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Mary Arnold is a Gen-X digital native who got pulled into working with technology in her first job out of college, where she was frequently called on by her co-workers to explain how to use the user-spiteful computer system in her office. Having grown up with computers (thanks, Dad!), she’s never been afraid to experiment with them until they work the way a user would expect. She is currently working as an instructional technologist, uses Flash extensively for her online learning projects, and probably spends more time than she should in social media.
Latest from Mary Arnold
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The Human Factor: “Please Acknowledge That You Have Read and Understood”
What’s your approach to “compliance” training? Many eLearning teams treat it as boilerplate; purely utilitarian, with minimal time and energy allotted to its creation. Yet there is a business case that supports more engaging treatment of the content. This month’s column presents that case – and the rewards of a creative approach for the eLearning team.
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The Human Factor: Moderators in a Creative Online Community
In online communities, members can produce tremendous amounts of content. In closely moderated communities, members submit more work, and get more feedback than members of communities with no active moderator. Here’s an exploration of what the most effective moderators do that makes a big difference.
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The Human Factor: Building Strategic Partnerships in Your Organization
Last-minute training requests make many training departments wish they had a seat at the table when projects are being developed. If your training group wants to partner with other areas in the organization, here are some ways to accomplish that goal.
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The Human Factor: Serious Game, Strategic Partnership
Mobile and social technologies can combine to support learning and performance, as can simulation and gaming. But games, simulations, and social technologies can also be combined collaboratively to support learning, performance, and other real-world tasks. Here is an example that also suggests a model for collaborative development of such applications.
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The Human Factor: Winter Reading List
Looking for some good reading during the holiday break? Mary recommends the five business books she’s found most useful in her ongoing professional development in 2011.
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The Human Factor: The Trouble with Group Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a common strategy for quickly getting good ideas from a group, but anyone who has ever participated in one of these sessions knows that the technique can confound the results. Here are three ideas to help you achieve efficiency while maintaining the enthusiasm of the brainstorming group!
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The Human Factor: The Connection Between Social Networking and Learning
Pondering how to create a social media strategy that supports learning? Research suggests that an effective strategy may be simpler than you think.
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The Human Factor: Communicating to Every Audience
Communication is a major concern in any human undertaking, and especially in instruction. Understanding what’s important to people, and how they respond to your content, is important to successful instructional design. Here’s a simple model that can help you connect with your audience.
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The Human Factor: Five Tips for a Better Audio Podcast
Podcasting (audio recordings on the Web with an associated RSS feed) has been around for several years, but it can be a surprisingly effective tool for eLearning and for mLearning – especially if you apply the five tips in this month’s column.
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The Human Factor: Making Your Process Transparent to Your Customers
All projects have constraints, and it is important that the project team and the client are on the same page about which one is most important. It can be painful to discover, too late, that the client’s expectations were different from the team’s. This week’s column offers a simple process that will protect you from that pain.