Four important new books have been published in 2017 that contribute to the ever-expanding knowledge base of LX design. They have all been a pleasure to read—informative and well-written. You’ll find reviews below listed in alphabetical order by title.
Investigating Performance: Design and Outcomes with xAPI by Janet Laane Effron and Sean Putman
Perhaps you’ve heard that the xAPI standard provides a way to measure, evaluate and support learner performance and to improve learning experiences. But how does one actually get started? Investigating Performance was written to show instructional designers and developers the way.
Authors, Effron and Putnam, keep one important focus throughout the book: the purpose of using xAPI is to collect relevant, clean data for analyzing learning (or other) experiences. If you’re new at working with data, you’ll find their explanations enlightening. After an introduction to the vocabulary of xAPI activity statements, Investigating Performance discusses types of data, importance of quality data, how to collect data, making design decisions based on data, and designing for data collection.
The authors then move on to analysis, with chapters on basic and then more advanced techniques. There are valuable case studies sprinkled throughout as well as in the final chapter. Available from Amazon.
Learning in the Age of Immediacy by Brandon Carson
Sometimes it’s hard to step back far enough to see the radical evolution of the learning industry. Don’t worry. Brandon Carson captures it for you in his book Learning in the Age of Immediacy. The book examines the impact of five factors that affect how people work and learn: workplace automation; the cloud; mobile devices; big data and analytics; and the Internet of Everything.
Carson argues that the Learning and Development function must reimagine a new future that meets the needs of a workforce with a wealth of information at its fingertips. Learning in the Age of Immediacy interleaves in-depth research, practical insights and expert interviews to offer a multitude of ideas on how our industry can transform itself in service of the modern worker. Available at Amazon and ATD Bookstore.
Learning Technologies in the Workplace: How to Successfully Implement Learning Technologies in Organizations by Donald H. Taylor
When your organization rolls out a new learning technology system or platform, how do people respond? Are they thrilled with the new capabilities? Or do they endlessly complain? Donald Taylor wants your next learning technology implementation to be a success. In his book, Learning Technologies in the Workplace, Taylor provides insightful guidelines gleaned from 16 years of experience.
Leading up to the in-depth section on learning technology implementation, the book covers the current learning technology landscape; the false premises on which Learning and Development groups often operate; and perspectives on how we learn in the workplace. A final section presents a vision of newer learning technologies and emerging roles we can expect to see in the future. Available from Amazon.
Ready, Set, Curate: 8 Learning Experts Tell You How edited by Ben Betts and Allison Anderson
In Ready, Set, Curate, you’ll get many perspectives on digital curation as a flexible solution for learning and collaboration that seems ideal for the modern workplace.
The book is a work of curation itself, with eight authors contributing their expertise. Ready, Set, Curate explores ways to use curation in formal learning; tactics and strategies for effective curation; organizational knowledge curation; the curated backchannel; copyright considerations; and several detailed case studies. The book closes with a chapter on the future of education by well-known digital curator, Robin Good. (Listen to my interview with Robin or download the transcript: Content Curation for Learning.)
Ready, Set, Curate exposes the complexity of considerations that go into designing a curation strategy. It also inspires the imagination to find better ways to add value and greater meaning to the workplace. Available from Amazon and ATD Bookstore.
Trackbacks
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
[…] the Elearning Coach, Connie Malamed quickly reviews four new books on learning. Have I mentioned that she has a great podcast on instructional design? She has a great podcast on […]