5 Ways To Motivate Modern Learners  Meet the modern learner: She is overwhelmed, distracted, and impatient; permanently connected to electronic devices, checking texts and emails, and bombarded by notifications, alerts, and apps. Some characteristics of the "modern learner" include the following: All ages. Uses multiple devices. Rapidly switches between devices. Bombarded by information. Attention spread thinly across multiple distractions. Data more quickly processed, but less deeply. Josh Bersin created an infographic that neatly captures the modern learner: Modern learners are now the people working inside your organization. They have tight schedules and busy workloads that no longer allow for day long training programs. More importantly, they are not interested in training that’s not relevant to their role and professional goals. Enter eLearning. It’s flexible, available at times that suit the learner, and easy to access on different devices. Modern learners love eLearning, but technology alone cannot solve the issue of motivating modern learners. Instead, it requires a different approach to training design and implementation. Let’s look at five ways you can motivate and keep the attention of modern learners. 1. Make training useful to learners. What to do: Create training on topics that will be useful to learners. Give your eLearning programs titles that convey value and have the "pull" factor to get your modern learners on board. For example, instead of using "Difficult Conversations" for your title, try "5 Top Tips for Approaching Staff about Issues". Align organizational goals (what you want to teach) with learners’ goals (what they want to learn), and then position your eLearning somewhere in between. For example, consider repositioning a unit called "Ethics for Sales Staff" as "5 Easy Ways to Avoid a Million Pound Fine". Adapt instruction to learners. One size does not fit all. By giving learners the freedom to select their own content, you can make it more engaging for them. Try building your learning in ways that allow multiple learning pathways. This helps learners who already have the skills move onto the next step. You can do this by providing "Test yourself" quizzes that place your learners at the most relevant parts of your program for them. 2. Keep training short and to the point. What to do:  Short attention spans and busy schedules make it imperative that you keep your eLearning sessions short and to the point. Video is a great medium to quickly communicate concepts and messages, but be sure to follow the five minute rule (no video should be longer than five minutes). Tools such as Screenr can help ensure that you don’t make it too long. Prepare properly with a script so that you don’t make mistakes and have to spend hours editing. Draw inspiration from this short, useful program by Utility Warehouse in their New Starter Training. Keep your eLearning units to no more than 15 minutes long. Chunk content into small, bite sized nuggets of training to let users navigate their own learning journey. Build an interactive menu to let learners select topics that interest them. Check out this eLearning by Filtered for a good example of how to use an interactive menu. Pace your learning with breaks, checks, feedback, and so on. For example, follow up a two minute chunk of content with a quick check or reflection question, and then ask for feedback. I like to design my eLearning in three to five minute daily training "bursts". 3. Use visuals to help learners recall information. What to do: A picture tells a thousand words. In the past, humans used to "write" in pictures (and some cultures still do). You are a visual animal and so is your learner. To help your learners process and recall information, you should include meaningful visuals (charts, cartoons or backgrounds) that help set the scene. But be careful; don’t add images simply to make your training "pretty". Make sure that the visuals you use are meaningful and content based. 4. Make training interactive to grab and hold learner's attention.  What to do: Games motivate learners. Designing your eLearning as a game (or with gaming features) can help to grab and hold the learner’s attention and to insert breaks into drier topics. Kineo’s Till Training Game for McDonald’s is a great example of a fully designed gamified piece of eLearning. Try adding gaming elements into your designs by using simple teaser questions, brain games, levels (learners can’t get to the next level until they pass a little test), rewards, and leaderboards. 5. Provide training on all devices so it's accessible anytime, anywhere.  What to do: Modern learners want training and information anytime, anywhere. You should consider making your eLearning fully responsive to these demands so that learners can access training on the go and when it’s convenient for them. A great example of responsive eLearning is the Royal Yachting Association’s radio training program. It has been specifically designed for learners to access on their smart phones and tablets. Training that is accessible on any device is great for untethered staff who are not based in the office. This will help you retain control of your content and reduce the chance that workers will need to search outside your organization for information and assistance. Need more inspiration? Head over to Elearning Superstars for more examples of great eLearning programs that are motivating the modern learner. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How To Boost Your Workforce Performance With Performance Support Tools  In my earlier article Performance Support Tools: Top 5 Things Your Boss Wants to Know, I had provided a background on what Performance Support Tools are and how they can add significant value to an organization’s learning strategy. I quote from this article to provide the background: When do learners seek learning? Dr. Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher’s Five Distinct Moments of Need© very succinctly captures when exactly learners seek learning. According to them, learners seek support in these Five Moments of Need: When they are learning an aspect for the first time (New). When they want to deep-dive and learn more (More). When they want to apply or remember something (Apply). When they need to solve a problem or fix something that has gone wrong (Solve). When something changes (Change). While formal training does address the first two learning needs, the use of Performance Support Tools is particularly relevant in meeting the subsequent three needs. You can refer to my article Improving ROI in eLearning where I have highlighted how an effective Performance Support intervention can increase the application of learning. This has a direct impact on improving ROI in eLearning. What are Performance Support Tools and where exactly do they fit in an organization's learning strategy? Performance Support Tools (PSTs) provide employees with on the job tools that make their work a lot easier. Unlike training, these tools are available to support and guide employees as they actually do their jobs. These tools are very easy to find, often directly embedded into the learners’ workflow (Learning Hub), and offer active guidance. These solutions enable organizations to provide the right amount of task guidance, support, and productivity benefits to learners precisely at the moment of need. Let me showcase 5 innovative examples that will provide the required insight on how you could boost your workforce performance with Performance Support Tools (PSTs). Example 1: Interactive PDF.  This format can be effectively used to convert lengthy information into a visually appealing, quick and easy to navigate format. The PDFs can be accessed from all devices (desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones). Additionally, you can integrate audio/video elements into the same document. This example shows how a mammoth 86-slide deck was transformed into an engaging and learner friendly format. Instead of linear walk through, learners have control on how they want to navigate and they can drill down to the required point in 4 clicks. Additionally, they have access to videos, if they want further information. You can also refer to my earlier article Performance Support: Featuring Interactive PDF as a Learning Aid To Supplement eLearning where this case study was presented in detail. Example 2: eBook (HTML5 compatible).  This format provides identical features as the Interactive PDF but provides extensions of SCORM packaging. Due to this, organizations get the added advantage of being able to track the learners’ usage, which is not possible with interactive PDF. You can also download this eBook and enjoy reading about Creative Learning Design Strategies that you can use. Example 3: Kinetic text/animations.  Sometimes simplicity speaks for itself. This approach uses animation of text to convey the message. This example showcases the use of Kinetic text to reinforce usage of the prescribed work flow for Instructional Designers. The use of typography, animation, and simple sound effects or voice over can create an immersive experience. You can also view this demo on our website (www.eidesign.net). Example 4: Whiteboard animations. This is one of my favorite approaches and the example featured here showcases its effectiveness in complementing a compliance course (on conflict management). Simple illustrations (that use real life scenarios) and concise audio drives the message very effectively. You can also look at the course on the same subject from our online suite of courses on Generic Compliance. Example 5: Videos. This example features a video designed through Adobe After Effects on another compliance course on Whistleblowing. As a supplement to the main eLearning course, it recaps the whistleblowing concept and uses a scenario to reinforce when learner action is necessary. To summarize, I quote again from my article Performance Support Tools: Top 5 Things Your Boss Wants to Know: The real solution lies in creating "Learning as a continuum". A good way to do this is to identify the areas for formal training and use Performance Support Tools intervention to reinforce it shortly after the formal session. You can then create a "learning path" that has interventions like this during the year. A combination of reinforcement as well as new assets that push application of knowledge on the job will help you create a high degree of knowledge recall, retention, and application. I hope this article was useful in understanding how to boost your workforce performance with Performance Support Tools (PSTs). At EI Design we have a very rich repository of engaging and innovative assets that you can use to enhance the performance of your team. Do contact me for further details. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Informal Learning Vs Formal Training  This is the first of three articles on Real Learning. This article looks at the ten year history of informal learning and the challenges involved in encouraging its use. The next article, Real Learning: Learning For Everyone, explains what people need to know and do to learn for themselves and work smarter. The third article, Real Learning: Bottom-Up Learning From The Top Down, looks at the role of Real Learning in organizational transformation. Ten years ago I argued that most people learn to do their jobs informally, not from training or formal courses. It was a radical message at the time. Most people rejected the notion or chose to overlook it. I wrote a book about Informal Learning, authored scores of articles, and gave countless presentations on the subject in the U.S. and Europe. I earned the reputation of being the "informal learning guy". Research showed that 80+% of the way people learn their jobs is informal. I asked why, if Informal Learning was carrying more of the load, did organizations invest most of their spend on Learning and Development on formal learning? Profit oriented managers were intrigued, but they didn’t know what to do about it. It was an emperor’s new clothes moment. I worked with Xplane to create a poster explaining how informal learning works. (You can download the poster from http://jaycross.com/Informal%20Learning%20Poster.jpg. I own the copyright to the poster. You have my permission to print a copy for our own use.) The rise of social networks raised the profile and fostered the growth of social learning, which is generally informal. Major organizations adopted 70:20:10 and similar frameworks that emphasize the importance of learning on the job. Smartphones enabled people to learn on the go, but this learning, too, was generally informal and on demand. Increasingly vocal workers demanded the right to choose their own learning and bring their own devices to support it. Workers didn’t want courses; they just wanted to learn what it takes to do the job. Informal learning now tops the agendas of most chief learning officers. [1] The problem is they want to control it, and that’s not how informal learning works. You have to trust people to make decisions for themselves. Frequently a training department will announce that people are ultimately responsible for their own learning. Then they abandon them. Rarely do CLOs or training departments lift a finger to help people learn how to learn. Craziness  This is absurd. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and brain researchers have discovered much about how people learn in the last 15 years. However, no one has shared these findings with the people who are being asked to take responsibility for their learning, many of whom equate learning with schooling. The credibility of L&D and HR is so low in many companies that they would be able to change the situation if they wanted to. Studies by the Corporate Leadership Counsel find that less than a quarter of senior managers think that Learning and Development is critical for meeting business outcomes. More than half would not recommend working with Learning and Development at all. In a survey conducted by Clark Quinn and myself, less than one in four CLOs agreed with the statement "Our people are growing fast enough to keep up with the needs of the business". [1]   To paraphrase Henry Ford, if a CLO believes he can do a thing or not do a thing, he’s right. If CLOs don’t have confidence in what they’re doing, neither do I. Learning and Development generally focuses on people who are deficient. These are people who need to know about something new or are under performing or have not been around long enough to know the ropes. High performers rarely receive any assistance at all. Years ago a study in Harvard Business Review reported that improving the learning of top performers paid many times the results of doing the same with average performers. For nearly half a century, I’ve advised corporate Learning and Development departments, but L&D only reaches a small sliver of the workforce and its approach is episodic. It doesn’t do much to empower the organization. Most people are unaware that learning is even a variable. I’d like to help those people Learning and Development never reaches learn to learn for themselves. Empowering People To Learn For Themselves Forgive a stretch analogy, but I’d like to do for learning what Luther did for religion: Make the sacred knowledge transparent. Bring things out in the open. (Luther’s big move was to translate the Latin Bible into something ordinary worshippers could read.) The sacred knowledge in this case is what astute Instructional Designers know. When people have to design their own learning, they need to become their own Instructional Designers. In an ever more complex work environment, Learning and Development doesn’t have a prayer of touching all the people who would benefit from learning more effectively. People ask how my new book is coming along. I tell them I’m not writing a book, I’m leading a crusade. The book is simply an artifact. The mission is to bring what we know about learning into the mainstream and to create a community of co-learners to update and improve this body of knowledge. Should some money fall in the founder’s pocket along the way, hallelujah. I enjoy doing well by doing good. [3] Endnotes: [1] Cushing Anderson, Look on the Bright Side, CLO magazine, January 8, 2015. [2] Jay Cross and Clark Quinn, Survey of 200 CLOs, Become a Chief Metalearning Officer, CLO magazine, June 2009. [3] Jay Cross, The Real Learning Project. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Why You Should Take An eLearning Course  How do you think eLearning works? What makes this era the era of eLearning? Why is that eLearning courses have introduced an added advantage to your resume that can keep you at an edge from others? eLearning courses are popular from a higher education level to a number of technical and professional courses that help in attaining a stable career. The following article talks about the advantages of eLearning courses and how they can push you a step forward in your career. Taking an eLearning course is beneficial to the taker in a number of ways. Some can be documented; others cannot. Time and money of course lead the list of advantages, but keeping them aside there is still a number that will make you ponder over taking an eLearning course. The typical definition of an eLearning course is any learning that is conducted through electronic media; typically the internet. In simple terms, it is a kind of course that requires a computer and an internet connection. It includes learning that has digital collaboration and virtual classrooms. eLearning is an excellent way that helps learn much in a short span of time. The eLearning market is expected to show growth and in the next three years, that is by 2018, and the self paced learning programs will achieve great heights. There has to be some solid reasons that are making eLearning a popular and effective way of learning. Some of the benefits that you can have with an eLearning course are: eLearning courses are scalable, fast, and efficient. Compared to the traditional classroom teaching concept, eLearning courses are far faster. The delivery of these courses does not depend on physical infrastructure, and hence there is no limit on the number of students who can enroll. This implies that even if you are in the US, you could access a course in India just through an internet connection. Talking about efficiency, a report says that learners learn more through an eLearning course than a conventional method of learning. Also, creating new policies, concepts, and ideas in an eLearning course is quick. eLearning is consistent. A great degree of coverage ensuring that the learners are effectively delivered the message in a consistent manner is what eLearning courses are able to do. The end result comes out that each person present in that eLearning course receives the same training, weather from Sri Lanka or Australia. eLearning saves money and time.  Time is money and with an eLearning course you can save both. You could do an eLearning course without relocating, without quitting your job, or without practically being there. The technology enables you to stay wherever you are and lets you do whatever you are doing saving a lot of time and money. The learning retention is high. The ability to refresh the coursework whenever needed increases the learning retention. This can also be blamed to a blended way of teaching commonly used in eLearning courses. You can tailor eLearning according to your needs. A classroom teaching course has mostly a fixed syllabus. eLearning courses on the other hand give you the opportunity to tailor the course according to the needs of the majority. Also, it enables you to attend your weak parts again and again and lets you skip through thorough parts. An eLearning course adds to your resume.  You can enhance your resume and think about switching a career without even leaving the current job you are in. For a fresher, these courses are a boom. The resume looks more professional with some eLearning courses listed in them. A lot of tools online can help you placing them right in a professional resume for a fresher. Concluding By Saying   The flexible and global nature of eLearning courses has led to an increased number of eLearning enrollments. With the progressive forms of technology, eLearning has grown tremendously. The potential of eLearning is substantial, making every form of education an inspiring and exciting field of study. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

ascilite2015 is a forum to learn about state-of-the-art and visionary educational technologies for globally connected teaching and learning, and to connect with key academics and practitioners. ascilite2015 program contains a mix of conference and social events. Enjoy a digitally enabled conference experience in technologically enhanced classrooms, as well as traditional discussions and face-to-face events to initiate the collaboration of tomorrow. ascilite2015 Themes Global Challenges in Education • Digital equity and social justice • Learning ecosystems • Digitally enabled learning for a global society • Regional and international research • Cross-cultural education Analytics and Visualisation • Data science in higher education • Learning analytics research and development • Learning analytics for 21st century learning skills • Big data ethics and privacy in higher education Innovations in Technology Enhanced Learning • Digital media learning in formal and informal settings • MOOCs and other population activation tactics • Media integration across platforms • Game and challenge based learning • Internet of things (digital fabrication, 3D printing) • Research on 21st century technology skills (eg. creativity, critical thinking, transmedia navigation ascilite2015 Keynote Speakers Jonghwi Park, Programme Specialist in ICT in Education, UNESCO Jeff Gomez, CEO, Starlight Runner Entertainment Paul Resta Professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education, University of Texas at Austin The 32nd annual ascilite conference (ascilite2015) will be hosted by Curtin University in Perth, Australia, on November 29th to December 2nd, 2015. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How To Engage And Inspire Baby Boomers In eLearning: 8 Tips For eLearning Professionals Baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964, just after the end of World War II. If millennials are the "tech natives", then baby boomers might be considered relative newcomers to the ever-changing technology landscape. Some reluctant members of the generation are even here on a "visitors’ pass", occasionally venturing into new tech territory. Thus, the challenge that many eLearning professionals face is figuring out how to use technology to their advantage while still making them feel right at home in the eLearning environment. Use these 8 tips to strike the perfect balance. Keep eLearning course navigation simple and intuitive. There may be baby boomers in your audience who are already tech-savvy. However, there are most likely going to be those who are at the other end of the spectrum and aren’t too familiar with modern technologies. For this reason, you need to keep your eLearning course navigation as simple and straightforward as possible. It’s all about intuitive user interfaces and easily accessible eLearning content. Make your navigation icons clearly visible and don’t use course maps that are difficult to decipher. Tap into their personal experience. Baby boomers have a wealth of life experience, and you should use this to their advantage when creating your eLearning course. Develop eLearning activities that encourage them to explore a topic or use their prior knowledge. Give them the information they need to know, and then set them loose and let them discover it on their own. This might involve online group discussions, eLearning scenarios, or any other interactive element that involves a hands-on approach. Cater to a diverse range of learning styles. As is the case with all generations, everyone has their own preferred learning style. However, thanks to the fact that technology is being thrown into the eLearning mix, you will also have to research their level of tech-friendliness when developing your eLearning activities and assessments. While one learner might absorb more information when watching an eLearning video or slideshow, another might fare better with text-only modules that involve minimal interactivity and visuals. Get a clear idea of how much tech they require and their comfort level with the various devices and tools. Allow them to set and track their own goals. Give them complete control over when they complete a module, in what order, and encourage them to set goals for themselves aside from the overall goals of the eLearning course. If at all possible, include them in the curriculum development process by soliciting their feedback. Baby boomers like to know that their thoughts and ideas actually matter, and giving them the opportunity to decide what goes into the eLearning course can motivate them significantly. Include plenty of online group collaboration activities. One of the most prevalent traits of the baby boomer generation is that they thrive in team settings. They like to work with others, make decisions as a group, and get involved in the learning community. Develop plenty of online group collaboration activities wherein they can share their personal experiences and insights. Better yet, pair them up with learners from younger generations so that both parties can mutually benefit. The millennials can share their tech expertise, while the baby boomers can offer their life experience. Center stories and activities on personal growth. Baby boomers are known for their "question everything and anything" philosophy. They don’t take anything at face value and feel the need to explore every facet of the situation before they make a decision. They also see every experience as an opportunity to grow as an individual. As such, it’s a good idea to center your eLearning content on relatable stories that evoke emotions, as well as eLearning activities that appeal to their strong work ethic; for instance, problems that take some determination and effort to solve. Offer individual praise and constructive criticism. As a whole, baby boomer learners don’t respond well to criticism. However, they do enjoy praise and recognition for their achievements. For this very reason, it’s important to have a solid feedback system in place when working with a baby boomers audience. Make sure that you immediately correct unfavorable learning or performance behaviors, but do so in a one-on-one manner. Take note of their accomplishments by offering them personalized praise to motivate and inspire them. You may even consider a gamification strategy that centers on rewards or badges, allowing learners to keep track of their achievements and show them off to their peers. Let them see the big picture beforehand. In order for baby boomers to truly be engaged in the online learning process, they have to know why they are participating in the first place. There has to be a purpose behind every eLearning activity and objective, and this purpose must tie into the real world. They need to be aware of what benefits they’ll receive upon completion of the eLearning course, such as what they will be able to do or how it will improve their life. Make certain to include each of the motives for taking the eLearning course in your eLearning course description, and then stress them again during the first online training session or module. Also, offer them a general overview that outlines the entire eLearning course, so that they can quickly see the big picture. Keep these tips on hand to create learning experiences that cater to the needs of baby boomers. It will also allow you to integrate their traits into your eLearning strategy, so that you are able to motivate and inspire them regardless of their prior tech experience. Looking for ways to create elements that stimulate the desire and energy in your learners to be continually interested and committed to your eLearning course? Check the article How To Create A Motivational eLearning Experience: 6 Tips For eLearning Professionals to discover 6 key tips to create motivational eLearning courses. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Real Learning: How To Implement Informal Learning On Your Own  My previous article tracked the ten year rise of informal learning from obscurity ago to top organizational priority. Managers and executives are embracing the concept of informal learning and its brethren social learning and experiential learning. It’s hip. They believe it’s cheap. It’s already 90% of the way people become proficient at their work. Management gives lip service to worker autonomy and freedom to choose. They tell the entire workforce they are now responsible for their own learning. That’s often as far as it goes. There’s no attempt to transfer the expertise of Instructional Designers and the wisdom of neuroscientists to the people who now need to become their own personal Instructional Designers. This is foolish. We know a lot about how people can improve their learning -it ain’t schooling- and we haven’t shared that knowledge. For shame. The Real Learning Project  That’s why I created The Real Learning Project: To share what scientists and practitioners know about learning effectively. My book Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Improve Learning and Performance defined informal learning, described its monetary and intangible benefits, offered examples, and provided advice to managers. My new book, Real Learning: Work smarter, advance your career, and live a better life, gives instructions on how to implement informal learning on your own. Real Learning Defined  Real Learning is learning as a life skill. It is learning from experience, from other people, from work, from feedback, and from courses and workshops. Real Learning begins when you Discover a new idea, Assess it for worthiness, Act upon it, Reflect on it, and perhaps share it with others. Not that the process is that neat. The four steps overlap one another. It’s more like they are being whirled in a blender to create a Real Learning smoothie. You are learning all the time, taking in new information and making sense of it. Real Learning is rarely schooling. With Real Learning, you learn by doing, through conversations, and from the school of hard knocks. You, rather than a teacher or institution, are in charge of the process. Learning is something that you own and experience continuously, with other people, in your life and your work. Most Real Learning deals with tacit knowledge, the things you cannot write down. It is about doing. The knowledge acquired through doing is what separates a professional chef from a home cook following recipes in a cookbook. Tacit knowledge, that is, practical know how, cannot be captured on the pages of any book. It calls for judgments, emotions, and complexities that you only absorb through experience. Tacit knowledge does not simply inform you, it makes you a better person. The basic difference is that explicit knowledge adds to what you know. Tacit knowledge transforms who you are. Real Learning focuses on acquiring tacit knowledge from experience and conversation. It accentuates what makes us human. Challenge. Variety. Growth. Relationship-building. Judgment. Complexity. Human skills. This is where value is created. Expanding your experience is the way to get there. To advance your career, you have to expand your work to include what you want to know and become. Whatever it takes in your organization, get assigned to situations you can learn from. Do not let yourself stagnate. What is good for you and good for them? Before signing up to learn this way, people need strong motivation. Change is not frivolous. The book begins with self assessment exercises and introduces a means of keeping track of progress. Then you’re asked to write down your goals. (Merely writing your objectives down makes it more likely you’ll shine.) With personal goals to encourage you to participate, Real Learning provides advice on how to: Learn from experience without instructors or classrooms. Work smarter and have more impact. Learn faster and remember more. Embrace openness and learn out loud. Make sound learning practices into lifelong habits. Co-create knowledge with colleagues. Plan how to achieve your growth goals. Learn to be the person you aspire to be. Real Learning provides techniques and the opportunity to practice these: Self analysis and goal setting. How people learn in organizations. Casting your net into the feeds and flow to extract the good stuff. How to learn -and demonstrate mastery- with curation. Becoming a search ninja. Refining your crap detectors. Strengthening your memory. When to take breaks. Sketching things out. Conditions/attitudes for optimal learning. Seeking new challenges, leaving "FamiliarLand". Taking on stretch assignments. Social learning, conversing, making relationship work. Participating in a community of practice. Reflection - on what’s learned, how it’s learned, and how to improve the process. Working out loud. Getting feedback. Talking business. Breaking nasty habits. Being mindful. FamilarLand?  You are the sum of your experiences. Experience has shaped your personality, your habits, your mindset, your values, and your brain’s wiring to make you who you are.  It is everything you have learned. I call it FamiliarLand. FamiliarLand is your comfort zone. Since you already know everything in FamiliarLand, there is nothing for you to learn there. Learning is a journey from FamiliarLand into Unknown Territory. In Unknown Territory, you will experience new things and link them to what you already know. Learning requires leaving FamiliarLand to try new things. Often the most practical way to experience Unknown Territory is to take on Stretch Assignments. First Principles  Naturally, The Real Learning Project has my fingerprints all over it. The book builds on the philosophy I’ve been spouting for years: While cleaning up my office this afternoon, I came up this list of essentials for effective informal learning I wrote a couple of years ago. I don’t know if I’m in a rut or simply unwavering in my beliefs, but I was surprised to find that every one of these appears in nearly the same language in my new book. (I’d forgotten that I’d written the earlier list.) Most learning is self directed. Give people the freedom to chart their course. Make sure resources are readily available and easy to find. Set high expectations, and people live up to them. Help people make sense of and prosper in the world and the workplace. Facilitate social networks that enable people to compare their situation with others. Conversations are the stem cells of learning. Foster open, frequent, frank conversations both virtually and in person. Praise courageous conversations. People learn by doing. Encourage experimentation. Ensure that managers and mentors understand the impact of stretch assignments. Learning is experiential, and stretch assignments give learners new experiences. Teach people the least they need know to tackle things on their own. Make it drop dead simple to access people in the know, the lessons of experience, how-to information, and performance support. Learning is social. Encourage participation in communities. Make collaboration the norm. Narrate your work and share with others. Communities and guilds create and consume knowledge. If you don’t have a vibrant social network, create one. More than half of us work part of our time outside of the office. Ensure support is mobile. We want what we want, no more. Whenever possible, provide choices. Give employees the pieces to create personalized learning experiences. Learning is for everyone, not just novices and up-and-comers. You can’t expect to prosper without it. Make sure everyone’s covered. Learning takes reinforcement to stick. Seek feedback. Blog, tweet, and otherwise share your reflections. Revisiting what you learn fixes it in memory. Innovation is born of mashing up concepts from different disciplines. Encourage looking outside the box. Provide feeds for what’s going on in the team, the department, the company, the industry, and technical disciplines. People confuse learning with school. Build lessons on learning how to learn into the organization. The Real Learning Project is an experiment. Borrowing a page from Lean Strategy, I released a "minimum viable product", in this case a beta version of the book, into the market to plumb for interest. I handed out review copies and sold the beta version for $2.99. 200 people are reading the book. It’s been revised and improved four times, and we’re still in beta. Only ten percent of the readers have provided feedback, but what they tell me is encouraging. 21 out of 21 respondents would recommend the book to a friend or colleague. Only half the group has read beyond the first few chapters. What they like is that Real Learning is: Clear, actionable. Concise ideas, language, and opportunities. Practicality, examples, and simplicity. Embodied energy, flexibility, and variety. Love that it leads to other learning. Interaction and reflection. Lots of great ideas about how to learn and be successful. Practical suggestions, encouragement to just do it. Authentic, simple to read. The self directed concept, the personal learning, the way it was written. Very practical, resonates to what I believe real learning is. Its human voice. In the next article, I’ll describe how real learning might be incorporated into the learning culture of an organization. The print version of Real Learning will be released at Online Educa Berlin in December 2015. Here is more information about The Real Learning project. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

DoviLearn And eLearning In Africa  Whether eLearning or otherwise, one thing is certain; learning can never be over emphasized, and it is priceless. How successful you intend to become, how far you intend to grow, still evolves on your willingness to learn new things. Unfortunately, this trend which is almost becoming a lifestyle in the western world still remains a newbie in most parts of Africa. Even with the hike in internet penetration, technology advancements, and other forms of globalization, the growth of eLearning in Africa remains relatively low. Tracing some of the factors which may have affected this, one could easily sight the lack of digitization of educational/training materials, internet cost and availability, technical know-how, government involvement, sensitization, and awareness, among others. These menaces have no doubt affected the growth of eLearning in many African countries lately; eLearning obviously has faced some set back in Africa, which has contributed to its slow growth and acceptance. Countries like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ethiopia, and Kenya among others have been on an active play in the efforts to digitalize learning; obviously Nigeria is not left out in the efforts, though may been in quite a relatively slow growth. eLearning has its advantages compared to other forms of learning, and there are many reasons why eLearning should stay in Africa. Not only eLearning enables for wider coverage through easily transferable digital contents, and the internet ubiquity, but also has numerous advantages which in overall help improve the way we live, the way we do businesses, and grow ourselves too. To take a closer look at some of eLearning’s benefits, they include: eLearning can help in cost effectiveness. Through digitalized training contents, more people can have access to these training contents, of which in overall can make them more affordable as compared to other forms of learning materials and training contents. eLearning can reduce or totally remove expenses incurred as a result of cost on transportation to training centers and classrooms.  A barrier which eLearning has bridged through the ubiquity of eLearning technologies and devices. eLearning can also help in time effectiveness. In most cases, through eLearning, students may enjoy the luxury of time to plan and determine the best training time for them, and learn at their own pace. Through eLearning, instructors or students can instantly measure their progress activity while learning. Many standard Learning Management Systems (LMSs) support tracking of student activities, and report their progress while they study. This obviously would put students’ activity and willingness to perform well *on check. The internet of a thing has enabled for various forms of learning. Of course distance eLearning has been on rapid growth in the recent time in Africa, but the kind of distance eLearning innovations put into play may have been on slow growth. I decided to take some further steps in our adventure of eLearning technologies, by bringing a twist to eLearning, through the combination of eLearning portal, eLearning social community, eLearning library, news update, and other amazing features that could help facilitate the learning process. "We just want to digitalize learning" - Okeke Vincent Chidozie Understanding that the success of any eLearning technology is not only based on its sophistication, but also on how it fits to people and organization’s learning culture, DoviLearn also tries to reflect this principle by enabling students create their own learning groups and learn as desired. Obviously, the potentials, opportunities, and discoveries in eLearning technologies are yet untapped! With increased competition for jobs, professional skill upgrade, and other continuous learning programs most likely will put many early eLearning adaptors in more prospective advantages in their career upgrades. Within the last two years, I have focused on innovation for DoviLearn. The idea is to first create value for the brand and to enable eLearning to stay; eLearning is important to us as a business. With DoviLearn, we plan to revolutionize eLearning in Africa. eLearning has come to stay, and this is the right time. We will continue to grow our portal, contribute in every way possible to foster eLearning technologies, and also contribute to bodies and agencies to grow their eLearning portals and libraries. Learning should be digitalized, and this is what DoviLearn stands for. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Model: Learning As Kids And Learning As Adults How often do people think about the way they learn? Once we are out of school and learning is no longer our primary occupation, often we stop considering how learning is continuing to affect our daily lives. Our focus changes from growing as students to achieving as employees. The truth is, learning never stops. But, what do the amazing learning experiences that we have all experienced in school have in common with the ongoing pursuit of growth and improvement as adults? This is the question that has inspired me and my work leading the SolidProfessor content development team, shaping our Instructional Design to be the most effective to learners who are trying to improve performance in addition to cultivating their knowledge. Here at SolidProfessor, one of the learning methodologies that have inspired our Instructional Design is Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Model. Kirkpatrick’s model is somewhat analogous to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in the learning world, where you need food, water, and shelter before you can begin a pursuit of self actualization. The four levels are: Reaction. Did you like the training? In order to learn effectively, people need to actually like the experience. Most people can relate to how much they learned in classes where they loved the instructor. The connection with the instructor is something we value in the learning experiences for all of the courses we develop. We strive to make each learner feel like our instructors are working with them right over their shoulder, and we place a lot of value on our media production techniques so that the experience is polished, professional, and engaging. Learning. This step in Kirkpatrick’s model is about how effective a course is in helping people gain new knowledge and understanding about a particular subject. Knowledge is the basis for the application of new skills. As we are living in a digital age, there is an ever increasing need to deliver information when and where it is relevant, in a consistent and concise format. As information is delivered, the "what" and the "how" are certainly important, however, when learners go on to apply their knowledge to obtain new skills, they must also understand why a feature or concept is important, and why they might consider a particular approach to applying them. Behavior. Ultimately, what we are looking to do as designers of learning programs is to change the learner’s behavior. Or, in other words, establish behaviors where learners adopt and perform newly acquired skills on the job. Implementation of knowledge is the key indicator of a successful learning experience. It essentially enables learners to be able to DO something that they would not have been able to do before. Results. Gaining tangible results through learning methodology is the Holy Grail in Kirkpatrick’s Four Level Model. It is the most sophisticated outcome and also the most difficult to measure. We look at it in terms of return on education (ROE) and/or return on investment (ROI) for the time invested or the money spent on a learning program. Examples of the results step for CAD users are: Reduced errors, reduced design cycle times, reduced costs, increased production, increased efficiency. This step is essentially the equivalent to "Self-Actualization" in Maslow’s hierarchy, and can only be achieved when the learning program is effective in the first three steps of Reaction, Learning, and Behavior. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Discovering Learning Management Systems  A Learning Management System (LMS) is an online system or software which is used to plan, execute, and assess a specific learning process. In simple words, software used in eLearning programs and which helps in administration, documentation, tracking, and recording. Learning Management Systems are used to maintain online collaboration over the internet. Colleges and companies use them to deliver online training; corporates use them for training purposes, as well as for maintaining employee records. Some use them to offer courses that provide students access to education, and some others as an online system which staff use to support course delivery and provide online learning and blended learning opportunities for students and employees. Purpose  The main objective of Learning Management Systems is to enhance the learning process. A Learning Management System not only delivers content, but also handles registering courses, course administration, skill gap analysis, tracking, and reporting. Most LMSs are web based and are used in various educational institutes and companies to improve classroom teaching, learning methodology, and company records. They are used in various industries and scenarios like in financial services, compliance training, computer based training, online assessment, collaborative learning, application sharing, and so on. Some LMSs also include a performance management system which encompasses employee appraisal, competency management, and skill gap analysis. 11 Benefits Of Learning Management Systems Stream lined training process. Using a Learning Management System makes things easier for you, as it helps plan the training activities calendar which you can share with your learners, trainer, and co-administrators. By doing this you can maintain and improve your training process. An LMS also helps in getting trainer reports, which is a time consuming process when done manually. Ability to deliver engaging and motivating training. This is a fact that each individual learns in a unique manner. If you apply different learning approaches, they increase your success rate. LMSs help in communication and balance the whole system. Technology leverage. In this digital world the working system has totally changed. Today every employee is engaged with a laptop or desktop, and with the help of Learning Management Systems you make the training future ready; plus it becomes interesting and exciting for your target audience. Centralized learning. It becomes easy to offer centralized source of learning to multiple users and the training, performance, and content can be accessed from the same source. Tracking and reporting features. Another benefit of using an LMS is that you can enhance performance through tracking and reporting tools. New users’ progress can be tracked, records can be reviewed, and users can register for more than one course. Learning can be done through web based training. Management can access the records and calculate which area needs improvement. The learners also become aware of the areas that need improvement and additional efforts, as the weak performance areas, can be identified easily. Evaluation capabilities. Users can evaluate courses before joining, and employers can keep a track of the retention levels and real time performance by periodically scheduling assignments. Easy upgrades. Content and information can be easily upgraded, as Learning Management Systems offer a centralized location for information which makes it simple to implement changes; plus, all users get the same upgraded information at the same time. Simplified learning process. An LMS refines the learning process. The systems are easy to use and a new user can figure out everything very easily, since help is built into the system. Reduced cost and time saved. The right LMS can reduce the training costs in multiple ways as the trainer doesn’t need to travel now, so there are no boarding and lodging charges involved. The teaching cost reduces to great extent. Learning Management Systems save organizations’ and instructors’ valuable time and money through web based training. Interactive environment. Through new online tools, the interaction and communication part improves. Learners get the answers in real time and the engagement is more geared toward being interactive. Anytime, anywhere learning. Centralized uploading and online access ensures this. You can learn whenever and wherever you want to. 8 Learning Management System Features Finally, some common features found in the majority of Learning Management Systems include: Managing users, courses, roles, and generating reports. This helps uploading courses, assigning roles, and generating various reports. Making a course calendar. This feature helps in managing the course activities. Messaging and notifications. Users and trainers can send reminders and notifications, including upcoming training and events. Assessments that can handle pre/post testing.  Certification and display employees’ score and transcripts. This helps in maintaining training records of the learners, performance of the individual, and providing certificates to those who have completed training successfully. Instructor-led course management.  Administration.  Competency management. With the help of this feature one can track and check the skills set of the team members and compare then against business goals. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Real Learning In Organizations: Bottom-Up Learning From The Top Down  For years, I’ve grappled with consultants who find it cute to say that we need to formalize informal learning. Snicker, snicker. The joke is that if you formalize informal learning, you strip it of its anytime, anywhere, moment-of-need, spontaneous delivery and peel off the intrinsic motivation inherent in "I’m learning what I choose". What the smart-mouth critics mean to say is that it’s a good idea to routinize informal learning, to understand its value and how it works, and to nourish a culture that is fertile, open, sharing, experimental, networked, optimistic, and respects the opinions and value of others. You nurture social learning; you don’t command that it happen. You might as well try to change the course of rivers by giving them orders and blowing upstream as demanding that people learn. Man plans; God laughs. Research by Richard Boyatzis at the Wetherhill School of Management [1] found that no matter what else, adults learn what they want to learn. Boyatzis’s studies included studying for exams or being physically threatened; you don’t retain things you’re not interested in learning. Dilemma For Organizations: Us Vs Them  How can we synchronize individual desires and organizational requirements? People are inherently free spirits, acting in the secret movies playing in their minds. This makes traditional managers squirm. They seek to get everyone lined up and assigned with their tasks, but the workforce is 30% to 90% unengaged, up yours, and resents lining up for anybody. Workers are no longer emotionless mechanical parts. Match this against volatile, unpredictable demands from customers and rapidly morphing business models. We don’t even know what we’ll need to deliver a few years hence. How will factors like plain English results from Big Data, cheap answers from Watson (HAL), and intrusive bio-monitors change the picture? People have to be organized, but in a traditional organization this leaves the manager herding cats. Square-peg people are hammered into round-hole job descriptions. Nobody is happy. The whole set up is wrong. Organizations Are Organisms The industrial age model of the organization as a machine has outworn its usefulness. Networks changed everything. We're all connected, and nothing is ever finished. Old authority has given way to individual autonomy - you play by new rules or drop out of the game. Real time replaces calendar time. Free-flowing networks subvert hierarchy, markets become conversations, honest conversation drives out hype, and power flows to customers. Old style hierarchies and rigid organizational structures can’t keep up with today’s demands. Organizations today are living organisms. Responsive organizations perform like schools of minnows, not whales. Ecology replaces bureaucracy. Members replace employees. Caring human beings replace mechanical jobholders. Everyone acts in the organization’s interest, for it’s their interest, tool. Thus, the secret to herding cats doesn’t lie at the individual cat level. You can’t spread yourself that thin. You must set up an environment that enables the cats to take care of themselves. You do things that benefit all the cats, e.g. an exercise program, more catnip, yoga classes. Or, if the cats are human, by helping them learn. Organizations should strive to become as adaptable as a school of fish. Every fish in the school is autonomous. I flip a chunk of pita from my seaside seat in the marina of Češme, Turkey. The fish arrive as one and then break ranks for a feeding frenzy. Human behavior can be that way. On Black Friday, shoppers wait for hours for Macy’s or BestBuy to open its doors. Everyone is friendly, sharing hot tea and stories in the waiting line. Kumbaya. The doors open and pandemonium breaks out. Shoppers belligerently grab and shove as if they were poor farmers from the Steppes set loose with unlimited credit at a Whole Foods superstore. Confusion. Chaos. Then back to heading the same way, in formation, relaxed, poised, calm. They don’t follow a leader, but they all head in the same direction. Responsibility is shifting from organization to individual. Everyone makes decisions on the spot. Organizational members help customers help themselves. We are each responsible for our own development. People concentrate on problem solving and customer service because the linear, repetitive, boring functions that people used to do back in the twentieth century are being delegated to computers. All of us are smarter than any of us, so it’s wise to let the organization’s collective intelligence take the helm. Organizations Are Alive Three years ago, twenty one management theorists and agile coaches met on a mountaintop in Switzerland to discuss the need for organizational transformation. [3] The mountaintop summit echoed the famous mountaintop meeting that developed the Manifesto for Agile Software Development a dozen years earlier. We agreed that: Reflecting on leadership in organizations today, we find ourselves in a bit of a mess. We see reliance on linear, mechanistic thinking, companies focusing more on stock price than delighting customers, and knowledge workers whose voices are ignored by the bosses who direct them. All these factors are reflected in the current economic crisis, increased inequity, bankruptcies and widespread disillusionment. Our primary conclusion was that organizations should be seen as learning networks of individuals, and that management’s job is stewardship, not control. We believe that we uncovered some of the common characteristics of that better way. For example, that organizations can become learning networks of individuals creating value and that the role of leaders should include the stewardship of the living rather than the management of the machine. After the two-day session in Stoos, I took the train south to Lugano, a perennially sunny town that couples Swiss efficiency and Italian verve (Mangiare!) on the shore of an Alpine lake. Fragments of the mountain top conversations rolled around in my head. I concluded: The business world must shift its focus from things to people. Living things trump machines. Moreover, people are inherently social. We cannot thrive -or even survive- in isolation. Connections are vital to creating value. And how is that value created? By adapting to change - and that requires learning. Bottom line: Businesses are networks of learning individuals. Financial success is not the ultimate target. Chasing money for its own sake is wrong headed and demoralizing. Drucker had it right: The purpose of business is to create and satisfy customers. People in sustainable organizations focus on doing this better and better, forever delivering more value to their customers. Do this right and the money will follow. For several hundred years, the machine has been the metaphor for the organization. Management’s role was to make the machine work efficiently. People were cogs; managers controlled human resources as if they were interchangeable parts. Bosses did the thinking; workers were told to get the job done. It was as if workers lacked intelligence, emotion, and initiative. Shut up and do your job. Machines work well when you need to do the same thing over and over. They’re not so hot when doing different things is required. Denser interconnections have transformed the world into one vast complex system. The past is no longer a guide to the future. Small things have enormous consequences. Logic breaks down. Shit happens. Everything’s different. These days it’s more productive to think of organizations as organisms. Managers become stewards of the living. Their role is to energize people, empower teams, foster continuous improvement, develop competence, leverage collective knowledge, coach workers, encourage collaboration, remove barriers to progress, and get rid of obsolete practices. Living systems thrive on values that go far beyond the machine era’s dogged pursuit of efficiency through control. Living systems are networks. Optimal networks run on such values as respect for people, trust, continuous learning, transparency, openness, engagement, integrity, and meaning. Transforming The Organization With Real Learning Many businesses are in the process of transformation from top to bottom. They want to reinvent themselves as a social business or be digitally transformed or to adopt Management 2.0 or become a Learning Organization. Some are embracing radical management or management 3.0 or elastic leadership or customer capitalism or organic business. [4] All of these approaches to transformation involve building a culture that is open, authentic, sharing, customer focused, social, risk tolerant, and progressive, the same values that are built into Real Learning. An organization is moving from a traditional structure to an organic one is in an ideal position to embed real learning and working smarter into its culture. Traditional Structure Rigid Predictable Fixed Simple Absolute Linear Transactions Individuals Isolated One time Mass production Central authority Teacher-focused training Organic Structure Flexible Chaotic Flowing Complex Relative Linked Relationships Teams In context Iterative Mass customization Distributed intelligence Learner-focused learning   Real Learning can ride on the coattails of an organization wide transformation. For a large effort, it’s worthwhile to customize the content of the book and website to focus on the change initiative. People will be learning to learn by learning more about their own organizations and teams. The usual change management advice applies: Get top management support, sell the stakeholders, enlist champions to proselytize, don’t try to boil the ocean. Jane Hart’s Modern Workplace Learning [5] calls collaboration specialists and community managers to enable and support informal learning and collaboration. Learning and performance advisors assist with personal development. Once again, Real Learning can be a resource for helping people learn to learn. The agricultural approach. Many executives and Chief Learning Officers buy into the philosophy underlying Real Learning and want to do something about it but lack a methodology and have scant time to devote to it. For them, I propose a radical approach. Treat the inexpensive Real Learning book and exercises as seeds. Distribute them widely. Picture what I’m describing. I call the place where people work and learn a Workscape. Others call it a learning ecosystem. It’s the place where value is created.       Endnotes: [1] See https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=formalize%20informal%20learning for discussions of formalizing informal learning. [2] Richard Boyatzis, "Unleashing the Power of Self-Directed Learning," advance chapter from Changing the Way We Manage Change: The Consultants Speak. (Quorum, 2002). [3] Steve Dunning, "Stoss: Facilitating a Tipping Point for Organizations," Forbes, January 13, 2012. [4] Steve Denning, Comparison of Approaches to Transforming Management, Draft paper, January 2012. [5] Jane Hart, Modern Workplace Learning, January 2015. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

ICCE 2015 theme is "Transforming Education in the Big Data Era" ICCE 2015 is a premier annual international forum for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and people in the industry in the Asia-Pacific region to connect with international research communities for the worldwide dissemination and sharing of ideas for research in the field of Computers in Education. ICCE 2015 Sub-Conferences Themes The seven theme-based sub-conferences will foster the building of strong research communities within the broader field of Computers in Education and Educational Technology. The meta-conference umbrella will play the dual role of allowing researchers to enhance their identity in their thematic research communities, but also allowing cross-disciplinary interactions to help broaden the scope of and inspire future innovative research. ICCE Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education/Intelligent Tutoring System (AIED/ITS) and Adaptive Learning ICCE Conference on Computer-supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and Learning Sciences ICCE Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ALT), Open Contents, and Standards ICCE Conference on Classroom, Ubiquitous, and Mobile Technologies Enhanced Learning (CUMTEL) ICCE Conference on Digital Game and Digital Toy Enhanced Learning and Society (GTEL&S) ICCE Conference on Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) ICCE Conference on Practice-driven Research, Teacher Professional Development and Policy of ICT in Education (PTP) The 23rd International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE 2015) will be held at The First World Hotel (Hangzhou, China) from November 30 to December , 2015.   This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

The Story Of Learning Battle Cards  Learning Battle Cards (LBC) is an inspirational tool for educators supporting them in their Instructional Design efforts. If you are unfamiliar with this concept you can check a few of my former articles published on the eLearningIndustry.com: Learning Battle Cards: A New Tool For Instructional Designers Gamification Of Learning Design: How To Use Learning Battle Cards? Learning Battle Cards Pinterest Space: 4500+ Inspirations For Instructional Designers On Pinterest You can also check Learning Battle Cards website where you can not only learn more about the concept, but also visit the LBC store. The Idea  In 2011 we met with a group of friends (and competitors at the same time) from the Training and Development industry. During discussion we came into an idea to work together with a goal of promoting mature, balanced use of eLearning in the Training and Development field. During a brainstorming session we created many ideas, but one of them looked the most appealing to us. We decided to show a variety of learning methods hoping that it would open educators’ minds for deliberate mixing and matching them to optimize the learning journey. We had many ideas on how to build the tool (set of infographics, Mendeleyev’s Periodic Table, etc.). We decided, however, to choose the collectible cards idea. Here are our sources of inspiration from the brainstorming session which let us focus on the winning concept. Content The first challenge we faced was the content. What criteria should we consider to place the learning method to the deck of Learning Battle Cards? What should be the scope of information placed in the card assuming that it had to fit into the small space of it? How we should collect it assuming that we were not experts in every single field of education, training, and development? To address these questions we decided to use a crowdsourcing model. After defining the framework of information space we asked for contribution of professionals from the industry. We just e-mailed a simple Excel sheet to them asking for providing tags to the tag cloud and their judgments of parameters which were located at the back of every card.  After that we merged all input and generated the first version of LBC database. Was it that simple? No - there were a lot of challenges, additional communication, responding to questions, following up, responding and taking into account suggestions from contributors, etc. On overall, however, the results exceeded our expectations. Visual Design In this challenge we were lucky, as one of us had a friend who was a co-owner of a marketing agency. He was so excited with the idea, that during the first meeting he told us that his team would design it free of charge. This is the raw concept of the cards which we showed to him during the meeting… … and this is what we have now as a result of his team’s visual design: Development Of The Deck There were only 32 cards in the first mock up of Learning Battle Cards. We focused only on the most basic learning methods supported by new technologies. We quickly realized, however, that we should extend the product by adding cards defining all methods supporting the Training and Development process. In this task we were supported once again by contributors who suggested many new cards and changes in the formula of the deck. Now the deck of Learning Battle Cards consists of 108 cards with about 10-20 more sitting still in the bench and waiting for new editions of the product. It is worth to point out that our intention was to create an open product, so we assume that the deck of Learning Battle Cards will never be finished, and we expect that every single year more cards will be added to it. Field Tests After the design phase of LBC development we decided to print out some mock ups to be able to make some field tests. Tied with a rubber band, with no box at all, with manually rounded corners - well, they were no perfect, but just good enough to play with them on various conferences and workshops. We quickly realized that this idea sticks. That people (trainees, participants of the conferences, etc.) are thrilled when using them. That they deliver the promise of opening eyes and flexing their minds. By using them we were adapting the logic of the product and designing some activities bringing educators into some conclusions or actions. Here are some pictures from field tests of the Learning Battle Cards idea: Proofreading From the very beginning we were considering LBC as a global product. The core database exists in English and can be translated (if necessary) to other languages (for example Polish). Of course we did our best to place the right words in the card, but we were afraid that local proofreading, even done by professional translators, wouldn’t be enough. Once again we asked for help. And once again we quickly found a contributor from US who agreed to check the final project in terms of wording. His feedback was very valuable as he pointed out a couple of important, cultural-related issues which was hard to find without being a native speaker and a learning industry professional at the same time. Further Development Of The Idea  Apart from the aforementioned idea of expansion of the LBC deck we have more side products based on the Learning Battle Cards concept. First of all, we wrote a book on Instructional Design based on the Learning Battle Cards way of thinking. Once again, it was written according to the crowdsourcing model in which 55+ contributors described various learning methods. For the moment this book is only in Polish, so only a small fraction of eLearnind Industry readers can have a chance to read it… At second, we designed the LBC Development Kit. This is a gamified tool for supporting the Instructional Design process. You can find some visuals here. We will probably start marketing activities of the LBC DK in the Q1 2016 after more field tests and finishing the product. We have many more ideas in mind (LBC Maps, LBC Hints, LBC Tips), but they are still in the concept stage. Final Thoughts  During the whole project we were amazed by the scale and the quality of people’s engagement. We were contacted by many people we haven’t any relation with declaring their support. We almost never heard "no" for an answer to our question for support. This let me think that not only relations matter, but also the stickiness of an idea. I would say that people love to engage in something which matters for them; which they consider fun, interesting, valuable (in terms of personal development for example), important, etc. In The End…  We would like to thank to all contributors and supporters of the LBC concept. We greatly appreciate all of your comments, feedback, e-mails, phone calls, and discussions about the idea. We appreciate your engagement in the crowdsourcing space. Names of all supporters can be found on the Learning Battle Cards website. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

eLearning In Leadership Training And Development  The model of heroic leadership is fast becoming a relic of the past. As our workforce gets younger, a new paradigm of leadership is emerging: Leading as a team or a collective. And eLearning is perfectly poised to train and develop the leadership teams of the future. Why? Because eLearning incorporates social media like webinars and social networks as part of their training structures. Think about it: We human beings are social creatures. We share. It’s part of our wiring. The human race has been sharing information socially ever since there’s been a human race. In more modern terms, we text, email, post, and tweet our best and worst experiences. We tell each other about our favorite show on cable. Or we talk about the terrible service at this bank, or that restaurant. Or we rave about the best place to get organic avocados, bananas, tomatoes, etc. And we subscribe to -and use- technologies that increase our ability to share with an ever-expanding network of social connections. If something (or someone) has impacted you in any way, you’re probably talking about it. And you’re talking about it with a lot of people. So for this article on leadership training, we invite you to consider this question: Does your leadership training and development program allow for team interaction, and learning in a social media network? Social media/social networking is now a fact of life in developed and developing countries. The connectivity of the internet provides us with opportunities to share our experiences with unprecedented speed. And so far, social media is an underutilized tool for leadership eLearning. And there is still some resistance to using social media in training programs, particularly among the baby boomer generation of leaders. As a counter to that resistance, we offer this rather simple recipe. Take the emerging paradigm of collective/team leadership. Add the tendency of human beings to share. Blend in the social aspect of eLearning. Roll the mixture out liberally on various mobile or internet-capable devices. And voilá! You get a leadership training and development program that (potentially, at least) serves up leadership success. Well, the theory is nice. But let’s take a closer look at the practical aspects of social media in leadership eLearning. Connections In The Classroom And Beyond eLearning is web-based, and learners can access the information individually. But then, learners can use social media to share what they have learned with each other. Peers can now connect with each other, and discuss their ideas, thoughts, and insights. Each person experiences information individually and uniquely. And if they can share that unique experience, they can learn as a community. Learning in a community boosts the effectiveness of training. What one learner may struggle with, another may grasp quickly, then pass on the knowledge to his/her cohorts. When learners work together toward mastering common subject matter, the resulting synergy boosts the learning potential. It also boosts the effectiveness of the leadership team. From Independence, To Integration, To Innovation  Another plus to eLearning’s social media aspect is the exploration and innovation that comes with community learning. New ideas emerge as solutions for challenges (both existing and potential), without "reinventing the wheel". Social media can be built into the eLearning experience. And when there is a built in structure for the social aspect of eLearning, information is shared more freely. New ideas and solutions emerge. While leaders-in-training receive instruction on the organization’s best practices and policies, they’re also free to explore and discover, leading to innovation. This community approach to leadership development allows for flexibility, which means the organization can evolve and shift as time goes by, while also maintaining its competitive edge. Developing your leaders in a team environment also supports them in relationship and consensus building. As leadership models shift from a single heroic individual to a team or community of leaders, the ability to build relationships becomes even more important. An effective team of leaders will potentially strengthen relationships in the workforce, leading to greater employee empowerment and morale. Team Leadership Training Empowers Discovery Of Future Leaders  Team leadership development can further create an environment where leaders are willing to listen to, and acknowledge, the ideas and thinking that emerges from the people whom they lead. And this allows leaders to create and discover other leaders. Furthermore, the community is better able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the learning group as a whole, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the individual member. Strengths can then be refined, and weaknesses can become areas of development. So, why not view social media as an investment in the future of your leaders? Especially when you consider that our workforce is shifting toward a generation for whom using social media is as normal as using a phone? To resist that shift is to lock your organization in the past. Far better, then, to incorporate the use of social networking as part of leadership development. In our next article, we’re looking at eLearning that takes leadership training and development to a whole new level. As eLearning becomes more and more engaging, blurring the lines between education and entertainment seems to be inevitable. Look for our next article, where we start looking outside the xBox for leadership training and development! This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How To Work With Tech-Resistant Learners In eLearning: 7 Tips For eLearning Professionals If eLearning professionals had their way, every learner who logged into the eLearning environment would embrace technology wholeheartedly. However, in reality, there are learners who fight technology at every turn and are completely resistant to the eLearning technologies at their disposal. In this article, I will share 7 tips on how to work with learners who are less-than enthusiastic about interactive eLearning, mobile-friendly online courses, and other tech-centric eLearning resources. Be clear about expectations and goals. One of the reasons why many learners are resistant to using technology in eLearning is because they are unsure of what is expected of them. In many respects, it is the fear of the unknown. Thus, you must be perfectly clear about why you’ve chosen the eLearning tools you have, as well as the role that eLearning technology plays in the overall eLearning experience. For example, will your learners be using the eLearning technology as a supplemental resource after the in-class training, or will the entire eLearning course be conducted online? What types of eLearning activities are you going to include? Walk your learners through every step of the eLearning course so that they know what is in store for them and what they need to do in order to successfully complete the eLearning course. Offer a demo. Some of your tech-resistant learners in eLearning may not actually be resistant at all, but unsure about their ability to use the eLearning tools at their disposal. For example, a learner may be unfamiliar with how to use an online assessment, which makes them hesitant to enroll in the eLearning course in the first place. This is why you should always offer your learners an in depth walkthrough of how to use the eLearning software such as your learning management system. Let them know about all of the features, eLearning navigation controls, and interactive eLearning activities. For learners who need a bit more help with tech know-how, consider creating an video tutorial or text-based explanation of how they can access and use the eLearning platform. Encourage group collaboration. Putting your learners into smaller groups and encouraging them to explore the eLearning platform gives them the opportunity to learn about the tech together. You can pair them up with other tech-resistant learners so that they can share their common concerns and help each other through the process. Likewise, you can group them with tech-savvy learners who can use their personal experience to provide assistance for those who are not familiar with technology. The goal is to utilize social learning to your advantage by having learners share their experience and insight to make the most of the eLearning technology that is available to them. Stress the benefits up front. This is the case for all learners, but doubly so for those who are tech-resistant. You must stress the benefits of taking the eLearning course from the start, so that your learners get the motivation they need to actively participate. Learners who are hesitant about using technology will be more likely to actually engage in the learning process if they know what they’ll get out of the experience; in other words, what is in it for them. If they are willing to put in the time and effort to utilizing the eLearning software, then they want to know that it will all be worthwhile. Show a proven track record. Making learners aware of the fact that the eLearning technology has worked in the past can be the nudge that tech-resistant learners in eLearning need. Give them evidence or testimonials that show them that the instructional strategy is actually sound and that they can achieve success if they dedicate themselves to the eLearning experience. You can even let them see past feedback forms, such as surveys  or focus group notes, so that they are able to get a glimpse of how the eLearning course can benefit them. Ask for their feedback. Speaking of feedback, in order to create a track record for your eLearning course and to make improvements that can strengthen your eLearning strategy, it’s always a good idea to solicit feedback from your current learners. This also gives tech-resistant learners in eLearning the chance to voice their concerns and opinions, and lets them know that their thoughts matter. It may be a good idea to offer them a survey at the end of the eLearning course, or even at the midway point, so that you can make changes as you go along. For example, if most of your learners aren’t comfortable with a particular eLearning activity or resource, then you can determine if it’s really a good fit for your online course. Introduce the eLearning strategy slowly and steadily. It’s best to ease learners into eLearning technology, especially those who are new to the world of eLearning. Don’t force them into highly immersive and interactive exercises right away. Instead, slowly but surely give them the opportunity to acclimate to the eLearning technology by offering supplemental eLearning resources and online activities. Then, as they become more familiar with technology, integrate eLearning scenarios, simulations, and other multimedia elements that offer them the full benefit of your online learning tools. This is also why it’s important to learn as much as possible about your audience beforehand, so that you can find out their level of tech-savviness and integrate the appropriate eLearning activities. Technology has the power to transform an eLearning experience, but only if learners are receptive. These tips can help you ease them into technology and offer them the full benefit of your eLearning course. Motivation is one of the most important aspects of eLearning. If your learners are motivated, then they will be more likely to welcome technology with open arms. Read the article Tips to Engage and Inspire Adult Learners to discover 11 adult learner tips that will give you the ability to overcome the obstacles that are often associated with training adult audiences. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

The Death Of SCORM: 4 Reasons   If SCORM is actually a standard, then why is it going extinct? Here are 4 reasons: 1. Inflexible and narrow in scope. SCORM was initially built to manage communication between a learning object (a course, for example) and a Learning Management System - but it’s still narrow in scope. To be more specific: It can only track what’s happening inside an eLearning course. But we don’t just want to know who takes the course and how well they do on the assessment. We want to track more information about the learning behavior of our users. Besides this, SCORM works with flash shared objects. But: not every mobile device supports this. Mobile flexibility? Not so much. 2. Too much complexity, too few results. When SCORM 2004 was brought to life, its most significant contribution was undoubtedly the "simple sequencing model". Given the fact that it was anything but simple, most courseware developers were having a hard time implementing this. The reason? SCORM is extremely outdated. The model upon which it’s based is over 10 years old. Moreover, the emphasis on self paced computer-based training was clearly misplaced. This is one of the many reasons the "latest" SCORM version resulted in a very low adoption. The number of searches for the word "SCORM" on Google: 3. Not education specific. Unfortunately, as some of us consider it to be a solution, SCORM barely addresses any of the requirements. That’s why this tool is definitely a poor fit for education. Our advice: The less reliant you are on SCORM, the more flexibility you will experience moving forward in an education centered environment. 4. New technologies: Tin Can or Experience API. Since SCORM 2004 was introduced, new technologies have been used in several ways to meet the demands of both digital B2B buyers and learners. Smartphones have become mainstream, gamification has seen a massive rise in popularity and whatnot; learning and performance management systems have clearly reached a point where cost effectiveness, smooth integration with other systems, and user friendliness are much more important than constantly releasing new features. These major shifts in technology made most of us realize we need something more versatile. That’s why Tin Can API (also known as xAPI or Experience API) was introduced. This tool enables you to view in depth test results and lets you transition between platforms. But that still isn’t enough. What if your employees are dealing with your content the wrong way? And what if you want to make quick changes to your courses as your employees are moving forward? This Is How You Will Survive: Do-It-Yourself Learning The do-it-yourself learning culture is not near, it’s here. It means you should be able to easily make changes to your learning content when necessary. And your learners should be able to be working outside your Learning Management System and transition between multiple platforms and trainings. Modern platforms will allow you to create any course or content yourself. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Are You eLearning Industry Ready?  While traditional methods of education and training have not gone away, online learning, or eLearning as it’s otherwise called is booming. Analysts at the Global Industry levels project this segment will touch a whopping $107 billion by the end of 2015. Information dissemination and training through the web, right from the corporation to public schools, are becoming popular and are seen as viable options for learning. Online training services such as Pluralsight which provides training for technology professionals has reached the distinction of closing a $135 million in Series B funding. Do you wish to ride the wave and make a profit out of a billion dollar industry? What is the history behind this industry and what’s in it for you? What can history show you and how have companies benefited, from seeing the industry’s boom early? Here we look into these aspects to help you understand this industry better. What Is Possible And What Are The Challenges So Far  There came companies like Vector Learning and Pluralsight which have been in the business of providing content for eLearning for mandatory skills such as software training and compliance, computer programming, etc. These are relatively easy to do, but for areas which have a greater and more urgent need, such as non-mandatory training, more so in areas like sales, leadership, soft skills, etc.; content creation is a great challenge. A Little History To Aid You Along The Way  The term "eLearning" was coined way back in 1998, and until such time corporate training online was an under-performing industry which was a bad product not wanted by anyone. This one sector was screaming for attention and looking for people to come along and make changes. The industry was looking for someone to get people to sit in front of the computer or a mobile device long enough to learn something useful. How did this situation arise?   Let’s go back a few more years…  eLearning was white hot in the late 1990s, and in 1999 several investors poured in $800 million into a segment that was threatening to make live training obsolete. Cisco’s John Chambers predicted that "eLearning was the next killer app" which according to him would make email sound like an error! But this really did not happen! By 2004 investment had gone down to near zero. While companies had invested in access to corporate eLearning libraries, there were very few people watching these or learning from them. Many with access to the eLearning platform never logged in! A few watched one or more programs and quickly gave up. Something was horribly wrong with what eLearning content developers were doing. One reason could be: The mixture of LCD screen, mouse and keyboard placed people in a state of extreme distraction. Getting people to sit in chairs and read a book has been easy for writers, but with online training or non-urgent training, keeping these learners focused for more than 10 minutes was next to impossible. Linear, logical, and complete content, which read like a book, worked with people because human minds were conditioned to accepting information in that manner. If You Wish To Take Advantage Of The eLearning Boom, What You Need To Know Is…  Two decades after the advent of the digital age the rules for eLearning and content creation for the same had been turned upside down. This saw the era when the computer had become capable of conveying the written word in ways that competed with books. As more and more learners started depending and relying on the knowledge gleaned online, they also started craving this information that came in the form of "short, overlapping, and disjointed bursts". With this attention spans of all these people shrank. When Instructional Designers started creating content for eLearners they created content with minds fixed on the book era. "Linear, logical, and complete" were the watchwords for online content creators, but this is not what people with a mouse in their hands wanted. When Instructional Designers started creating 90-minute eLearning modules this was difficult to watch for digital natives, Gen-Xers and Boomers whose brains were in rewired condition. Let’s Look At What A Few Industry Leaders Did At This Time  Lynda.com, a consumer company with content library, had been limited to software training until 2008. A new growth-oriented CEO Eric Robinson decided to transform the modest Lynda.com into a global eLearning company. 2012 saw the emergence of this dream with Lynda expanding its content library into new areas especially business skills. With continued expansion into general business content, Lynda soon had over 1200 courses including 500 on management, interpersonal communication, and leadership. This led to Lynda.com becoming a company that shook up the eLearning content market. Lynda.com invested $103 million in 2013 showing that its rise was real and in 2015 it received another $ 186 million into the company. Later LinkedIn paid $1.5 billion and bought over Lynda. Lynda’s business model and growth were carefully studied and the lessons learnt from Lynda can come in useful here. The message for eLearning insiders is clear - If you wish to make the big bucks in this industry you need to remember these points: They used business courses that were long, but these courses had been broken up into five to ten minute shots. The learning should be smart and not micro learning, ensuring it fits the short attention span of learners today. Lynda’s content producers are aware that they are creating video which operates under a different set of rules than traditional learning platforms. They are also fully aware that the well-developed content will anyway useless if we are not able to get people to watch the modules. Also, they ensured they found good Subject Matter Experts who could speak comfortably in front of a camera and not look wooden. Quality of content matters. You cannot use second rated content in this industry for long. If you are able to grab the learner’s attention and hold on they’ll probably be able to give in to the bait for a second! This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Why Your Organization Needs A Learning Culture To keep abreast of these changes and ensure your business is flexible and adaptable, you need to foster and encourage a learning culture within your organization. Providing your biggest asset -your people- with training, development, and career pathways could also result in a happier, more-productive workplace and save financial resources spent on managing turnover. But wait, there’s more! At PulseLearning we always remind our clients that a learning culture: 1. Builds sustainable engagement.  The 2012 Towers Watson Global Workforce Study found that almost 6 in 10 companies reported difficulty retaining critical skill employees, and around the same number have difficulty retaining high potential employees and top performers. Why? Because of disengagement. The study found that sustainable engagement is closely related to the nature and quality of your employees’ experience on the job. Engagement develops as part of an organization’s culture and work environment. It must be created and continually nurtured through a focus on training, performance management, communication, and visible leadership. 2. Encourages problem solving.  "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime". This quirky proverb tells us it is more worthwhile to teach someone to do something than to do it for them. It looks like the person responsible for this pearl of wisdom knew the value of a learning culture. Through teaching skills and facilitating learning in your workplace, you are continually adding value to your employees by increasing their skills sets. Encouraging people to seek answers creates a problem-solving mentality rather than relying on others for solutions. Even better, a problem solving mindset helps people make good job-related decisions. 3. Responds to technology.  Advances in technology are pushing the need for a new skill set. The Global Talent 2021 study conducted by Oxford Economics identifies several competencies that will be in high demand within the next decade. These skills include: Digital skills for working remotely and utilizing social media. Agile thinking for dealing with complexity and ambiguity. Interpersonal skills for effective physical and virtual collaboration. Global operating ability for managing diverse groups of people, understanding international markets, and acting with cultural sensitivity. Moving forward, it will be important to provide training and encourage your people to learn about these new skills to ensure their productivity and effectiveness remain stable as technology continually changes the workplace. 4. Increases employee retention. Five key drivers for attracting and retaining employees were identified in the 2012 Towers Watson Global Workforce Study. Career advancement opportunities were ranked in third place and learning and development opportunities in fifth place. Of those surveyed, 41% also said they would have to take a job elsewhere to advance their career. For employers, the message is clear: "I prefer to be employed and highly engaged here, but I need to see evidence that I can grow my skills and career". An effective way to provide that evidence is precisely through well-defined and communicated career paths, skill training, and strong and effective leadership. For sustainable success, it looks like all organizations need to bring on that learning culture. At PulseLearning we develop effective, targeted, custom eLearning solutions to help organizations build a productive learning culture. Related Article: 5 Reasons Why You Need To Invest In Employee Training References: 2012 Towers Watson Global Workforce Study Oxford Economics Global Talent 2021 This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

4 Challenges To Overcome When Managing eLearning Platforms  To go or not to go online is no longer a question for the training providers. Even face to face training programs of significance (such as University or Certification courses) are hard to deliver without interactive online presence. Some are using established eLearning platforms such as Moodle or Blackboard and tailor them to the delivery needs, while others develop eLearning platforms of their own (e.g. Interact eLearning Platform by the Charles Sturt University). This brief article attempts to discuss some of key challenges faced by the eLearning platforms’ exponents. Getting Started: In-House Development Vs. Outsourcing. When a training provider wants to make his courses available online, the very first dilemma it is likely to face is: To handle development and implementation of the eLearning Platform on his own or to outsource the task to the 3d party. So far, there appears to be little consensus among the providers which path to follow. Some Universities like to "stay in control" and keep a team of in-house developers who can cement commitment to eLearning by working continuously on the platform development and improvement while others trust the "hired experts" - aka the outsourced consultants. While the in-house developers are arguably more committed, few of the Universities are able to boast a level of technical expertise that is high enough to develop an eLearning platform that is tailored to the ever changing learners’ needs and incorporates all of the necessary learning and teaching technologies such as embedded video streaming, Turnitin, online marking tools, user support area, etc. Therefore, outsourcing of the eLearning platform development does pay-off! User Support: Teaching To Learn And Learning To Teach? Both students and instructors take time to acquaint themselves with a new eLearning platform and utilize its capacity to the full. Furthermore, some of the users (including instructors) never discover major potential joys that eLearning platforms have to offer and focus on employing the very few functions and tools that are absolutely essential for training delivery (at the instructor end), such as uploading lecture slides and assessment requirements, and for completing the learning tasks (at the learner end) such as submitting assignments and downloading the resources available. Both parties often tend to ignore a wide range of teaching and learning options that the eLearning platforms are capable of delivering. For instance, distance students often feel isolated throughout their studies and would love to have some peer support, but even if a video chatting option is available (even though majority of the students is likely to be using technologies such as Skype already) they may not even be aware that the video chatting option does exist. They rarely if ever read user documentation or use the site help function leave alone calling or emailing the helpdesk. As evident from the passage above, availability of effective user support systems and processes is critical for optimizing the eLearning experience. It confirms the need for every eLearning platform to incorporate a virtual helpdesk function that supports both the teachers and the learners 24/7 as well as keeps "promoting" all of the platform’s functions to the users continuously. Managing Platform Administration Rights: Who Is The Boss? The concept of empowering users is central to any eLearning platform. However, there are obvious limitations to how far the empowerments should progress. We cannot allow instructors to make alterations to the system settings (not to be confused with customization) and certainly cannot allow students to manage assessment requirements or the Gradebook section. Therefore, training providers need to find the "Golden Middle" between user empowerment to have the platform customized and keeping settings in accordance with the established standard. Another important factor is managing access rights. There has to be a clear policy to address access related issues. During the initial stages of eLearning implementation, there have been cases where students were accidently provided with "Staff Access" and vice versa. Furthermore, lecturers/instructors should be provided with access and administration rights that are on the one hand sufficient for managing their classes but on the other hand do not allow them to access irrelevant areas as it may lead to potential data security breaches. For example, it is common for eLearning platforms to store students’ personal data that they provide on enrolment (e.g. date of birth, home address, contact phone number, etc.). It is transparent that while even access to complete personal data set for the students that the instructors are currently teaching is questionable, they should definitely not be able to access personal data of the students enrolled in other subjects and programs. Learner Engagement: Communities Are Hard To Build. Learner engagement takes more than availability of fancy communication tools to build. Students love using mainstream social media channels such as Facebook or Twitter, but often tend to be reluctant to communicate via Moodle forums or Blackboard blogs. Building online student communities is an ongoing challenge. Usefulness alone will prove to be insufficient for successful community building unless there is also a truly social twist to it. "Smart" communities invite learners to combine discussion of study related matters with chatting about social issues, hobbies, sports, and other topics of interest making it feel like a friendly community rather than a purely study oriented one! To sum up, eLearning platforms take time to develop and grow. Launch of such a platform is just the starting point. As evident from the discussion above, successful eLearning delivery is not just about delivering suitable eLearning platforms, but also (and even more importantly) about effective management of these eLearning platforms and tailoring them to the users’ needs! This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

29th AAOU Annual Conference theme is "New Frontiers in Open and Distance Learning" Over the decades, distance education has undergone tremendous changes. Starting as postal correspondence courses, it has evolved into the digitally enabled learning of today with the advent of broadband wireless technologies. Learning is no longer reliant on print technology and a host of fixed infrastructure. Nor is it constrained by time, space and distance. Instead, learning is very much flexible as it is self-paced, self-directed and self accessible. Learning is also easily accessible to all, regardless of age and vocation. More importantly, this emergence of digitally enabled learning has opened up new opportunities and possibilities in open and distance learning (ODL), some of which are relatively unexplored and require further debate. A case in point is the mushrooming of providers of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) worldwide, some of which are associated with top universities in the world. The provision of MOOC is but one significant new frontier in ODL which has greatly widened participation in higher education. As more and more advanced technologies are being introduced in this digital age, more educational innovations are expected to come along to satisfy the needs of the wider audiences. The 29th AAOU Annual Conference can provide the much needed forum for national and international ODL practitioners, experts and providers to exchange views and ideas on recent educational developments in ODL Among the debatable issues that form the sub-themes of the conference are: New Paradigm for Open Universities Technology as Drivers in ODL New research and Practices in ODL Quality Assurance in ODL Open Knowledge Movement 29th AAOU Annual Conference Keynote Speakers Professor Yuk-Shan Wong, President, the Asian Association of Open Universities, President, the Open University of Hong Kong Professor Dr Yang Zhijian, President, Open University of China Professor Asha Kanwar, President and CEO, Commonwealth of Learning Professor Nageshwar Rao, Vice Chancellor, Indira Gandhi National Open University Professor Tian Belawati, Rector of Universitas Terbuka (UT) Indonesia 29th AAOU Annual Conference will be held at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (Dubai, UAE) from November 30 to December 2, 2015. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

How To Sell Your Online Courses: A Proven Model  For the past 10 years I have taught instructors, trainers, and small businesses how to launch online academies and sell courses. In this article, you will be given steps to generate traffic to your academy’s website, build trust with your learners, and ultimately sell courses. Traffic | Trust | Sell Traffic  Maybe you already know which groups of people will benefit from your course. The question is, where are they and how do you begin a conversation? Step 1: Contribute to an online community. When you think about it, community and relationship is kind of like the chicken or the egg: Which came first? What we do know is that community builds upon relationship and the best way to cultivate a relationship is to have consistent interaction. With today’s social media platforms, there are many ways to engage with others. LinkedIn.  Pulse: http://linkedin.com/pulse Pulse provides the space for people to write, share their articles, and get likes and responses. It’s a great way to start or join in on a conversation! Groups: http://linkedin.com/directory/groups Groups allows you to interact with specific types of professionals that share your same interests. Google +.  Communities: http://plus.google.com/communities All you need is a Google+ profile. Go to the communities link above, find a community that is relevant to your content, and start sharing! Reddit.  Subreddits: https://www.reddit.com/subreddits/ Reddit acts like a virtual bulletin board where you can share, connect with others, and facilitate discussions that matter to you. Facebook.  Groups: https://www.facebook.com/help/167970719931213 It’s the number one social network. Need I say more? Quora.  Community: http://www.quora.com Quora is a community of people in need of answers. Choose a question on a topic you know about and submit an answer with a link to your product. Growth Hackers. Post: http://growthhackers.com It’s a forum for growth hacking and marketing. See what’s trending or start a trend yourself! Product Hunt.  Post: http://www.producthunt.com Tech, games, apps and more! This is the place to join in the chitter-chatter on the newest tech products out there. Step 2: Post a video on YouTube and link to your course. YouTube is the second largest search engine and a powerful means for product promotion. Start by uploading a short video that introduces your course or post one of your recent webinars. Remember, the key to driving traffic to your video is to include a keyword that your audience is searching for within the title. With an estimated 300 hours of video added to YouTube every minute and 4 billion video views per day, you must create a specific title and description in order for people to find it. Don’t forget to include a link to your course in the video description and tag relevant topics your audience cares about. Step 3: Find out what learners are searching for and what your competitors are promoting. To learn more about a product or service, a person will likely google it and view the top results. In order for your course to rank high in a search engine, you will need to use the same keywords your target audience uses. Another way to position yourself in the market is to identify the keywords your competitors use and what they are promoting through social media. Buzzsumo.  In buzzsumo.com’s search box, type the domain name of your competitor and find out what they are promoting. Alternatively, type in a keyword related to your course and find out what social channel most prominently promotes that content. Tweetreports.  Tweetreports lets you find out ahead of time when specific Twitter chats will be taking place. These chats are conversations scheduled in real time to give users a chance to contribute their thoughts and resources relevant to a particular topic. Step 4: Bundle your course with a deals website. Everyone loves a good discount. A price cut often leads to larger purchases and helps sellers tap into large audiences that would be otherwise unreachable. Here are a few of the top deals sites you could consider posting your course. To leverage them effectively, bundle a few items together and sell them for a discounted rate. Stacksocial: www.stacksocial.com Groupon: www.grouponworks.com/get-featured LivingSocial: www.livingsocial.com Bitsdujour: www.bitsdujour.com/promotions/software-marketing-services AppSumo: www.appsumo.com/business Fatwallet: www.fatwallet.com MightyDeals: www.mightydeals.com Slickdeals: www.slickdeals.net - Note: This forum has the most traffic, but is also one of the hardest to post to if you don’t contribute regularly. Ozbargain: www.ozbargain.com.au  - Note: This is an Australian deals forum. If your deal gets featured, you could receive as many as a few thousands clicks in one day! Step 5: Create an email signature and add a link to your course. Like most working professionals, you probably experience the daily barrage of emails. With so many messages to sift through, it’s important to make sure the ones you send aren’t instinctively trashed before being read. While there are many marketing tips on this, one step I highly encourage is to create an email signature. A signature adds a touch of professionalism and credibility; a point of reference for who you are and what you do. This is also an excellent opportunity to work in the link to your course! Here is what my email signature looks like: -- Ridvan Aliu CEO EDUonGo, Inc.    |  EM: ridvan@eduongo.com  |   PH: 1-800-955-8363   |   WEB: www.eduongo.com Check out my recent article, "A Proven Model For Selling Online Courses" -- Here are some helpful video tutorials that demonstrate how to create email signatures: Gmail Signature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzVdX5USTFY Outlook Signature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP9BvCRlaRE Yahoo Signature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNJx2DqmWqw Step 6: Send an email to your current community. If you have taught an online course before, make sure to touch base with former students by sending them a mass email announcing your new course. Remember, these are individuals of a community you have previously engaged with. If they have benefited from your other content, they are more likely to sign up again. Former students already know the value of your content and are more likely to pay for your next offering. Here is an email sample you can refer to: https://goo.gl/SfVZaV Trust  Building trust is an essential part of generating traffic. It will keep visitors on your site long enough to read through your content. The goal is for them to subscribe to your newsfeed, register for a free course and eventually pay for the course you are selling. Step 7: Install Google Analytics - THIS IS A MUST. Google analytics enables you to get the data you need to make intelligent marketing and business decisions for your company. Find out the bounce rate on your web pages; for instance, a bounce rate above 30% (which is relatively high) indicates you need to revise the content of the webpage. I facilitate a self paced online course with materials gathered from Google Academy; it helps people understand how the platform collects, transforms, and organizes data in Analytics. You can check in out here: www.goo.gl/BKfDvP. Step 8: Integrate Sumome - Another MUST. Sumome provides intuitive apps to help you build trust with your audience. Below I have listed some apps I use as well as how I use them. List Builder.  List Builder converts one time visitors into faithful readers and subscribers. As they leave your website, a window will pop up asking for their email. Content Analytics. If you blog, you likely have no idea of how little or how much content your visitors read. With Content Analytics, however, you can see exactly where your readers stop reading. Smart Bar.  Smart Bar sits at the top of your webpage to remind visitors to sign up for your mailing list. Step 9: Hold weekly open hours (AKA webinars). Set aside one or two open hours every week to talk to your website visitors. You can use Google Hangout, Skype conference, or any similar tool. A live online event like this will facilitate more personal interaction with your visitors and strengthen the credibility of your brand. To organize and keep track of these events, Sumome offers a dialog box feature, where participants can RSVP to your next open hours. Sell Once you are generating traffic and interacting with visitors, you can focus on setting a price for your course. The question is, how much do you charge? If you already have a price in mind, ask yourself whether you would pay that much for the course. If you would, charge accordingly. Connected with this is the final step that can help you hit a homerun. Step 10: Build a brilliant landing page. The look of your landing page is key in convincing visitors to register and pay for the course. I could write another article just on the topic of the landing page. What I will highlight are a few tools that can help you create an attractive presentation page: Course Video Intro. Spend as much time as it takes to create a quality introductory video to your course. Using something as simple as your smartphone to record yourself as well as screen recording can do the job. Here is a sample: http://goo.gl/Ci9fQS Personally, I like to use Camtasia from Techsmith to do screen recording and editing. Course Description. Write a short and sweet description about your course. You don’t have to make it long if you are including a video intro. Curriculum Outline. Users want to know what they will be paying for. Give them the curriculum outline and mention any media material you will be providing as downloadable inside the course. Testimonials. Display testimonials of what people are saying about the course and you. It’s a way to show that others have indeed benefited. Your Biography. Write about your passion and highlight your achievements. Write a lot. You want people to feel like they know you, which helps you to gain their trust and inclination to pay for the course. That’s it. You have reached the end of the 10 step model to help you sell a course. But before we bid adieu, there is one last thing you need to know. Following these steps will only yield the desired results IF you add this one essential ingredient: Repetition. If something works, do it again and again. Repeatedly doing what works will generate more revenue. Eventually, you can hire others who can do the repeating for you. And before you know it, you are running an online school. Speaking of online schools, I actually created a tool that helps anyone the launch their own online school. You can check it out at www.eduongo.com. Here is a video that explains how to get started with EDUonGo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yH2DCHyGNw I would love to hear your feedback. Please feel free to leave a comment! This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

What Is A Learning Portal?  A learning portal is a gateway to all the courses, resources, and instruments that facilitate teaching and learning. Technically speaking, it’s a website that acts as a repository for teaching and learning materials. It’s a place where you store all your documents, podcasts, videos, presentations, and so on. Learning portals can also include applications that facilitate communication: Discussion forums, messaging services, email, calendars, and so on. In its simplest form, a learning portal can be a shop-front where your learners can discover or be assigned content. In its complex form, a portal can be an ecosystem for managing all teaching and learning. Whether simple or complex, a learning portal must: Let your learners get into the system and keep out those who aren’t registered. Provide easy routes for learners to navigate through the content. You don’t want your learners stepping over pools of alligators or having to pass through cages of lions along the way! With that in mind, here are 7 points to consider when selecting a learning portal. 1. Learning Portals must personalize the learning journey. One size no longer fits all. The key to a successful modern-day learning strategy is to move away from the sheep-dip and toward the shop-front model. A learning portal is the most effective means by which today’s learner can get to content that’s relevant to them and their organization. To make your portal as flexible as possible, you need to keep each piece of content disaggregated and chunked into small discernible parts. Why? Because this makes it easier for you to create a variety of courses or programs. For example, imagine you have a minute of really good video that helps explain a new product. By keeping it small, you can provide it as a stand-alone object in your library of content (even if it’s also included in a longer eLearning module). This provides your learners with additional options for accessing content that’s of interest to them. 2. Learning Portals must make content "discoverable". This is one of the most difficult things to achieve. A learning portal, by its very definition, needs to make it easy to access content quickly. Portals need to provide multiple routes to content, and they need recommendation systems that suggest content that is relevant to learners. A great way to achieve this is to embrace the "like/dislike" feature that is popular on social media sites. By asking learners to recommend (or like) content, the content can be organized in such a way that it suits the learners. 3. Learning Portals must be flexible.  Large or diverse organizations need a learning portal that offers sufficient flexibility to customize the learning journey and to customize the look and feel of the learning environment. Different departments have different needs and wants, so it’s important for large organizations to find a solution that offers flexibility. You may also have experts who want to manage their own learning resources. In this instance, look for a tool that gives you design control so you can structure how the content is presented. Elucidat is a tool that can give you design control while providing authors with the flexibility to change brand identity and content. 4. Learning Portals must enable community interaction. A learning journey shouldn’t be a lonely experience. While it is important to encourage self-directed autonomous learning, you should provide opportunities for learners to interact with other learners and teachers. Discussion forums, blogs, and sharing buttons are great communication tools that can create an environment that encourages learner-learner and learner-teacher interaction around the content. 5. Learning Portals must recognize achievement. Use your learning portal to recognize learner achievements. Give awards to those who complete courses and finish programs of study. Smaller achievements can be recognized by using a system of badges that are awarded after specific course goals have been met. Make sure you choose a tool that lets you build badges into each level of your course. This provides learners with a sense of achievement - or a progress report - that keeps them motivated to complete the course. 6. Learning Portals must blend online and offline learning. A learning portal can do so much more than simply act as a gateway to your online courses. As part of your overall learning strategy, you’ll want to be looking at value-adding as well as efficiency saving. If you are using face-to-face training in combination with online training, you should provide routes in and out of the portal so learners can access information online while they are involved with face-to-face training. For example, consider letting learners access the content online before they attend a scheduled mini master class or lunchtime huddle. By promoting these lunchtime huddles through the portal, you can bring online learners into an offline environment where they can discuss the content with a facilitator or expert. 7. Learning Portals must be accessible on all devices. The modern learner wants to learn on the go. Your portal must be accessible and easy to use across a range of devices so that the learning can begin at the desk and then continue on smart devices. Choose a tool that synchronizes learners’ progress across multiple devices. Conclusion: What Makes A Good Learning Portal?  In summary, here are 5 features every learning portal should have: It encourages your learners to be independent. It enables your learners to curate content that’s relevant to them. It provides multiple learning journeys. It allows learners to communicate and connect with other learners and their teachers. It allows learning to take place in all contexts across all devices. For inspiration, take a look at these 3 great examples of learning portals: Jurys Inn: Learning portal awarded silver in the ‘Best LMS Implementation’ category Sky: Global LMS trains 36,000 learners Plan International: Plan Academy is a learning community Stay on top of the latest eLearning ideas, trends, and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

Examples Of Collaborative eLearning Activities To Achieve Near And Far Transfer Saying that we use a project-based learning approach in Instructional Design is a good start, but what are the actual collaborative eLearning activities that we are going to use? Are the same types of online activities appropriate for all levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning objectives in order to achieve near and far transfer of knowledge? In the next section, I’ll show you examples of collaborative eLearning activities that can be used to promote near or far transfer of knowledge, meeting different levels of learning objectives, as defined in Bloom’s Taxonomy. In all cases, I take for granted that these collaborative eLearning activities are accompanied by the respective social media online discussion section, as part of a project-based approach of Instructional Design for eLearning based on Constructivism. Knowledge. In order to create collaborative eLearning activities the aim of which is to help learners acquire new information, I would recommend one of the following two approaches to be used: Gamification (Inductive approach). First you present the information to your audience and then provide them with a game-like online activity to help them memorize the information. Gamification is very effective at this stage as gamified eLearning activities are relatively easy to develop; most eLearning authoring tools offer templates such as memory card games, wheel of fortune, who wants to be a millionaire templates, etc. All these questions test lower level cognitive learning objectives that require basically memorization of the information presented in the eLearning course. Through leaderboards and badges shared on social media, learners may have a sense that they compete with each other, while at the same time they assimilate the new information through the online learning activity. Group Presentations (Deductive approach). An alternative technique could be based on a deductive approach; instead of giving the initial information, the online project consists of asking learners to find the information themselves and present it as a group project. For instance, in order to teach food vocabulary in a foreign language, you may ask learners to create an online "recipe book" with recipes they find on the Internet and then a shared glossary of the ingredients they have found, with no duplicates allowed, translated to their own language. Comprehension. This level of project-based collaborative eLearning activities require learners to demonstrate that they have understood the information presented at earlier stages and that they are able to identify benefits, drawbacks and key characteristics. Searching for additional information to enrich the topic. An excellent idea is a collaborative eLearning project that asks learners to review similar or complementary articles that discuss or further elaborate the previously presented information, enriching learners’ knowledge on the topic by going a step beyond the basics, identifying key characteristics, benefits or drawbacks. A blog or a wiki would be ideal tools for this stage. Apart from links to related articles, learners could also upload YouTube videos, provided that they would also write a brief summary of the new material uploaded in order to show their personal contribution to the group project. This should be clear to all learners, as the purpose of the activity is to make each learner demonstrate comprehension; thus, only new information should be regarded as contribution to the topic at this stage. Summarizing is an excellent practice that shows learners’ level of understanding of the information presented, for both texts and videos. Application. At this stage, the purpose of the project-based collaborative eLearning activity is to enable learners to demonstrate that they can apply what they have learned in action. Role-playing videos. Role-playing scenarios are very effective at this stage. The group project may consist in assigning learners different scenarios, let’s say for example, in a corporate setting different scenarios may be distributed among learners on how to handle customers’ objections while closing a sale. Then, learners could be asked, in pairs of two, to practice the scenario in front of a camera and upload the video. The rest of the group may compare how each pair handled the objection, and comment on best practices and weak points at the respective online discussion group on social media. At the end, they may create and upload a shared document which summarizes all good practices they have encountered. Case Studies. Case studies are ideal tools as they can be used as real-life examples that further elaborate how the information that has been presented to your learners so far can also be applied to different settings. As "application" is a transitional stage from near to far transfer of knowledge, this is the right stage to provide your audience with case studies in order to reinforce the learning message and promote far tranfer. The purpose of the activity should be just to show that the same principles can also be applied in different contexts. For this reason, the focus of the eLearning activity should not involve any kind of judgment in the case study, but rather, asking learners to open their minds trying to visualize other contexts that the same principles can be applied; an interesting online discussion may arise from such brainstorming, and this will be your audience’s first step towards far transfer and assimilation of knowledge. Analysis. In order to design collaborative eLearning activities which place emphasis on analysis of the information presented, as an Instructional Designer you should take for granted that learners should be in position to demonstrate not only that they have mastered theory, but also that they have understood how to apply it. Therefore, collaborative eLearning activities designed at this stage, are highly demanding as they require learners to make use of higher order congitive skills in order for both near and far transfer of knowledge to be achieved. Comparative Case Studies. Assigning multiple case studies to learners, which illustrate application of the same principle in a variety of contexts, would be an example of collaborative eLearning activities suitable for this stage. The task would be to ask learners to group together common elements or characteristics of different case studies, differentiating factors and how similar or differentiating elements led to different types of decisions taken. Such an analysis would reinforce learning towards far transfer. Commenting on Branching Scenarios. Commenting on branching scenarios would also give learners the opportunity to examine and compare different approaches to a given situation, classifying common elements and discussing the differences with the potential consequences of each decision or action taken. It is important here, as an online group facilitator, to cultivate an open non-judgmental culture, where learners will feel comfortably to open up and express their personal viewpoints, without the fear of being judged. Let them know that there are no right or wrong answers, but rather less or better-documented support arguments. Evaluation. Ideal evaluation collaborative eLearning activities would be based on learners’ recommendations of required action, no matter what the given context is. In order for your audience to be able to recommend best possible action, they need to show knowledge on the subject matter, as well as understanding not only of what you are asking for, but also of the context to be applied. Problem-based learning activities. Learners at this point may be asked to give a solution to a specific problem, the objective of which should not be the problem itself, but rather the approach they will follow during the decision-making process, and how they will use their previously acquired knowledge on the subject-matter to solve this problem. It is also important for the learners to perceive the problem given as realistic, that is possible to happen; this would further motivate them to get involved in the learning process. Collaborative eLearning activities would be quite useful at this stage, as learners would have to argue with their vitual classmates, discuss and rate each different factor presented, make recommendations to the rest of the online group, until they reach an agreement on how to proceed with the problem. Ranking. Another collaborative eLearning activity appropriate for the evaluation stage of learning objectives would be to ask learners to rank possible solutions to a problem. In this type of activity, instead of giving a specific problem to be solved in group, as an Instructional Designer you do exactly the opposite; you provide your audience with a list of possible solutions, asking the group to evaluate each one of them and rank them accordingly, taking into consideration the circumstances, their previous knowledge on the subject-matter or new elements they need to search for. Group agreement should also be reached through online discussions or video conference meetings among the learners.  Synthesis. Asking learners to produce an entirely new concept out of current knowledge meets the highest level of learning objectives to be mastered, and definitely demonstrates that far transfer of knowledge on the subject matter has been achieved. Proposing Alternatives. Collaborative eLearning activities that ask learners to propose an alternative course of action may be an example of appropriate online activities at this stage. This would also require students to generate new ideas and make predictions about their possible consequences. A problem-based online activity could also be effective here, but the emphasis should not be to solve the problem itself, but rather to the benefits of the solution given. The examples of collaborative eLearning activities given above are only indicative, and can certainly be used to meet various levels of learning objectives. These were just a few proposals; the only limit is the creativity of each Instructional Designer. Before closing, there are two last points I would like to mention: First, never mix levels. Go through each level of learning objectives with a different collaborative eLearning activity. For higher level of learning objectives, you may extend the previous activity, but the new objective to be mastered should always be crystal clear to your audience. Last, but certainly not least, always supplement the collaborative eLearning project with online discussion groups. I would recommend social media closed groups, as the vast majority of eLearning course participants are already familiar with and they already have a social media account. Want to learn more about how to design effective collaborative eLearning activities? Read the article Success And Inhibiting Factors Behind The Instructional Design Of Collaborative eLearning Activities to learn about the factors that contribute to the success of collaborative eLearning activities, as well as inhibiting factors that may make Instructional Designers reluctant to include them in their instructional design for eLearning. This post was first published on eLearning Industry.

5 Horror Stories Of eLearning Design And How To Avoid Them  Like many of us involved in creating eLearning, I’ve seen and heard many horror stories which would make any designer scream with fright. In the run up to Halloween, here are five ghostly eLearning design situations I’ve come across, with some tricks on how to avoid them. Narrating all screen text. This is the one of the scariest eLearning design principles of all. To make matters worse, there was no option to switch off the audio. If you go down this road, you’ll kill the learning experience for sure. Reading and listening to the same information creates a cognitive overload; making it difficult to process the learning messages. We all read at different speeds and if a learner reads faster or slower than the narration, then you’ll lose them. More importantly, writing an audio script which will be listened to is completely different to writing onscreen text, which learners will read. Audio script writing should be more informal and conversational. Therefore, recording the onscreen text word for word just does not work. It’s making me shiver just thinking about it. Trick: Decide on the purpose of using audio narration in your eLearning. For example, if you’re telling a story, narrate the script with powerful images; like a movie trailer. Or narrate a short introductory message at the start of a topic and then leave learners to read the rest. At the very least, give the option to switch the audio off. Content which has been dug out from the internet. It was frightening when I heard a colleague was given a bunch of links and was asked to use them to design an eLearning course. Fear not readers, he did not use the information; but had a conversation with the client. Whilst the internet is an invaluable source of information, it shouldn’t be used as a unique content source. Even if the content is for internal use, copyright laws will haunt you for sure. Trick: It’s an obvious trick, but use a Subject Matter Expert (SME) during the eLearning design phase. They’re given the hat of Subject Matter Expert because their knowledge and experience has made them an authority in their field. Typically, the Subject Matter Expert will work with the Instructional Designer to identify the learning goals, give content ideas (some may even write draft content), and review storyboards. No instructions on screen. Shocked by this story? So was I when I came across it. Providing no screen instructions because you think that learners will figure it out is horrifying. It might be obvious to some learners what they need to do, but not to others. Trick: Even in a world where we’re used to finding our way through online content, make clear what you want the learner to do when they arrive at a screen. Whether it’s to choose, select, tap, read, reflect, drag, or simply click, include clear instructions. At the heart of creating eLearning is the Instructional Design process, so as well as designing everything else, make sure you design the instructions themselves. An eLearning version of a workbook. A workbook for use in the classroom is created word for word into an eLearning course just in case learners cannot make the classroom training. This eLearning design approach is ineffective on so many levels: Ineffective for the learners; it’ll no doubt create ineffective design; ineffective on the budget and generally a waste of time. Trick: First, ask yourself some fundamental questions. For example, why should there be an eLearning version of the workbook? What’s the purpose? Why are learners not attending the classroom training? What is the value of providing the same solution in two formats? Spend time deciding if you need both. If you do, give each a unique role in the overall learning. Would a blended approach of core knowledge in the workbook and eLearning scenario work? Is there any context out there? Imagine having to read copious amounts of facts and information, screen after screen, with no context around the content. Learners are given no indication of how the information applies to them or how they’ll use the information. Terrifying, right? Context is what gives any learning meaning and relevance. Trick: Using scenarios, common problems, conversations or situations learners regularly come across all help to create context. As well as text, remember to add context in all the media assets that will used in the eLearning. For example, images of the environment where context might take place; the tone in any voiceover; body language of characters used in images. This will ensure the context represents real life as much as possible. What are your eLearning horror stories and tricks to avoid them? This post was first published on eLearning Industry.