly newsletter here. Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe.   The post June 2015 roundup: inspiring eLearning sparks appeared first on Logicearth.

We all love a great deal, and perhaps even more as we get into the last couple months of the year. The other day I was talking to a friend about a service I was thinking of buying, and she suggested I wait until Black Friday sales at the end of the month (for our readers outside of North America, the day following American Thanksgiving widely known for being the biggest promotional day of the year). In recent years, especially as commerce is increasingly online, Black Friday sales can be found around the globe. Two things immediately came to mind when my friend suggested I wait - first, that I had no idea if the company I was planning to purchase from was even going to offer any promotions. Second, if I waited and no sale happened, how disappointed I’d be for then having to pay full price along with the added frustration of having waited the extra time! If you’re looking for a way to drive new sales to courses you’ve had up for a while, Black Friday is a PERFECT excuse to have some fun with your marketing. Now is the time to make the plan. Here are some things to consider to get you started: Straight up Black Friday sales - an awesome promotion, based on a % or $ amount off, for a single day. You can create coupons for your Thinkific school directly to make this one easy, details here. Sweeten the deal - how can you make your course offering even more compelling? Think about add-ons for your promotion. Perhaps access to a second course, a half hour coaching call, or bonus course content could fit the bill here. Get your fans excited. Remember the post last week about building anticipation? This is a great way to put that hype-building knowledge to work on an existing course. You don’t want your audience to question whether you have a sale coming up (like I did) - make sure they know and are ready for it! Encourage new visitors to sign up on your list to be the first notified - perhaps list members get extra time to cash in on the deal (made possible by giving list members a discount code that expires at a later date), or extra value (like the sweetening options above)? Seek out new audiences! Use your Black Friday deal as a way to share your promotion with new groups. Hit up LinkedIn or Facebook groups that would be interested in your course with exclusive Black Friday promotions for them to share with their members. And of course, be sure to let us know what you’re up to! We’re looking forward to hearing what everyone does as we get into the busiest shopping time of the year. Have fun! The post Counting Down to Black Friday - Using Promotions to Drive Sales appeared first on Thinkific.

These are public postings of my writings for the first course of the Graduate Certificate Program in Serious Game Design and Research at Michigan State University. Each week, we are required to post three responses/reactions to queries posted by other … Continue reading →

Hello Thinkific fans! We’ve been rolling out some great new features here at Thinkific HQ, and wanted to share a few of the recent updates with you. We’re constantly working behind the scenes to make Thinkific even more amazing, with lots of fun stuff in the works. Have fun exploring! Upload and lay out your entire video course in one step New Feature: Bulk Video Uploader & Quick Edit. This is a big one! Instructors with video courses can now bulk upload and edit their entire course in one step. Simply create your new course, then click on "Quick Edit" in the top left once in the course editor. Drag in all of your files, and while they’re uploading you can name your lessons and chapters and move things around, all on the same screen. Be ready for launch in no time flat! Details here. Shiny new options for text-based content creation New Feature: Updated Text Content Styling. Many of our instructors are creating courses using multiple content types - Videos, PDFs, Quizzes and Surveys, the list goes on! We’ve now updated our Text content type to make it more robust, both for creating content right in the tool and for pasting in content from other sources. Authors can now author text content right in the system and apply basic styles without ever having to touch the HTML view (which is still there for our power users, of course). Data exports now available New Feature: Survey & Quiz Exporter. Survey and Quiz data in the system can now be easily exported. Wahoo! Quiz data is great to track student progress and see exactly which areas students are struggling with, and the export feature makes surveys more robust. Find the new exporter in your dashboard under Reporting -> Quizzes and Surveys. Instructions are up here.  Social discussion forums added New Feature: Disqus. We heard you! We’ve integrated with the Disqus social commenting platform to give you more control over discussions for your classes. Disqus offers social logins, moderation and notifications, and robust commenting features such as image support. Learn more about using Disqus for your school here Native PDF content support added New Feature: PDFs. eBook authors rejoice! Native PDF support means that PDF files can now be added as course content directly from within your editing dashboard, and viewed by students right in the browser (rather than as download only). Turn your existing PDFs into lessons as part of your new dynamic course. Details on the Knowledge Base. The post New Features Announced! Improved course authoring & more appeared first on Thinkific.

What makes an engaging user experience in eLearning? This one is always hotly debated, especially amongst the Logicearth design teams! The graphic designers say that style, flair and creativity is what draws users in. The instructional designers say that interaction and challenge is what keeps users wanting to learn more. Ideally an engaging user experience in eLearning has equally good graphic design and instructional design. Maybe it is that age-old battle of inspiration versus perspiration? Or art versus science? Art versus science - who wins in eLearning design? Today’s post comes from Erin Doherty, a key member of our graphic design team. Erin has written before on user experience design for eLearning, and today she takes that one step further to look at design techniques and examples that she finds particularly engaging. If you have any questions for Erin, she’d be happy to answer them - just reply to us in the usual way through the form at the bottom of this post. Over to Erin.. Drag & drop Drag & drop activities are a great way to initiate user interaction with the course. Prompting the user to physically interact with the course provides a fun and engaging way to help them remember the information given to them. Drag & drop interactions are a great alternative to blocks of text or simple yes/no questions. Users are much more likely to remember something that they have had to drag to a certain zone, rather than simply read. The example below shows a way to make a yes/no question much more fun & engaging for the user. Have a go at the drag & drop interaction below. Animation Animation is a really effective way to get a message across to your user. Animation has been capturing the attention and engaging children for a very long time through cartoon television programmes, but it can be just as engaging to an older audience. Types of animation can range from quirky animated cartoons to corporate explainer videos. The entertaining aspect of animation is a great way to evoke enjoyment within the user, helped by the fact that animations can always be a quite humorous if they want to be. This can be used to good effect in the middle of a course, to re-attract the users attention if it has wandered, or at the end of a course to reinforce the key points. Illustration Replacing corporate photographs with vector illustrations is one way to break up a course and make it more eye-catching. Illustration, when done well, can brighten a course and make it much more pleasing for the user to look at. When illustrating, there is much more freedom than when using stock photography as scenarios and environments can be created that directly link to the content, which gives the course a much more bespoke feel. Consistent illustrated characters can make a course more playful and give the user a sense of trust through building a relationship with the characters.  Illustrated images are an excellent tool for learning and some images, such as icons, can be universally understood without any need for text. The illustrations can also be branded specifically to the company that the course is being created for. Live action There will always be a place for live action video in eLearning. Animated videos are always fun and are great for explaining, but sometimes nothing can beat actually seeing a real life scenario. Health & safety and first aid courses are two areas in which live action is very important, as the user will need to know exactly how to carry out an action. For example, when instructing a user on how to properly carry out first aid on another person, a live action video would be much more effective than an animated video. This is simply because seeing an actual person carry out the action shows the user exactly how it should be done, whereas with animation there is always room for a slight error in position, technique etc…which isn’t ideal with such a critical topic. This video is an extract from an ergonomics course - to highlight how many small movements we make each day, putting pressure on our joints and limbs. Did you know that you are likely to click the mouse 400+ times a day? No wonder wrist pain is common. Of course, live action video does come with its limitations. A low budget video will almost definitely look like a low budget video. Limited lighting, environments, actors etc. can make a high quality live action video very hard to achieve without forking out for it. However, the results of a high quality live action video can look very professional and can be extremely effective for the users learning experience. Combining design styles Finally, combining some of the above skills can create a really innovative and exciting learning environment and a user experience that learners will actually want to engage in. An example of this is the interaction below. The combination of illustration and animation, along with the background functionality of hover overs and clicks, creates an interaction that is not only pleasing on the eye but really fun to take part in as well. Other ways to combine skills to create an engaging user experience is using animation on top of live action video to prompt users to make decisions that determine what comes next. A great example of this is the interactive film Lifesaver. Engaging user design for eLearning needs to take many things into consideration. Our top 5 tips are: Good design is a communication tool - be clear on what message you are communicating through all elements of your design - colour, texture, white space, size, shape, weighting etc. The human brain will look for meaning in all your design elements. Get to know your audience - what types of imagery and design techniques are they used to seeing? What would grab their attention? Encourage your graphic design and learning/training design teams to work together; the more each team understands each other’s perspective, the better the overall design. Infographics are a great example of where art and science meet together in perfect harmony - without good design, infographics just don’t work. But using the wrong content or content structure confuses the user and is likely to stop them engaging. Avoid common design pitfalls - take a look at websites such as this one. If you have any design questions or examples of good or poor designs, get in touch - our design team love to talk about all things design. Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe.   The post 5 ways to create a more engaging user experience in eLearning appeared first on Logicearth.

I came across this today (Thanks to Jeremy Hunsinger): Second, we have become painfully aware of how badly (or how little) some of our colleagues read. Articles are too often cited, by authors and by referees, as making the exact … Continue reading →

I get asked the question a lot of how Thinkific built our online video course platform. To provide a seamless video solution with a custom solution is not as simple as it may seem. At Thinkific, it has taken many iterations to get all the right pieces working. You need to encode the video to many different formats (mp4, webm etc.) and to support all browsers using HTML5, and then support a flash fallback for those that don’t support HTML5. In addition, you need to provide video sizes such as 720p and 360p in all these formats to ensure students are able to watch the video regardless of how fast their internet connection is. This is just a few of the many things you need to get right. For online video courses, you need to provide a seamless experience that can be viewed ideally with no stuttering. The last thing you want is someone watching your course videos and getting frustrated because the technology is getting in the way of their learning. There are 5 main components you need to consider to build a complete solution: Video Player (this is extremely important and has a big impact on quality of delivery & experience). Options include Sublime Video, MediaElementJS, VideoJS & JW Player (has been unreliable and support isn’t great in my experience). These are just a few. Encoding. You will need to encode videos to multiple formats and sizes. Zencoder or AWS Elastic Transcoder are both good from my experience. Storage. AWS S3 is definitely one of the cheapest and most reliable options.  Hard to beat this. Delivery. This can be done by S3 but a CDN is ideal to improve downloading & buffering speeds. AWS Cloudfront is sufficient for most scenarios but there are many others depending on budget and need. Uploading. Handling large video uploads can be challenging. At Thinkific.com we rolled our own and has taken a few attempts to make this reliable and simple to use. Our recent bulk video uploader and course creator is just another iteration on this. If you’re just looking to just host videos, then Wistia or BrightCove are great solutions. If, instead, you’re looking for a complete course hosting solution then Thinkific.com would be what I’d use! - Matt @ Thinkific The post How to build an online video course platform appeared first on Thinkific.

Challenging times for modern L&D professionals At Logicearth, we recognise that today it is not easy to be a L&D professional. The technology choices alone that are available to support the modern learner, not to mention the on-going narrative of doing more with less, can often leave the L&D professional caught in the eye of the storm; sometimes damned if you do and dammed if you don’t. And we know from research that confidence in how to do the right thing is a challenging issue for L&D professionals. In the CIPD Annual L&D Survey report, 2015: In this blog, we offer some refection on how workplace learning has evolved and how the L&D professional might capitalise better on the opportunities now open to them. (You can see a summary of our 5 tips here: 5 ways to supercharge L&D) So where has learning evolved from? Think about how you learn today, versus ten years ago. What are the key differences? For me, there are two; immediacy and collaboration. Ten years ago, I did most of my learning from a recognised expert, the sage on the stage. I did most of my real learning on my own - after attending courses or reading a book. I had very few people to talk to about what I learned. It took me a long time to learn things, to become expert myself. That made me want to horde my knowledge as it was so hard-earned. Knowledge is power was definitely of that era. Fast forward 10 years and content is freely available. Many people share their knowledge and learning freely in the sharing economy. We’ve gone from the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. Coaching and mentoring are now key workplace skills along with the ideas of self-service and on-demand learning. Such is the pace of business, I can’t afford, most of the time, to wait until something is formally scheduled for me to learn. Learning in the classroom insn’t dead though - it just needs to be supported by other flexible options. That means L&D needs to respond differently to my needs; else I may end up doing what many modern learners are doing - bypassing L&D and organising their own learning. So, let’s look at 5 ways that you could supercharge your L&D provision to bridge these gaps; question, focus, set goals, be agile and get support. Question: common challenges that your organisation needs to address What do you need to change, fix or improve in your organisation? I like the KISS acronym; what do you need to Keep, Improve, Start or Stop? Is it helping staff to use a new tool or product, is it to prevent recurring errors or could you do staff induction much better? Spend time with your key heads of department. Talk about their challenges and above all, ask lots of questions. Focus: identify the specific type of learning need If we consider the 5 moments of learning need, we start to get a better handle on how more sophisticated learning needs can be. Start by asking your staff three key questions: What do you need to learn? What will it make you better at? How will we know you are better? Spend time researching the 5 moments of learning need and think about how it might apply to your staff. You can read more about it in one of our blogs here, or in this Learning Solutions magazine article here. There are many types of learning need - so let’s look at another; behaviour change. Behaviour change is often the holy grail of training and learning. How do we encourage and support employees to act in the best way to support the business? Behaviour change is a science and there are tried and tested techniques to support this in the workplace. It isn’t a quick fix though, so often, on-going re-inforcement and practice is needed. To change behaviour you need three things in place: Call to action - help people see that the behaviour is needed now Ability - people must have the knowledge and capability to perform the behaviour Motivation - there must be little barriers to performing the behaviour and some intrinsic rewards, if possible Logicearth learning services has designed many eLearning programmes that support clients in facilitating behaviour change in their organisations. It is one of our key strengths and as such we have developed a series of instructional design techniques specifically aimed at behaviour change. This example guides the learner through a reflection on energy habits, helping them to think about making changes. These include: Inspirational explainer videos, targeting emotional impact and consequences of either completing or not completing the behaviour Discovery learning pathways using personas, which encourage learners to pull their own learning in a way that helps them to explore potential barriers to change Scenarios that allow the learner to try the behaviour on for size in a safe environment, complete with actions and consequences - both good and not so good Success stories that role model the impact of appropriate behaviour change Set goals: measure the business impact There is a saying - you can’t manage what you don’t measure. How do you know what success looks like for you when you support a new learning initiative in your organisation? You can include both qualitative and qualitative measures. Ask staff frequently to demonstrated how they have improved - and encourage them to share their insights with others. For many years, we in the L&D professional have be characterised by our ‘smile sheets’ - we asked people if they enjoyed training courses by focusing on the lunches we provided or the comfort of the training facilities. I know, I did it too! We need to go beyond that now. We need to look at measures that have an impact on the business bottom line. For example, how can we use learning to: Reduce customer complaints Reduce operator errors Increase sales performance Increase market share Working on these kind of metrics requires alignment with business need - and a deserved seat at the senior management table for L&D. So what could you do? Next time you are talking to the head of sales, ask him or her what is biggest barrier to improving sales? This doesn’t have to be a 50-page time and motion study - pick a metric, try it out, see what results you get and improve the next time. Be agile: prototype, test, measure and re-test There is another saying - think big, start small, scale fast. I’d like that to be new mantra of the modern L&D professional. Marketers are great at this - they start a campaign as a small prototype and test the parameters, then they adjust and make it better next time around. Marketers are always learning, always growing. Some L&D teams create a focus group to test new ideas on just showing rough prototypes rather than a polished solution. Is this something you could do in your organisation? Get support: build your own personal learning network (PLN) To keep up with the pace of change, it is important that you have good support. Many L&D people now find themselves in much reduced teams  -often running a L&D department with just one other colleage but still having to service the learning needs of the whole company. In previus era’s many of us could travel to networking events or conferences to keep up, but with less money around now, that is not always possible. So what can you do? Social media provides a wealth of opportunity to connect to L&D professionals. Two tools in particular have many L&D professionals who frequently share and help each other out; Twitter and LinkedIn.  If the thought of these tools makes you bristle with the potential thought of encountering a bunch of narcissists, I can reassure that won’t be the case. You can find your own corner in these networks, look for like-minded people - just as you would in the non-virtual world. If you want to learn more about Twitter for example, you can check out our recorded Webinar here, and more Twitter advice here. In LinkedIn, why not get yourself registered if you aren’t already and do a search for training or learning and development groups. Are you up for the challenge? Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe. The post From threat to opportunity: 5 ways to supercharge L&D professionals appeared first on Logicearth.

http://minkhollow.ca/beckerblog/2012/12/01/dont-beleive-everything-you-read-really-stop-it/ Don’t Beleive Everything You Read. REALLY. Stop It. | The Becker Blog This was posted on Google+…

When I created my first online course I spent months researching and testing dozens of tools and methods for content creation. I tried various PowerPoint plugins and course authoring tools. In the end, I settled on something I wasn’t all that happy with but it was enough for the time. That was 10 years ago, and today there are so many more options. Since then I’ve re-produced my course a few times, built a full production studio, and helped hundreds of experts produce and launch their own courses. Recently I’ve really honed my workflow and come to rely on a few key tools. I want to talk about one of those today. My favourite easy-yet-powerful way to create courses is with a screen recording tool. This lets you record what’s happening on your screen (for example: a walkthrough of an application, a PowerPoint, or a Keynote presentation) while also recording audio. For the Mac users out there, my go-to software choice is ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow allows you to quickly record your screen as well as video and audio. Once you’ve got a recording, ScreenFlow includes everything you need to edit and publish your content. You definitely do not need to have any video editing or technical skills to work this either. Full disclosure: I was given a free copy of the latest version, but the reality is I’ve been recommending this tool to our instructors for ages! The newest version has some great additions, like the ability to record directly from an iPhone or iPad, and adds new "Touch Callouts" that mimic finger gestures to help guide viewers. We’ve got a few clients working on mobile and tablet training courses where this will come in handy. I can create a complete video very quickly using this method. In addition to my recording, I often add a little video at the start or end to keep it personal and engaging and it’s ready to go! - Greg @ Thinkific The post Screen Recording to Create Video Lessons appeared first on Thinkific.

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