Understanding how the mind processes information and stores it is vital to educators, instructional designers and eLearning professionals. Simply stated, if you don’t know how the mind works, you have no way of knowing how to design material that will ensure success for your students. Information processing theory is a subject that has been studied, discussed and debated so much that a lot of the information available conflicts. However, there are a few basic principles that are generally agreed upon. So, how do people learn? Essentially, it works in four main stages, and five thought control processes. The four stages are motivation, comprehension, practice and application. The thought control processes are attention, encoding, rehearsal, retrieval and metacognition. When you’re creating instructional materials, you need to keep the stages and thought control processes in mind in order to best facilitate learning.

INTRODUCTION: You may be an eLearning professional, but the subject matter expert or the SME actually flags off your course by providing the all-important content for you and your team to sculpt on. The SME may be a software programmer or a marketing analyst in your company, a professor, doctor, or a best-selling author who has penned books of encyclopedic proportions on the course matter. Whoever may be the SME, it is likely he is not your cubicle mate. You will probably get just a few opportunities to glean relevant content from him. So take the smart route to make the most of an SME interview. Here we will review the key steps you can take before and during, the interview to maximize its effectiveness.

Most likely you have seen the movie Terminator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you haven’t, chances are you know what it is about. Whether you love or hate 80’s science fiction, if you develop eLearning courses this movie has something for you. The secret is in how the story is built.   To clearly understand the narrative structure of the story behind the scenes, here is a brief description of the movies’ plot:

La comunicación efectiva es todo un tema a la hora de hablar de eLearning.  En realidad es más difícil de aplicar de lo que se piensa y resulta ser sumamente importante; ya que los cursos eLearning bien diseñados no tienen ningún valor si no pueden comunicar de manera efectiva los contenidos de aprendizaje. Un diseño optimizado, bien pensado y efectivo tiene el poder de motivar a los estudiantes e impulsar el rendimiento de los mismos. Si usted es serio en la creación de cursos de eLearning, es esencial que siga estas cuatro recomendaciones para enviar el mensaje correcto a sus alumnos.

Usability applies to any user interface, from a door handle to an airplane cockpit - or an eLearning course. It means, simply, how easy it is for users to get what they need out of the device. How usable your eLearning course is, is one of the most important factors that make or break your entire program. Usability is so  critical in eLearning because every minute students spend learning to use the software is a minute out of their time spent learning the content. If you are in the middle or just starting an eLearning course, before you go any further, ask yourself if you have covered the 5 E's of usability .Use these as guidelines or standars to make sure your course is as usable as you can make it.  

Recently, we found some powerful words by Carrie Cousins which made us think on how they apply to eLearning: "Design for readability or don’t bother using text at all. If you want your content to be effective, it must be readable."  As a learning professional, your responsibility is not just to deliver eLearning content to your students - it’s to make sure that it’s engaging and readable. What that means, is that you’re going to have to learn about design, especially typography. At its essence, eLearning is mostly about reading, and if what you’re offering is visually confusing or hard to read, your then your material simply fails to deliver. And since readability is an essential aspect of comprehension, it's necessary to consider the ease with which students can read the text.

eLearning courses are designed for the benefit of students and not to bombard them with irrelevant information. Relevant information is necessary, but if you exceed a human’s brain capacity to understand and retain all the information, then all the learning goes to waste. Designers often ask how they can improve the quality of their eLearning content and make them more engaging. What can they do? Stick to one of design's timeless rules: "keep it simple" .  Applying the principle of simplicity in eLearning means relaying information through the simplest means possible. Less information will always be more. When too much clutter vies for the learner's attention, the learner may not see the forest for the trees. They end up thinking the course isn't worth so much effort, and the content gets lost.  Keeping it simple can be an art. So, let’s discuss some tips to improve the eLearning design and help learners get through the course as fast as possible. Make sure to use these as your goals for next year when you design a new course: 

Do you buy clothes online without looking at the photographs? What sounds more exciting—reading about a seaside town or actually walking through the streets of one while smelling the sea in the air? Why is your computer crammed full with photographs and videos of long-gone birthday parties and family picnics? That is because, we love images! Images talk to us, move us, make us remember, and inspire us in ways that words hardly can. We also happen to learn better through images than with text.  The human brain processes visuals 60,000 times quicker than text!

Bad Stock Photos Make for Bad eLearning How often have you gone to a website, looked at the photos, and said "Oh yeah, there are the happy clapping people, and there’s the arrow going into the target, and there’s the thermometer showing sales figures, and… yawn." Probably more times than you could count. Does that really make you want to read the content? Does it do anything to enhance the information that’s there? Of course it doesn’t. And the same things that are beyond boring and beyond overdone on various websites are going to be equally as un-engaging if you use them on your eLearning course. The dilemma with stock photos is that cheesy-to-the-maximum, cliché, exaggerated, awkward and fake photos do not connect with an audience of learners. You have to make images speak to your learners. Images need to say the 1,000 words you actually want them to. The ideal case is that you take your own photos, but we know that not everyone has the budget, time or available resources, so if you must use stock photography, make sure it’s relevant, not hideously overused and think creatively about choosing and editing them in unique ways.

eLearning and Learner Engagement: What is learner engagement? It’s not just about keeping your students busy. It’s keeping your students motivated, giving them the tools that they need to learn, and fostering a sense of pride in achieving personal goals. It’s about encouraging learning for the pure love of it, not just for the sake of getting grades. When learners are working hard to absorb the material the course offers, and they’re committed to learning that comes without reward other than the learning itself, then they’re engaged. Engagement requires an emotional connection between the content and the learner. And the only way we can do that is by knowing what drives people to spend time, effort, and energy learning your content. This post will help you understand this thoroughly and even learn how to apply it to your eLearning.

The year is about to end, and people around seem to have gone into a nostalgic mood. Websites are fondly remembering what took place in the year gone by—trends that ruled the ramp, blockbusters that broke box-office records, and men, women, and events that made an impact. Year-end seems to be the ideal time for reflection and recapitulation. So why don't we? As eLearning professionals, we learned many important lessons in 2014. Let's take stock of these:

Happy New Year! It is that time of the year when we get busy making resolutions. It is a time of hope and new beginnings. We resolve to lose weight, manage our time better, become more productive, and turn over a new leaf. This year, let's resolve to become more empathetic eLearning designers. We can resolve to stop churning out cookie-cutter courses, and instead, create learning material that is truly inspiring. We can resolve to stop talking down to our learners, and instead, reach out and connect with them. We can resolve to stop being aloof, and instead, show more empathy. According to Theresa Wiseman, the four attributes of empathy are putting yourself in another person's shoes, understanding their feelings, accepting them non-judgmentally, and communicating with them to make them feel assured and cared for.

Some of us remain awake till the wee hours leafing through the pages of a riveting story or scrolling down our Kindle screens. The movie buffs among us blow up our earnings on Netflix. Some others prowl the blogosphere to read about their favorite bloggers' lives and experiences. We all love stories. We love tales that resonate with our emotions and aspirations. Your corporate learners are no different. You know this, so spare your audiences the ordeal of going through tables, statistics, graphs, and pie charts when they take your course. Instead, couch your material inside an engaging story that not only tickles their gray cells but also fires their imaginations. How do you transform seemingly drab learning matter—HR policies, fire safety guidelines, Six Sigma principles, customer experience management, and the like—into engaging stories that will keep your learners hooked? First, you have to change your mindset and start thinking like a stroyteller. Then, you have to understand the elements that make up a story. And then, you can start weaving your stories.

Everybody loves a good story, even your (seemingly) staid and somber corporate learners. That's because, a child lurks inside all of us; he loves to peek into other people's lives and go with them on their journeys. Unconsciously, he tries to identify himself with the good guy in the story—the one who overcomes all challenges, bashes the baddies, and emerges as the hero in the end. Stories are captivating. The actions of the protagonist, who we can relate to, inspire us to think or act similarly. This is why, stories have been used throughout the ages to teach morals and values to children. You can also use stories to teach your corporate learners technical and soft skills that will help them further their careers. There are four basic type of stories. You have to know about them before you can choose a format that best fits the drab learning matter and tell a story that your learners will lap up.

Unfortunately, we live in a real world. Howsoever we prepare ourselves to face the challenges that life throws at us, we are sometimes caught off-guard. The most learned men falter. The most experienced person around you fumbles for answers. The wisest man makes mistakes. That is because, the problems of the real world are not custom-made to suit our learning, experience, and coping mechanism. But can we change the problems that befall us? We cannot. So the only way out is to transform ourselves. We need to learn and develop our skills in a way we can tackle life's specific challenges. Think of it in this way. You pack your bags only after you are certain you are heading for the mountains and not the sea. Isn't it natural eLearning courses should be designed around how the learners are expected to perform in certain situations? This is called backward design, where you keep the end in mind before developing the course. It is radically different from the traditional way in which eLearning courses are designed, which is to "dump" knowledge on the learners and hope they will find "some" use for it.

Recently, I attended a Congress of Human Resources. On stage, the speaker appeared charismatic, professional, and he gave quite an entertaining presentation. He held the audience's attention by constantly making jokes and adding interesting personal anecdotes. I sat through the entire speech waiting for the speaker to reach a climax, make a solid point or establish a noteworthy conclusion. In the end, I was left unsatiated, with the feeling that while the attendees had all had a good time, no real learning had actually taken place.  This same situation occurs during trainings for countless companies. In-person trainings involve a fun and enjoyable classroom environment, but often lack applicable content. Similarly, online trainings are all too often attractive eLearning courses with impressive graphics and animations that still fail to teach meaningful information.  We must remember that the ultimate goal of a training course is to learn. But how do we know that we have fulfilled this goal after delivering it? Here, it is important to mention one key element: evaluation.  There are many different approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of an eLearning course, but they all share a common first step: identifying success metrics.  Kirkpatrick's taxonomy is one seasoned model that continues to receive widespread use. Developed by Dr. Don Kirkpatrick in the 1950s, the model originally contained four levels of training evaluation. Now, the levels have been clarified by Don, Jim, and Wendy Kirkpatrick to form what is called "The New World Kirkpatrick Model". Since the concept has continued to evolve alongside training, it remains a relevant and robust evaluation framework. This evaluation model is applicable to both classroom training and eLearning.

Remember the school days? They were not only about making new friends, sharing lunches, having crushes, and dreaming of making it to the basketball team. There were some trying times too. For some, the Algebra class was a nightmare while for others, History lessons brought out the tears. Yet, the demons are not inside the formulae, dates, or maps. How a subject is taught has a lot to do with how well we learn it. Not every one of us had a passion for Literature, but we all loved it when Mrs. Smith made us dress up and play the characters from the stories we had to read. Not of all of us have grown up to become chemists, but many would love to go back to Mr. Henry's laboratory to once more have fun mixing chemicals. The reason we see so many boring and passive eLearning is because it is just flat out easier for the designer. It is challenging to create learning that engages learners, that fires up their brain's synapses and makes content stick. But all you instructional designers out there, you have to take up this challenge; you owe this to your learners who have probably stayed back, rescheduled their meetings, or postponed tasks to take your course.

Cognitive load. What's that? You may not be aware of the jargon, but you are up to your neck in it! Try searching for information on the Internet. Kudos to you, if you can manage to find what you need right away in the midst of spammy websites and pop-up ads. An hour of your favorite animal show on TV instructs you more on detergent brands and car makes than animal trivia. We have to be on top of the cognitive load aimed at us in our daily lives, else we would be lost in the maze of useless information. Spare a thought for your learners when you create courses for them! Learn about the cognitive load that could creep up in your course (unknowingly, of course) and how to manage it.

What does an instructional designer do when he or she is at work? He hobnobs with clients who may be life coaches, entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals, owners of production units, real estate magnates, or banking professionals. He gets to read on and learn about a mindboggling array of subjects—self-development tactics, new software systems, fire safety, managing diseases and medical emergencies, flying an airplane, food packaging, and everything else under the sun.  He shares office with creative graphic designers and illustrators who make scenes and people come alive with their images, wordsmiths who paint pictures with their words, and maverick programmers who bring together the words and the pictures to create exciting courses. He looks for inspiration in movies, video games, books, and toys. There's never a dull moment at work for the instructional designer. And he gets paid to have the fun!

I was at LinkedIn when I came across this post by Paul W., Managing Director at Wright Solutions: "People hate compliance training, they don’t remember it and they don’t take it seriously!" What do you think? I have to agree with Paul! Is this the students' fault? No! It's our fault! Most compliance eLearning courses can be sooo boring, the topics presented are just "common-sense" or too repetitive, and learners only take the course because they "have to" - not because they are expected to learn anything useful. eLearning professionals know this, but why is that we keep immersing learners in hours of regulatory torpor?  Why can we develop courses that engage our audience in the same way their favorite book or TV series traps them? I think the book The Age of Slide Stuffing has the answer: "We’ve forgotten to tell stories; we’ve learnt to stuff slides".   In this age of lightning-fast communication and varied media, we are bombarded with messages from all quarters. How many of these stick with us? How many move us? You have to admit that although many messages pack in oodles of wow factor, courtesy of technology, not many inspire you. That's because they fail to connect with you emotionally. As an instructional designer, you should care. After all, you want your courses to help your audience. The solution? Weave storytelling into your compliance eLearning courses to make them resonate with your audience's hearts. Yes, stories can enrich and make memorable even dull, drab, and complex technical subject matter. Teaching through stories and metaphors is the best way to hook your time-crunched adult audience and keep them engaged till the end. 

How often have you spent hours staring at a blank screen in front of you trying to come up with an innovative eLearning design? Waiting for inspiration to strike is agonizing, and if ideas take too long to show up, you begin to wonder if your creative juices have dried up. Scary, isn't it? Admit it; we don't get to enjoy too much variety in the content for the courses we create. HR policies, health and safety guidelines, sales techniques, team management and leadership roles, and application and systems training—we seem to circle round and round these types of content, often for years. Our learners often belong to the same demographic group, which means they tend to have similar learning styles and preferences. It is not surprising that most of the time we fall back on tried-and-tested design strategies, either because we fear experimenting or we run short of ideas. We end up falling into a design rut. Beware! Do not let your creative juices dry up. Follow the tips below to cultivate and nurture a creative mind that is always brimming with ideas.

It is true that we learn design principles from a bunch of theories. But too often, we eLearning designers make the mistake of relying on these theories to give us design ideas. They can provide ideas but only so much. You need to think beyond the theories and look around you to find inspiration and break free from the creativity rut. Last week we published the first part of the Creativity Series. Here we will continue giving you more design hacks. 

Creating an eLearning course is a creative process. As an instructional designer, you need to be come up with designs and ideas that wow your audience. But in trying to be innovative, we often end up creating courses that wow us but fail to inspire the audience. We feel elated at having used a novel technology but fail to impress the learners. We think we have got across a message effectively but the learners leave our course feeling unfulfilled and without solutions to their problems. There is obviously a gap somewhere! Yes, the gap is in the thinking processes. We, as instructional designers, tend to think differently than the learners. But you want to create a course that not only impresses the learners but also helps them solve their problems. You want to create a course that convinces the learners to change their thoughts and behavioral patterns. You want to create a course that is memorable and enlightening. To create a course that sticks and connects with your audience, you have to step into their shoes, delve into their minds, and deliver what they need.

Fairy tales do a better job of teaching kids the values of honesty and hard work than all the dressing-down you may administer or the sermons you deliver. Kids learn from examples. Adults are no different. They feel inspired by the stories of struggle, hardship, courage, and triumph of our real-life heroes and feel motivated to emulate them. Have you seen a soccer coach teaching in a classroom or someone learning to drive a car by reading how-to manuals? No. Some tasks are learned best with hands-on training. Scenario-based eLearning (SBL) courses combine the magical appeal and relevance of stories with the realism of hands-on training within a virtual environment. Virtual scenarios let learners gather professional expertise and experience within a much shorter duration than what they would have obtained from just working at their real jobs. What is more, scenario-based learning lets them learn through a trial-and-error process that is as effective as getting an on-job training but without having to face the consequences or bear the costs of a wrong decision. Scenario-based learning is well-suited to teach or help the learner hone skills that involve decision-making. Scenarios are often used to teach soft skills like communicating with customers to sell various offerings or resolve complaints. Sometimes learners need to learn, practice, and perfect skills like emergency preparedness and reaction, so they are not caught unaware when a crisis actually arises. SBL is the best instructional strategy to achieve this end. In this post we will take over a simple and proven model to guide your planning of a scenario for your eLearning course.