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.
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The Human Factor: Get On The Same Page With The Stakeholders
Customer satisfaction is as important a goal for instructional development teams as it is for any other business activity. The very first step in your analysis phase should be sitting down with the stakeholders and identifying their expectations. This month’s column arms you with the right questions to ask!
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The Human Factor: Delivering Training to Multi-Taskers
It’s a simple fact: In this always-connected age, learners multi-task. It’s true for learners in the classroom, and it’s even truer for learners engaged in asynchronous e-Learning. You won’t be able to stop them, but here’s how to design instruction that takes multi-tasking into account.
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The Human Factor: Do You Speak Video?
Being familiar with video, as a lifelong consumer of it, does not guarantee that we know how to produce it. Instructional designers should learn to think like a director, and to look at the story from the point of view of the audience. Here are some pointers to get you started.
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The Human Factor: Back to Basics With Each New Tool
Analyzing new technologies is a fun activity for instructional designers, but it takes focus to remember that the point is learning, not technology. Here’s a three-step process to keep your review on track.
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The Human Factor: Instructing From a Learner’s Perspective
Methods intended to engage learners are just tactics that become instructional only when they’re meaningful and strategic. Here’s how to achieve this: by writing content backwards.
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The Human Factor: Feedback, or Things I Could Have Learned Playing Zuma
Videogames show us how to provide useful feedback, even in conventional e-Learning offerings. There’s more to feedback than correction, as this week’s column demonstrates!
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The Human Factor: Mixing & Matching with Rapid Development Tools
Rapid e-Learning tools provide some benefits, but at the cost of tight, clean, easily maintained code. Here are some great tinkering tips for optimizing your work by using a combination of tools.
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The Human Factor: Social Media as Mentoring Platforms
Have you ever thought of social learning platforms as knowledge management tools – ways to store an organization’s knowledge so it can be tapped as needed? Could knowledge management be mentoring with a new name? Here is a brief collection of ways to use social learning platforms to promote sharing of knowledge and experience, to give guidance to those who need it, and to get a better ROI.
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The Human Factor: Creating Opportunities to Participate in Social Learning
If you’ve ever tried to move the social learning dynamic to a computer-mediated discussion, you’ve probably noticed that giving learners a forum where discussion can take place is not enough to create a social learning environment. Here’s how to give learners a sense of presence that motivates them to participate in the discussion.
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The Human Factor: Can Learners Participate At Their Own Level of Expertise?
Scores can be a surprisingly good way to help learners enter the Learning 2.0 environment at their own level of expertise. Here are some great pointers that will help you use social networking-type incentives (points) to build participation, and to track and reward individual users’ contributions to group understanding.