The Learning Blog
Train Quickly and Easily with How-to Videos
What are How-to Videos? How to Videos are a quick, easy way to convey information to learners, especially people with shorter attention spans. Well-designed How-to videos can be used to teach people how to follow a process or how to do a task. These types of videos are very popular on websites such as YouTube …
Relevant Learning Articles
Train Quickly and Easily with How-to Videos
What are How-to Videos? How to Videos are a quick, easy way to convey information to learners, especially people with shorter attention spans. Well-designed How-to videos can be used to teach people how to follow a process or how to do a task. These types of videos are very popular on websites such as YouTube …
eLearning Narration – In House vs Outsourcing
An eLearning course can sometimes be seen as an interactive book or movie, and what often separates the forgettable from the memorable books is the quality of the narrative. With eLearning, one can use narration to inspire, educate, and increase learner interest in the content. The question becomes, how best can you accomplish this? Do …
The Art of On-the-Job Training
One Size Doesn’t Fit All On-The-Job Training is happening constantly across a myriad of businesses with different needs, clients, products, and services. However, not all on-the-job training is created equal. Many workers are undertrained or forced into position they don’t feel ready for in a move some people call being “thrown into the deep end.” …
Latest Learning Articles
Train Quickly and Easily with How-to Videos
What are How-to Videos? How to Videos are a quick, easy way to convey information to learners, especially people with shorter attention spans. Well-designed How-to videos can be used to teach people how to follow a process or how to do a task. These types of videos are very popular on websites such as YouTube …
eLearning Narration – In House vs Outsourcing
An eLearning course can sometimes be seen as an interactive book or movie, and what often separates the forgettable from the memorable books is the quality of the narrative. With eLearning, one can use narration to inspire, educate, and increase learner interest in the content. The question becomes, how best can you accomplish this? Do …
The Art of On-the-Job Training
One Size Doesn’t Fit All On-The-Job Training is happening constantly across a myriad of businesses with different needs, clients, products, and services. However, not all on-the-job training is created equal. Many workers are undertrained or forced into position they don’t feel ready for in a move some people call being “thrown into the deep end.” …
The Value of Process Documentation
What is Process Documentation? Process Documentation is the act of taking your organization’s processes, tasks, and responsibilities out of people’s minds, and putting them into written form. This allows them to be seen, reviewed, referred to, and updated to better match the company’s goals and vision. It is an important part of training development, but …
How Content Curation Improves Training Development
What is Content Curation? Content Curation is the act of researching, and collecting specific information and content from various sources that fit a need, and then aggregating it into a form that can be easily consumed to fill that need and add value to the learning experience. Content Curation is often utilized in social media …
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Overcoming 5 Training Development Pitfalls
Beware the Pitfalls of Training Development Training development can be a complex endeavor. Each organization, and each course being developed, is its own unique entity that has a specific set of criteria that will work best for them. This often leads to distinct challenges that arise from their unique use cases. Overcoming these challenges is …
Train The Trainer Best Practices
Why Train Trainers? Does your business need to train internal team members on how to do something, but you lack anyone with the ability to properly run the training? Do you have a subject matter expert in the content you wish to teach, but they lack the skills to be able to train effectively? This …
The Power of Blended Learning
What is Blended Learning? Blended Learning is the combination of traditional, in-person learning experiences (such as Instructor-Led Training, Seminars, etc) and virtual learning (eLearning, Webinars, etc). While traditional learning has been around for centuries, Virtual learning has become more popular lately due to global circumstances, and has demonstrated that it can be a very useful …
Choosing the Right Training Delivery Method
In the instructional design world, choosing the right packaged training delivery method is sometimes as important as creating the training itself. This is because how a training is delivered to learners can greatly impact your goals and learning outcomes. What is Packaged Training? Packaged training is the buzzword often used to describe the courses and …
eLearning Development Roles
Why are Roles Important in eLearning Development? eLearning development can be a large undertaking that contains many moving parts. Changing one part can impact other areas, creating extra work, so it’s vital for everyone to know what needs to be done and who is responsible. This is why eLearning development roles are so important. Roles …
Remaster eLearning content to give it new life
Reduce, Reuse, Remaster It’s inevitable that your eLearning content (no matter how well produced it is, and how much you try to account for scalability and future proofing) is eventually going to become outdated. This can happen due to unforeseen changes in your industry, rapid improvements in technology, shifts in design trends and more. Some …
Rapid eLearning Design with Powerpoint
eLearning Simplified Microsoft Powerpoint® sometimes gets a bad rap in the eLearning community because people often use it to create low quality, boring presentations riddled with bullet points. However, Powerpoint is actually a powerful tool for rapidly designing simpler, high quality eLearning content that’s interesting, and engaging. This makes it an attractive option for a …
How Downloadable Resources Support your Training
What are Downloadable Resources? Downloadable Resources are supporting materials such as documents, videos, audio files, or other materials that pertain to elements of your training but may not fit inside the training itself. Although the term “Downloadable resources” implies that they are electronic and can be downloaded from somewhere, these materials can also be distributed …
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How Reflection Encourages Better Training Design
Reflection is an Underutilized Skill Reflection is a skill that we feel isn’t utilized enough within the learning development sphere, both from the perspective of an instructional designer and that of a learner. This type of deeper thinking can help spur training designers to identify and improve their training while it can also assist learners …
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How Text to Speech can Reduce Training Design Costs
What is Text to Speech? Text to speech is a function that many computer applications provide, which takes text that is in written form and verbalizes it so that it can be heard instead of read. Many people tend to associate text to speech with robotic-sounding voices that did a poor job intonating and pronouncing …
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Connecting Your Learning Objectives to Your Business Outcomes
When a company wants to create training, business leadership will often ask about the value training will bring to the company. Connecting the Learning Objectives in your training to the Business Outcomes for your company allows you to both define the value of the training, and ensure those outcomes are actually reached. What are Learning …
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The Benefits of Social Learning
What is Social Learning? Employing social learning can help businesses more smoothly transfer the most important knowledge to learners. 82% of businesses that currently utilize social learning tools want to increase their use of them in the future.[3] With an increasing amount of the workforce being driven by millennials who grew up with social technology[4], …
How to get more from your Learning Analytics Data
Training is Only Part of the Solution While training is often designed as a way to solve a problem (often through teaching learners a new skill or changing their behavior in order to better align with the needs of the business), many businesses don’t typically spend much time determining if that expected result actually occurred. …
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Why scripts are important when recording training
What are Scripts? Scripts are a common element of film and TV production. They explain the actions, events and dialogue that will occur during the course of a scene, so the cast and crew know what, how and when to do things. In Training Development a script is similar in form, as it usually contains …
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10 questions to ask yourself when choosing an LMS
What is an LMS? An LMS (Learning Management System) is a powerful tool that can house your training content and supporting documents while managing users and reporting on progress. An LMS has many other features that can make it an attractive option for many teams looking for a way to optimally deliver their content, but …
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How creative storytelling can increase learner retention
Tell a Story, Inspire an Idea Some people love to learn, but for others it’s a struggle they endure because they’re required to. Those who struggle may not gain nearly the same benefit of the learning as those who are enjoying themselves. What if there was a way to help inspire more people to enjoy …
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Is an LMS the right solution for your training delivery?
What is an LMS? When companies need to create training for their teams on processes, applications or materials, there are many outputs they can choose from. They might decide to record a quick video explaining the concept, write a step-by-step user guide, or get a trainer to learn the material so they can teach others …
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How Process Documentation Removes Organizational Silos
What are Organizational Silos? Many businesses, large and small, encounter issues with workers and teams creating their own processes and structures, which are self-contained and isolated from the company as a whole, often referred to as silos. It’s very easy for SMBs to get caught in a silo mentality because there may only be a …
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Simplify Complex Processes into Easily Consumable Training Content
Keep it Simple Many workers are inundated in a myriad of complex processes as part of their job. Oftentimes these processes are not documented and may change on the fly. How would you train a new employee to follow those processes and ensure they learn the “right” way of doing things? It could end up …
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The Value of Stabilizing Process before Teaching
Remember the old saying, “Measure Twice, Cut Once?” It implies that rushing to make changes before taking the time to determine the result of your actions could be costly. Instead, it’s often better to plan first, then take action once you know your plan is sound. This is a great analogy to apply to many …
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Why VR may be the next big thing in training development
What is VR? Since training development often utilizes tools such as gamification and simulation, it’s not hard to see that VR would be appealing to developers because of its ability to provide realistic simulated environments for learners to explore. Not surprisingly, VR has already been in use for quite some time, and in fact, VR …
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How to successfully utilize AI in eLearning development
AI has a range of applications Artificial Intelligence (or AI for short) is becoming a staple of the cloud computing scene, and its versatility and accessibility is allowing it to cross into other fields such as Training & Development, specifically eLearning development. This is because AIs can be trained on a myriad of different functions …
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4 eLearning Design Choices that Excel and 4 to Avoid
The Dos and Don’ts of Modern eLearning Design eLearning design is as much an art as it is a science. You need to balance the requirements of the training against the needs of the learner and limitations such as time and budget. Additional factors come into play as well, since not all eLearning is created …
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The Importance of the Instructional Designer in eLearning design
An Instructional Designer is like the Architect of the elearning World Training is often compared to building a house. In housing once someone has decided to get a house built, you need to have an architect draft blueprints, builders create the framework of the house based on the blueprints and designers furnish and customize the …
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How the Gig Economy is influencing training creation
What is the “Gig Economy”? More and more people are working freelance or as solopreneurs through projects called “gigs” where they create a product or service for customers. The Gig Economy is defined as “economic activity that involves the use of temporary or freelance workers to perform jobs typically in the service sector.”[1] It can …
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Why the Agile methodology can flourish in modern Learning Development
Learning development has undergone a lot of shifts and evolutions over the past few years. From areas such as Micro-Learning Development, Learning Experience Platforms (LXPs) and Gamification, there are so many wonderful new tools and applications to help improve training, but has the internal process of the training development team evolved at the same …
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Why Interactive Training Increases Learner Engagement
What is Interactive Training? Interactive Training is not a new topic, but it has come more to the forefront recently as other trends such as Micro-Learning and Gamification have become more popular and demands are increasing to provide more benefits (such as increased ROI, higher grades) in less time. Making a training interactive can come …
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Writing Case Studies – a How To Guide
What is a Case Study? A case study is a descriptive, exploratory or explanatory document that analyzes a person, object, event, situation, or idea. People may find themselves writing case studies in different industries for different purposes. Some examples include: Marketing or sales case study to highlight a product or service and its benefits Educational …
Why virtual mentoring guides new hires to success
Mentorship Makes a Difference Having a mentor is a big deal, especially when it comes to entering a company or the workforce as a whole for the first time. According to a CNBC-SurveyMonkey poll, 91% of workers who have a mentor are satisfied with their jobs, while 57% say they are very satisfied.[1] In that …
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Develop Mobile Learning to Stay Ahead of the Curve
What is Mobile Learning? Mobile learning is a relatively recent development that allows people to enjoy training opportunities from their mobile device, such as a smart phone or tablet. Mobile learning is unique because it allows participants to learn in a time and place that is convenient for them. Mobile learning offers many advantages to …
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5 Ways Training can Increase Employee Engagement
Training is Important If your organization doesn’t promote training opportunities properly, your employees may look at training as a chore. Rather than making it seem like an obligation they have to fulfill as part of their job requirements, you should work with the leadership team to position training as a beneficial experience for your employees. …
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Can Online Learning be as effective classroom training?
Today’s learning environment is shifting rapidly. With technology and the internet becoming more readily adapted into daily life due to challenges in the modern world, it’s more important than ever to find ways to utilize online learning to continue to help companies grow and stay effective. Online training isn’t that new, but it has been …
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How Covid-19 exposed the need for eLearning
What is eLearning? If you’re reading this article, you may already be familiar with the concept of eLearning, but for those who are unfamiliar, here is a brief overview. One of the greatest benefits of eLearning is that it can be accessed online via the internet and does not rely on the same limitations that …
Best Practices for Virtual Meetings and Webinars
What are virtual meetings/webinars? Virtual meetings are similar to in-person meetings, except they are done remotely, usually via an online meeting application (such as Ringcentral or Zoom). Attendees can call in through their phone or computer (where they can oftentimes voice chat and share their webcam) and converse with many others at a time. …
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Why Micro Learning is dominating eLearning trends
What is Micro Learning? Micro Learning is much as you might expect from the name – it’s learning, but smaller and shorter in length with less complexity. Micro Learning doesn’t have a set length but tends to prefer a larger number of smaller training modules to be able to carry clear, concise and retainable messages …
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Keep eLearning simple and keep users interested
Training doesn’t have to be boring Training is very important in helping businesses to function smoothly and efficiently. More and more industries are turning to eLearning and Instructor-Led training to accomplish these goals. But not all training is created equally. Many people have suffered through very dry and boring material that impacted their ability to …
Ensure You’re Training the Soft Skills Your Workers Need
What are Soft Skills? When applying for a position, job seekers often look at the skills that are required for that particular role. Depending on the industry, those skills may vary from technical skills to trade skills. While these hard skills are critical to success, many employers often overlook the importance of soft skills. Soft …
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