There are many paths that help us build learning experiences that are in tune with the audience and the organization. One aspect that too many of us ignore is the rich data set that likely exists … [Read more...]
Newsletters I Like Outside of Learning & Development
It happened when I wasn't looking. It was a slippery slope. One day I realized I was hooked on newsletters. I was getting LOTS of them. Perhaps too many. I couldn't stop myself from subscribing … [Read more...]
ELC 075 Finding a Career Path in Instructional Design
The diversity of career paths in instructional design is greater than you may think. This solo episode is for people who are trying to break into instructional design and those who are new to the … [Read more...]
Using the Think Aloud Protocol to Test Usability of Learning Designs
Usability testing is missing from the traditional instructional design process. But not having a way to find problems is a problem. We need to make sure that eLearning courses, learning portals, … [Read more...]
Design for Bottom-Up and Top-Down Processing
In order to design for the human mind, it's helpful to understand how attention guides a person to perceive and then comprehend information while learning. Outside of research circles, one under … [Read more...]
Six Ways to Use Examples And Nonexamples To Teach Concepts
Your brain likes to generalize. It forms generalizations out of individual examples, similar to fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. This is more or less how we form concepts—by grouping together … [Read more...]
Persuading Clients To Accept Your Course Design
I received an email from an experienced instructional designer who had a problem that is all too common in our field. She was having trouble persuading clients to accept her course design. She … [Read more...]
Talent Stacking For An Instructional Design Career
Sometimes an obvious concept takes on a deeper meaning when you see it from a new perspective. For me, talent stacking was one of those ideas. We all know that being multi-skilled increases your … [Read more...]
Stealing From Product Design
Seven Principles for Innovating
Like all designers these days, learning experience designers are under pressure. We must find the most effective ways to meet the needs of a target audience, improve workplace performance and measure … [Read more...]
Using A Comic Book Style For Learning
The Value of Instructional Comics
I thought it was time to republish this conversation with the author of See What I Mean. Depending on the audience, content and context, low fidelity graphics—like simple line drawings—can be more … [Read more...]
ELC 074: Creating Effective Surveys for Instructional Design
A Conversation with Caroline Jarrett
When you create surveys for instructional design, such as for an audience analysis or evaluation, what process do you use? Are you confident that you'll get accurate results? There’s a large body of … [Read more...]
20 Things To Remember About Forgetting
What Causes Us To Forget
Even though we use it all day and night, we are usually not aware of our memory's processes until they fail. Yet remembering and forgetting are crucial aspects of learning. In learning design, it's … [Read more...]