You wanted it so we made it happen - eCommerce has landed on the Academy LMS! Don’t say we never do anything nice for you… We’re passionate about ridding the world of mind-numbingly boring eLearning and transforming zombie learners into learning legends. So what better way to help organisations all over the world make this a reality than by giving them all the eCommerce functionality they’ve been dreaming of? We believe that when organisations create fantastic training content they should be able to share it with the world - and our eCommerce functionality on the Academy LMS allows them to do just that. When learners login to their Academy, they’re greeted with numerous content options, from free eLearning courses and individual units, to paid-for downloadable content and immersive eLearning certificate courses they can purchase. Now the choice is theirs. How have we done this? Well, we decided to team up with Stripe, a really simple, secure payment progressing system. It’s used by some of the world’s biggest websites, like Twitter, Pinterest, the Guardian and Salesforce, so you can rest assured it’s the real deal! Not only will it remember learners’ card details, making it quick and easy for them to charge through their training, but everything is done within the Academy LMS. Unlike with PayPal, learners don’t need to exit their LMS to complete their purchase - they can do everything from the comfort of their state-of-the-art Academy. All payments are completed within the Academy LMS, making the whole process simple and secure There are lots of options available to organisations. Once eCommerce is activated on their Academy, Admins simply need to select using check-boxes which content should be free and which should be paid for (and then set the currency and fee). These will then be displayed in their Library area so learners can choose their training pathway to success. Alternatively, organisations can create stand-alone catalogue pages that are accessible to everyone, even if they’re not logged into the Academy. Once they’ve selected their preferred course and payment has gone through, they’ll be prompted to sign up. Simple, eh? The ‘Catalogue’ feature allows anyone to purchase courses. They are then automatically prompted to sign up. In addition to selling any kind of content on the Academy LMS (including eLearning, videos, downloadable documents, classroom/website events, etc), Academy Admins are also able to offer learners eLearning ‘bundles’. This means that whole training courses comprising numerous learning materials can be packaged up and sold as one unit, ensuring that learners gain access to everything they need to succeed, gain certificates and qualifications, and generally become much more awesome. The Academy LMS’s refund procedure is simple - not that learners will want to get a refund on your stupendous content! - and with over 100 different currencies (including Bitcoin) supported, our new eCommerce functionality really does make the Academy LMS that bit more special. With innovations like this, it’s no wonder the Academy was ranked the #1 Learning Management System in the world by eLearning expert and CEO of E-Learning 24/7, Craig Weiss, in his yearly review of over 600 Learning Management Systems. Juliette Denny, Managing Director of Growth Engineering, said: "Offering eCommerce on the Academy is great for learners, since they can get the training they want when they want it, but it also makes it easier for organisations to recoup costs. We’re really excited about it and our clients are champing at the bit to activate it on their Academies!" Want to find out more? We’d love to show you around the Academy LMS! Click the button below to request a demo and see for yourself why our Academy is #1…      The post eCommerce has arrived on the Academy LMS! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Fancy joining the most exciting learning technologies company in the known universe? Well, you’re in luck! We’re current looking for two exceptional people to join the marketing department. Graduate Content Writer We’ve realised that if we’re going to succeed in our mission to wage war on dull online learning, we need more bodies on the front line: that’s why we’re looking to expand our marketing team. If you fancy joining forces with Growth Engineering’s Marketing Magicians, here’s what you’ll need to bring to the table: A sense of humour to rival the best comedians out there A passion for writing all kinds of content, from 600-word blog posts and snappy mail-outs to epic 14-page research papers Marketing nous: if you know your SEO from your PPC and understand how to make the most of any content we create, you’re in with a shot of catching our eye A degree (2.1 or higher, preferably in English) or boundless passion for writing - either way, you’ll need to prove to us you have what it takes Interested? Click here to take a look at a more detailed job advert and apply on Reed. Graphic Designer/Design Don As one of the world’s leading learning technologies companies, our brand is very important to us. It tells people at a glance who we are, what we stand for, and makes us instantly recognisable - we pride ourselves on standing out and doing our own thing. As you can probably tell, there’s no one quite like us! We’re on the hunt for a graphic designer to join the team to make sure everything we produce is fun, energetic, beautifully designed and completely on-brand. Here’s what the successful applicant will have up their sleeve: An awesome portfolio. If you can’t show us your previous work, you have no chance of gaining the coveted spot in the design team. Sorry! Adobe Creative Suite skills: you’ll need to be an ace in Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign An understanding of how to create content for both print and digital Bonus skills: photography, motion graphics (using After Effects or other applications) and fab drawing skills Find out more about the Design Don position and apply on Reed! If you’re not quite sure whether Growth Engineering is the place for you, click the button below to take a look at the kind of thing we produce… It’ll show you just what we’re about!  The post Growth Engineering’s Marketing Department Needs You! We’re Hiring: appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Looking at the eLearning industry from the outside, people may wonder why things are done in certain ways; how companies came up with that idea or this way of working; and why a lot of learning technologies companies seem to be sticking with what clearly isn’t working! Let’s take a sneaky peak into the eLearning industry and see what the truth really is… Some companies are stuck in their ways Many eLearning organisations are seemingly allergic to change so avoid it at all costs. They stick with what works for them and try to resist changing. But there’s a problem with this - without innovation, eLearning courses and Learning Management Systems will become stagnant and inefficient. And just because something worked years ago, there’s no reason to expect it to do the same now - particularly when other companies are offering such state-of-the-art functionality! That’s why we pride ourselves on continually moving forward and developing new features. Our Learning Management System has changed a lot over the years, but that’s not a bad thing. Evolving in this way means we are able to give learners what they want, when they want it (or even before they know they want it!) and create learning environments that not only appeal to learners and the way they learn, but which also mimic the kinds of technology they use daily. Engagement isn’t always the end goal For us, learner engagement is paramount. Everything we do and everything we create is centred around achieving learner engagement, because without it there is no hope of seeing any of the behavioural changes that training is supposed to generate. Unfortunately, not all LMS vendors see engagement as quite so pivotal. Instead, they focus on end results: how can they ensure learners pass tests and assessments? But this isn’t the best indication of whether the training has truly been successful. Just because a learner can do well on a test they take immediately after completing an eLearning unit does not mean they’ve learnt the content or truly improved their knowledge for good! Loneliness is painful It used to be thought that in order to learn things you need silence. Talking, sharing ideas and working in groups was seen as a bit detrimental to learning - if you’re not 100% focused on training you won’t remember anything, right? Er, wrong. We recognise the importance of social learning, particularly online, which can be a pretty lonely place a lot of the time. We’ve found that learners actually retain more when they’re given the opportunity to work together, share their thoughts and chat about the topics. This is because we only gain 10% of our knowledge from ‘formal’ training, like eLearning units - the rest is attained when we reinforce the training through ‘informal’ means, like observing and collaborating with others, and learning while ‘on the job’. Read more about this here! eLearning doesn’t have to be boring Yes, eLearning needs to stick to quite strict parameters in order to deliver what it needs to - ultimately, increases in knowledge and behavioural change. But just because eLearning units need to achieve learning objectives doesn’t mean they have to be boring! There are plenty of ways that content creators can stick to learning objectives but still make the whole process fun for learners - for example, they can turn the eLearning module into a game! It hurts to fall off the bandwagon While some eLearning companies are stuck in their ways, others will be tempted to jump on the latest bandwagon and bring certain functionality into the lives of their learners. While it’s great that they are forward thinking and dedicated to utilising the latest concepts and technology, it’s important that these new techniques are fully thought out before being implemented. There’s nothing worse than rolling out new functionality on an LMS only to realise shortly afterwards that it doesn’t do what was ‘promised’, isn’t engaging learners, or jars with the whole eLearning experience. That’s why it’s vital to fully think out new functionality - not just how it will be created and implemented, but how learners might use it and how it’ll benefit their lives - before going forward. Always think, "What’s in it for my learners?" If the cool new functionality won’t: Engage them Motivate them Make their lives easier Boost their confidence Get them learning or improve the learning experience …then it’s simply not worth it! Find out more about the kind of functionality that does work on a Learning Management System by taking a tour of the Academy LMS - ranked the #1 LMS in the world by eLearning expert and CEO of E-Learning 24/7, Craig Weiss:  The post 5 Truths About eLearning You Should Know appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We know how important it is that learners are encouraged to interact on their Learning Management Systems. Social learning is one of the main ways in which we learn, after all - without social interactions, we skip an important aspect of knowledge acquisition and may end up not cementing the learning content sufficiently… and all our hard work will be for nothing! Social learning on the Academy LMS can take a variety of formats, from instant chat to forum-style interactions. The main differences are whether interaction is encouraged synchronously, i.e. in real time, or asynchronously, not in real time. Research has shown that, generally speaking, synchronous tools are better at engaging learners and generating a culture of interactivity than asynchronous tools. Synchronous tools ‘Instant’ tools such as chat and video conferencing fall under this umbrella. Due to their very nature, synchronous tools are inherently interactive - learners have to constantly react and respond to what is being said, keep focused on the conversation, and adapt to the topic as it flows and develops. Synchronous learning is often seen as more participatory and ‘active’ than lecture-based learning, and can contribute to a higher level of understanding. However, there are problems with synchronous learning: In chat, not all learners will be experienced enough to keep up with the conversation. While they are typing the topic may move on, resulting in overlapping conversations which are hard to read, and disappointment that their points aren’t being recognised. Conversely, experienced users might find the conversation too slow! The biggest problem with video conferencing is turn-taking. Learners might not be sure when they should speak up, which can lead to three or four learners taking centre stage and doing the majority of the talking. More reserved learners might not have the chance to join in, so they won’t be able to get their point across or ask questions if they feel unsure. Asynchronous tools Unlike synchronous learning, asynchronous tools - like blogs and discussion forums - aren’t used in ‘real time’. Instead, learners can use them and then return at a later date to either add another update or see what other contributions have been made in that time. Research has shown that asynchronous tools often receive luke-warm feedback from learners. Although learners like that these tools force them to slow down and reflect on their training, they are seen largely as a chore - something that must be done just to tick a box. As such, asynchronous tools don’t always get learners motivated or engaged… Blogs are useful for encouraging introspection, but if learners don’t receive sufficient (or any!) feedback from peers or instructors they will soon become discouraged and demotivated. Discussion forums are often deathly silent places where hopes go to die - except close to deadlines, where they suddenly become a buzzing hive of activity. However, if all learners end up writing on the same topic, interest will quickly wane… How to make asynchronous tools interactive As can be seen, it’s hard to get learners interacting when they’re not being asked to do so in ‘real time’. They often see asynchronous tasks as chores that need to be completed alone - definitely not the level of interactivity and social engagement that L&D professionals aim for! One of the reasons that social tools don’t always reach the level of interactivity required is that learners either don’t see the point in using them or know they can ‘get away with’ not using them. Making the use of these tools compulsory is one definitive way to make sure learners do use them. But, as we all know, making something compulsory doesn’t necessarily make it engaging or motivating! Adding gamification to social tools, on the other hand, can add this element of engagement. Rewarding learners with gamification Allocating points and badges to certain actions within the Learning Management System is a way to avoid having to make the use of social tools ‘compulsory’ in the traditional sense. Rather than stipulating that learners must use chat or insist they share links on a forum, learners are instead rewarded the more they use the tools and interact with others. This helps to boost motivation because learners want to gain the most points and showcase the most badges in their badge cabinet - and they want to climb up the leaderboard to become the Top Contributor. When gamification is added to social tools, motivation, engagement and interactivity increase - which will lead to better understanding and greater success. Find out more about gamification and social learning by downloading our free white paper below!  The post Synchronous vs asynchronous social tools appeared first on Growth Engineering.

As you know well, we’re an online learning technology company. But that doesn’t mean we want to send face-to-face training to its grave. In fact, online learning is most effective when it gets blended with traditional, classroom-based learning! For instance, rather than just using one online module to cover a topic, you might break that topic’s training programme into several stages. So, for example, here’s what a five-stage blended learning programme might look like: Online learning - Learners complete an online unit which eases them gently into the topic. Applying learning on-the-job - Leaners apply their new-found knowledge back in the real world (Just because we love online learning doesn’t mean we forget that this place exists!). Their experiences can be recorded as case studies to see how they’re getting on. Face-to-face workshop - Learners prepare work for highly-interactive workshops. Rather than traditional classroom dictating, they can be super-engaging and make sure that everyone gets involved! Written assignment - Learners go away and spend some time putting together a report to demonstrate their understanding of the topic. Writing something like this for the first time since school might seem scary, but with all the training to this point writing it ends up being a breeze. Consolidative learning - Now your learners are experts in this topic! But let’s not stop there. Online learning and a test can be delivered via an LMS at a later date to keep the topic fresh in their minds and make sure that the knowledge has been embedded properly. According to Training magazine, 29.1% of training hours were delivered with blended learning techniques in 2014, and that number is rising each year. Clearly the world of learning and development is catching on to what makes blended so splendid, so make sure you don’t get left behind. The benefits So, it’s clear that blended learning can offer a robust training programme which covers every angle, but have you considered some of these benefits? Teamwork - Alongside having a social learning management system to foster collaborative learning, getting the chance to bounce ideas off of each other in a workshop is a fantastic way to help each other’s understanding. Direct access to experts - You can ask questions to experts at any point during online learning, but being able to bombard them with everything at once during a workshop is the perfect way to check that you’re on track. Embed training - By learning in a number of environments (online, in the workplace, in the classroom) and through a number of methods (eLearning, workshops, written assignments), a learner gets to wear every hat while thinking about the topic, giving them a much more rounded understanding of it. But what about the cold, hard stats? What real-world results can blended learning bring? Well, just ask our client Steinhoff! They wanted their learners from Bensons for Beds to get completely comfortable with their Comfort Station. It’s smarter than your average bed, and works out exactly which bed and mattress is the perfect match for you. They blended eLearning with workshops and in-store observations, and followed up with more eLearning to make sure their learners stayed on the straight and narrow. The results were unprecedented. Normally their teams convert sales at a rate of 15-20%, but following this blended programme they’ve been converting at a whopping 45%! This means that one in every two people to try the Comfort Station now goes on to buy a bed! Surely you’d like to see results this good, so what are you waiting for? How we manage blended learning Organising a blended learning solution can be a nightmare if your online and offline elements can’t speak with each other. That’s why we’ve made it easy for our Academy LMS to act as a hub when running any blended programme. Classroom booking - You’ve managed to attract your learners to your shiny new Academy, but you need to rally them into a classroom. No problem! Classroom events can be managed through the Academy, where learners are able to book onto the courses that appear on their calendar. Upload work - Your learners have worked tirelessly to craft their assignments, so why make handing them in difficult? They can upload them directly to their Academy, and your assessors will get a notification telling them they’ve got something to mark. Curricula - Struggling to keep track of who’s completed what? Creating a curriculum for each unit will wrap up every stage of the blended learning progress and keep track of what’s been done. So learners won’t be able to pass the unit until they’ve completed all the training and uploaded all of their work. If you’re itching to find out more about blending traditional classroom training with technology, check out our white paper:  The post Why blended learning is splendid learning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

eLearning production doesn’t happen by magic - not usually anyway. It’s easy to forget, when you see a shiny new eLearning unit, that buckets of blood, sweat and tears have been poured into it. A whole team of instructional designers, subject matter experts and graphic artists have toiled endlessly to produce the content that you take for granted.   One of the biggest challenges faced by instructional designers is that of managing the eLearning project and making sure it gets delivered on time and to the expected degree of awesomeness. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, these projects can fall short. In fact, in a survey of over 1400 professionals,  86% of respondents cited lack of adequate collaboration for workplace failures.   Collaboration, dear reader, is in fact the secret sauce to making sure your eLearning project runs like a well-oiled machine, like a dream come true, indeed, like magic! So what can you do to improve collaboration in eLearning production? Well… 1. Open a dialogue Many delays and hold-ups are caused by inconvenient breakdowns in communication. Clear lines of communication are essential in any project, and eLearning production is no different. Before you even start, make sure that you have a solid infrastructure in place to keep all parties informed of progress, whether that’s an online social forum, or a network of strings and tin cans! 2. Know your role As a project manager, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming too much responsibility. You need to accept that nobody expects you to know everything! Your team members are your best asset and you need to use their knowledge and skills to the advantage of the project. Make sure that everybody involved in the eLearning development knows what is expected of them, and give them the tools they need to deliver it on time. You wouldn’t try to put up a shelf using a banana, would you? The eLearning world is no different. Know your strengths and apply the right tools where necessary. 3. Keep it in context Everyone learns in different ways and some people simply won’t grasp a concept until they can see it with their own eyes (it’s estimated that around 65% of the population are visual learners). Try not to rely too heavily on spreadsheets and content outlines - chances are, they make perfect sense to you… and only you! If you start the project with a graphical mock-up of the finished eLearning unit or a basic slideshow that’s easy to understand at a glance, you can alleviate a lot of confusion at an early stage, and avoid costly mistakes. Better still, if you let your team see the eLearning unit as it’s being created, they’ll have a much clearer understanding of where the project stands, and what’s left to do. 4. No mess, no fuss Unless your eLearning unit is entirely text-based (maybe you’re experimenting with the limits of boredom…), it won’t take long before your list of graphics, video and other assets stacks up. Ideally, all of the assets you need will be available at the same time, but more often than not, you’ll find that they’ll trickle in from a number of sources as the project progresses. Although it might seem like a minor point, it’s easy for assets to go astray, costing you time that could have been saved. This is why it’s important to set a standard for how your assets are managed. Make sure everyone has access to the same central location and that they’re clear on where everything should be uploaded. 5. Set a date Nothing motivates quite like a scary, looming deadline! It’s a sad truth that if you want something done ‘whenever’, it’ll never get done at all. Instead, people will tend to prioritise the tasks on their lists that actually have deadlines. If you want your eLearning project to go off without a hitch, you need to make sure that your whole team is aware of the delivery date and, more importantly, the impact their contribution will have on it. 6. Make it fun Who said that eLearning production has to be one mindless, heart-breaking chore after another?! True, no matter what your role might be, it can be a thankless task. Any good project manager should recognise this and fill that big, ungrateful gap with something that keeps the rest of the team engaged. Have you got an asset manager who’s particularly organised? Well, you should recognise it - in public, to great acclaim. Encourage some friendly competition among your team by awarding badges. They don’t have to be medals made of solid gold; the gesture itself is all that’s needed to let people know that they are doing a good job.   If you follow these 6 steps, you and your team will be on a collision course with success, but there’s a secret, hidden, seventh step that will wrap the other six up in a tidy little package…   7. Unleash the Genie! Genie is a collaborative authoring tool that had all of the functionality you’d expect from an eLearning development wizard with the added power of collaboration. With Genie, you can assign custom roles specific to each team member and invite them to edit your eLearning projects. The platform is completely social, meaning that everyone can stay abreast of all of the latest developments and maintain a constructive dialogue. Not special enough for you? What if we told you that every piece of Genie eLearning is designed to be as game-like as possible? Each eLearning unit can be easily built using one of Genie’s game templates creating a magical experience for your learners unlike anything they’ve seen before. And it’s not as if the learners get all of the fun; Genie is completely gamified, giving your whole team the opportunity to earn badges for contributing to the project. For now, we’ll let you sit down and come to terms with that barrage of awesomeness - and when you’re ready, you can pop over to unleashthegenie.com and test-drive it for yourself… …or just do it now. Go on - make a wish and click the button!  The post 6 Ways to Boost Collaboration in Your eLearning Production appeared first on Growth Engineering.

LMS, LCMS, LRS… There’s enough lingo in the world of online learning to give even the most weathered ID a headache! But don’t fret! We’ve put together a handy glossary to help ease you into our wonderful world. It’s worth bookmarking so that you can check back on it whenever you stumble upon the latest buzzword that’s floating around. Online learning glossary API - This acronym stands for ‘Application Program Interface’. Essentially, it allows two different types of software to communicate with each other. Take our Academy LMS for example. Our API allows you to integrate the Academy with your HR system so that you can upload all of your learners in one go rather than doing it manually. Blended learning - Online learning doesn’t always completely replace traditional classroom-based learning. Blended learning describes programmes which blend together online and face-to-face learning. Cloud-based learning - This means that all of the software and resources involved in the learning is stored in the enigmatic cloud. This is a good thing because it means you don’t have to download or install anything to access your learning, and you can access it using any device. Content authoring tool - Learning is great, but you need content to be able to do it! A learning content authoring tool will generally create SCORM-compliant content which can be hosted on most LMSs. Our recently launched Genie is an example of such a tool. Discovery Method - You might hear us banging on about this from time to time, because this is our unique approach to content creation, designed to engage the learner. It gets the learner to plug in their own experiences as they work through the content, and then recalls it later on so that they can think about their new-found knowledge in context. It also tracks any inputs and automatically builds a personalised study plan to be downloaded at the end of the unit. Our Genie content authoring tool lets you utilise the Discovery Method in your own content. eCommerce - Short for ‘electronic commerce’, it is the process of buying things online. So if you enable eCommerce on our Academy LMS, you can create a catalogue page and charge for courses and curricula. Gamification - This is our area of expertise! Gamification is the process of applying gaming mechanics to non-gaming situations in an effort to inject excitement and engagement into boring activities. So on our Academy LMS your learners will earn badges and levels, and compete against each other to climb leaderboards as they learn. Source - http://elearningindustry.com/top-gamification-statistics-and-facts-for-2015 HTML5 - The latest version of Hypertext Markup Language, which dictates the structure of web pages. It lets you deliver all sorts of multimedia via the web page, without having to download additional plugins like Flash Player. It’s also supported by all the main desktop and mobile browsers, so systems designed with HTML5 in mind should work properly on any device. ID - An ‘Instructional Designer’ designs and develops not just the learning content, but the learning experience. They work with subject matter experts to design the content, design the assessment methods and create all the multimedia and additional materials to accompany everything. Instructor-led training - This is more akin to traditional classroom-based training, where an instructor will teach a group of learners in a physical location. This could be one stage of a blended learning process. Interactive classroom - This is a method of blending online learning with classroom-based learning. So with our Academy LMS, an instructor leading a classroom can push assignments to the learners during the session and get instant feedback to check they’re keeping up. LCMS - A ‘Learning Content Management System’ is focused on creating online learning content. They let developers interact and share assets and materials used when creating content, but place far less emphasis on managing the learner experience than you find in an LMS. LMS - A ‘Learning Management System’, such as our Academy LMS, is all about managing the people. They come jam-packed full of features and host libraries of learning content. They let you design the learning path you want people to take, manage online and offline training, and run robust reports to track everyone’s progress. Source - http://elearningindustry.com/top-lms-statistics-and-facts-for-2015 LRS - A ‘Learning Record Store’ works with Tin Can API to keep track of a learner’s data. It allows for robust reporting, and could potentially follow a learner around between jobs. mLearning - Meaning ‘mobile learning’, this enables online learning to be accessed from portable devices, such as their mobile phones. It basically means that you can learn on the go! MOOC - A ‘Massive Open Online Course’ is one which takes place over the web and lets a huge number of people sign up and learn free of charge. PENS - No, this isn’t anything to do with written exams! This actually stands for ‘Package Exchange Notification Services’. It allows one-click publishing from and authoring tool directly to an LMS. SaaS - No, we’re not giving you any sass, this actually means ‘Software as a Service’. It means that the software is centrally hosted and licensed out to clients. Our Academy LMS is an example, and it means that you get automatic updates and easy administration. SCORM - This stands for ‘Sharable Content Object Reference Model’ and is the current standard in eLearning content. Basically, if your content complies with SCORM, then it should be able to run on most LMSs. Skills gap analysis - This generally takes the form of a short test which assesses a learner’s existing competencies. Specific areas for improvement are highlighted and relevant learning content is pushed to them to help them target their learning. SME - This doesn’t mean ‘Small and Medium-sized Enterprises’, but rather ‘Subject Matter Expert’. These are experts in particular topics, who often assist Instructional Designers in building learning content. On our Academy LMS, learners can also ask questions to SMEs, and the answers are recorded as FAQs to help everyone in the future. Social and collaborative learning - This learning methodology follows the viewpoint that two heads really are better than one. By discussing their learning together, groups of learners can really boost their collective knowledge of a subject. This social method of learning also engages them much more with the topic, meaning the learning is absorbed and stored more effectively. Our Academy LMS features a whole suite of social features to enable the 90% of learning which happens outside of formal training. From a Facebook-style newsfeed of comments to real-time live chat functionality, no learner can ever feel lonely! Tin Can API/xAPI - Known as both the Tin Can API and Experience API, this is an up and coming way of allowing communication between learning content and learning systems. It records learning experiences and stores them in an LRS, allowing for robust reporting. Now that you’re an online learning expert, we bet you’re itching to find out more about our gamified, social LMS! Why not request a demo today to find out why it was named the world’s #1 LMS for 2015?  The post Online Learning Glossary - Know your LMS from your LCMS! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

A couple of months ago, eLearning Jedi, Christopher Pappas listed 10 of the most challenging challenges faced by instructional designers today. Since we’re always fighting in the corner of instructional design superheroes, we thought it’d be a useful exercise to examine these 10 hurdles and ask ourselves what we’re doing to ease the burden. So, without further ado: 1. Designing and developing powerful eLearning courses. The fundamental challenge before any ID is creating a course that does what it’s supposed to. To do that, they need the necessary tools to build that learning experience and the means of assessing its success. We’ve developed our eLearning authoring tool, Genie, to make the building process as straight-forward as possible, letting the ID concentrate on the important business of crafting a powerful message. Once the game-based unit has been unleashed on the learners, our Academy LMS takes over with its slew of reporting options as well as giving the learners the opportunity to rate and comment on the experience. 2. Identifying key issues. In the whole field of learning and development, one of the most important jobs is to identify knowledge gaps and address them. This can be challenging when, as is often the case, the subject is long-winded and not very engaging. Again, Genie’s eLearning game templates can help instructional designers to split these topics into digestible chunks that are actually fun to consume - like a big packet of Haribo Starmix. 3. Choosing the right instructional design model. For many instructional designers, the model they choose to build a coherent learning journey is largely a matter of personal preference. The jury is still out as to which one is the most effective and learning professional can just about come to blows over whether Kolb would beat Gagne in a fist fight. At Growth Engineering, we’d rather not to get involved, and simply stick to providing solutions that help implement them! 4. Managing the eLearning project. Excellent organisational prowess is one of many superpowers possessed by great instructional designers. Delivering learning collateral promptly and to budget is one of the more practical challenges faced every day in the online learning community. Much of the work we do is focussed on removing obstacles that can cause delays in eLearning implementation. Using Genie’s eLearning templates shortens the delivery time by removing the need for development. Our authoring tool is also packed with project management tools to help coordinate assets and team members. 5. Crafting the art of communication. Instructional design is essentially the art of communicating a message to learners in the most effective way possible. We facilitate the genius of instructional designers by giving them the means to communicate in as many ways as possible. Genie lets eLearning wizards build text, video and audio into units as well as offering several options for knowledge recall, including The Discovery Method - our own training methodology that encourages learners to examine their own experience. 6. Dealing with people. "Hell is other people", said Sartre… but he was a bit of a miserable old sod! No eLearning project can be successful without the input of subject matter experts and other parties, even if it sometimes seems like they are standing in the way. The secret to dealing with people effectively falls down to three things: collaboration, collaboration and collaboration! We’ve always been staunch advocates of the power of collaboration in all walks of life, and that’s why we’ve built a strong social element into all of our learning technologies. These allow for real-time communication which is essential for avoiding unexpected surprises! 7. Resolving problems effectively. No matter how solid your project plan might be, the aforementioned surprises will inevitably occur. Instructional Designers are prized for thinking on their feet and adapting their approach to accommodate new information. At Growth Engineering, we’ve seen how easily slip-ups can happen and we’ve learned that the only way to deal with them is to tackle them head-on. We’ve also learned that an unintuitive UI only delays the resolution of these issues and that’s why we put the user experience first when it comes to developing our platforms. 8. Overcoming mistakes. So, what happens when you really screw things up? Even though the instructional designers of the world are legends, they are not invincible, and it’s all too easy for their confidence to be shaken. We must admit, it’s difficult for an online application to heal those wounds, but a few wise words can go a lot further. One of the most helpful things we, at Growth Engineering, can do is to repeat Christopher Pappas’ inspirational words: "The instructional design challenge here is to overcome these mistakes and keep walking. Just like learners can actually benefit from mistake-driven learning, so can you. As a creative eLearning professional, realize that the creative process often involves trial and error, and sometimes it’s impossible to innovate, unless you fail first." 9. Always keep learning. No instructional designer would choose their career path were it not for a true passion for learning. At Growth Engineering, we live and breathe learning and we firmly believe that engagement is the key to delivering a message that really sticks. We use gamification to make the experience fun and engaging for learners, but we go one step further: we’ve gamified our LMS and our authoring tool to make sure that course creators are also awarded for their efforts. This means that they too are encouraged to go further, reach higher and learn more! 10. Staying current with technology. This is the final point in Christopher’s list of instructional design challenges and we think it speaks for itself. The field of instructional technology is growing every year and the only real challenge is finding the technology that works best for you and your team. We stay at the forefront of this development by catering for the learners of today, rather than the outdated methods of yesteryear. It’s our mission to break new ground in learning technology and focus on what really matters - making people love learning again! The above challenges won’t magically disappear overnight, but we hope to make them a little easier to overcome and to let instructional designers do what they do best - create learning superheroes! Check out our white paper to find out more about how we’re taking the pain out of eLearning production.  The post Rising to the Instructional Design Challenge appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Think back to your school days. You likely spent a lot of time in stuffy classrooms, listening to a teacher speaking to you for an hour. The moment you opened your mouth to try to talk to the person next to you, you got shot down and sent to the dreaded Naughty Table… That’s no way to learn! Were you engaged with what was being dictated to you? Back in the early 20th Century, a young Russian man named Lev Vygotsky was formulating his Social Cognitive Learning Theory. It took far too long to catch on, but a key part of his theory is that we tend to learn best by socialising with our peers. You might be forgiven for thinking that an online learning solution will strip away any chance of social learning, but that’s absolutely not the case with our Academy LMS! The benefits There’s a reason why nearly one billion of us visit Facebook on a daily basis. We’re social animals who crave interaction with our peers. When we get that interaction, not only are we more engaged with what we’re doing, but we begin to build habits and are far more likely to repeat our actions in the future. Sounds great! But how does this help a learning and development team? One of the biggest problems you might face when running a learning management system is in convincing your learners to keep coming back! Unfortunately, for many people the stereotype of online learning is that it’s about as dull as debating the existence of worms. But as soon as you whack in some social features, your learners will be as fired up as Mount Vesuvius in AD 79! Take our client GAME as a perfect example. Their learners are using their Academy as a real social network, and GAME is feeling the benefits. Chloe is clearly loving the social features on GAME’s Academy! The learners keep checking in to chat to each other and post photos of the best costumes worn to their store promotions. To put this into perspective, from April-July 2015, their 3,600 learners logged in more than 40,500 times. That’s nearly 12 logins per user! And in case you’re worried that social activity is no good if no-one’s learning anything, over the same four months these same learners completed more than 61,000 pieces of content - 17 per learner! That’s before you even consider the benefits brought by having a community of leaners helping each other to understand and apply their knowledge. Clearly, fostering these communities is the way forward. How we encourage social learning You can find social networks designed for businesses knocking about on the market, but if you have an LMS, you’d greatly benefit from incorporating social elements within the same virtual space. Thankfully, our Academy LMS was built to engage learners, so it’s packed full of all the features you’ll find on your favourite social network: What’s Happening? Feed - Similar to Facebook’s newsfeed, this is a stream of updates and discussions started by other learners, all of which can be liked and commented on. Insight Groups - Like focused chatrooms, you create insight groups around specific topics, to keep discussions relevant to the matter at hand. As an added incentive, learners earn experience points and climb leaderboards by participating. Comments under learning - Learners can rate each piece of content and leave comments underneath. This is a great way to start a discussion about it! Live chat - Pop-out chat boxes let learners have discussions in real-time while they get on with work, learning, or pretending they’re not actually watching cat videos. Access to experts - Learners can ask questions to subject matter experts at any point to check their understanding. The discussions are saved as FAQs for everyone’s benefit. Interested in reading more about what makes social learning so brilliant? You’re in luck, because we’ve got a white paper about it!  The post Why social learning is super learning! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

So, it looks like all of the cool kids will have authoring tools by the end of the year. According to the 2014 Training Industry Report, 37% of companies intend to purchase authoring tools/systems in 2015. If you count yourself among that number, then firstly, welcome to the cool table! Now you’ve got the fun job of choosing one of the many eLearning authoring tools on the market. Of course, you know what your business needs, but just because we’re a helpful bunch, here are a few things to look for when it comes to picking the right content authoring tool. Easy to use Life as an eLearning developer is complicated enough. The last thing you need is an impenetrable user interface. This is particularly important when it comes to collaborating with other team members who might not be as tech-savvy. Keep your authoring tool simple, and your eLearning can shine to its full potential! Flexible options Not all eLearning authoring tools are born alike. Some let you build content around rigid templates (which is handy if you have a huge workload) and others give you more creative freedom (provided you read the 500 page user manual). Before you choose your Authoring tool, decide which is most important to you and how much time you have to dedicate to these projects. Fits your team Examine what you already have at your disposal. Do you have access to a top-notch development team with plenty of time on their hands? If you do, you’re one of the lucky ones! If you’re not that fortunate, you’ll probably want a simpler authoring tool that won’t require too much extra development. Mobile ready Who uses desktops any more?! Nobody, that’s who! With the rise of ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) initiatives in online training, the tide is turning towards mobile learning. This is mainly because mobile learning works - because the learners can consume training wherever they go, they tend to study, on average, 40 minutes more per week! If you don’t want to miss out, make sure your authoring tool can support mobile learning. Reporting Check that the exported unit conforms to SCORM/AICC standards. It’s possible to run an eLearning campaign without the need for reporting options, but it would be pretty foolish to do so. Don’t you want to calculate the return on investment you’re getting from your training content? If you’re not reporting and analysing the results, you’ll be unable to learn from your mistakes and you won’t know for sure what’s going right and what could be improved. Compatibility Will your snazzy new authoring tool work with your faithful old learning management system? It’s easy to assume that they all will, but it’s not always the case. If you need your authoring tool to integrate with your LMS, be sure to check! Quiz creation You don’t want to spoon feed your learners with a click-through slideshow. Quiz questions are a must if you want to inject a little interactivity in your eLearning. Do your research on this point when you’re shopping around and make sure you find something that’s easy to use, and that gives you plenty of question types (both qualitative and quantitative). Multimedia support A hundred years ago, people would have been satisfied to learn from a book that didn’t even have any pictures. We’ve moved on a bit since then and now, your learners will only be engaged if you dazzle them with gorgeous images, clear audio and high-quality video content. An ability to handle an array of multimedia asset types is a must! Collaborative options Collaborative eLearning authoring is a growing field, and now is a good time to get involved! Having a collaborative authoring tool lets you assign custom roles, log in from anywhere and keep tabs on how each project is developing. Some of them can cut your development time right down by allowing for live, real-time client reviews. If you’re looking for something to really spark things off in your eLearning department, keep your eyes open for collaborative features! Fun You might think that making your eLearning fun, is an optional extra - a ‘nice-to-have’. Well, we’re advocates of engagement here at GE, and we’ve got buckets of statistics proving that people learn more when they’re enjoying themselves. When you’re choosing an authoring tool, look for something that offers gamification options or, better still, find an authoring tool that creates game-based eLearning! Keep these tips in mind when you go off a-hunting for a new way to create eLearning and you can’t go wrong! Alternatively, save yourself some time by hopping aboard the good ship Genie! Follow the link below to try our game-based, collaborative authoring tool for yourself!  The post 10 Things to look for in an Authoring Tool appeared first on Growth Engineering.

So you’ve spent months polishing every tiny detail of your shiny new Learning Management System. It looks fantastic, it functions perfectly and it’s packed full of awesome content. Congratulations! There’s just one problem… After visiting once, your learners haven’t bothered to come back. This is one of the biggest problems we face in Learning and Development. You can force your learners into compliance by making the training mandatory, but why use the stick when the carrot can be so much more effective? (Plus, they help you see in the dark!) Don’t panic! We’re here to help with three ways you can lure your learners back, and make them feel good about it at the same time. 1. Outstanding onboarding After fine-tuning every aspect of your learning programme, why just drop all your learners in? Excitement is contagious, so it really is worth taking the time to generate some hype around your brand spanking new system. One of GAME’s posters One of our clients, GAME, is a perfect example of how to electrify your learners (in the best possible sense!) before they’ve even had the programme explained to them. They created a teaser campaign for their Academy, knowing that their game-savvy staff would be particularly receptive to it as it’s how the video game industry reveals the biggest releases. They commandeered the daily bulletin system, which sends information directly to each store, so that their Academy’s key features (badges/levels/leaderboards) could be teased without saying anything specific. With hype levels well and truly aroused, they sealed the deal by putting up posters in each store to keep the new platform at the front of everyone’s minds. Their efforts weren’t in vain. In the first three weeks of their programme, their 3,300 learners logged into their Academy more than 10,000 times and completed more than 20,000 pieces of content! 2. Email encouragement It might seem like email has been around forever, but it’s still generally found to be the most effective medium for marketing. Simply sending out regular emails to your learners letting them know that there’s some amazing new content for them to try out is a great way to give them a gentle nudge back in your direction. But what about when you need a little extra oomph to entice your learners back? Well, some healthy bribery always works! Take our clients Hewlett-Packard and Tech Data Corporation as an example. They regularly use email campaigns, but they back them up with real monetary incentives. One particular campaign in March offered a £20 Amazon voucher to anyone who completed the required content that day. They ended up receiving more than seven times as many logins that day as the average, and their learners went on to sell more than €4.2 million worth of the product, delivering a hearty return on investment! If all this talk of bribery has tempted you over to the dark side, you should keep an eye out for when we launch our brand new Rewards Centre. Built into our Academy LMS, this Centre will let learners spend the points they earn through learning on real-world rewards, such as cinema tickets and restaurant vouchers. 3. Get gamified You didn’t think we’d neglect to mention this, did you? As the creators of the world’s #1 gamified LMS, our Academy LMS, we know all about just how much value gamification brings to the table! So we know that gamifying training experiences will make a learner 86% more active and will make them spend 50% longer on their LMS. But gamification is also the perfect tool for encouraging repeat visits. Since introducing gamification features, our clients have seen a gargantuan 70% increase in traffic to their Academies! The allure of unearned badges brings back the completionists, who want to fill every inch of their badge cabinet. The chance to advance through levels brings back the glory hunters, who want to see proof of their progress as they learn. And the opportunity to climb the leaderboards brings back the most competitive learners, who want to get one-up on their peers. See, it’s not all fun and games, there are real tangible benefits! Now that you’ve discovered how to keep your learners visiting your LMS, you just need to make sure the content is all in top shape. Check out this post’s companion piece - ‘3 foolproof ways to spice up your eLearning content’!  The post 3 foolproof ways to bring learners back to your LMS appeared first on Growth Engineering.

The world is slowly waking up to the truth that learning isn’t inherently dull, but there’s still a grey cloud of tedium hanging over much of the online learning landscape. We need to blow this fog away, we need to breathe some fun into online learning and we need to eradicate the zombie learner curse… Ladies and gentlemen, in the immortal words of Bonnie Tyler, we need a hero! Luckily, there’s a secret alliance devoted to the cause of effective learning. They’re known as Instructional Designers (a term whose very vagueness is a cunning disguise) and, like a team of shaolin monks, they’ve devoted their lives to honing their superpowers for maximum ass-kickery. Let’s take a look inside the typical ID’s utility belt… 1. Neural Pathfinding In essence, IDs work on manipulating the brains of learners and to do this, they need to know how the old grey matter works! IDs need to understand how people learn if they ever hope to affect the learning process. 2. Empathic Reading Of course, an accurate map of the brain is useless on its own. Sometimes the fastest way to a learner’s heart is… well… through the heart! Great instructional designers have an innate ability to appeal to the learners on an emotional level, as well as intellectual. 3. Body swapping Can you step into someone else’s shoes and look out of their eyes like a weird poltergeist? Instructional Designers can - there could be one inside you right now! They don’t do it for a voyeuristic thrill though. The ability to see the world from the learner’s point of view is essential if you want to give them a learning message they can relate to. 4. Human Sponge A funny thing happens when an Instructional Designer stands close to some information - they just absorb it, straight away! As you’d expect, those in the Learning and Development field are obsessed with learning new things, as well as delivering those lessons to others. 5. Divergent People value stability and the security of the status quo. Instructional Design superheroes, on the other hand, have a more innovative outlook. IDs cannot sit still, quietly relying on ‘the way things are done around here’, and the truly heroic ones will constantly encourage their team to brainstorm new ideas and think outside of the box. 6. Inner eye Did you know that Instructional Designers can look into the future? It’s true - before their eLearning project even reaches the storyboarding stage, they already have a picture in their mind of the finished product. By visualising the UI and the design of the eLearning, they’re in a better position to guide the project. 7. Super-scribe If instructional designers were superheroes, words would be the laser-beams that shoot from their fingers. Words are handy tools, but in the hands of an exceptional ID, they are powerful weapons against boredom and dullness. Whether they’re writing onscreen text, video outlines or audio scripts a real ID will have the word-crafting skills to captivate their audience. 8. Mind meld As with so many things in life, a lack of communication can be like kryptonite to an eLearning project. One of the key superpowers possessed by instructional designers is their ability to collaborate with SMEs and other team members with almost-telepathic efficiency. It’s actually quite spooky - in a good way. 9. Reactive Evolution Online learning doesn’t happen in an isolation chamber. It affects everything and it is affected by everything. Instructional designers need to have a broad knowledge of everything that impacts the way people learn. If there’s a breakthrough in the field of user experience or visual design - a super-ID will be among the first to know. 10. Gadgets Batman had them. Bond had them. Inspector Gadget was made out of them. If they’re going to emerge victorious in the battle against dull online learning, instructional designers need to understand their toolkit and make the best use of it. If they’re going to use an eLearning authoring tool, it needs to be the best authoring tool they can get their hands on, and they need to know it inside and out! If you’re an Instructional Design Superhero, and you want to add a powerful weapon to your arsenal, then you should see what we’ve developed in our secret underground research facility. Genie isn’t just any eLearning authoring tool - it’s supercharged with the power of gamification. Give it a try for yourself and see how easy it is to create truly engaging game-based eLearning units! Go on, unleash the genie and be more superheroey!  The post 10 Superpowers all Instructional Designers need appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Earlier on in the week we showed you three foolproof ways to entice your absentee learners back to your Learning Management System. Now that we’ve put that issue to bed, you’ll need to make that your training content is worthy of each learner’s time and effort! You could have the flashiest restaurant in all the land, but if your food wasn’t up to scratch, your patrons wouldn’t get anything positive from their experience. The same is true in the world of online learning. Your LMS may be a joy to behold, but if you don’t spend enough time preparing your ingredients and working on your recipe, your learning content will leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Here are three ways to spice up your eLearning dishes. Gamification and game-based learning Gamification really is our area of expertise. Though we’re best known for gamifying the learning platform itself through our world-leading Academy LMS, we also know a thing or two about how gamification can be used within the content itself. Quizzes can be a handy way of testing that new knowledge is sinking in properly, but they can also be pretty dull. That’s why we always make sure to liven things up a bit by setting time limits and offering gameshow-style power-ups (50/50s, time freezes, hints) to ease the pressure! A time freeze being used during a quiz. Of course, adding games to content is one thing, but turning an entire eLearning unit into a game is another. Thankfully Genie, the newest addition to the Growth Engineering family, is a game-based content authoring tool that solves the problem completely. With Genie’s templates, you can easily create game-based learning content. You can use the exact same assets you would have used anyway, but your finished product will be transformed into a game which is sure to engage your learners! Why not combine the gamified quizzes with the game-based content? Then you can serve up a small slice of what we like to call gameception! Personalised courses Think back to our snazzy restaurant analogy (is it lunchtime yet?). Would you rather they served stale pizza all made using the same cutter, or fancy personalised pizza cut into any shape you want them and baked just the way you like it with any toppings you ask for? It’s a no brainer. And it’s actually something that you can bake into your learning content! We designed our unique Discovery Method to personalise the learning journey. It lets people discover their newfound knowledge through reflecting on their own experiences. So as part of the eLearning unit, a learner will plug in their own experiences. Then, later on in the unit, this information can be recalled so that they can reflect on their learning in context. Finally, a personalised downloadable learning plan is created based on the inputs and answers given throughout the unit. If this all sounds very fancy, it’s actually one of Genie’s features, so it can be easily built into absolutely any course you want to create! Tell a story You’ve got all the fact and figures you want to relay to your learners, but how are you going to get them to remember them all? If you can find a way to tie everything together into a story, you’ll make a massive impact and make the information far more memorable. Since the times of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, people have been using the Method of Loci to help them remember vast amounts of information. A certain Gary Shang was able to use it to memorise pi to more than 65,000 digits! It basically involves imagining a location or journey and placing each piece of information at different positions. It makes recalling the information much easier, because you can imagine taking that journey and seeing all of the information along the way. So essentially it ties everything up into a narrative, which is exactly what you should be doing with your learning content. With scenario-based learning, your learners might work through a sales scenario from start to finish, making different decisions along the way. By learning in context they’re much more likely to remember exactly what they need when the time comes that they actually need it. Now that we’ve shown you how to create amazing content and reel your learners in to see it, you just need somewhere to host it. As luck would have it, we’ve got the perfect solution! Have you taken a look at our gamified social Academy LMS yet? You can take a free tour here:  The post 3 foolproof ways to spice up your eLearning content appeared first on Growth Engineering.

What’s your zombie learner survival plan? What have you packed in your bug-out bag? What will you do when your brightest and best are reduced to spine-chilling flesh crawlers intent on taking a bite out of your training campaign’s return on investment? Perhaps you’ve seen it before: sunken faces, lifeless eyes and lips coated in drool. And that smell! These are all tell-tale signs that you’ve failed to engage your team in their training content. And whilst zombie learners may not be able to climb ladders, they do have a nasty habit of infecting others with frightening levels of indifference.  Before you know it, your Learning & Development department will be in a state of decay. But don’t fret. It’s not too late to turn things around. Here are our SIX top tips for transforming zombie learners back into learning legends. Quarantine your zombie learners Once disaster strikes, the only thing you can do to prevent a full-scale outbreak is to quarantine those who have been affected. If you’re considering rolling out a training and development programme, it helps to be pro-active in this regard. Create a ‘pilot group’ of learners, give them pre-launch access to your content and your training portal and analyse the results. Through the use of engagement based statistics (number of log-ins per user, amount of content accessed, time on site, etc.) and learner surveys, you should be able to judge whether your solution is ready for the wider world. Take stock and head for higher ground Zombies aren’t good with steps and they can’t swim (due to the wide-scale muscle atrophy across their body). As such, it seems like the safest place for you would be the highest diving board down at your local swimming pool. With that kind of vantage point, you’ll be able to review the situation, figure out what’s going wrong, correct mistakes and start planning for the future. You’ll also have an opportunity to practise your form and unleash your inner Tom Daley. Aim for the heart AND the head Zombie hunter veterans will tell you to aim for the head and to use a blunt instrument, but we take a different approach. The only way to stop zombie learners from spreading throughout your organisation is to ensure that your team loves their training content. That’s right. LOVES. Not likes. They should love it to the same degree that the cookie monster loves cookies (a lot). ‘How do you make them love it?’ I hear you ask. Well, that’s an entirely different question. Stay mobile What’s the one thing we all know about zombies? They’re slow. A garden snail could out-pace them in a foot-race. If you’re able to stay on the move, they’ll never catch up. Here’s what we’re getting at: you should do your utmost to deliver a mobile learning experience, so that your learners can access their training content from their mobiles or their tablets at their convenience. This links nicely with our next top tip… Deliver content in bite-size chunks Heed our warning: if you don’t deliver you content in easily manageable bite-size chunks, your zombie learners will turn you into bite-size chunks. Modern day professionals have to-do lists that are as lengthy and imposing as a python, so there’s rarely time to indulge in epic 3 hour long learning binges. Break the content down into easily consumable nuggets and deliver it at regularly scheduled intervals. This will have the added benefit of triggering a low-level pavlovian response in your learners and it’ll give them a reason to keep frequenting your learning portal. Team-up Did you ever see the film about the lone-wolf zombie hunter who saved the day all by himself? No, you didn’t, because such a movie doesn’t exist. There’s always safety in numbers, so it’s important to encourage collaboration and communication across your learning platform. Here at Growth Engineering, we’re a firm believer that learning’s better when we do it together. In some cases, a social learning approach can invigorate dull training content and prevent a zombie learner uprising. Find out how L&D wiz ‘Rodger’ dealt with an alarming zombie learner breakout within his organisation, in Growth Engineering’s inaugural comic, ‘Night of the Learning Dead’ (see what we did there?). Enjoy. Oh and if you have a zombie learner predicament of your own, do get in touch. Unlike your zombie learners, we don’t bite. We’re highly trained zombie learner terminators, ready to wield the chainsaw of learner engagement at a moment’s notice.  The post 6 Top Tips for Terminating Zombie Learners appeared first on Growth Engineering.

In any eLearning project, it’s the instructional designer’s job to create something that delivers a learning objective as effectively as possible. In most cases, they are creating learning content on behalf of an organisation to help them teach their employees something important. The chances are pretty slim that the instructional designer will have the qualifications to understand the learning objective in all of its nitty-gritty detail, so they need the help of someone on the inside. Enter the subject matter expert! This often-reluctant hero didn’t become an expert by accident. They’ve worked hard to become the chief authority on whatever the subject happens to be and, as such, they’re always very busy people. Throughout much of the instructional design community, subject matter experts are often seen as a challenge to be overcome or a necessary evil. That’s no way to kick off a fruitful working relationship! To help instructional designers and subject matter experts create a great piece of learning content, here are 10 top tips to getting the most out of the ID/SME relationship! 1. GET SOME PERSPECTIVE Contrary to rumour, SMEs aren’t corporate fossils who refuse to understand or accept the point of eLearning. SMEs don’t get stamped out of a mould in the SME factory - they’re people too! They are extraordinarily busy people who already have a lot to do, and the chances are that the eLearning project is yet another task on their already-full schedule. It’s important for instructional designers to take a step back, appreciate the SME’s challenges and try to accommodate them as much as possible. 2. PREPARE If you’re an instructional designer on the cusp of your first meeting with a new SME, preparation at an early stage will give your project the best possible start. Before dealing with the SME, make sure you’ve done your bit to meet them half-way. Read up as much as you can beforehand so that you can hit the ground running. Write down any questions that occur to you - This will get your project off to a flying start and it’ll impress your SME! 3. REACH OUT Make sure you give your SME a chance to prepare as well. Send an email setting a clear agenda prior to the first meeting. Briefly highlight the key points that you want to cover so that there are no surprises! 4. GETTING TO KNOW YOU Introduce yourself and try to find out more about your SME. They’re probably incredibly busy, so avoid talking about what they watched on TV the night before - you want to find out things that will help you both stay on top of deadlines. Things like: How do they prefer to be contacted? When are they most likely to be available? Do they prefer tackling clarifications one by one, or is it better to batch them and send them in a weekly update email? Build a rapport and find the sweet spot - just the right level of professional formality. If the topic of last night’s TV comes up by itself, it’s up to you to decide if you have time to talk about it! 5. DEFINE THE MISSION Nothing sets a mission up for success like a clearly defined goal! Once you’ve both covered the practicalities, the next step is to define what success looks like. Make sure your goal is SMART and it’s something you can both agree on. This is also the best time to clarify your roles. Generally speaking, the instructional designer is designing the course and the SME there to provide the essential knowledge. Make this distinction as clear as you can and avoid straying from the path. 6. BUILD A STRATEGY The eLearning is the link between the subject and the learner. The ID wants to get as much knowledge out of the SME as they can so that they can give that knowledge to the learners. At this stage, the instructional designer needs to learn the important points from the subject matter expert and the subject matter expert needs to have an idea of how their knowledge will be used. Remember what you’ve learned from Instructional Design 101 - most people won’t learn very much from reams of text, so don’t rely on a trailing thread of emails or a statement of works to get the message across. Make sure to show a few examples of the ways you might approach the project. Go through all of the options available and highlight the pros and cons of each. 7. AGREE ON A BATTLE PLAN Decide on a clear plan with dates and deadlines, making sure to build in some buffer time to make up for the inevitable delays and setbacks. Ensure that all parties know how important it is to deliver each step on time. It’s important that they understand that the quality of the eLearning depends on the plan. If you have time, carve the plan into a stone tablet and place it in a shrine at the top of a mountain - whatever you need to do to convey how important it is! 8. DON’T BE A STRANGER During the eLearning project, you might need clarifications on various aspects, or you might need to follow up on review deadlines. Since the SME has a whole world of responsibilities outside of the eLearning project, it’s down to the instructional designer to keep in contact as much as possible. If you’ve already agreed on the best method of contact, this shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re lucky enough to have an authoring tool that supports cloud-based collaboration, this can be a great way to give everyone in the team an up-to-the-minute account of the status of the project. With the right tool, SMEs can log in, view the progress and even create quiz questions! 9. MAKE IT FUN! There’s no law stipulating that eLearning production has to be a chore. Find a way to turn it into a game. You could offer awards for reaching various milestones in the eLearning project. You can even create a leaderboard for everyone involved and let their competitive spirit take over. Using game mechanics like these in a non-game scenario is known as gamification and the principles behind gamification are proven to increase engagement in various fields. Find out more about gamification here. 10. SAY THANKS At the end of the mission, when the most engaging piece of eLearning possible is blowing the socks off of the learners, make sure to acknowledge the SMEs for their efforts. A little recognition can go a long way! If you want something to help the ID/SME relationship blossom, check out Genie. This game-based authoring tool has been built to deal with the realities of collaborating on an eLearning project. It’s fun, it’s quick and it’s easy to pick up - just what you need when time is of the essence!  The post 10 Tips for Subject Matter Expert Harmony appeared first on Growth Engineering.

While doing some routine upgrades to our Academy LMS recently, we were ever so slightly surprised to find that it seems to have developed sentience, a mind of its own! And what is our system using its new-found consciousness for? Discovering the meaning of life perhaps? Nope. Turns out it’s taken a liking to online dating… Still, we couldn’t let this go to waste, so let’s share this particularly saucy exchange: Online learner’s profile Hello dating world! My name is Louise, but you can call me Lou This is my first time doing something like this, but I’ve just been burned too many times by everyone else out there on the market… So, what to say about little old me? I’m an online learner and, well, I love learning! Like, REALLY love learning! I just want to take all the knowledge in the world and cram it into everybody’s heads! But judging from everyone else I’ve been with, a lot of people seem to think that loving learning and being the mayor of Dullsville go hand in hand. Well, they don’t! I actually happen to be something of a social butterfly. I’m happiest when I’m hanging out with my mates. I just feel like you take everything in more easily when you speak about it with other people. I’m also a bit of a game geek! Whether it’s playing cards with friends or getting engrossed in an online gaming session, I just love a bit of healthy competition. I feel like it’s a fantastic way to fire up my brain and really get engaged with something! I just want to find someone who really understands me, and who is willing to adapt to my needs. If you think that might be you, then please get in touch! Lou Kingford Iversity Academy LMS response Lou, what an absolute pleasure it was to come across your profile! It always touches my heart to find someone who shares my passions. As a Learning Management System, I share your love of passing on knowledge. In fact, I’ve made a career out of it. I was thrilled to see that you value having an active social life! I agree with you completely that discussions help the learning process, so that’s why I come equipped with a Facebook-style social feed, topic chatrooms and even live-chat features, to make sure learners always stay connected. And finally, to see that you live and breathe games has me more excited than a caffeinated squirrel! I’m a huge fan of gamification, particularly when it comes to learning. I offer badges to learners, and let them level-up as they learn. I even encourage the healthy competition you talk about, by letting learners race each other to the top of leaderboards. It’s just about the best motivational tool around! My good friend Genie insisted I show you this photo. Plus, I have a feeling that you’ll get on perfectly with my friends. I have one in particular who loves nothing more than bringing a little magic into other people’s lives. His name is Genie and he’s spent the past few thousand years trapped in a lamp of all places. Now that he’s out, he’s itching to help people easily author game-based learning content. He’s also helping teams collaborate on projects, so he can satisfy both your social and gamification needs. You can see why I thought you two might also get along. On top of that, he looks cool with that beard of his! I really hope to hear back from you, I’d love the opportunity to learn more about you! And if there’s anything you’d like to change about me, you’ll find I’m pretty easy to tweak to your liking. Academy Learner response: Wow Academy, I’ve never come across anyone who completely gets me like that! I can’t wait to meet you and get to know you better! It sounds like there’s a high chance I’ll get engaged Lou xx After that the messages get a little too raunchy to publish… But luckily for you, our Academy LMS isn’t monogamous, so you can get to know it too! To find out whether you’d be a good match, why not take the grand tour?  The post An online learner’s dating profile appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Some things, it must be said, are inherently dull but there’s no reason in the world why your eLearning should be one of them. Even when you’re dealing with a less-than-interesting topic, you still have a wealth of tools at your disposal and guess what - we’re going to tell you what they are! 1. RAID YOUR RESOURCES First thing’s first - get your toolbox open and have a look inside! Which resources are available to you? Are you an independent instructional designer, or do you have a team of developers and designers available? If you want to get the most out of your eLearning project and really get the learners engaged, you need to use all the tools available to you. 2. FIND YOUR FORM It might seem like a minor point, but the form of your eLearning can make all of the difference between learning that sticks and learning that slides off like the proverbial water off of a duck’s back. Miller’s Law states that we can only hold between 5 and 9 pieces of information in our minds at one time, which means that if you try to crow-bar anything in above that, the learners will more than likely forget it. Don’t waste your efforts! Split that content into more manageable chunks. This won’t just help your learners absorb the information better, but from a project management point of view, you could find it easier to deal with several small projects than one enormous one! 3. TWEAK THE TONE Know your audience! You need to know who you’re talking to if your message is ever going to stick. Luckily, most of your learners will be human, and there are a few sure-fire ways to capture a human’s attention: Tell a story. Put the eLearning in a context that your learners can relate to. Try to identify the major pain points and deal with these in a hypothetical scenario. Keep it natural. Try to avoid corporate jargon and other mumbo jumbo. Pretend you’re describing the issue to one of your friends and put it into terms that a relative novice might understand. Einstein said that if you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough. And who are we to question Einstein? Make it funny! Add some personality and let your sense of humour show. You might not be eLearning’s answer to Jerry Seinfeld, but even a groan is better than a yawn when it comes to engagement! 4. SET YOUR STYLE If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing amazingly! It’s not 1996 anymore and most people have developed pretty sophisticated tastes when it comes to design. If you produce something ugly, clunky and difficult to use, you’ll turn your learners off before they even get past the introduction. Spend some time considering the fonts, images, graphs, etc. that you plan to use and run them through your ugly-filter. If the words "Teletext" or "Clipart" pop into your mind, it might be worth reconsidering. Now is a good time to dig into your instructional design bag of tricks in search of interesting ways of displaying the information. Perhaps that massive block of text would work better as a voice-over with a few eye-catching images? You could also consider gamifying the eLearning. Adding some badges, points and leaderboards can significantly boost engagement, even for dry topics! Even something as minor as a progress bar can make all of the difference! 5. TAKE IT TO MARKET It’s a step that’s often overlooked, but it can boost engagement on your eLearning project before it’s even launched! If you want to have a successful training roll-out, put on your marketing hat and start generating a buzz for your upcoming learning extravaganza! Does your company have an internal social network? If so, pull out all of the stops, design an awesome flier and start promoting your new eLearning a couple of weeks in advance. You could even offer rewards (anything from a special badge to a lavish gift voucher) to the first learners who engage with the course. When the launch date finally rolls around, everyone will be itching to see what all of the fuss was about! This is just a small selection of tips that you can start using today to get a measurable increase in engagement. If you want to get the full scoop on creating truly engaging content, click the button below to download our new white paper!  The post 5 Ways to Make Boring Content Irresistibly Engaging appeared first on Growth Engineering.

See on Scoop.it - Blended Learning Lab Over the course of my time as a student, I have been lucky enough to see technology evolve from dial-up Internet and floppy disks, to high speed wireless and pocket-sized mobile computers. Now, as a high school student, I couldn’t imagine not being able to access any resource […] The post Five Things I Want Teachers To Know About Edtech (EdSurge News) appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Moodlicious Our latest release puts a nice Moodle hat on top of six months of planning, conversations via every medium, meetings at all hours, arguments (usually constructive), worry, long coding sessions, organisation, chaos, conferences and mojitos among developers, teachers, administrators in many countries around the world, integrated by Moodle HQ.  About 104 […] The post Moodle 2.7 is released! appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Moodlicious This document summarises the various development processes used in developing Moodle. There are four main processes that overlap. See on docs.moodle.org The post Moodle Development Process appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Moodlicious A short overview of assignment improvements in Moodle 2.7. Learn more about other new features and improvements in Moodle 2.7 at http://docs.moodle.org/27/en... See on www.youtube.com The post What’s new in Moodle 2.7: Assignment improvements - YouTube appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Moodlicious A short overview of assignment improvements in Moodle 2.7. Learn more about other new features and improvements in Moodle 2.7 at http://docs.moodle.org/27/en... See on www.youtube.com The post What’s new in Moodle 2.7: Logging - YouTube appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Digital Fluency Is it possible for our students to be both digital natives and digitally unaware? Young people today are instant messengers, gamers, photo sharers and supreme multitaskers. But while they use the technology tools available to them 24/7, they are struggling to sort fact from fiction, think critically, decipher cultural […] The post How Do We Teach Digital Literacy to Digital Natives? - Edudemic appeared first on Patric Lougheed.

See on Scoop.it - Blended Learning Lab At first the #edtech skepticism seemed to be formed around the utility and effectiveness of these new learning tools, the same way we might question a new assessment form or academic standards. It seemed to be more singular—this learning tool or that learning tool. Now "technology" seems all […] The post Why Some Teachers Are Against Technology In Education appeared first on Patric Lougheed.