Help your class get into the holiday spirit! Familiar traditions have fascinating and sometimes surprising origins. Get to know the history and significance behind Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and more with our All About the Holidays video collection.  View Collection RECOMMENDED RESOURCES Eight Days of Hanukkah | Peg + Cat Albert Einstein sings a song with Peg, Cat, and their friends about the number that Hanukkah is all about: eight! View Resource Missing Reindeer | The Odd Squad Teach your class about plotting coordinates with this Odd Squad resource. Two of Santa’s reindeer are loose and flying all over the world! By graphing coordinates on a map, Olive and Otto try to locate them.  View Resource Kwanzaa: All About the Holidays Kwanzaa is a time to celebrate African American heritage. Learn the ways people observe this festivity and trace its roots to ancient African customs. View Resource NEWS Apply Now for the 2016 PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovators Program PBS is excited to announce the fourth annual Digital Innovators program for tech-savvy K-12 educators. The program recognizes educators nationwide who are incorporating digital media in classrooms and serving as leaders in educational technology. Learn More & Apply   PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Raising Readers: Preparing Preschoolers for Success Using early literary research from Susan B. Neuman and Kathleen Roskos, you’ll learn to plan meaningful early literacy-learning experiences that build on preschoolers’ prior knowledge, expand their vocabulary, and strengthen oral language development. Learn More The Habitable Planet: A Systems Approach to Environmental Science- A Special Collection from Annenberg Learner This course helps to provide a background for understanding and discussing the natural functioning of the different Earth systems: geophysical systems, the atmosphere, the oceans, and natural ecosystems. Learn More The post Learn about Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa with PBS LearningMedia appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Nurse revalidation is fast approaching, and this shake-up of processes has certainly caused a stir across the nursing community. With poor morale, low pay and demanding workloads already impacting retention across the profession, there has inevitably been some apprehension around these new regulations and the additional input required from those who undoubtedly have some of […]

Disentangling Pedagogy from Epistemology Bill Jerome and Dr. Benny Johnson Because Pedagogy Dating back to my time at the Open Learning Initiative, I had sat in some meetings and felt the percussive impact of pedagogy — or "The P-Bomb" as I thought of it. Not having been trained in cognitive sciences like many of those around me, I simply deferred to those who invoked the word "Pedagogy." Once deployed in an academic setting, it often served as the final word in many matters. (Dear internet, I would love a sketch of this). On the whole, this was a very good thing indeed because it emphasized the focus of what we were working together to achieve. Sometimes we can reach conclusions or make assumptions we believe to be based on sound pedagogical thinking but when investigated can prove otherwise. (We will get to what I think is a counterintuitive example of this in a moment). Being guided by pedagogy continues to be the driving force of the work I do, though outside of the academy, I’ve learned to be a bit more skeptical (and I am more informed) when the P-Bomb is deployed as if it is a mystic force that cannot be understood; only believed in with solemn nods of agreement. If it were a meme, it would be this: I think it is important to sometimes stand back and ensure when we are using the word, we are in agreement about what we are all talking about. That is my most critical point I wish to make. As a primary example, however, it frequently seems to have become conflated in general discourse in one critical way we should aim to disentangle so that we can ask meaningful questions about it. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." - Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride Pedagogy or Epistemology? Recently I have had the opportunity to see a number of presentations and discussions around work being done in the adaptive and online learning space, for which I am grateful, but something was nagging at me in the back of my mind. I felt that the room was nodding along with thoughts of good pedagogy but something wasn’t sitting right. The following morning my colleague Dr. Benny Johnson and I met in a café like you do when in Seattle. He was able to capture succinctly the disconnect I was having. Pedagogy was being conflated with epistemology. Aside from referencing a dictionary (or modern equivalent) and thinking critically when we hear the word pedagogy used, this is one area in particular we can be cognizant of: "Are we conflating pedagogy with epistemology?" More in depth discussion: Epistemology or pedagogy, that is the question by Paul A Kirschner, 2009. It is naturally intuitive to think about this and come to the conclusion that "real world discovery" is the best way to learn. It simply makes sense when you hear a sentence such as "Doing the real work of a scientist teaches students to become scientists while being motivating and engaging." In fact for novices, this can be counterproductive by ratcheting up extraneous cognitive load. In an earlier publication, Kirschner writes: […] inherent flaws in considering and using the epistemology of the natural sciences as equivalent to a pedagogic basis for teaching and learning in the natural sciences. It begins with a discussion of the difference between practicing science and learning to practice science. It follows with a discussion and refutation of three commonly held motives for using practicals in science education. It concludes with the presentation of three new, better motives for their use. Epistemology, practical work and Academic skills in science education Paul A. Kirschner, 1992. The practical takeaway for us today is not to confuse immersive (usually quite gorgeous, engaging, and expensive) virtual spaces built for the explorers among us for good pedagogy just because they are attractive and make those of us who are not novice learners excited and motivated. The chief principle of the human-computer interaction discipline is "You are not the user" and it applies directly here: "You are not your student." Engagement is critical indeed, but for my part, I would not want to sacrifice good pedagogy designed for novice learners. In fact, despite the considerable enthusiasm generated by these environments, research has not shown an advantage commensurate with that enthusiasm, and cognitive load theory cautions that for novice learners such realistic task assignments can easily lead to cognitive overload. My view on that subject is of course just that, but we should at least all be equipped to recognize the difference and make decisions accordingly. And when you hear someone deploying the word pedagogy and you think it might not be, be prepared to raise your hand and say, "You keep using that word, but.…"

With the Hour of Code and Computer Science Education Week in full swing, there have been some great new and updated resources released in the past week! Check it out!Vidcode - Create a Bestie Video eCard w/ CodeCheck out vidcode.io for their Hour of Code contribution. They've partnered with the Girl Scouts of Great New York to allow users to code their own bestie video ecards using Javascript. You can record a video, insert graphics, and code in special effects. Then you can publish for others to watch!Kodable for iPadThe latest update for the Kodable iPad app received some minor bug fixes and improvements just in time for the Hour of Code. Update the app to get the best experience! Kodable is a great option for introducing young children to programming and its target audience is ages 6-8.Hopscotch for iPadHopscotch is another great iPad app that also received an update just in time for Hour of Code. The update added 4 brand new tutorials specifically for Hour of Code participants! You have your choice of creating Geometry Dash, Spiral Draw, Emoji Waves, of Megamoji! Also, if you conduct a search for "Hour of Code" within the app, you'll find a ton of great user generated content!The Foos for iPadThe Foos also received an update recently, which now includes the ability to create and share games within the app! This is another great option for younger students age 6-8!Tynker for iPadIf your students are itching to program their own games, have them check out Tynker! They just released an update that now includes 9 Hour of Code tutorials, 3 each for beginner, intermediate, and advanced users. Their website also has content for Grades K through 6+!MinecraftEDUHave you seen the new Minecraft themed tutorials on code.org? MinecraftEDU has also offered some great resources for the Hour of Code! Check out this page to download an Hour of Code Minecraft world and to print your very own Minecraft themed board game that teaches programming skills! There are also a series of programming challenge videos that students can follow in the Minecraft world.PBS KIDS ScratchJr for iPadScratch and Scratch Jr are already very popular programming apps for children. So PBS Kids partnered with MIT to create their very own PBS KIDS ScratchJr app for the iPad! It works pretty much the same as the original app, but it includes 150+ PBS characters. Now you're students can program with their favorite PBS cartoons!Made with Code's "Inside Out" Coding ActivityHopefully you've already seen the movie "Inside Out". If not, you should definitely go see it! Great movie! Google's Made with Code website released a brand new coding activity called Inside HQ. You can program Riley and the other characters through a series of coding challenges.Google CS First "High Seas" ActivityGoogle CS First is a great FREE program that aims to expose more students to Computer Science education through a variety of online activities for boys and girls. For the Hour of Code, they released a new activity called High Seas which utilizes Scratch. There is a great lesson plan for teachers with example projects and solutions. Give the High Seas activity a try!Do you know of any other new or updated coding activities? Share them in the comments below!

Whoa! It’s been a while since my last post…end of the semester craziness has commenced! I first learned about Nearpod about a year ago, when I began my journey as a flipped classroom teacher, and immediately brushed it aside as a tool that I would have used in a more traditional classroom setting. This year, […] The post Using Nearpod in the Classroom appeared first on Teaching with Technology.

One of the key skills in any research project is good organisation. This is especially true for a PhD research project, lasting as they do over three years of full-time study, or up to seven years part-time. Students start off with two or three seminal articles relating to their research topic, but the field of reference will grow dramatically within the first six months, and citations will continue to be added to the reference list right up until the dissertation is submitted. Even then, the external examiner(s) might insist at the viva that the student needs to consider further a certain area of the research which will require further reading. Without a careful system, it does not take long for this growing pile of references to become unmanageable! Some researchers swear by the old "traditional" system of individual index cards, alphabetically filed for each reference. This has the advantage of being able to add notes, summaries, questions etc., and also it is not dependent on technology, so does not require electricity or a battery. On the other hand, a file of cards is not very portable, can be a bit clumsy to sort, and not being digital, is less flexible to re-purpose. There are number of software packages, both free and commercial, that allow you to store and sort references on a computer. A product called Refworks provides an online database to manage bibliographic data, and this has numerous advantages, including being able to manipulate the data to display in different academic styles, create bibliographies for different publications, and also to access the data from different devices and locations. The university may subscribe to this product or some comparable service. Personally, I use a simple word processed file. This does not have the flexibility of customised bibliographic management software, but it has the advantage of being easy to create and use without specialised training. To create a bibliography for a new article I simply cut-and-paste from my master list (not forgetting to keep back-up copies of the master-list in other locations!) In addition, Mendeley https://www.mendeley.com/ is a free manager for references and pdf documents which can be used to annotate articles and share online with students and other colleagues. It’s easy to use, see https://youtu.be/qRiAIaqdAOg and allows storage and access to a personalised library collection from any internet location. So, for example, a researcher could import an identified article, store it in a personalised online space, add comments and questions to the file, then share with an online social network which could include a research team, supervisors, or a cohort of students. Whatever filing system for research articles is used by a PhD student, it needs to be able to store, display and allow easy retrieval of anything that has been read over the duration of the study, which is not a simple task when this means five or six hundred individual references.

Anyone who still feels that learning to use new technology has to be a frustrating, mind-numbing experience should have been at the LearniT! Technology Adoption Summit here in San Francisco yesterday. It was a wonderful example of how a company’s interest in promoting its product—in this case, numerous first-rate learner-centric onsite and online learning opportunities for those in need of technical and desktop training as well as professional development opportunities—can occasionally and easily be combined with a meaningful, very productive day of learning at no cost to participants. And for those of us involved in training-teaching-learning, it was an inspiring opportunity to see colleagues at the top of their game displaying easy-to-replicate effective methods for engaging our learners. The structure of the free daylong summit itself is well worth noting as an example of how an event reflects the learning approaches it showcases. It began with an informal half-hour slot during which participants could get to know each other one-on-one or in small groups before diving into the learning sessions scheduled throughout the day; the fact that company CEO Damon Lembi, several members of his staff, and several LearniT! instructors were accessible but not at all the center of attention at that point reflected what was obvious during each of the learning sessions I attended: this is a company where learners and learning facilitators work effectively together by creating small, temporary, and supportive communities of learning while they/we are together. It also included tremendous displays of hospitality and a commitment to creating a social-learning environment in that summit organizers had plenty of food and beverages—including sandwiches, pizza, and salads at lunchtime; coffee and cookies during a mid-afternoon break; and wine, soft drinks, cheese, and cold cuts during an early-evening reception just before the final set of sessions began. Also well-worth emulating was the way the schedule offered a varied but far from overwhelming set of choices. Each one-hour slot included three different learning opportunities. Participants could attend as few or as many sessions as they cared to attend throughout the day. Some sessions were clearly meant to serve as stand-alone learning opportunities; others offered a clear learning track, as was the case with a series of four interrelated sessions exploring an Agile approach to project management and many other workplace endeavors (including training-teaching-learning)—but even that learning track was developed flexibly enough to accommodate those who wanted to attend the entire series as well as those who may have only been interested in one or two of the offerings. (This approach to letting learners determine how many—and which—modules of a series of learning opportunities they want to pursue is one of the many reasons I had LearniT! as a training partner when I was in charge of the San Francisco Public Library staff training program many years ago.) The levels of flexibility visible and inherent within the LearniT! approach to the summit (and to its day-to-day operations) played out to the benefit of the company and participants in magnificent ways. While there was not a lot of repetition among the session offerings, at least one—an introduction to Windows 10—was scheduled in two different time slots to accommodate what was anticipated to be a spillover crowd for the initial session and to also accommodate participants who might have opted to arrive later in the day rather than attending the entire daylong event. More impressively, summit organizers realized early in the day that they were facing an overflow crowd for another one-time session, so immediately located a second instructor to lead a simultaneous offering in that same time slot—then notified everyone by making announcements in the classrooms and sending a follow-up email to all registered participants. When we turn to the heart of what the summit accomplished, we find ourselves focusing on how the various instructors worked to make the subject matter meaningful to those of us in the learner seats. Sean Bugler, for example, enthusiastically covered an amazing array of elements during his 45-minute introduction to Windows 10. His love for the product was infectious even for those of us most cranky about having to go through yet another upgrade and having to learn a new way of doing things we would have been quite happy to continue doing with our current tech tools if the inevitable upgrading of software weren’t forcing us to sift through another set of changes. And his highly-developed ability to quickly, concisely respond to learners’ questions in easy-to-understand terms was something any trainer-teacher-learner could have benefitted from observing. Even before I left Bugler’s session, I was already thinking—and saying out loud—the words I love hearing from any learner: I wanna try that. And thanks to Sean and our colleagues at LearniT!, I know I will. Next: A Summit Learning Facilitator, an Agile Approach, and Writing on the Walls  

Designing or redesigning learning spaces is an increasingly common endeavor; knowing how to use those spaces effectively is an entirely different challenge that often doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. So when I had an opportunity (earlier this week at the LearniT! Technology Adoption Summit here in San Francisco) to observe and learn from someone who clearly revels in using every inch of a learning space to the benefit of the learners she serves, I faced the wonderful challenge of trying to absorb the learning content she was offering while also trying to pay close attention to how she accomplished what she was so effectively accomplishing. Walking into each of the four one-hour sessions led by LearniT! Vice President of Professional Development Jennifer Albrecht on the topic of exploring and developing an Agile approach to project management and many other workplace endeavors (including training-teaching-learning) was a trainer-teacher-learner’s dream. The sessions were highly interactive. Well organized. Learner-centric. And they were clearly designed to inspire participants to apply what was learned as quickly as possible after the sessions ended. Obviously grounded in LearniT!’s "8 Step Model for Learning," the sessions (without ever feeling forced or formulaic) encouraged self discovery (brief self-assessments were a deftly-handled element of the learning experiences); provided concise explanations of ideas—and the value of the ideas—to be explored; included brief breakout sessions to foster a social-learning approach; included class discussions; offered moments for us to consider how what we were learning could quickly be applied in our worksites; had moments for individual learners to complete exercises to foster greater use of what was being learned; encouraged participants to engage in small groups (two or three people per group) to further learn by sharing their thoughts on specific elements of the course content); and left us thinking about what would and could come out of the time we spent together. The framework, as many of us recognize, is not particularly revolutionary; it actually provides the foundation for some of the best learning experiences we are encountering onsite, online, and in blended (onsite/online) learning environments. But what made Albrecht’s sessions dynamic from the moment we entered her/our learning spaces was the way she so effectively and with minimal effort transformed our perceptions of the space in subtle yet important ways. Jennifer Albrecht (photo from LearniT! website) One fairly straightforward example was the manner in which she rapidly went back and forth from having a formal front of the room to having a room full of interactive centers. Her standard approach, whenever she wanted learners to engage in an exercise in groups of two or three people, was to give us eight seconds to form those groups. It always worked: within an eight-second period, the learning focus had shifted from a teacher-to-learner model to a learner-to-learner model where the front of the room was wherever a group of learners were interacting. The transformation was so effective and so complete that most learners didn’t seem to notice that she occasionally, briefly stepped outside of the room while the learning continued because learners had taken control of their own learning process. What was most striking to me, however, was a sudden, completely unexpected shift in my own perceptions of how the room-as-learning-space was functioning. It started with her use of the whiteboards that seem to cover entire left-to-right spaces in many of LearniT!’s classrooms. If Albrecht had simply done what so many of us do—used those spaces to write notes and draft simple illustrations of points she was making; we would have had good, productive learning sessions. If she had simply done what her other colleagues did—used the center part of that white board as a screen upon which she could project text-laden PowerPoint slides—we still would ultimately have had good, productive sessions. But by creating visually appealing slides with strong imagery projected onto and extending seamlessly across the central section of a wall-length white board (instead of onto a stand-alone screen), she subliminally created the same feeling of engagement and immersion we have when we’re watching a movie in a well-designed theater—a feeling also fostered through her use of the whiteboard as a screen for showing brief videos. Those videos and the high-quality, visually-appealing images from her slide deck made them feel as if they were part of the entire room; they were large enough to draw us into them completely as they flowed across a space with no visible boundaries differentiating it from other parts of that entire front wall. It was only at the point when she began writing on that extended whiteboard, using a space unoccupied by one of the beautiful images she was projecting, that I realized how much my perceptions of the room had changed without my having noticed the change: "Oh my God, she’s using a marker to write on that expensive screen," I thought in horror until I quickly refocused my attention to take in the fact that the screen was the whiteboard and the whiteboard was the screen. In the same very important way, I also realized that Albrecht had made the entire space an integral part of that learning opportunity, and the learning process was supported and augmented by her use of that space. As is the case with many well-designed and well-facilitated learning experiences, hers were lively because there was never a moment when the learning started to feel forced or routine. She employed a variety of resources and techniques to convey information. Content within the superbly designed and graphically-stimulating PowerPoint slides, for example, were used in ways that connected them to the in-class use of simple workbooks: the content on the screen/whiteboard and the content within those workbooks seemed to melt into one cohesive resource. Her judicious use of the short videos to bring otherwise unavailable experts into the room to make key points provided a variety of viewpoints during what was essentially a one-facilitator session. Sprinkling citations to additional resources throughout her presentation and our discussions repeatedly and subliminally reminded us that our learning was a process as well as an event and that we could continue learning long after we left the room—something I took advantage of by using my tablet to place reserves on a few books through my local public library while I was still participating in the session. None of this is difficult to replicate. All of it requires a commitment to learner-centric creative approaches to learning and to learners—probably one of the most rewarding lessons I could have once again encountered by attending the Technology Adoption Summit and learning from a master learning facilitator. N.B.: This is the second of two sets of reflections inspired by the LearniT! Technology Adoption Summit; the first set remains accessible elsewhere on this blog.   

Context is key to creating successful eLearning experiences. Learners must be able to put their knowledge to use outside the virtual classroom, and simulating real world challenges is one of the best ways to achieve this. In this article, I’ll shed light on the situated cognition theory, from its core principles to tips that will help you use it in your next eLearning course. Situated cognition is based on the idea that learning is most effective when it is in context. The Situation Cognition Theory was first introduced by Brown, Collins, and Duguid in 1989, who suggest that learners should be immersed in eLearning activities and content that mimics real world situations. For example, if an individual needs to learn how to complete a complex task, learning by doing is more effective than simply reading out it in a manual. Cognitive Apprenticeships and communities of practice also go hand-in-hand with situated cognition. Below you’ll find 4 best practices and 5 tips that can help you integrate situated cognition into your eLearning strategy. 4 Situated Cognition Best Practices According to J. Herrington and Ron Oliver’s publication, "Critical Characteristics of Situated Learning: Implications for the Instructional Design of Multimedia", situated learning experiences must meet specific set of criteria in order to achieve desired results. These best practices are inspired by Herrington and Oliver’s guidelines: Authentic context and activities. The content must have real world applications, as well as activities that mimic real world situations and problems. Ideally, all elements should be as realistic as possible to provide accurate context for learners. Expert support. Experts or experienced professionals must be on-hand to offer guidance and support to learners. They must also provide an accurate model of the process, such as a detailed walkthrough. The expert typically offers coaching and scaffolding as well, which comes in the form of supplement learning resources. Group collaboration and self-reflection. Learners are encouraged to work in group settings, wherein they can benefit from the personal experience of peers, share differing viewpoints, and take on different roles. However, they must also have the opportunity to reflect upon their own work and compare their performance to that of their peers and experts. Articulation and assessments. Learners should be able to articulate, by paraphrasing, what they have learned, and an effective eLearning assessment strategy should be in place that tests authentic knowledge. For example, a simulation that analyzes their ability to carry out the task. 5 Tips To Use Situated Cognition In eLearning 1. Foster learning communities of practice. A community of practice works collaboratively to solve problems and achieve shared goals. Learners have the unique opportunity to share their experience with others, and benefit from the expertise and skills of their peers in return. They can also interact with the instructor or facilitator to expand their comprehension of the process or task. Develop a learning community of practice in your eLearning course by creating online forums, blogs, and social media pages where you learners can share feedback and address concerns. Pose a question based on the authentic task each week to get the online discussion started, or share a link that might spark a conversation amongst them. 2. Integrate real world scenarios and simulations. eLearning scenarios and simulations are one of the most authentic learning tools available. They immerse learners in real world environments, pitting them against real world challenges, without the real world risk. They can explore every aspect of a task, master each step in a process, and identify their key strengths and weaknesses in a supportive eLearning setting. Experts and peers can also provide feedback that helps improve performance. When developing eLearning scenarios and simulations, make certain that the situation, characters, and virtual environment are as true-to-life as possible. Use images that are relatable and challenges that they might encounter on a daily basis. 3. Use case studies to put knowledge into context. When learners are able to see that the task or concepts can be tied to real world applications, they are much more likely to participate. For example, if you include an article or case study that highlights the benefits of mastering the task or absorbing the information, learners are able to determine how the subject matter can be used in real life. They personalize it and put it into context, which makes it easier for them to recall necessary information when they actually have to complete the task outside of the eLearning environment. 4. Model the learning behavior or task. One of the most important elements of Situated Cognition in eLearning is modeling. The expert walks the learner through every step of the process so that they can see the process in action. This can be accomplished by integrating tutorials, video presentations, and step-by-step walkthroughs that highlight every aspect of the task. Make certain to have supplemental scaffolding resources at the ready for learners who may need more information before tackling the task themselves. 5. Develop authentic online assessments. Authentic online assessments test learner knowledge while they are immersed in the activity itself. For example, they might have to complete a scenario that features every step of the process, or to engage a group role-play that tests their understanding of the concepts. Rather than giving them a series of multiple choice or true/false questions to answer, they must use all of the tools, skills, and information they have developed to solve the problem or complete the task on their own. All scaffolding resources are removed and they must explore all possible solutions without any assistance. This not only assesses their knowledge and abilities, but gives them the confidence they need to fulfill the task in the real world. Successful situated cognition eLearning experiences put everything into context. They give the learner the opportunity to see knowledge in action, instead of just passively observing the possible applications. This is what makes it such a powerful approach in eLearning course design, and why you may want to think about using it in your next eLearning project. Looking for tips that can help you design branching scenarios for your situated cognition online course? Read the article The Top 7 Benefits Of Using Branching Scenarios In eLearning to learn about the many advantages offered by using branching scenarios in eLearning course design. The post Situated Cognition In eLearning: What eLearning Professionals Should Know appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

Deciding to embrace eLearning for your employee training has become a no-brainer nowadays. After all, businesses big and small, from Fortune 100 multinationals to your local hair saloon chain, have already done so. What’s a little more difficult however is picking the right tools to help you with course design, content creation, learning assessment and all the other tasks you need to run a successful eLearning program. Fear not, however, as we’re here to help you with this, by suggesting the (you’ve guessed it) top 10 most useful tools for online employee training. Let’s begin with the most essential content creation tools: 1) A text-editor Yeah, we’re starting with the meat and potatoes. Whatever your role in the implementation of an eLearning based training program (or a physical one for that matter) you’re gonna need a text editor at some point. In fact, picking a handy text-editor is especially important if you’re doing the writing the course material. Now, you could go with what everybody uses (Microsoft Word) or its open source alternative (Open Office), and both will surely more than capable for the task. But as those tools are overloaded with features you won’t need, and place premature emphasis on formatting which can be quite the distraction, we suggest something simpler and more focused. See, while enterprise workers and home users stick to MS Word, professional authors, journalists and copy writers have increasingly embraced streamlined text-editors over the past decade. One of the most popular ones, Scrivener, is available for both Windows and OS X and has everything you need to create, organize and refine your course content and nothing you don’t. Other capable options include Ulysses (OS X) and Page Four (Windows), while a whole cottage industry of text-editors has been created around the Markdown text format, that’s very easy to learn and lets you totally focus on your content. 2) An image editor With text covered, the next most useful thing you’ll need will be an image editor. Photoshop is, of course, the undisputed king for this kind of work, but it might not be your best choice for several reasons. For one, Photoshop is now only sold through a subscription program, which can cost you from anywhere from $10 to $80 per month depending on how many other Adobe programs you need (and even more if you happen to live outside the US). And with Adobe’s subscription model if you stop paying, you can’t use the program anymore, even if you’ve paid several times its worth over the years. But the real reason is that unless you’re doing heavy photo and design work, Photoshop is probably overkill for your humble content editing needs (mainly cropping, resizing, making small adjustments, etc). On Windows, we suggest you check out Paint.net, a free, lightweight bitmap editor, or Corel PaintShop Pro, a mature and very capable Photoshop alternative that’s been around for over 2 decades. If you insist on Adobe, there’s always Photoshop Elements, Photoshop’s scaled-down little brother that thankfully remains available to purchase outside of a subscription program. On the Mac side there’s Pixelmator, Acorn and Affinity Photo to chose from, which cover all basic design needs (and then some) for a fraction of the price of Adobe’s offerings. 3) An audio editor Whether it’s to edit an interview, to extract the relevant parts from the recording of a lecture, or to trim a piece of music you’re using as a soundtrack to your eLearning videos to the right size, you’ll need an audio editor. Similar to an image editor, an audio editor is a piece of software that lets you manipulate digital sound content, like mp3 or wav files. This manipulation can range from trimming (cutting an audio clip to a specified size, e.g. to get rid of irrelevant parts), normalizing (making sure the sound is as loud as it needs to be) and de-noising (removing unwanted sounds, like the hiss of an air-condition) to very elaborate and extreme edits. When it comes to audio editors the general consensus is clear: whether you’re on the Windows, Linux or Mac, Audacity is the tool you should first opt for. There are better options out there, that offer many more features (e.g. Steinberg’s WaveLab and Adobe’s Audition) but Audacity is both free (can’t beat that) and full featured enough. It’s also popular enough that there are also a lot of tutorials on webpages and on YouTube to help you learn how to use it to handle most basic audio editing tasks. 4) A video editor With text, images, and audio covered, video is the last thing you need to cover to be able to create and edit full blown multimedia training content. Fortunately this is an area where OS makers themselves offer quite capable software that should cover all your needs when it comes to editing training video. Microsoft has the excellent Windows Movie Maker that comes pre-installed with most Windows versions (and it can also be downloaded online for free) and Apple offers its own very good iMovie editor for just $14.99. You’ll be able to edit footage, add music and sound-effects, create titles and export your masterpiece ready for consumption in both, while the learning curve is not very steep for either. In fact, given their popularity and ease of use, it’s quite possible that your little cousin is already uploading his own videos on YouTube using one of these editors, and can show you everything you need to get going. If you ever outgrow these two video editors (something unlikely for most basic productions), you can always step up to pro and semi-pro NLE platforms like Adobe’s Premiere Pro, Apple’s Final Cut Pro X, and Sony’s Vegas. 5) Secondary content creation and management tools With your four big content creation needs covered, let’s briefly discuss a few other tools you’ll might need for creating, editing and managing your eLearning content. Scanning software will help you achieve the optimal transfer of third party text, drawing and photos in the digital domain. While both Windows and OS X offer a bare-bones scanning app, we suggest you take a look at something like VueScan if you really want to take full control of your scanner. You might also need some OCR (optical character recognition) software if you want to automatically convert scanned books into electronic text that you can manipulate in your text editor and add to your courses. ABBYY FineReader and ReadIris seem to rule this particular niche, and are both equally capable. While creating online content for employee training you’ll need to juggle a lot of information and details. To help you organize it all, we suggest a note taking program such as Microsoft’s OneNote or Evernote Corporation’s Evernote. They’re both available for the two major desktop and the two major mobile platforms (and also for Windows Phone, but you probably don’t care about that, do you?). 6) A backup solution Moving beyond content creation tools, let’s discuss data protection tools for a moment, something that’s as essential to content creation as anything we’ve already presented. After all, what’s the use of toiling over the creation of your training content, only to lose everything the moment your hard disk fails or some computer virus decides to delete your home directory? For a professional, and if you’re doing employee training you’re very much a professional, backup is one of the most mission-critical issues. Of course, with a Cloud based platform such as TalentLMS your course data, learners info, settings, etc are automatically backed up safely for you, leaving you without anything to worry about. As a content creator though you’ll also have many documents, presentations, images videos, etc. you work on that have not yet been uploaded to any LMS course. Those, you’ll need to backup yourself. Now, when it comes to backup there are several different options, each with its own trade-offs, complexity and cost. Perhaps the simplest (and cheapest) form of backup is making a copy of your data (e.g. to an external hard disk, a USB stick, etc). Note that your backup HAS to be an external disk. A copy on the same disk is neither safe, nor a backup. Don’t keep the second disk in the same place as your computer either — in case of accident, burglary etc, both your data and your backup might be gone. To handle such simple backup options, a tool such as Microsoft’s own Backup and Restore or Apple’s Disk Utility will do. There are also third party options such as Acronis True Image (Windows) and SuperDuper (Mac), that offer a few more features. A more advanced option, that offers both backup and access to different versions of your files (as they’ve changed through time would be Windows’ "File History" feature and Apple’s Time Machine, both of which you need to enable on your own in your OS settings. Last, but not least, there’s the online backup option, in which you make backups of your data in the Cloud. The two most robust and popular services when it comes to online backup are BackBlaze and CrashPlan, with both offering clients for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android, along with several subscription plans to choose from. (Note: In their basic setup, Google Drive and Dropbox are ways to sync your data across many PCs and not actual backup solutions. If you accidentally delete your data on your home computer, they’ll be gone from those services too. Keep that in mind.). And with that we conclude part one of our series on the top 10 most useful tools for online employee training. Stay tuned for next week’s second part, where we’ll be focusing on learning assessment tools to help you measure the effectiveness of your employee training program. The post The Top 10 Most Used Online Employee Training Tools: Part 1 appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

Our belief: At Vignettes Learning we use stories in eLearning; however, we make them interactive. The emphasis is getting learners involved in the story and not just telling the learners the story.Synthesis. eLearning designs should not spoon-feed learners. Developers and designers are encouraged to create modules that challenge the intelligence and creativity of the learners. Knowledge spoon-feeding would create infants out of learners. Image SourceThe job of eLearning designers should enable learners to reflect, discover and decide rather than just giving information out. Creating the proverbial comfort zone in eLearning designs is the formula for boredom. The so-called ‘comfort zone’ induces students to become passive. It dulls their minds and suppresses creativity.Facilitators and trainers shift the control of the learning from the learners to them by giving too much information and data. Overly eager designers tend to manipulate the modules to attain their desired results. They want the learners to win the ballgame according to their terms and biased outcomes. Intellectual constraints build mental muscles. Muscles are formed by consistently engaging them with artificial stress and constraints. You don’t need Arnold Schwarzenegger to tell you that. Likewise, designers must push elearners’ to critically think and carry some mental burden to arrive at or discover learning nuggets. Let them travel through a labyrinth and discover their way out in the quest to acquire knowledge.As an eLearning designer, I understand the dilemma that my fellow colleagues face in the industry. By designing lessons that give more control to learners, we make ourselves ‘obsolete’. It’s a scary thought, right? I aired this matter in my blog : Are Trainers Still Needed? In that blog, I wrote: Informal learning, social learning, or learning based on the learners’ choices or options are certainly redefining the roles of trainers, learning specialists and even learners themselves. As they take more control of their own learning on their own terms, this becomes a frightening scenario to many learning specialists."Letting go of control" pushes trainers to rethink their roles in the learning process. However, rather than balk at the prospect, it is about time that this becomes an open issue. Years ago, letting go of control was like committing suicide where trainers are concerned.Truth to say, we trainers, never had total control. We’ve always felt, thought and convinced ourselves that we control learning because we instruct and teach knowledge. However in reality, learners choose to learn based on their own personal goals. So, this openness about losing control is not entirely novel news. It should no longer be a surprise.Interestingly, this is the same concept that Adam Richardson wrote in his Harvard Business Review article entitled ‘Boosting Creativity Through Constraints’. In that article, Richardson writes: Conventional wisdom holds that the best way to boost a team's creativity is to unshackle them from constraints. The less they have to worry about, the more open they'll be with their ideas, the theory goes. Budget? Unlimited! Ideas from outside? Bring 'em on! Different business model? Consider it entertained! Unfortunately this approach can actually be counter-productive.Some constraints are realities that must to be dealt with — laws of physics, or perhaps a budget. Other constraints may seem immovable but upon inspection are actually assumptions based on the past — your business model, or which customers and needs you serve, for example.Constraints have a Goldilocks quality: too many and you will indeed suffocate in stale thinking, too few and you risk a rambling vision quest. The key to spurring creativity isn't the removal of all constraints. Ideally you should impose only those constraints (beyond the truly non-negotiable ones) that move you toward clarity of purpose.If a constraint enhances your understanding of the problem scope and why you're doing what you're doing, leave it in. Insights into user needs, for example, are great because they provide focus and rationale. If the constraint confuses or overly narrows scope without good reason, remove or replace it. Don't be afraid to experiment with different combinations of constraints; it's not always easy to tell ahead of time what the right mix will be for a particular project or circumstance.Here are some tips on how to build constraints that compel learner’s creativity:Ask or post the right questions in your modules. Target the learner’s blindside. Post unexpected questions that are not answered by yes or no. Use hyperlinks and links in your lessons. Let you eLearners navigate through other knowledge references. Present contradictory ideas and compel your students to take a stand. Opposing views fuel discussion. Collaborative learning is attained when there are clashes of ideas and concepts. Do not feed your students with your conclusions or recommendations. Guide them through but do not dictate as to how the learning should be concluded. Provide a feedback mechanism so that you can challenge the answers or conclusions of the elearners. Whenever possible, use learning games. This can make learning entertaining. Related BlogsAre Trainers Still Needed?Are you guilty of interrupting the learners learning?Reference: Boosting Creativity Through Constraints by Adam RichardsonRay Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Our belief: At Vignettes Learning we use stories in eLearning; however, we make them interactive. The emphasis is getting learners involved in the story and not just telling the learners the story. Synthesis.Avatars are not only novelties or catchy web accessories. They provide web users with a third-person perspective of themselves. Avatars help us project ourselves during web interactivity. Recent studies show that the third-person perspective has more advance uses in eLearning and interaction.Image Source I chanced upon an EA Sports website, a gaming portal that enables players to ‘paste’ their head shots onto the body of the player of their choice. The feature is called Game Face. It gives this alluring welcome to the players: Create your EA sports avatar on the web and get to play as yourself in the games!I am not into gaming but I like the concept of personification: the users "see themselves" in the interactive zone they are engaged in. Perhaps, people tend to become more efficient in interactive games when they see themselves in it. The survival instinct kicks in: they don’t want to see their avatar lose or die right before their very eyes.As eLearning facilitators, we make it a point to require elearners to post their photos or avatars during interactive sessions. The chat room and online forum become more ‘personified’ during virtual lessons through the photos or avatars of fellow learners. An article published in the Harvard Business Review describes a breakthrough research that takes the avatar concept technology a hundred notches higher. In You Make Better Decisions If You "See" Your Senior Self, Hal Hershfield writes:"There’s a large body of literature showing that emotional responses are heightened when you give people vivid examples: Donors give more to charity when they hear from a victim; pulmonologists smoke less than other doctors because they see dirty lungs all day. So I partnered with Daniel Goldstein of Microsoft Research, Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford, and several other Stanford researchers see if giving people vivid images of their older selves would change their spending and saving preferences. We took photos of our subjects and used software to create digital avatars—half of which were aged with jowls, bags under the eyes, and gray hair. Wearing goggles and sensors, participants explored a virtual environment and came with a mirror that reflected either their current-self or future-self avatar. Afterward, we asked them to allocate $1,000 among four options—buying something nice for someone special, investing in a retirement fund, planning a fun event, or putting money into a checking account. Subjects exposed to aged avatars put nearly twice as much money into the retirement fund as the other people. Later we had some people see the older avatars of other subjects to test if that affected their choices, but it didn’t. Only those who saw their own future selves were more likely to favor long-term rewards."So, how do we apply the basic concepts of the third-person perspective in elearning design? How can we induce our elearners to "age or become more mature" in their responses? The correct and efficient use of avatars in story-based eLearning design is only part of the whole approach. To create the appropriate learning environment, designers should set a good storyline, an apt setting and a realistic script. Create the right tension and draw them into the scenario. Trust the learners and implement your lessons with the disposition that they can rise to the level of the challenge. In short, treat them as adults who are capable of being creative and responsive no matter how difficult your lessons may seem. Pace your lessons well so that learners have enough time to think, react and assess their response. We are recreating real-life scenarios. As such, there are emotions and reactions involved. While we try to draw out the spontaneous reaction from learners, it is also as important to give them space to process their own learning . The results of the above-mentioned research could be further applied to elearning development. I foresee that this third-person concept is applicable to value-based and ethics-centered lessons for NGOs, socio-civic organizations and churches. Indeed, the elearning universe is expanding because of the changing needs of global communities. Related BlogsThe Dream of Personalization - Far fetch but PossibleDesigning eLearning for Martians and Other Aliens Reference  You Make Better Decisions If You "See" Your Senior Self by Hal HershfieldRay Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Our belief: At Vignettes Learning we use stories in eLearning; however, we make them interactive. The emphasis is getting learners involved in the story and not just telling the learners the story.Synthesis: Accessibility to massive content  in this Digital Information Age can be overwhelming and sidetrack even those with the best intentions. It is therefore important that designers focus on the intended context of their lessons rather than allow themselves to be distracted by too much information during elearning development.  Minimizing  content to its essentials  can be an effective way to accelerate eLearning.  It allows  context to float to the surface like oil over water. Image SourceWell developed elearning programs put premium on embedding context rather than just provding content. A critical step to achieving this is distinguishing content that learners need to know or must know. It is lean yet significant. Otherwise, it does not create the intended learning impact. As we apply the approach to creating micro-lessons with the embedded context, learners are drawn to discover it and enables them to glean the critical knowledge and retain it more easily.The quality of content and the process by which we synthesize content are factors that affect learning. Content that simply  overloads our minds and makes learning incomprehensible can even  lead to confusion. In this light, context takes precedence over content. In my blog Context is King, I wrote:"With the massive information and content growth and the speed of information change, the next generation challenge is not content but rather how to make sense, how to discover and how to apply the ideas from the content. In essence, how to find the context becomes more important. This is known as Contextual Learning - a learning that connects content with what the learners already know and benefit from its immediate usefulness. It is not the amount of information that we provide learners that is important. It is what is meaningful and immediately useful to impact their performance."Here are points to ponder for elearning designers:• Content development doesn’t work like a piggy bank. Storing too much information in one single lesson weakens the learning framework. If you keep on dumping content without providing the process on how to weave everything into one symbiotic modality, your lesson becomes good for nothing.• Context focuses on micro-lessons that lead to rapid learning. Uncovering  a single lesson from one page is more practical than unearthing  multiple lessons from  a whole book. • Contextual learning limits the scope of the lesson but it does not mean that the learner  has lesser learning. • Context enables designers to focus only on what is relevant and disregards novelty and unnecessary  information embellishments that do not contribute to the eLearning structure.In his article  4 Weapons of Exceptional  Creative Leaders, Charles Day wrote:"The context gives us the ability to say no with confidence.Great leaders are not necessarily braver leaders. They’re just better informed about the consequences of their choices, which makes it easier for them to make the hard ones. The result is they are able to keep their companies focused.When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 as its CEO, he began saying no to virtually every request by Apple’s developers. He understood that saying yes was a distraction from where he knew he needed to take the company and having context gave him the confidence to stand by his convictions.Many leaders fear saying no and see it as limiting. But more often than not, it’s the right answer when you’re clear about where you’re headed and are in a hurry to get there. Context requires that you build from the future back. Once you know where you’re headed, the decision whether to turn left or right at any given fork becomes increasingly clear. Context is only relevant if it’s based on current information. Because the world is changing in real time, exceptional leaders actively welcome disruptive thinking."What is said about contextual leadership can also be applied in contextual elearning development.   Designers who are keen on contextual learning safeguards their lessons by saying "no" to: • Information overload that defocuses the learner from the heart of the lessons • Bland, boring and conventional designs that fail to challenge the creativity and rationality of the learners • Knowledge spoon-feeding that induces procrastination rather than participationRelated BlogsContext is KingConstraints Compel eLearner to be CreativeReferences4 Weapons ofExceptional  Creative Leaders by Charles DayRay Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Our belief: At Vignettes Learning we use stories in eLearning; however, we make them interactive. The emphasis is getting learners involved in the story and not just telling the learners the story.Synthesis. eLearning content should be a collaboration between the client and the instructional designer and developer. Without the collaborative process, it is more difficult to produce effective and impactful elearning design. This is the reason why training needs analysis is important in elearning development. The first question a developer should ask the client is: what do you want to learn?Recently, Ikea launched an ingenuously designed shelter for refugees. In his article, A New Ingeniously Designed Shelter For Refugees—Made By Ikea, Shane Snow writes:"The Ikea Foundation (which has invested approximately 3.4 million euros in the project so far) and UNHCR will beta test the shelters in Ethiopia next month, then iterate to a final design for mass production. They currently cost $10,000 to make, but they’re hoping to get that price down to less than $1,000 when they’re in mass production. The tents cost half that, but they hope to have the cost even out, given the long life of the shelters."The same article cites that these innovative shelters are twice as large as the old-school refugee tent. They measure 17.5 square meters, take four hours to assemble and designed to last 10 times longer than the conventional ones. Take a look at the Ikea tent here.Putting on my designer’s hat, I became fully aware of the amount of research, situational-needs analysis, behavioral study and technical preparations Ikea designers went through to produce the innovative refugee shelters. The design is objective and end-user specific: for refugees.The process of developing the elearning design is similar to the design approach of the said tent. Just as the blueprint of the tent was based on the needs of the refugees, the development of elearning modalities should consider the assessed requisites of the learners. In this sense, a needs analysis is a vital step. A shotgun approach will not achieve learning goals especially in the development of the elearning design. The next key step would be the presentation and discussion of results with client. Here lies the opportunity for a collaborative approach between designer /developer and the organization’s elearning stakeholders.In my years as an eLearning developer, I am convinced with certainty that the most effective and impactful lessons are those co-designed by the client. Co-design in this respect means that the client spent collaborative sessions with the developer to analyze the needs of the organization.Entities subscribed to elearning, participate in the development of lessons. After all, the principals have better knowledge of its members than the developers. Collaborative elearning development produces contextual lessons that hit the bull’s eye.In my book 3-Minute Learning, I pointed out one of the common pitfalls in eLearning course development: designing and developing e-Learning programs without understanding the principles of elearning behaviors and the nature of internet technologies.Based on the above fact, I cite these guide points for both the developers and elearning principals:Learning needs analysis should be implemented with a critical mind. The principal should disclose relevant data and information that could help designers come up with an objective-specific lesson. Designers should be given the general background of the elearners. Prior knowledge of the contextual situation of the organization would definitely help designers customize an appropriate eLearning design. Principals should inform the designers about the strengths and weaknesses of the organization in relation to the lesson being designed. This way, the designers and developers are able to build the learning parameters. Learning results should be quantifiable and measurable. Keep in mind that the behavior of learners in an elearing environment is different. Virtual classroom solicits a different attitude and disposition from the learners. What works in a conventional learning environment would not necessarily apply in a virtual class. Conduct a Beta test of the virtual lessons and invest time in implementing trial runs to recognize the flaws and defects of the conceptual and technical elements of the design. Allow the principals and the learners to evaluate the elearning design. Record and keep the evaluation results. Knowledge benchmarks are necessary for the next phase of the elearning development. Related blogsAccelerating eLearning by Focusing on ContextSurgical Insertion of Micro-Scenarios that Beautify and Fire Up Your eLearningReferenceA New Ingeniously Designed Shelter For Refugees—Made By Ikea, Shane SnowRay Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Our belief: At Vignettes Learning we use stories in eLearning; however, we make them interactive. The emphasis is getting learners involved in the story and not just telling the learners the story.Synthesis. An iconic TV series is used as a model for creating an open-ended ending for story-based elearning design. Such an approach creates cycles of continuous learning because the lesson becomes collaborative. As the learners attempt to put an ending to an unconcluded story, different insights contribute to the development of the lesson.Image source.American actor James Gandolfini passed away last June 19, 2013. He played the iconic role of Tony Soprano in the HBO TV hit series The Sopranos. As the mob boss of a ruthless and dysfunctional crime family syndicate in New Jersey, Gandolfini was critically acclaimed for his intensity and realistic portrayal of the role.The Sopranos are considered as the greatest television series of all time. It has won a multitude of awards, including back-to-back Peabody Awards for its first two seasons, twenty-one Emmy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America named it the best-written series in television history. (Wikipedia).What impressed me most about the Sopranos was the manner the scriptwriters ended the series. The interpretation and meaning of the Sopranos’"final scene" is still being debated today, six years after the last episode was aired.The final scene showed the Soprano family about to have a family dinner in a diner. The camera pans through different frames suggesting that an assassin could show up and ‘whack’ the crime boss in front of his family. As tension builds up, the camera gives a close-up of Tony Soprano’s face, looking at someone who just entered the diner. Then, blackout. The credits followed without any annotation or epilogue. Watch the Sopranos’ final scene here. The ending has spurred hundreds - if not thousands - of blogs, articles and feature writing, explaining their point of view or interpretation of the ending. The Sopranos’ finale is a clear example of what we story-based elearning designers aim to achieve in their elearning modules. After hooking the learners with a well-written and engaging story, the open-ended ending allow the viewers decide how to end their story.In the same manner, a story-based elearning lesson solicits innumerable lessons, insights, interaction and reaction among the learners. Unlike conventional learning where there have been always a ‘right or wrong’, the story-based elearning lesson probes deeper into the emotional and intellectual faculties of the learners. The learning becomes collaborative because of the interaction and feedback. Here are some guidelines on how to create a story-based elearning lesson with an impactful open ending:The beginning and body of the story should be engaging. It should move the learners to commit to the story. It should be compelling enough to make them deeply concerned about how the story would end. If the developer could not feel the tension and conflict of his or her SBL design, I am 100% certain that the learners would not experience it also. Without character identification, the story-based elearning lesson fails to connect with the learner. Without such connection, the whole learning framework falls apart. Everybody is basically going through the same thing every day: joy, happiness, enthusiasm, sadness, tension, anxiety, disappointment and fatigue, among others. Human emotions are the easiest to recreate and project. Reflect and ask: is this story-based elearning lesson projecting an authentic experience? I close by quoting an excerpt from my book Scenario-Based Learning Using Stories To Engage e-Learners:"Many of us in the business of teaching, learning and training believe it is our role to engage learners. We become frustrated during these occasions when we can’t achieve this. We can only set the stage for learners to become engaged themselves. There’s a difference. Learners are perpetually engaged by their own stories. They complete their own stories, their bucket lists. Trainers and designers merely help by facilitating the process. The power of SBLs is to allow learners to complete their stories and discover the embedded learning ideas, not to force them to participate in stories that don’t resonate. They may go through the motions, but they won’t be engaged."Story-based elearning design creates a never-ending story that draws reactions, perspective and insight long after the last scene ended.Related BlogsCreating Learning Peaks with ScenariosPut the elements of viral videos in eLearning story designReferencesScenario-Based Learning Using Stories To Engage e-Learners by Raymundo Jimenez, PhD. The Sopranos, WikepediaRay Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Our belief: At Vignettes Learning we use stories in eLearning; however, we make them interactive. The emphasis is getting learners involved in the story and not just telling the learners the story.Synthesis.The responsibility of eLearning developers does not stop at implementing lessons. Post-learning assessment and data analysis are major factors to determine the efficiency of the learning modality. eLearning facilitators should ask themselves: Are we interpreting data correctly?Image source.Recently, the British Broadcasting Company website published an article written by Malcom Gladwell entitled "Viewpoint: Could one man have shortened the Vietnam War?" It is both intriguing and enlightening. It showed the vital role of data analysis and consequences for the erroneous process. Gladwell cites historical references pointing to the failure of American intelligence executives to correctly interpret the data of the Vietnam War. It proposes that the Vietnam War could have ended much earlier and saved thousands of lives had there been accurate interpretation of information collected.Konrad Kellen was part of Rand Corporation, a high-level think tank commissioned to interpret Vietnam War data. He was part of the Vietnam Motivation and Morale Project headed by Leon Goure.  Gladwell summarizes the objective of the project:"The idea was to break the will of the North Vietnamese. But the Pentagon didn't know anything about the North Vietnamese. They knew nothing about Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese history, Vietnamese language. It was just this little speck in the world, in their view. How do you know that you're breaking the will of a country if you know nothing about the country? So Goure's job was to figure out what the North Vietnamese were thinking.The idea was to break the will of the North Vietnamese. But the Pentagon didn't know anything about the North Vietnamese. They knew nothing about Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese history, Vietnamese language. It was just this little speck in the world, in their view."As the Vietnam War ensued, Rand Corporation managed to interview captured Viet Cong guerillas and produced 61,000 pages of transcribed manuscript. Goure interpreted these data and concluded that the Viet Cong were utterly demoralized and they were about to give up. Goure recommended more bombings to break North Vietnam. Everyone but Kellen believed Goure.According to Kellen, his interview with a Viet Cong Captain changed his perspective. The captured officer revealed that North Vietnamese believed that they could not win the war. Kellen interpreted this data differently and concluded that "an enemy who is indifferent to the outcome of a battle is the most dangerous enemy of all."The US government ignored the opposing recommendation submitted by Kellen. The Vietnam War continued and the rest is history. Data analysis and interpretation are vital in any industry including the eLearning sector. As eLearning facilitators and developers, we should interpret the data without biases or prejudice. It is in the best interest of our elearners to give up control over our desired results or projected outcomes.Vignettes Learning is running a program called STEX, an online application that gathers learner’s feedback and reaction over simulated training scenarios. We do our best to interpret data in the most objective way in order to get accurate evaluation. Aware of the consequences of manipulating data to achieve preconceived outcomes, I would point out that our guidelines in data interpretation are meticulously followed.In the medical field, wrong diagnosis could lead to dangerous results. This can very well compound the problem and endanger the well-being of the patient. This logic is also applicable in eLearning. Here are some points to ponder in analyzing elearning data:Give attention to details. All data are important, even the seemingly insignificant ones. Approach your data with an open mind and objective disposition. Do not prejudge an assessment based on initial results. Analyze the data with someone who has an opposing perspective. You need to test conclusions and recommendations by putting it in a crucible, so to speak. Detach yourself from the analysis and do not get emotionally attached to the outcomes. State your margin of error in your assessments. No one is infallible. Malcom Gladwell compares data analysis to listening. The ability "to listen" correctly to data is a skill all elearning facilitators and designers should possess. Of this, the author of the article writes:"Listening well is a gift. The ability to hear what someone says and not filter it through your own biases is an instinctive ability similar to having a photographic memory. And I think we have a great ]deal of trouble with people who have this gift. There is something about all of us that likes the fact that what we hear is filtered through someone's biases."Related Blogshttp://vignettestraining.blogspot.com/search/label/critical%20thinkinghttp://vignettestraining.blogspot.com/search/label/e-Learning%20StrategyReferencesViewpoint: Could one man have shortened the Vietnam War by Malcom Gladwell Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Rapid learning is achieved by putting lessons in micro-scenarios. Instead of serving the "whole pie of knowledge" all at once, serving slices to elearners is also effective.Micro-scenarios prevent information overload and give learners more capacity to focus and accumulate information.The eLearning culture has a couple of limitations. In virtual learning, both the trainer and the learners are separated by space and barriers. Technology compensates these limitations. Virtual learning centers do their best to make virtual human presence as real as face-to-face presence.In this regard, the mode of learning in a physical classroom differs from an elearning environment. Big data, huge knowledge sources and voluminous information should not be forced upon the elearners. Instead of pontificating on large data, eLearning methodology selects only a micro-lesson which can be plucked from the whole knowledge source.In his article, Little Data Makes Big Data More Powerful, Mark Bonchek shares a parallel view. He placed a distinction on the specific uses of big and little data and their specific uses in transmitting lessons:Selecting a small data or a micro-lesson is indeed an effective way to bring lessons across in an eLearning environment.I compared these micro-lessons to kernels. In my many years as an eLearning professional, I can say that focusing on kernel knowledge is a lot more effective than serving the entire corn. This is so because the constraint in the elearning environment is different from a classroom setting.In my blog, Instant and Rapid One-Minute Learning for mLearning and eLearning, I stated tips on how to pick up the "kernel":Although our brains are powerful, we can only process a quantified amount of data at a given time. Since not all the data we acquire translates into learning, it is only rational to choose kernels of knowledge and focus on particular lessons. In eLearning, the kernel is more significant than the corn.Do you agree that fleshing out small pieces of learning a little at a time, instead of dumping a huge amount of info all at once works better? Share your thoughts in the comments section!Related blogs:Instant and Rapid One-Minute Learning for mLearning and eLearningReferences:Mark Bonchek: Little Data Makes Big Data More PowerfulRay Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

Story-Based eLearning design is effective because it creates an environment where learners are compelled to anticipate. The vagueness of "what's next" keeps the mind engrossed until the story finds a resolution. Very few people can resist the power of a good story. Anticipation is a natural human tendency or practice. Ordinary everyday occurrences are filled with circumstances that compel us to anticipate. Whenever we drive, we anticipate the change of traffic light at the intersection. While watching a baseball or football game, we await the direction of the ball or the pass. We can almost predict what our boss might say if we are late for a meeting. We look forward to how our spouse would react over a new dress or suit. We eagerly anticipate the reaction of our kid over a surprise gift. Anticipation makes life dynamic. It keeps us moving. The Story-based eLearning design stirs the learner's anticipation. It is a catch or secret door through which learners enter. People can barely resist a well-told story and their minds are enticed to follow the plot with embedded lessons.Interestingly,Thomas Levenson wrote an article in the MIT Technology Review about Rebecca Saxe's experiments on Theory of the Mind (ToM). One of the objectives of the experiment was to find out how our brains learn to be social. To do this, Saxe devised a story-based experiment to assess via MRI, how children anticipate scenarios and thoughts.Rebecca Saxe describes how she came up with the idea of making a story-based experiment process: Even other fields of science have acknowledged the potential of the story-based design as a learning modality and a knowledge-gathering tool for neuro-research.In my blog Vague Stories Help Learners to Discover, I quoted an excerpt from John Lehar's In Praise of Vagueness: As eDevelopers and story-based learning designers, we are reminded that the human brain is wired to anticipate. Every human being has the innate capacity to see storylines in everyday occurrences. Our job is to bring out these storylines in real life and put it in the context of eLearning.I’d love to hear your thoughts about this topic. Sound off in the comments section! Related blogs:Vague Stories Help Learners to DiscoverReferences:Thomas Levenson: The Story of a Study of the MindRay Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

In most endeavors - war, sports, marketing, or storytelling - the element of surprise works wonders. By using the strategy of surprise, people are caught in their vulnerable state, a condition that leads to openness and non-judgment. Surprise, therefore, is important in the Story-based eLearning design because it creates an environment of awe and marvel during the learning process. The ingredient of surprise adds more impact to any event or endeavor. In the movie Sixth Sense, the audience was blindsided when Bruce Willis - who everyone thought was a regular character - was later revealed to be a dead person. During the Vietnam War, the Tet Offensive launched by the communists caught the US military off-guard that it nearly depleted the American forces.The power of surprise is just as important in the Story-based eLearning design. Since eLearning follows the dynamic or hypertext method instead of the linear approach, the lessons are unexpected, with open-ended outcomes. In effect, learners’ sense of wonder is heightened, causing them to be more receptive. How is surprise attained?Story-based designs are basically provocative and argumentative. It compels learners to take different views and answers that are not labelled as right or wrong. In effect, there is a flow of new ideas, giving learners the opportunity to 'stack experiences'. Surprise is largely based on the unexpected. In real life, we cannot always predict how events will turn out. We attempt to bring the unexpected into our learning scenarios to make lessons more authentic. Our eLearning designs usually mirror real life with its own surprises.On the contrary, when we spoon-feed learners, we eliminate the surprise factor. When this happens, learners tend to be passive and take less active roles. When eLearning lessons are dynamically designed, the learners are taken to various twists and turns. They flow with the story and discover context as it unfolds. Learners in anticipation and see how the scenario turns out.In his article Surprise Is Still the Most Powerful Marketing Tool, Scott Redick writes:What are the other lessons infusing surprise? When learners are surprised, It is actual evidence that they have more to learn. The fact that they were surprised proves that they still lack knowledge or have not learned enough; thus, there is an exciting room for growth. I’d love to hear your thoughts! Sound off in the comments section, and let’s discuss.  References:Scott Redick: Surprise is Still the Most Powerful Marketing ToolRay Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

I am thrilled to present you five of my best videos, each one providing you with a sneak peak, as well as helpful tips, on how the Story-Based eLearning Design can transform your courses into high-impact learning events. Must Learn - Does Your Learner Need 1,500 Pages?How many percent of 1500 would a learner require in order to start working at their new job? It depends on the content, but never all 1500 pages.Why do we expect our learners to go through all 1500 pages as if we expect them to master the massive information?Must-learns -  important information we want learners to learn quickly because they need learning competencies and skill sets they can build on the job quickly so that they can perform.Mastery or full competency - these are learnings they can only learn over time so they can become masters of it.We don't want to train a master in just one hour or even a 5-hour eLearning course.Focus on separating the must-learn from the working competency to the full competency content so we can focus our energies. Extreme StoriesIn selecting stories, we tend to select those that show extreme emotions.There is a science behind it - our minds no longer respond to typical situations.Sometimes, we get so used to typical situations on routine, we go on autopilot but when something particularly eventful happens, we tend to remember that for a long time.When you tell a dull story, nobody will pay attention to it.When you design stories you need to infuse these with new information so you tend to exaggerate the details.Embedding Content in Stories Sometimes you encounter participants who have no experience or idea about embedding technical aspects of a module into a story.Add more elements into the story so learners will see information that he may not have known ahead of time, or skipped through.If it's the first time for a learner to encounter a policy, a good strategy would be to have one of the characters explain the benefits and the impact of the policy to help learners gain a better understanding.Allow learners to discover the facts and learnings embedded in the story. As they go deeper into the story, the more they will discover.The more you embed, the more you will be providing them with a more enriching experience. I would love to hear from you! Share your thoughts in the comments section.Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

This case study presents a series of strategies and tactics which help you answer these questions: How do I respond to rapid business needs for e-Learning?How do I decide which approach can dramatically increase the speed of development and how do I calculate the returns?How do I work effectively with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to obtain content?What strategy ensures that the software meets rapid development and cost objectives?Here are some excerpts from the article:Rapid e-Learning as a term is an oxymoron. e-Learning is inherently rapid.  Its principles are all about speed and quality. It provides immediate learning. Its tools and software are fast, inexpensive and have more capabilities than we can even imagine. It is personalized and just-in-time learning at its best.  Our e-Learning programs are at least 50% heavier than they should really be (too much content).  These are at least 75% cumbersome (too much control) than what is required by e-learners.We need to present an architectural plan or infrastructure for our e-Learning program so all contributors can follow a process.Remember "Garbage in, garbage out"? Well, it may be more like: "The more garbage is generated, the slower the speed or flow, the higher the costs - and the quality stinks."Software developers and suppliers have their own "beliefs" borne out of their backgrounds, origins, interests and skill sets.Add interactivity only whenever and wherever it matters.This architecture provides clear direction for design, processes, and software and resource requirements - that lead to a clarity of standards and streamlined decision making.Reduce the amount of content to focus on "must learns." This increases the speed of development, cuts the costs and meets e-learners' needs.The ability to randomly select application  points allows e-learners to learn or apply ideas rapidly; it cuts down by 75% the burden of forcing learners to go page by page.Assist SMEs to organize, categorize, write and display the content that meets the standard of your architecture (structure their contribution so it is easy and time efficient for them).You can also maximize the full capability of the software when you know the end results you wish to derive.Not all content should be in an interactive form. Don't rush into converting content into interactive format if  plain text, images and references will work. If only 20% of your content needs to be interactive, then you already drastically reduce your development time. You also help the learners focus on what is truly important and what matters - which is one of e-learners' needs. Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

How do we make sense of the huge barrage of information that we encounter on a daily basis? We need to let go of the need to know everything. We need to train both our learners and leaders to resist the tendency to dump content. We need to help learners focus on usefulness and context of the content and to design and deliver training and eLearning programs to reflect this principle. According to Dr. Daniel Levitin, PhD, author of the bestselling book This is Your Brain On Music, we process 34 gigabytes of information during our leisure time alone and we would have created a world with 300 exabytes of human made information. Every hour, YouTube uploads 6,000 hours of video content. It's just impossible to keep up. Information overload is a growing concern and it has been discovered that the human mind can only take so much information at a given time. It needs time to digest.A Huge Problem for Corporations, Classrooms and eLearning LessonsOrganizations are unaware that they are actually paying a high premium for information inundation. Employees are not as productive when they are pressured to learn new things in with so little time. Hence, information and its application seem to be divorced from each other. "Corporations are failing to help staff cope with the technological barrage, daily meetings and constant connection, leading to rising levels of stress and psychological illness and costing billions in lost productivity," says Sarah O'Carroll in her article "How email deluge makes frustrated workers go postal" published by Herald Sun Melbourne Edition.Have you tried being in front of your computer trying to complete an elearning course? Can you still remember how instantly you became confused, frustrated and overwhelmed because of the information dumped on you? The overload problem manifests in elearning, classroom training and other forms of learning. The tendency to dump content is high. The challenge for eLearning designers and leaders is to engage users without overwhelming them.Solutions for Learners and CompaniesPaul Hemp in his article "Death by Information Overload" published by Harvard Business Review, suggested some solutions to the problem: changing corporate cultures, providing better tools, learning to use tools to filter and focus. Although these are great suggestions, the most important and may be the most critical is a change in our belief system or attitude. Jerry Michalski, an independent consultant on the use of social media nailed it, "You have to be Zen-like... You have to let go of the need to know everything completely."Why do we need to let go of the need to know everything? In training we are focused on production and efficiency of delivering content, not on its usefulness. Its consequence is the slowing down of the usage of content particularly apparent in the overload problems.Context is the True King, Not ContentWith the avalanche of information caused by high speed telecommunications and information technology, the current challenge is not the lack of content, it's the lack of context.  The need to refocus learning objectives on the needs of learners becomes apparent. For example, story-based learning objectives focus on acquiring knowledge in small steps. Instead of writing content from the context of the designer, write it as a set-up so learners can instantly see their usefulness in real life context. In designing content, always start by asking learners what is important to them and why. Why use story questions? Because you are are encouraging learners to bring forth their own stories. The key idea is that with the presence of so many content, the learners must be helped with your questions so they can focus on what they consider useful. When we skip this process, we don't help the learners. Here are some story-based questions aimed to help learners find out the usefulness in a content: What problems will you solve if you find the answer?What is important to you?What are you trying to solve?What do you know NOW about this topic?What do you want to know about this topic?How will you go about learning more about this topic?How do others feel and what do they say about this topic?How does the above change your understanding of what it is that you want?Context Setting Learning ObjectivesHow do we operationalize using learning objectives to helpful learners discover the usefulness of content and finding context instantly? Let's call this Story-Based Learning Objectives.Preview the two examples below.Example 1 - Probing Questions Example 2 - Confidential Documents  What is the difference between the static learning objectives and Story-Based Learning Objectives? Static learning objectives are statements of facts or academic learning goals.  This is an example of what we dump on learning lessons. We expect the learners to appreciate and learn academic goals. Naturally, it is difficult to learn by the sheer nature that it is hard to find meaning from a static fact. Story-Based Learning Objectives on the other hand are context driven. They quickly bring the content into a contextual form. They help the learners visualize the value of the context in real-life context. In preparing the Story-Based Learning Objectives above by focusing usefulness and context, do we engage the learner? Do we shorten his/her stress? Do we hasten his/her understanding of the content? And do we make it easier for the learner to apply the ideas presented within the content? The "Set Up Steps" of Story-Based Learning Design helps you to convert your content into highly contextually focused learning objectives. I'd love to hear from you! Share your thoughts in the comments section. References:Ray Jimenez, PhD. Story Impacts Learning and Performance: Monogatari Press. March 5, 2013John Gantz, Angele Boyd, and Seana Dowling: Cutting the Clutter: Tackling Information Overload at the SourceAnnual Reviews: The Role of the Critical Review Article in Alleviating Information Overload Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

A sage was once asked by his students, "Master, we ask you the truth and you tell us stories," to which the master replied, "the shortest distance between you and the truth is a story." So what are the things we learn from stories? Why do we hang on to every word that the character utters? Has the character changed our behavior? Suppose we replace the character with a lecturer, would you get the same automatic connection? Probably not.Are Our Brains Hardwired for Storytelling?An award winning storyteller who has performed for 6.5 million audiences and a prolific author who has written 34 books, Kendal Haven answers with a resounding yes! As a nationally recognized expert on story structure, Haven believes that our brains are hardwired for storytelling and that we're not just Home sapiens, we are Homo narratives. According to Haven, we prefer to remember stories better than non-story information. Kendal Haven on YOUR BRAIN ON STORIES: WHY YOU ARE HARDWIRED TO THINK AND LEARN THROUGH STORYTELLINGPeople are willing to pay to be engaged. You want to buy their attention. They want to pay with their attention to be engaged. Attention is the currency in the exchange of ideas and stories to ensure that they are engaged.Human beings have been telling stories for 100,000-300,000 years. The human species has relied on stories as a structure and has been used to convey and archive learning, history and wisdom. We are hardwired for stories and that's why it resonates with us.According to EEG recordings, from sensory organs (seeing, hearing, smelling, touch and taste), information goes through the neural story net and are converted to story form before it gets to the conscious mind.The story net automatically distorts and makes up its own version of the story to make sense of it. We need effective story structures to ensure the accuracy of the information being conveyed through the story.Listen to the FULL Audio for 40 minutes here.What Happens in the Brain During Storytelling Session?The brain is not in neutral when we hear stories, its gears are engaged. It's ready to make its own judgments and is synchronized with the storyteller. "When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs. By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners' brains.", says Princeton researcher Uri Hasson. We know that the experiences presented in the stories can be experienced by them too. This automatic connection or synchronization between teacher and learner is seldom achieved through traditional teaching methods. What We Learn from Stories: Values, Morals and How to Live Our Lives Stories have characters placed in a specific situation. We easily identify with them and how they cope with the situation that they are in. What is the moral dilemma that they are facing? Did their values in life help in achieving moral clarity? In short, how the characters live their lives become an example for us. So it's not accidental when we use characters in a story, it's intentional. There is a foundational theory that characters represent the teaching moments. And it is in our use of these characters that we can impart knowledge. Since stories are that influential, isn't this the best way for educators to embed technical compliance and other learning content?What is the goal of the main character? Did he manage to accomplish his goals? Every story is resolved when the character fails or accomplishes his goal.Conflicts. What is keeping the character from getting what he wants?Risk and danger keep the excitement in the story. What can possibly go wrong?What is the struggle the main character is facing? What is the main character up against? This keeps us glued to the story.Details make the audience add pictures to the stories. Designers can effectively use details to insert learning content in the stories.Motive explains why the goal is important and makes us identify with the characters. We become the character so to speak and we pay attention.ReferencesEmma Pearse: 17 Life Lessons From 'Stories We Tell': Web: JUNE 24, 2013 Michale Gabriel: Learning and Growing Through Stories: April 1999: New Horizons for Learning   Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning

How would you like to learn the way they do in the blockbuster movie "The Matrix"?  Was there ever a time when you just want to download a whole bunch of information-minus the hole at the back of your neck-into your brain and viola!? When you want to be a musician, you just plug that "musician plugin" and all of a sudden you're performing in a concert. When you want to be a programmer, you just download the latest "programmer plugin" and you're set to write the next killer app.According to Teemu Torvelainen in a newsletter entitled "What are nano-learning and m-learning?," "In the Matrix films, new skills were learned fast. Instructions on how to fly a helicopter, the characteristics of a motorcycle, and many other things were downloaded in a couple of seconds. This could be called nano-learning. Such training contents, or modules, are extremely short, take a minute or two, and focus on the point. Learning takes place at exactly the right moment and in the right place."What is Nano-Learning?There are different terms used in reference to it including micro-learning and small bites learning. However, it's all about breaking down huge chunks of information into small, bite-size, digestible morsels.  And this is not even a new idea. In the words of Elliott Masie, President of The Masie Center and the director of the Learning Consortium, "I am a nano-learner. What does that mean? Each day, I learn several things in small chunks. Really small chunks. A 90-second conversation with an expert triggers a huge 'a-ha.' A few moments concentrating on learning how something works leads to a new micro-skill. What's more, I am not that unusual. Most people acquire most of their knowledge in smaller pieces." The video above tells us the basic of micro-learning. Using the cake analogy, it gives us the idea that we should not learn anything that doesn't fit our brains. Hence, "don't eat anything larger than your head."The normal way people acquire knowledge is by learning in small steps. These bite-size morsels of information that we consume forms a broader and deeper connected knowledge.The idea is to take a learning unit that takes seconds to learn or do. Micro content should not take longer than 15 minutes.Make the information learned, a part of the daily routine. Acquiring this habit allows learning to really sink in.Incorporate micro-learning in the virtual learning environment. This way, you can impart knowledge the micro-learning way too.As it turns out, nano-learning is actually how people normally learn. It's not an event, a lesson, or a content, but rather a way of using the smallest ideas to get things done or get results. Knowledge is cumulative. This means that what we know at this point in our lives is just the sum total of all the micro-learnings in our entire lifetime.How to Empower Your Organization Through Nano-LearningAlthough the Matrix analogy is fictional, nano-learning is not. It has been effectively used in various scenarios to empower organizations. Companies have been using this technique to introduce new products or a new way of dealing with customers.Another way nano-learning is used is in the creation of ads. You do not have the luxury of lengthy explanation about how your product can improve people's lives. You only have a few seconds to grab viewer's attention, so making use of that small window is crucial. The video above showed how companies can systematically use nano-learning to empower their employees without sucking the life out of the learning experience. There are four stages in a learning journey namely, Prepare, Equip, Apply, Reactivate and Support. Prepare-four things occur at this stage namely Introduction, Orientation, Alignment and Inspiration.Equip-another set of four occurs at this stage and they are known as Course, Campaign, Coaching and Cohort.Apply-the four most important factors here are Practical Factors, Checklist, Certification and Active Coaching.Reactivate-at the reactivation stage, the fact that the brain forgets a lot easily is taken into consideration and that's why four factors are important at this stage namely, Recap, Reflect, Reinforce and Repeat.Support-taking into account that we can't contain everything in our head, at the support stage four factors are also taken into consideration. These factors are Performance Support, Help Desk, Expert Network and Community.From the rest of the video, you can see that micro learning is used to deliver content in all stages of the learning journey. What Does this Mean for Designers?Most instructional designers are not aware of the power that nano-learning packs in. It gives you the opportunity connect to your audience in an instant! No need to bore them with details, just deliver the meat of your topic in a creative and effective way. "We have a unique opportunity to stretch our thinking about the size of our average learning project. Right now, most learning modules start at 15 minutes and often cover hours or days of involvement. But most learning moments are teachable moments. Malcolm Knowles described the perfect teachable moment as the intersection of a small question with a great small answer. That is at the heart of nano-learning." Elliott Masie added.  For your audience, it gives them the most of what you have to share without being bogged down with the details. It keeps them interested and connected to you. In short, nano-learning is a win-win situation for both you and your audience.References:Elliott Masie: Nano-Learning: Miniaturization of Design: Dec. 28, 2005  Teemu Torvelainen: What are nano-learning and m-learning?: Nov. 17, 2007Cognitive Advisors: Nano-CoachingLiz Stinson Design: An App That Tells the Fascinating Stories Behind 5 Fonts: Web: Sept. 24, 2014Kerri Simmons: 10 Things You Should Know About Nano-Learning: Less Is More Ray Jimenez, PhDVignettes Learning"Helping Learners Learn Their Way"Ray Jimenez, PhD Vignettes Learning Learn more about story and experience-based eLearning