How often have you groaned at the thought of attending yet another training session that you didn’t need? How often have you wondered "Why am I here" while going through an eLearning course and struggling not to doze off? Trust that your employees are rational adults who know what is good for them. So if you are wondering whether they appreciate the training you make them go through, then make sure that you deliver it when your employees need it, NOT when you want them to take it. Below are six signs that your employees need training, now:

E-learning is gaining momentum. Over 40% of Fortune 500 companies use eLearning as a form of employee training. Nearly 50% of college students are enrolled in online courses. And eLearning is growing at an incredible rate. As of 2014, it was a $56.2 billion dollar industry with expectations of that amount to double by the end of this year. With so many courses out there and so much demand, what makes one eLearning course stand out from the rest? Writing an awesome course can bring in stellar reviews and earn you more students on your next round. But writing incredible eLearning content isn't just about having good writing skills. Creating realistic expectations for your students, setting goals, engaging participants with awesome multimedia content slides, giving them activities to practice their mastery, checking their retention often with knowledge checks and tying the content into real-life scenarios - all contribute to building a solid course. Here are seven things to get you started on your way to becoming an eLearning course developer:

Imagine the following scenario: you just started a project that you are very excited about. You meet the client, and you both agree that your first task will be conceptualizing and planning of the course’s content.  Meeting #1: Even though you had sent some of the project’s advances ahead of time, the client has just read them. He says that that's not the idea he had in mind and explains how he’d like the project to be restructured. Meeting #2: You did your best to prepare something close to your client’s expectations, but he says he has new ideas and proposes a change to the project. You accept these changes and begin working on the project again. Meeting #3: You both meet again, and the client goes over your work. He gives you some ambiguous feedback and notes that it has taken a long time for such a little progress in the project and asks you to return to the original idea.  Three months have passed, how would you feel? Even though it’s not directly your fault, you didn’t meet the project’s goal, and you feel FRUSTRATED.

Although classrooms offline have been delivering competency-based training for decades, the eLearning industry has only just woken up to the merits of this form of learning. However, competency-based training is yet to become a trend in online education simply because most designers and training managers are not sure what it means and how they can implement the concept in practice. So in this post we’ll be decoding the jargon. For starters, here’s an infographic that outlines the whys and the wherefores of competency-based learning. Read on, if you want to learn more.

It’s Halloween time, a time for all things spooky and scary. If you are an eLearning designer, you have horror stories of your own. Yes, our jobs as designers are not easy. Don’t get us wrong; we love the challenges that each new project brings. We love to exercise our gray cells to think up novel solutions, and we pride ourselves on surpassing our clients’ expectations every time. But we still get a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach when we have to face our worst fears and nightmares, which are the following:

They know that they make the best burgers in town, but McDonald’s still spends billions of dollars on marketing. If it is fried chicken, then it has to be KFC, but the makers still market aggressively. The truth is that your audience has choices, so they won’t come to you. You have to take your offerings to them. Marketing is no longer a dirty word in eLearning. In fact, now it is not even an option. As eLearning designers, you HAVE to take your courses to your audience and convince them of their value. Else there are just 0-5 percent chances that they will take them. So the time has come for you to double up as a marketer. Below are some smart marketing tips to make your courses fly off the blocks:

Today's learner has ample avenues to seek out information. As an eLearning designer, you have competition! You have to create online courses that will keep your learners engaged from start to finish; else you will lose them, and worse, they might move away to your competitor (Facebook, email, Skype, etc.) Here are ten ideas to create captivating online courses that your learners just can’t leave:

Anyone seeking to create meaningful and engaging eLearning courses can benefit by remembering what it is like to be on the other side. It is bad practice to subject learners to any training that you would not participate in yourself. It’s time you stop blaming the "boring" content and commit to stop tormenting the learners who are required to take your course! Our job as eLearning designers is to FASCINATE the learner from beginning to end. In the excitement of launching a new course, it’s easy to overlook details. Therefore, it can be very useful to have a checklist for last minute touches.

For anyone who is new to the eLearning industry, getting familiarized with the jargon and industry phrases can be a cumbersome task. It can be overwhelming as well as demand a huge commitment. While there are a huge number of eLearning terms and phrases every newbie needs to stock up in their arsenal to get it right, here are a few which stand out, whether by the commonality of usage or the importance of what they stand for.

Bite-sized learning or Microlearning. It is the latest buzzword in the eLearning world. Designers and developers discuss it when they meet around the water cooler. HR and training managers have found ways to implement it in their learning strategies. The top brass of companies is no longer questioning its efficacy. Day-long PowerPoint training sessions are passé; microlearning is a new (and effective) way to train adult corporate learners. And the sooner your company adopts it, the happier your learners will be. Learner satisfaction, of course, translates into more business for you. But being the prudent person that you are, you will want to see "the numbers" before you decide to board the bus. So here are the numbers:

With benefits like automation, consistent messaging, wider reach, and the ability to provide 24/7 learning, eLearning is an option that more and more companies have started to embrace. But now what do you do with those PowerPoint slides that you created ages ago and had been delivering to your employees since then? If that training program is effective, don’t ditch it. You can convert it into an eLearning program without reinventing the wheel. But look out for these common mistakes that companies do when converting PowerPoint and Instructor-Led Training to eLearning because they don’t realize that eLearning and classroom learning are different:

With the world going digital, you can no longer stick to traditional training programs that have to be delivered in classrooms and whose efficacy is dependent on the skills and personalities of the trainers. Your learners who may be scattered physically want more freedom to choose the training they want to take and the time and place where they want to take it. Going digital is the only way you can meet the demands of the modern learner, who wants fast, personalised, bite-sized information, wherever they are. According to IOMA (2002) companies save between 50% and 70% when they replace instructor-based training with e-learning. Click to tweet.

According to a survey carried out by the Rapid Learning Institute, a whopping 94 percent of the Learning & Development professionals who took part in the study said that their learners preferred bite-sized learning modules to eLearning courses that run to 30 minutes and more. They have their reasons. But are you surprised by this piece of statistic? Millennial learners have only so much time to put across his views in 140 characters. They prefer to know the gist of a story from a one-line update than read pages about it. They demand that information is made accessible to them on the go. So it is not surprising that they also want learning to be delivered to them the way they are used to consume other types of information—in bite-sized chunks at their own "place and pace." You can’t stay away from microlearning if you want to stay on the minds of your learners. But before you create a microlearning module, here is a disclaimer: "A bite-sized learning module is NOT just a short course."  Tweet this.  The following are the principles of bite-sized learning:

Adult Learning or Andragogy highlights that adult learners are fundamentally different in their methods of learning in comparison with children. As an L&D professional, you need to understand these differences and figure out the best methods that can be employed to meet the adult learning needs. With adult learners, you will encounter different types of expectations, demands, and challenges. The key is to accommodate to these needs and work in a manner that is most effective and engaging for them. Understanding human psychology and brain science can help in this regard. While there are multiple methodologies to make this happen, there is a model proposed by Lila Davachi, Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University that is known to be very effective. Known as AGES (Attention-Generation-Emotion-Spacing), this model highlights four key elements that are essential for effective adult learning. Let us go through the four elements in detail now.

That you have built it is no guarantee that they will flock to take your course. Your learners have better things to do than take courses that do not appeal to them. So what do you have to do to appeal to your learners? You have to excite them. You have to intrigue them. You have to provide solutions to their problems. And most importantly, you have to convince them that your solutions will change their life for the better. How?  By knowing what your learners expect from you. By knowing your learners, so you can deliver exactly what they need. By having a deeper understanding of them you can approach them like a friend and guide them like a mentor to make them change their behavior and attitudes. Have conversations with them frequently. Hear about their needs, fears, goals, interests and expectations and figure out next steps from there. Each conversation will make you more effective at eLearning design.  If you know your learners, it will be worth your time as you will be more capable of:

Tests like these are why you buy the SCORM Engine. "What is that?" you might ask. This is a dashboard widget that we maintain on our big screens in the two offices. Anytime you walk through the common space, you get a quick look at this dashboard. Each row here represents a fundamentally important automated test of the SCORM Engine. Green is good news; pink is bad. (Truth be told, I’ve been waiting several days to catch some portion of this screen pink. Things are very stable around here right now, and I thought an "all green" dashboard was a bit contrived. Further truth be told, catching this screen shot half pink might be retaliation for David eating my ice cream yesterday.) Over the summer, Andrew, our intern, spent his time automating the SCORM test suites. SCORM test suites are anything but fun the first time, and going through them over and over is torture. We’ve done this plenty of times (as has Andrew) and it’s time-consuming enough that no one does it as often as they should. Our response? Automation. The tests listed in the screen shot are run on different periods, but each confirms the current health of various versions of the SCORM Engine. 2008.1.x references are to the currently released product. "Trunk" references are to our forward-looking development. And you can also catch a glimpse here of the fact that we’re already testing against SCORM 2004 4th Edition, which is still in beta. Those who are perceptive will likely notice that last night, all of the Java tests failed. This is because we’re doing a bit of internal restructuring and we broke them. And you know what? That’s OK, because we immediately know that they’re broken, and David and crew will spend time today fixing them. Would you or your organization ever take the time to create an automated testing platform like this? Maybe. Would you do so for the vagaries of the SCORM test suites? Would that be an effective use of your time? I doubt it. Most development shops would make a reasonable effort to test this stuff… once, when they create it, and hopefully again before they send it off for certification. Would they take the time, then, to test it monthly? Or before each release? As you see here, the SCORM Engine is being tested, in all of its flavors, every single day. This is not just a confirmation that it builds, either, this is a full fledged run through the entirety of the SCORM test suite. Even at its best, SCORM is touchy. Things break, content can be bad, there are plenty of ways for things to go wrong. You need to know the quality of your delivery platform, whether you buy it from us or build it yourself. Tests like these are why you buy the SCORM Engine. Update, 1/23/09: If you want to get developers in a tizzy, post a picture that shows their stuff is broken. 12 hours later, you get a completely green dashboard.

A few weeks ago, we released the new version of our website (which has been well received) and upgraded our servers. TestTrack, our freely available testing application, has been growing constantly and was overloading the server on which it lived. The transition went very well, the 404s have been handled (for the most part), and things are functioning as we all wanted. During the process, TestTrack was down for a period of time, and our phones started ringing. People really depend on TestTrack. We’re glad. We want folks to use it; it helps us get better and it helps further the standard as a whole. So, for all you who depend on TestTrack, let this be your warning. We’re doing something new with TestTrack again. We’re about to move TestTrack from a traditional SCORM Engine installation to our newest release… something we’re really excited about. We have developed a hosted/cloud based version of the SCORM Engine, the SCORM Cloud. "What?" Some of you are reading this thinking, "What in the world is "cloud computing"? Put "simply", cloud computing lets us provide the SCORM Engine functionality as a service. Rather than having to install the SCORM Engine for each of our customers on their servers, anyone who wishes to integrate against the SCORM Engine may do so against an existing installation in Amazon’s Web-service Architecture. Is this a big deal? No. If you’re a TestTrack user, and all you care about is TestTrack’s ability to import and launch your content, this really isn’t a big deal. It does allow us to scale TestTrack more effectively (because we can increase storage dynamically and add EC2 instances as need), but it shouldn’t dramatically impact your experience. And yes! I am personally very excited about things that could come out of the Hosted SCORM Engine. I’m excited about what we can do with it, and I’m excited about what others can do with it. Anyone who aspires to "mash-ups for eLearning" and cares about SCORM may now have the tool that really lets them make a difference. The first thing we’re doing with the SCORM Cloud, as mentioned above, is releasing TestTrack against it. That means that the core part of the TestTrack application will continue to function as it does today (a .NET application hosted on our own servers), but that the content delivery and tracking and import will all be handled by the SCORM Cloud. Consider this your proof of concept (and our beta). From there, some of the things we have in mind include (ideas only, no promises): Automatic SCORM Version upgrades Alternative pricing structures for the SCORM Engine (with lower up-front costs) Hosting for content vendors who want to track the use of their content Anything that reduces the "silo-ed" nature of the learning industry today And more than anything, we’re hoping you, the community, will create awesome products around the SCORM Cloud. What could you do? Deliver content from any application? A Facebook application? A Google Calendar based LMS? Limit the server/bandwidth requirements on your LMS by offloading them? Anything. Come up with better ideas than we have! Shoot us a message. We’d love to talk through the possibilities with you. We’re pretty excited about the unlimited possibilities this creates, and we’re nearly ready to share the APIs and documentation that will allow you to build around the SCORM Cloud.

Yes, as we’ve mentioned recently, several things are different about TestTrack. We transitioned upgraded our server, we applied a skin that makes it look like our new website, and most recently, we switched TestTrack over to our "beta" of the SCORM Cloud. Truth be told, I’m remarkably happy with how well TestTrack has held up through all of these iterations. It’s undoubtedly a testament to the developers who are working on it. The SCORM Cloud, while built around existing SCORM Engine code, is really a very different architecture from what we had been running. What’s different, you may ask? Use of Amazon’s SimpleDB for storing aggregate registration and package information Use of Amazon’s S3 storage for per registration detail Use of memcached to address certain eventual consistency issues with S3 Use of Amazon’s Elastic Block Store for persisting content and managing the FTP access to TestTrack (read about that here) Is that enough for now? Well, one less obvious change is the use of a linux box for the content storage and delivery. The fundamental difference I’m referring to is that TestTrack is now, all of a sudden, case sensitive. That’s right, the old version of TestTrack ran on a Windows box that was completely forgiving of all case sensitivity issues. The new version of TestTrack still runs partly on a Windows box, but the content itself lives in "the cloud", and the cloud cares about your capital letters. So, as you develop content and test it on TestTrack, you’ll need to be a bit more wary of this detail. In writing this, I was pondering whether an apology might be in order. Have we wronged you by making this change? My conclusion is… a defiant, "NO!" Actually, I think that you owe me a debt of gratitude. (OK, I’m kidding here… I thought a little drama was called for.) I do, however, think this is better for content vendors in total. Case sensitive LMSs are more restrictive, more burdensome for the content developer. As a developer seeking to create content that will just work when I deploy it to other LMSs, I think the case sensitivity constraint on TestTrack will likely improve my chances of success. So, with only a bit of remorse, I say, "Go enjoy the constraints we’ve imposed and create some more compatible content."

I never liked Provence (the bread store in Nashville, not the region in France… I’m sure it’s lovely). I found them to be a bit pretentious, really… the store I visited never really awed me with their breads and I never got a great vibe there. I just wasn’t impressed. In a single weekend, Provence changed my mind completely. One weekend to completely change the mind of an obstinate, ever aging, opinionated man? Impressive, yes, but how did they do it? They Showed Up At "My" Place My family adores the Franklin Farmers Market. My wife is a huge foodie, and we’re there every week celebrating the local food and farmers. When we walked around the corner and saw Provence in our world, it made a statement about our shared values in a voice far louder than the marketing text on their website. They Brought the "A Team" My wife is a legitimate baker. When she goes to talk bread with someone, she’s thinking about Peter Rinehart, percentage yields over 100%, rise times, etc. She’s not talking "Amish Friendship Bread", not that there’s anything wrong with that. As we walked up, we were immediately introduced to Provence’s head baker… the baker himself. Jenn immediately got to talk details, to ask for advice, to learn about some different authors with new perspectives on baking. This was not a company baking up frozen loaves of bread delivered by a foodservice company. This was a bakery, with a guy who knew his stuff deeply and wasn’t afraid to share what he knew. They Remembered Us When we got home, Jenn immediately checked them out on Twitter. No later than the next day, Provence had already connected with Jenn and shared further useful information. Again, the lack of pretense, the personal connection, these things make a huge difference. @lovingtree great to meet such a dedicated customer and serious baker. Please check out www.BBGA.org to network with artisan baker community The Last Step in the Conversion: Sesame Semolina No doubt, the bread is pretty tasty, but wasn’t it before? Why didn’t I know that? How does this translate? Are we making ourselves available in the right places? Are we demonstrating our commitment to the things that are important to our customers? Are we providing access to the right people for every question? Can you get to our experts? Are we connecting to the people who come to us? Are we understanding their particular situations and expertise? Do we make good bread? Is three out of four good enough?

Whoops! Realize I never said hi or introduced myself. Just kind of jumped into the blog. So hi. Glad to meet you. We’ve been heading back to school for a couple of weeks now in these parts. (I realize most of you Yankees won’t be in school until next week. Slackers.) Lots of meet the teacher, find your locker, figure out where your new homeroom is, buy books and supplies. I’m a long time out of school myself, but the past month or so has been a similar experience for me. New homeroom (literally, since I’m working out of my house), new teachers and classmates to figure out, new subjects to tackle. Suddenly, my reading material includes words like pedagogy, sequencing, manifest, interactions, learning objectives, and my head is swimming. My new teachers not only include Mike and Tim but Aaron Silvers, Mary Cooch, Tony Karrer, Cammy Bean and about 100 others. I’m absorbing what SCORM is and does while also exploring what makes e-learning tick and tock. It’s an interesting crossroads - applying something I know and love (marketing and social media) to a field I’ve never played in before (Wait! What is it we do again?). Kind of like attending a new school, but taking the same classes you had the year before. So … all my pencils are sharpened and I’m ready to learn, take notes and mostly listen to what you have to say. What would you like to teach me?

Legal documents are among my least favorite things about running a business. Yes, they’re necessary, and I understand that. There are times, however, where wrangling over a few words in a contract worth $800 simply isn’t worth it. (For my rationale, note that lawyers charge quite a bit per hour… Also note that my understanding of indemnity and warranties is somewhat limited.) There are other times, though, where the words are important and also broadly applicable. The SCORM Cloud Click Through Agreement definitely falls in that group, as it will be a core platform for us and others going forward. It’s not a one time thing. So when someone comes to us with a question about it, we’re open to addressing it broadly, on behalf of all customers. A prospect pointed out this section of the agreement to me recently. He mentioned that this would be a potential show stopper for them, due to the risks it afforded. Rustici, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service for any reason at any time. Point 3 under Termination, in the document dated July 23, 2009 My reaction? Well, yeah, he’s right. That would be a substantial risk to someone looking to build applications around our service. I get that. So I went looking at some of our favorite, thoughtful companies. 37signals, in its sole discretion, has the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of the Service, or any other 37signals service, for any reason at any time. Such termination of the Service will result in the deactivation or deletion of your Account or your access to your Account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all Content in your Account. 37signals reserves the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason at any time. 37signals, Basecamp Terms and Conditions Hmm, well, that’s pretty aggressive, and a bit like ours. The crux of the issue for us, as the provider, is that we can’t commit to provide this service forever, can we? We have to have the ability to stop providing this down the road if we’re incapable of doing it in a way that makes money (or worse, if we cease to exist for some reason). We may suspend your right and license to use any or all Paid Services (and any associated Amazon Properties) other than Amazon FPS and Amazon DevPay, or terminate this Agreement in its entirety (and, accordingly, cease providing all Services to you), for any reason or for no reason, at our discretion at any time by providing you sixty (60) days’ advance notice in accordance with the notice provisions set forth in Section 15 below. Amazon’s, AWS Customer Agreement Alright, this makes more sense. Provide some notice, but don’t obligate yourself forever. So, our new language will require of us that provide notice, unless, of course, you fail to pay or breach the agreement in some other fashion. Without further adieu, here’s our new language: Except for your breach of the agreement, including without limitation failure to pay, in which case Rustici may immediately terminate the Agreement or suspend your account, Rustici, in its sole discretion, has the right to terminate your account and use of the Service for any reason upon sixty (60) days notice. Rustici Software, SCORM Cloud Terms of Use So, our thanks go out to a prospect who was willing to call us on something that was unfair. Provided you are willing to use "reasonableness" as a guide like we are, feel free to let us know when we miss something important. We’ll do our best to accommodate.

We are considering the possibility of an update to Test Track and want to get your feedback on what it should include. Please take a few minutes to take our Test Track Improvements Survey. When we released SCORM Test Track a few years ago, we had no idea it would be this popular. We currently have over 10,000 users with dozens more signing up every day. Test Track has come to be a critical application for many in the community and we take that responsibility seriously. Please help us to make it even more valuable.

I had an "ah ha" moment this weekend. To put it in geek-speak, I had my first experience with mobile learning for performance support…and it was amazing. After seeing a quote to replace the windows in my house which roughly approximated the US median annual household income, I decided it might be a better idea to try my hand at some weatherstripping. So one night, I did some research online, figured out that I could handle it, and assembled a shopping list for my weekly contribution to Home Depot’s bottom line. Come Saturday, I had my tools and my materials, but standing in front of my first window, I realized I’d forgotten most of the little tips and tricks I’d learned earlier in the week. But that wasn’t a problem, I just whipped out my new Android phone, spent 5 minutes watching a refresher video on YouTube and I was off and running. Once it became mind-numbingly boring to adhere strips to window, my mind wandered and it occurred to me how brilliantly effective little bytes of mobile learning can be. I didn’t have to go downstairs and sit at the computer, I didn’t have to sit through everything I’d already learned…I just needed a quick refresher and it was sitting right there with me in my pocket. Of course, I’ve heard all the buzz about mobile learning and yes, I get it at an intellectual level. But now that I’ve experienced it, it takes on a new meaning. This is really powerful stuff. A lot of people have asked us if we’re doing anything with mobile and we’re not really doing anything yet. We know that the SCORM Engine works on the iPhone and Androids devices, but that’s about as far as we’ve taken it. The question I keep asking is, "what are the big technical problems to be solved in mobile learning?". I don’t have a good answer yet, so I’ll pose it here. What are your thoughts? What needs to be done to enable mobile learning on a broader scale? Are the problems technical, or are they more organizational? What should we do in the space? Or, really, does anybody have an idea for a killer app that would let me afford those new windows??!!

SCORM Cloud is a relatively new product, and new products need prices and pricing schemes. So we picked one. We promised ourselves, though, that we would listen to our customers and prospective customers (the market) and that we would be willing to change that pricing structure if we needed to. Well, I’m happy to announce today that we are raising prices across the board! You all seem to think the product is too cheap… wait, stop, hold on. I’m kidding. Nobody ever wants something to be more expensive. Soooo, we’re lowering the price of every registration beyond the first 300 each month. Once you reach the "Big" plan ($300/month for up to 300 registration), there’s no bigger plan. We simply charge you $0.50 per registration for the next 700 registrations, and $0.25 per registration after that. So, an example might help here. If your organization launched 1500 courses for the first time in March, you would be charged $300 (your basic fee) + $0.50 * 700 + $0.25 * 500 = $775 for the month. Enjoy the reduced pricing. And if you have concerns or questions, or simply wish were doing something differently, tell us. We’re obviously open to your ideas. Note: The new pricing scheme will be deployed next week sometime, and will affect your next bill, not this one. Further Note: The new pricing scheme is now in effect.  (March 25, 2010)