While linear video is a preferred method for learning, technologically speaking it has not advanced much over the past few decades. Now, linear video has started to incorporate interactive annotations, which have greatly improved users’ learning experience. Adding interactive annotations becomes easier each year.

Creating effective learning experiences is not a job for a novice, although many novices are thrown into the role of instructional designer/developer. If beginners turn to the field’s expansive literature, which ranges from cookbook-style guides and blogs to scientific research, they are easily overwhelmed and typically turn to overly simplistic approaches. But even experienced professionals can come to feel they’re never able to do the job that should be done.

NorthShore is taking proactive measures to combat the rising number of violent trends in health care settings. The company developed online training that teaches employees how to 1) identify the beginning stages of workplace violence, 2) understand how best to respond and prevent it from escalating, and 3) know when to get help.

Much has been made about the astounding dropout rates for massive open online courses (MOOCs): typically 85 percent or more. While it may be misleading to apply the traditional metrics of higher education to MOOCs, there are ways to dramatically improve the numbers.

How will the connected learning landscape shift when cognitive technology takes over? Connected print technologies, extreme wearables, and device-to-device, machine-to-machine communication will transform the way a learner interacts with content, changing everything about the ecosystem of learning.

Mobile is the new way of learning. Learners want it, and companies want to provide it. But app development can be expensive, especially if you are starting from a mostly print or standard eLearning model. Finding a way to give learners and organizations the mobile learning they want without breaking the bank is a must in today’s training market, especially for companies with populations of mobile learners (e.g., sales).

It has been said that Flash is dead, yet there exists an army of Flash content in the world of eLearning today. Seemingly alive and well, these Flash zombies must be eliminated in order to answer the increasing demand for mobile-compatible content. Is there a way to save any of the good work that was done—or is a double tap to the timeline the only way?

There are many situations where learners can benefit from being able to instantly request assistance from an expert through voice or even video chat. That kind of in-the-moment performance support can save time and help people get back to the task at hand quickly, armed with the knowledge they need to do it right. But how do you provide that kind of support directly in your web or mobile applications? In the past this could be done, but only with the assistance of extra plugins that were tricky to use. Thankfully, there’s now an easier way for developers to include this functionality: Web Real-time Communications (WebRTC).

Animation is a powerful tool for creating engaging eLearning experiences. Sadly, many animations are used without purpose as just a design embellishment. When that happens, the animation distracts the learner from the content rather than helping to elevate it.

J.M. Barrie said, “We are all failures; at least, the best of us are.” When attending conferences, you often get the opportunity to see individuals sharing their best work. What isn’t visible is everything that fell apart in the process of achieving something great. These are great opportunities to learn from.

You are always striving to ensure the learner is learning in the best possible way, aren’t you? Sometimes technology introduces a new way of interacting that really takes learning to a new level. Explore some of these technologies and their possibilities for learning.

Learning and development professionals strive to help people get better at what they do every day. But acquiring knowledge isn’t enough to improve performance. In order to do better work tomorrow than they did today, people need to change their behaviors. That’s when learning becomes effective and gets results. However, behavior change is hard. It takes time, energy, and commitment. The only way to keep people engaged in the project of real transformation is to give them an experience they love.

Formal online learning doesn’t work like it used to. Attention spans are decreasing, and mobile access is more critical than ever. So how do you create mobile learning without hiring experts or spending a fortune? And how do you get part-time employees to care about making shakes and smoothies?

In a world of short attention spans and the need to “break through the clutter,” how can you ensure your learning videos leave your audience remembering your message? Maybe it’s time to look outside L&D for inspiration and toward a field that already does this well: advertising. If advertisements can influence people to purchase items they don’t need, are there ways to use this field’s secrets to influence learners (and do this without their feeling manipulated)?

In just a short span of time, a succession of technological advances have impacted L&D, from VHS tapes through to eLearning and mobile—and they’ve landed with mixed success. All have had an impact; none have been transformative. But that’s about to change as distributed technology and AI start to intersect with learning. The success of these technologies, though, depends on industry professionals. Are you ready?

Are you meeting all Five Moments of Learning Need? You already teach the moments of “new” and “more.” But what are you doing to support the moment of “apply,” when your learners become performers and have to use the knowledge you taught them? What about the moment of “solve,” when things are broken and need to be fixed? Or the moment of “change,” when they have to unlearn old habits?

When a new specification such as the xAPI comes out, it is important to understand the basics. And one of the most critical basics of the xAPI is the concept of statements: the way most xAPI data is communicated. Before getting started with an xAPI implementation, you’ll want to have a strong understanding of what statements are and how you can form them yourself.

Big data and learning analytics are top of mind for many organizations throughout the training industry. However, while there is a lot of of information about what you can do with data, there is much less about what you should do. Since data can include deeply personal or sensitive information, training organizations cannot consider using this information without first thinking about the ethics of what they are intending to do with that data and the privacy of individual learners.

A large amount of research in recent years has explored the value that music has for the brain and learning. Everyone has experienced it in some way, be it from listening to music while studying, learning something from a catchy song, or learning to play an instrument.

Online videos are extremely popular these days, particularly for quickly learning new skills and just-in-time content. While short videos can be an effective way to learn soft skills and system processes, many instructional designers and developers believe they have neither the tools nor the skills to create these training videos themselves. But they’re wrong, because most people have a surprisingly useful animation tool already: PowerPoint.

It’s harder and harder to catch the attention of learners, especially field sales representatives. It is also difficult to encourage them to practice important skills like sales techniques and how to speak with customers in different situations. While they need to practice these critical skills to succeed in their roles, they don’t always take the time to do so. What could engage this audience?

“Blended learning” was one of the hottest buzzwords back in the day. In its infancy it was, at best, a design construct that focused on combining the best elements of face-to-face with eLearning. At worst, though, it merely gave the learner the choice of attending class in person or online. This was a cutting-edge approach at one time, but the tools and media for learning have expanded far beyond this. To get the most out of blended learning, you need to shift your thinking and look at how you can use all of today’s tools in the blend.

As websites and apps get increasingly more sophisticated and personalized, people are coming to expect a similar experience from learning as well. Adaptive learning is one such technology that promises this experience, but many of the platforms that exist are expensive and currently geared primarily toward K-12 and higher education. How can L&D professionals in the corporate space find ways to provide their audience with this more tailored learning experience?

Design starts on paper—or at least it used to. Early apps were clunky, and those that had great promise fell short because of a stylus that did not feel the same as a pencil. With the advances in touch-sensitive screens and stylus technology, designing or sketching on an app is like having a library of sketchbooks. The current problem is no longer technology, but rather choosing the right app. When choosing which app to use, it takes time and practice to become proficient enough to determine whether it is the right app for your application and workflow.

Are you designing training for people who need to experience situations firsthand, but struggle with how to do that effectively and efficiently? Is your workforce widely distributed, so in-person training is just too expensive? What if you could bring a situation to your audience anywhere and any time you needed to with a solution that was both immersive and cost-effective? While this sounds like a training option from the future, it’s actually something you can launch right now using Google Cardboard and 360 degrees of virtual reality.

Intellectual property law affects every stage of the development and delivery process. Unfortunately, it’s daunting—and, even worse, often deadly boring. As a result, your decision making about what media resources you can actually use might be rooted in ignorance, fear, or frustration, none of which contributes to your project goals. As a result, it’s not uncommon to struggle with how to use free media to enhance your projects while also avoiding accidentally infringing on someone else’s work or exposing yourself to unpleasant legal action.

Poor leadership is a significant drain on organizations, with some estimates claiming it costs the US economy billion of dollars a year. That’s why leadership development remains a top priority for many companies. But while organizations want to invest in this training, in many cases the training they offer doesn’t fully meet the needs of the leaders taking it. So where should you look for inspiration on how to make your leadership development more effective? Games!

Video production and delivery have evolved quickly over the past few years. Unfortunately, pre-2010-era video knowledge often dominates how people consider using video for learning, including their understanding of video files and codecs, streaming specifications and file sizes, video production techniques and styles, and even the role of video in training media. Moreover, these misconceptions actually keep teams from launching the video production processes they’d love to be working on.

In a world of fragmented content consumption and constant distraction, how do you not only grab your audience’s attention but also get them to care about your content? One way is to create an emotional connection by putting them in the driver’s seat of the experience. Giving your audience choice both attracts their attention and creates emotional investment, allowing the message you share to go deeper and actually change behavior.

You know that taking online courses isn’t the only way to learn. You want to invent new learning formats and experiences that better meet your audience’s needs. However, in many cases you need to include tracking, and the types of learning trackable by traditional learning management systems are limited. The Experience API (xAPI) specification is flexible enough to track a wide range of learning experiences, but it’s a new technology, and barriers to adoption still exist. How do you bridge this gap?

How do you develop a generation of learners who may have spent more time with video games than in school? How do you leverage the explosion of screens and devices to change behavior among all learners? How do you use the recent growth in affordable virtual reality devices to bring immersion, engagement, and presence to new levels? This is the reality in which you design training. So how do you use these media experiences as inspiration for where L&D should go in the future?

When a new director of diversity and inclusion reviewed the courses offered at Johns Hopkins Medicine International, the eLearning development team was surprised to find out just how much work its content needed in order to be current and inclusive. Staff had thought they were practicing diversity and inclusion at a high level, but this review showed that they were way off the mark. Both this review and feedback from newer members of the team helped the eLearning development team realize the nuances to incorporating diversity and challenged them to do better.

Admit it: You have a love/hate relationship with stock photography websites. Sure, you love how using stock images can inspire your creativity, but you also hate how hard it is to find ones that look genuine and aren’t exaggerated. eLearning developers rely heavily on stock-image-based designs for building workplace eLearning. And it’s not just a problem of finding stock images full of people with the right poses or expressions. The bigger challenge is that the images you find often just don’t feel authentic.

Implementing an effective mobile user experience is challenging. How do you deliver useful information at the time of need without being disruptive to the employee’s workflow? How do you integrate the content effectively within the context of the user’s task at hand? How do you leverage the available technology to reach the target audience? How can you create a mobile app that is “sticky”?

Using workplace stories to engage learners and enhance your content is a hot topic in learning and development. But when you’re getting started with storytelling as an instructional design technique, you’ll likely have a lot of questions about where to find effective stories for this purpose and how to make sure they not only entertain but also foster learning at the same time. You’ll also want to know how best to integrate storytelling techniques in the tools you already use.

You’re excited about the promise of an xAPI-enabled world, but you currently have a learning management system and a host of SCORM-based courses that you can’t just get rid of. Early on, it can be difficult to see how you can stay flexible and manage this transition over time. But what if you could get the most out of both an LMS and an LRS (learning record store) at the same time that you move to your next-generation learning and performance infrastructure?

When you’re developing strategies to engage your learners, you need to keep your audience and their anticipated learning environment top of mind. But with more and more people shifting when and how they want to access training content, it’s more important than ever to make sure your design strategies reflect this. Your success in reaching the modern learner will depend on understanding how these shifts should influence your technology selection, implementation strategy, and design approach.

Accessibility is about more than just doing the bare minimum for compliance. It’s about the difference you can make when you ensure everyone has equal access to what you’ve designed. While this intent is good, in the real world, actually making all your content accessible can seem like a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be.

Selecting authoring tools wisely is important! Choosing the right tools will set you up for success, and choosing the wrong tools can lead to disastrous results. Knowing your project’s requirements and the capabilities of the tools help ensure you select the best tools to get the job done. 

Critical thinking is an incredibly valuable skill in today’s workplace. In fact, the US Department of Labor proclaimed that it’s the raw material of workplace success. But while organizations value this skill, they don’t always systematically seek out and support it. Many employers actually say their employees struggle with critical thinking skills, and most want to provide more development opportunities in this area. How can the L&D field address this gap and help amp up people’s ability to think critically?