Friday, October 30, 2009

Walk in their shoes

With Halloween tomorrow many (myself included) of the people in my office have dressed up in their costumed alter ego's. As much fun as it is it also made me think about putting yourself into the shoes of others...more specifically our learners. If we don't take the time and put ourselves into the place of our learners and see the training through their eyes we risk missing some information. We also risk missing the point which is to make the training interesting and engaging for our learners so they will use them.

"Dress Up" as your learner and then take a look at your presentation and see what you think...it will be an interesting experience and help you create better eLearning!

Happy Halloween!

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

"Why do I get out of bed and go to work?"

Have you ever looked at a job description and wonder "What makes the person in that job get out of bed in the morning and come to work?" What about those days when you hit the brick wall and wonder "Why do I want to get out of bed this morning and go to work?" We've all been there, we've all had days where we are just warming the chair and not being our most productive selves. We still carry on through meetings, webinars, training, etc. but on these days are we learning? How do we as designers engage our learners on these days?

I don't know about you, but when these days are around for me if something doesn't catch my attention within the first 5 seconds I'm gone and on to something else that might provoke my interest and engage my attention. So there is an answer for designing, it needs to grab your attention immediately, no big long lead in about what you're going to learn, no pages of text telling you what is coming next, you need to get the attention of the learner NOW or you won't get to later.

There is a lot of information out there about designing attention grabbing graphics and those are great but they also need to be followed up with continued attention grabbing content. In this fast paced world, were it is admitted that most people don't read past the first three lines of an email, if our learners aren't interested and engaged they are gone and our work has been for nought and we begin to wonder "why do I get out of bed this morning to go to work?". It is up to us to get our learners engaged and then keep them that way so we ourselves can stay motivated and know why we get out of bed in the morning.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

To Market, yes but how?

So you've spent time and energy creating your eLearning program and presentations and you've published them to your company website. Now you've got to get your audience to participate and utilize them. The question that you have to answer now is how do you get the word out? What is the best way to make sure that your employees and audience know that they are out there and available for them to use?

I'm asking you for your ideas, what has worked for you and what hasn't. Please leave your opinions, thoughts and ideas.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Great Blog Posts

Here are some great blog posts that I found useful from my reading last week:

Elearner Motivation & Support - [[http://newmiddle-earth.blogspot.com/2009/09/elearner-motivation-and-support.html]]
10 Sites to Learn Something New in 10 Minutes a Day - http://mashable.com/2009/09/24/learning-resources/
What’s the Difference: Learning Designer vs Instructional Designer? http://learningvisions.blogspot.com/2009/09/whats-difference-learning-designer-vs.html
What makes online learning effective? http://alearning.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/what-makes-online-learning-effective/
Top five tips for managing resources.
http://www.saffroninteractive.com/2009/blog/top-five-tips-for-managing-resources/
It's not the tool that’s boring, it’s you. http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/2009/09/its-not-the-tool-thats-boring-its-you.html