Imagine a trainer at the front of the room responding to a participant's comment by saying nothing more than "You're right!" or "Incorrect." Imagine this happening over and over again. So, why is … [Read more...]
Finding Your Place In an Instructional Design Career
If you aren't happy with your career in instructional design or want to start a career in this industry, there's no reason to be a square peg in a round hole. There are numerous paths you can follow … [Read more...]
The World Needs More Checklists
Using Checklists for Performance Support
One of the most brilliant cognitive aids devised by some very smart humans is the checklist. Hidden in this deceptively simple format is a type of performance support that has saved lives in the air … [Read more...]
What Do Instructional Designers Do?
Starting a Career in Instructional Design
What is instructional design? Instructional design involves the process of identifying the performance, skills and attitude gaps of a targeted audience and creating or selecting learning experiences … [Read more...]
SME Advice: How To Brain Sync With A Subject Matter Expert
Short of performing a science fiction mind-meld, how can you efficiently transfer content from the brain of a subject matter expert (SME) into a form you can use? … [Read more...]
Why Discovery Should Come Before Analysis
Most instructional design models start with analysis. During this time, the learning experience designer gathers and analyzes data and information related to one or more performance problems, such as … [Read more...]
A Quick Guide To Attitudinal Training
If you're involved in creating a course with the explicit or subtle goal of changing an attitude, you might be wondering how to go about doing this. Also known as the affective domain of learning, … [Read more...]
Does Humor Enhance Learning?
It's hard to tune out when something is funny. You just want to keep watching or listening. If humor grabs and sustains attention and if it evokes pleasant and positive feelings, why don't we use it … [Read more...]
Six Ways to Use Examples And Nonexamples To Teach Concepts
Your brain likes to generalize. It makes generalizations out of individual examples, similar to fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. This is more or less how concepts are formed—by grouping … [Read more...]
Become A Better Writer – Updated
Writing is one of the most important skills of the competent learning experience designer. From on-screen text to video scripts, we are often required to come up with words that flow. Words that … [Read more...]
Get Your Audience Pumped: 30 Ways to Motivate Adult Learners
Motivation is the force that drives people to fulfill a need. If you can tap into a learner's intrinsic motivation—where an individual is rewarded by the learning itself or an internal goal—you've got … [Read more...]
Transformative Learning: Another Perspective On Adult Learning
In the 1980's, Malcolm Knowles popularized certain assumptions about adult learning that have been the basis of a model you know as andragogy. The term andragogy, which was first used in Europe and … [Read more...]