April 27, 2016 We consider ourselves fortunate when we come across a written piece that exhibits both perceptive reasoning and insightful conclusions. Such was the case for me this week when I came upon the Valerie Strauss’ Op-ed “Answer Sheet” published in The Washington Post, “College counselor: I’m sick of reading about golden kids getting into Harvard. Here’s the story I want to see.” This one’s worth your time and I hope...
April 25, 2016 “Although instructional design typically focuses on the cognitive aspects of learning, a new line of research is now exploring the affective dimension too. Known as “emotional design,” this research looks at the ways a learner’s feelings and mood can influence motivation and learning results.” (from “Why Aesthetics Matter to Learning” by Connie Malamed, published by ATD, formerly ASTD) Unfortunately, the importance of aesthetics in e-Learning design and development is...
April 20, 2016 When selecting your e-Learning courseware, do not overlook a most important consideration —- “Usability!”. Usability, as it relates to e-Learning can be generally defined as to how user-friendly or appealing a program is to its users. In practice, usability goes deeper than this, and is closely related to how much users actually learn from using the selected e-Learning courseware. One of the better explanations of usability for e-Learning comes...
April 18, 2016 I don’t do commercials or endorsements. But, I do recognize leadership in the technology training world. Hence my earlier pieces on the pioneers of the ‘70s and ‘80s — giants like Ray Fox, Gloria Gery, Rockley Miller, Phil Dodds, Paul Tenczar, Bob Yeager, and Phil Dodds —- all Americans. However, I was reminded of another pioneering giant in learning technology this weekend—- an Australian —- when I re-visited his...
April 13, 2016 Learning is diminished when public schools are required to build their school days around continuous testing. Learning has become a victim when teachers spend their time “teaching to the test.” It is time to acknowledge that the fashionable theory of school reform — requiring that pay and job security for teachers, principals and administrators depend on their students’ standardized test scores — is at best a well-intentioned mistake, and...
April 11, 2016 “Some stray thoughts, in no particular order, gathered over time, on the differences between education and training, from the lens of custom content creation for diverse companies across the world. Education (even vocational education) is far transfer; training is near transfer. Hence the obsession of training with application (“I don’t care what they learn; I’m only interested in how they do their jobs better”), with reducing time to competence...
April 6, 2016 Today, let’s focus on the underlying reasons behind e-Learning’s failure to live up to its earlier promise. To do so, I’m going to quote from a very interesting and valid argument put forth by Raj Raheja, “Learning Replaces Classrooms For Naptime”: “Much like monotone lectures or subtitled movies, there’s another contender for the “most likely to put you asleep” award – eLearning courses, often embedded in a LMS (Learning...
April 4, 2016 After a SALT Conference presentation a few years ago, several attendees asked why the focus had emphasized full-motion video and optional word-for-word audio as the key ingredients for successful online instruction. While those observations were accurate, it is also true that instructional designers must return to the basics of “Skills and Task Analyses” for the core content approach to their designs. In addition, technology training is in real need...