Each day we are exposed to multitudes of user interfaces (UI) in media, marketing, and design, all geared to grab our attention. Specific techniques are used to draw us to the next item, scroll down, click here/there, make that purchase, watch that video, or look at that picture. Adopting these techniques and implementing them into our eLearning designs can have a similar engaging impact on learners.

As adoption of xAPI takes hold, it allows for more robust and interesting tracking of the learning process. As actual performance and results data are integrated with learning metrics, we will have the data we need to tailor the learning process to individual needs, and can draw more useful conclusions about the learning as a whole across a wider population. This leaves instructional designers with a set of critical questions: How does this impact my work? What tools do I need? What data should I track? What infrastructure does my organization need to be able to take advantage of this?

Shooting video according to the script is one thing, but what about when you can’t call "cut" and start over again? When there’s no fixing it in post? Or when participants are live online, as well as live in an ILT situation? How can we best leverage interactions cross-format? What technology and resources are needed to pull off livestream?

Learning leaders are feeling pressure to embrace microlearning, both from operational leaders and from the employees they train. Learning leaders want to offer more shorter-form and on-demand content, but often they don't know where to start. They don't know the formats to use, the pros and cons of different mediums, and the relative cost of different approaches. Even more importantly, they don't know where microlearning can fit into their learning ecosystems or how to introduce it into their organizations.

You've heard about xAPI, but wonder what comes next. Getting from this initial position of interest to having wide-spread organizational buy-in can be a huge challenge. It was for us! How do you justify taking resources away from creating and curating learning experiences to build something new and unproven? It can be a challenge to identify the first steps needed to start convincing stakeholders that the investment is worth it. Since xAPI is a complex solution, there is no road map that an organization can follow. We are all looking for the best ways to use project management strategies to leverage the resources that we have access to, so we can go beyond those first "wins" in the process of implementing xAPI.

It's been more than five years since we first heard about xAPI. As the specification is gaining momentum, so is the learning record store (LRS) that accompanies the xAPI. Since we finally have a clear understanding of what actor-verb-object can mean for our profession, it's essential to find the right LRS to give us clear insights. But what platforms are out there, and what are the pros and cons of those systems?

Research shows that sales training positively impacts productivity, quality, and financial results. Still, sales enablement through training can be difficult. Every minute a salesperson is away from selling costs the company money. You need fast, effective, and impactful models to develop sales training that works.

The virtual reality landscape is shifting rapidly as the main barriers to implementation—cost and content—are lowered. Investing in VR for learning is on the verge of being very affordable, but do you need it? The answer to that question depends on what you're trying to teach, and an evaluation of your alternatives. Convincing your leadership to invest in virtual reality can be challenging unless you can speak to its impact on organizational outcomes. How do you know you're getting your learning bang for the buck?

Learning & development departments are at a crossroads. Staffs are stretched to the limit creating, vetting, evaluating, and maintaining content, programs, and curriculum, while looking forward to the future and trying out new things. No consistent or repeatable frameworks exist to test and review emerging technologies such as augmented reality, blockchain, IoT or voice, or AI.

Let's face it, auto generated online certification has no real credibility, as you cannot guarantee if the owner of the certificate is the actual person who passed the course. Also, certificates can easily be reproduced by anyone with some Photoshop skills who has access to the template or a sample. Currently, facial recognition is the most popular biometric technology on the market. It combines high accuracy and high speed of operation. Biometrics is the only form of identification that truly identifies a person. Also called 1:1 comparison, authentication answers questions like: Are you the person you pretend to be? Are you in our database? And do you have the right credentials? In contrast to passwords, PINs, cards, and other forms of identifiers, biometric ID can't be lost, forgotten, or stolen.

eLearning has a satisfactory set of options if your goal is information delivery or procedural training, but what about creating meaningful eLearning for complex skill development or for the not-so-procedural kinds of problems that show up more and more in the workplace? What about creating learning for those situations where your SME can't tell you what good performance looks like except to say, "Well, you know it when you see it.”

We are exposed to polished and professional content that we only wish we could recreate in a small- to medium-sized company. Hiring outside vendors to create videos, situational learning, and multimedia presentations is beyond the budget for many of us, and yet we recognize and understand the benefits of increasing employee and customer engagement through the leveraging of technology to supplement our online learning. If only we could find a way to do it ourselves…

Scenarios are wonderful tools for encouraging changes in performance. Once we see ourselves in a story and are invited to take on a challenge familiar to us, we become more open to evaluating our own behavior. But bringing a scenario to life takes more than simply describing a situation and slapping a name on the protagonist. Transforming seemingly mundane tasks into powerful stories is something with which even the most prolific and celebrated writers struggle. Writing scenarios for elearning is challenging because it requires communication and storytelling abilities that instructional design programs and certification programs do not teach. IDs are left to their own devices when creating immersive stories for learners that keep them engaged, and simultaneously addresses the performance we want to change.

Storyboarding and prototyping are more important than ever, but too often we're making do with substandard tools or skipping the process altogether because the tools don't make it easy. If only there were tools that would help! Have you heard of Adobe's free tool, XD? It's part of the Creative Cloud but you can download and use it for free, even if you don't subscribe.

Many eLearning designers and developers need to teach systems. It can be quite labor and time intensive to teach face-to-face. Hiring a vendor to build system simulations is another option, but with its own challenges. Vendors have to learn your internal processes, your organization may not have a secure way of giving a non-employee access, and changes to your systems may lead to additional costs to have the vendor-built simulation content updated.

With the vast number of awesome features included in Adobe Captivate, it can quickly become overwhelming to identify which approach to take on a project. Should you utilize screen capture, program simulations, create a page-by-page presentation, maybe use videos and audio? Don’t get me started on activities and quizzes! And what about the new VR functionality Captivate offers?

Choosing a new learning platform is a little bit like falling down a rabbit hole. With more than 700 platforms from which to choose, getting lost is easy. Why not learn from the soul-sucking experience of those who have traveled this journey before? 

The effectiveness of any eLearning experience is only as good as the instructional design put into it. But can instructional design alone make eLearning engaging and effective? The truth is, good eLearning design is more than just instructional design. An engaging eLearning experience uses visual design, graphic design, and user interface design to help elevate the instructional design and learning experience.

It's a common problem in learning organizations…not enough skilled instructional designers to go around. Building or enhancing instructional design skills quickly and cost-effectively can be a challenge for both small and large learning teams. At PwC learning & development, a recent organizational change found our digital design & development team with varying levels of instructional design skills, and a need to upskill those with little to no experience.

Supporting the diverse learning needs of an organization where time is money can be challenging. The goal of most learning organizations is to drive content and "foot traffic" into their LMS. Today, gains in technology offer more efficient methods to complete tasks. Corporate learning organizations need to examine their goals and determine the best way to support employees in an era of shorter duration learning content, mobile-friendly options, and a workforce that takes ownership for their own learning. During this session, participants will follow one company's journey from LMS to LXP. Topics covered will include the process of finding, implementing, and launching a learning experience platform.

You've attended a great eLearning conference, read some amazing articles, and participated in some inspiring webinars. You're bursting with ideas to invigorate your team's eLearning offerings, but how do you persuade your department or client to share your vision? It's seldom enough to simply tell what you've learned and describe the possibilities. A successful pitch will show how your idea will come to life and improve eLearning performance. With both time and money at a premium, developing a successful pitch, especially one that includes a POC, can be difficult. But by investing in the effort and correctly framing your pitch with a clear "hook," you'll increase your chance of success.

As eLearning professionals, we know gamification helps make learning fun and engaging. It can be a challenge to find the right authoring tool to maximize gamification, while meeting your institutional needs of flexibility, quality, experience, and price. Look no further—the world of video game development has new authoring tools that eLearning professionals can adopt for amazing gamified learning creation.

One of the most sought after uses of artificial intelligence is a system that can continually assess learners and recommend the right content at the right time, adapting with them as they progress. While this description of a recommendation system sounds simple from a user standpoint, it is extremely complex in practicality.

Many L&D organizations are struggling with how to evaluate virtual and other immersive technologies for their learning and training initiatives. Options abound, and with a lot of pressure on corporate training organizations to include VR in their training, today's learning leaders need help in choosing the right solution. A successful evaluation process includes: 1) understanding of how to establish organizational and learner needs criteria to evaluate the immersive technology options, 2) knowing the strengths of the different approaches from both a cognitive science and technical perspective, and 3) recognizing the impacts of how the technology is brought into the organization. The best way to illustrate this process is through hands-on examples in diverse learning situations.

If they're going to work in a virtual classroom, your traditional learning methodologies need a makeover. A virtual session is more than lecture and uploaded PowerPoints. Unique techniques must be used to engage learners throughout the session. A common pitfall is to focus on the technology and forget about the design—often resulting in unengaging sessions focused on using the tools and not meeting the needs of the learners.

The two goals of any training program are to teach employees new information and then to enable them to transfer their new knowledge into their workplace. But learning transfer is a complex process, and most trainers do not understand the simple steps that they can take to ensure that knowledge transfers from the computer where it is learned to the workplace where it is needed.

Imagine you're about to build a house with all the bells and whistles. Now imagine building this house without a set of blueprints. Would your contractors know what to build, and where? Would the city be able to approve any additions or modifications you want to make? Like the blueprint for a house, your eLearning storyboard outlines everything about the training you're creating. This same concept applies to eLearning and training as a whole. It's important to create a storyboard that can be easily understood by everyone in the project process, so all are "in the know" on what the final product will look like.

Creating an exciting experience in the VR headset is only part of the solution. How do you ensure that it’s instructionally effective? The ability to produce artificial environments that are believable enables us to produce an authentic context well beyond anything we’ve ever achieved in eLearning. We can produce fully immersive experiences that feel like real life, both in the environment the user experiences and the tasks that they must perform. With an effective ID framework, we can elevate human performance to produce true behavioral change. These aspirations are vitally important in subject matter that requires human interaction, empathy, and decision-making–topics such as sexual harassment, customer service, and negotiations, to name a few. These solutions are possible through a balanced application of instructional design and game design.

What's the best eLearning authoring tool out there? That's a lot like asking, "What's the best car on the road?" The answer can be very subjective, and in the end it's based on what matters most to you. Identifying key features and characteristics that differentiate tools—such as price, ease of use, interactivity, accessibility, and mobile compatibility—can help you can make the best choice to meet your needs.

Electronic accessibility is increasingly important in digital learning, but it can be challenging to achieve in many eLearning authoring programs. There are myriad rules one must know and follow; different programs have different capabilities, including which browsers, devices, and assistive technologies offer the best and most reliable results; more development time is inevitably required, especially if accessibility is treated as an afterthought and not an integral component; and it's not uncommon to find a disconnect between purported performance and tangible, tested reality. What are development teams to do?

Good courseware engages the user with multiple elements. From video to audio to the venerable drag-and-drop, you need to make sure your content is doing the job. But is your audience actually learning anything? More importantly, are they learning the lessons you need them to? And if they are, do you have the tools to prove that to your leadership?

Most trainers today make video, but many have not had the opportunity to learn key principles for making video engaging because it's usually not taught in train-the-trainer classes or adult learning programs. It's the stuff usually taught at film schools.

Whether you're a learning professional or a marketer, you're competing for the same thing: attention. Without it, you can't get people to think and act and perform in new ways. There's one big difference, though. Marketers have been much more successful. Savvy marketers understand that tapping into the psychology of emotions sparks engagement in today's hyper-distracted world. That's a mindset learning professionals need now more than ever before.

Whether your job title is instructional designer, learning experience designer, or trainer, the career path forward (and upwards) may not always be clear cut.  There are often critical moments that can shape one’s career. Understanding how to recognize these moments, and the context of the questions and answers that shape your decisions, can make a huge difference in your career.

Once upon a time, training was measured in seat time and the ISD community saw that this was bad. After great debates and much consternation, seat time was replaced with learning objectives and cognitive task analysis, and the ISD community pronounced that this was good. But is it? The result is that learning programs—in both education and training—are assessed on knowledge to be learned rather than what is needed on the first day on the job. As an example, people learning cybersecurity are tested on their knowledge but not on their ability to innovate and apply the knowledge, or on the "weaponized attitude" that they need to be successful.

When it comes to creating gamified or game-based learning experiences, most practitioners throw game mechanics at a program without a methodology or rational strategy. They assume that what is fun for them will be fun for their participants. The result is hit-or-miss. When budgets and time are in short supply, organizations cannot afford such an approach.

Oftentimes we present the learner with content they need to use for a job within the classroom setting. This may work for some, but others may forget what they have learned once they are on the job. Why not access what the learner is seeing in the moment and provide additional context or information that would enable them in the moment? End users may have to wait for a specialized technician, when instead we could use AR tools that could walk users through some initial trouble shooting steps for what they are currently seeing in the moment.

Too often our industry rushes to develop a course, or whatever the default method is within their workflow. We need to break the habit and provide the paths to create better tools and access to learning for audiences.

The eLearning Guild’s director of research, Jane Bozarth, along with contributors to recent research, hosts a review of several recent Guild reports. We’ll look at the ever-expanding role of the instructional designer, be joined by Julie Dirksen for an overview of what research says about designing with AR and VR, and then hear from Megan Torrance about the current state of xAPI. The focus of this session is on what is really happening across our industry now, with an emphasis on what works, what factors support our success, what content lends itself best to particular approaches, and what would enhance our own professional development.

Microlearning. Personalized learning. Learning styles. These are all buzzwords you've heard from vendors, at conferences, and on social media. The pace of technology development and implementation is increasing exponentially, and so is the number of buzzwords. Even if you try to keep abreast of the latest L&D trends, it's impossible to be an expert in everything. How do you know what to try right now, what to keep an eye on for the future, or what's industry hogwash?

Essentially, workflow learning is less about content consumption and more about solving problems and creating innovations while in the midst of the workflow. It is less about software and platforms, and more focused on changes in behavior and process of thinking.

From faxed questionnaires to mailed DVDs, training solutions have evolved over time. How do you work within a limited environment but still innovate? How do you get buy-in from your organization when technology keeps evolving, but you feel like your organization's training is lightyears behind? What's the best way to manage change so the focus stays on the training? And, how do you evolve your learning management system as your learning needs change over time?

Delta Air Lines Pilot Learning and Development needed a way to push Captivate beyond its off-the-shelf capabilities to meet the requirements set out by both Delta and the FAA, and to enable us to produce 15-20 lessons every three months. Widgets can be hard to use, even harder to customize, and it is almost impossible to figure out how make one on your own, however we were able to crack the code and develop some widgets that are now an essential part of our training workflow.