Instructional Design Best Practices
Color Theory for eLearning
We had a great webinar last week on designing visual hierarchy. Our senior designer, Stacey Wilhelmsen, touched on some elements of color while discussing visual hierarchy principles. It sparked a great discussion and many more questions about color from the audience,...
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3 Reasons Performance Support Is Vital
It’s time to take a moment and give performance support its due. But first, what is performance support? Performance support can take many forms, but in essence, it is task-specific guidance, support, or resources delivered at the moment of need. A printed resource...
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Setting the Standard for eLearning Assessments
Previously, we discussed how authentic assessments can be used to continuously improve the quality of eLearning experiences. Another key to the continuous improvement of your eLearning experience is the integration of quality assessment standards into the...
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Immersing Learners in Engaging eLearning Assessments
For many workplaces, the educational argument for integrating authentic assessments into their eLearning experiences is powerful. When effective, authentic assessments not only provide significant prompts to engage learners in the experience, they also help to equip...
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Webinar: The Hard Value of Soft Skills Training
Time and again, employer surveys reveal what most training professionals already know: soft skills are crucial for developing new hires and emerging leaders in your organization. Soft skills such as effective communication, creative problem solving, and conflict...
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For Courses That Make a Difference: Remember Your CBAs
I’ve been designing courses for a number of years now. When I think about the training that has been the most effective, it involved helping the client to “remember their CBAs.” I could have gone with “ABCs,” but then the process would be backwards. Let’s avoid that....
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Webinar: “Yes, And:” An Improviser’s View on Custom eLearning
We had a hilarious and informative webinar this week with Ivan Bigney from our Custom Solutions team. In addition to being a top-notch Custom Solutions Consultant, Ivan is a regular in the local improvisational comedy scene. As Ivan showed us in this webinar, improv...
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Leveraging the Capabilities of AGILE Instructional Design Strategies
For many learning organizations, the term “AGILE” has become a hot topic. Often, when referred to in a business sense, AGILE strategies tend to focus on more project management or software development areas (such as with achieving continuous improvement, maintaining...
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Webinar: The Neuroscience of Memorable Messages
We were pleased to host cognitive scientist Carmen Simon in a webinar last week. She discussed how one of the biggest problems with business content is that audiences forget 90% of what you share after 2 days. And the typical goal of creating a message or training...
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Why Training Fails…and What We Can Do About It
Before becoming an instructional designer ten years ago, I was a teacher. As I reflect back on the education courses I took in graduate school, I think of a class that seemed odd at first, but then ended up being one of my favorites. It was called Change Strategies....
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Go For It! Goal Setting Tips – Part 1
We already know how important setting goals is. But sometimes you make goals at the beginning of the year and then forget to continuously act on them. Over the next few blog articles, I'm going to share some tips on goal setting—quick reminders you can act on now to...
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Win the Game With Two Great Gamification Webinars
Gamification is huge in eLearning, so naturally, we want to help you become a gamification rockstar. We have two webinars coming up that focus on easy ways to incorporate gamification into your next eLearning development project. Our own eLearning evangelist and...
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Webinar: 5 Things We Love About Good eLearning
There is something great about quality eLearning. Last week we had our very own Michelle Thacher, one of our amazing Instructional Designers, talk about some of the best things to see in eLearning. Her list included: Active engagement Short and sweet approach Visual...
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Is Your Design Really “Responsive?”
One of the biggest points of confusion I’ve seen evolve in recent years is how people use the word “responsive” when speaking about device-independent eLearning. How can it be that people can interpret one word so differently? Over time, “responsive” has become the...
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Branch Out with 2017’s Top Branching Scenarios
Branching scenarios are an eLearning staple—and for good reason! Scenarios are a great way to allow your learner to take a more active role in the learning. Developing your own branching scenario can feel intimidating if you’re new to eLearning development, and that’s...
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5 Things You Can Do to Boost Your Cultural Agility
Previously, I introduced some of the challenges that instructional designers face when designing for cultures that are very different from their own. As more companies expand their eLearning programs on a multinational scale, it is becoming increasingly important that...
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Webinar: Newbie No More: Getting Started With Storyline
As the final page of the calendar appears, our thoughts turn to new life. Yesterday, in the northern hemisphere, we marked the Winter Solstice which means the shortest day of the year and subsequently longer days in the future. As our thoughts turn to new life and new...
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3 Strategies for Infusing Cultural Authenticity in Your eLearning Experience
These days it is not uncommon for companies to have global locations and a multicultural workforce. As more companies expand their eLearning programs on a multinational scale, instructional designers are more frequently finding themselves in positions of having to...
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eLearning Innovation at PayPal
How can you help learners feel connected during asynchronous experiences? How can you tailor a standard eLearning experience in a way that makes it feel personalized? How can orientation be standardized without losing its impact? Could you, in your wildest dreams,...
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Engaging eLearning Design
All of us have experienced dry, boring, painful eLearning. I can say that with confidence because it’s so prevalent. The question is–why is there so much of it? My answer, or at least part of it, is that eLearning designers and developers have very few good examples...
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