About Guild Articles
Find practical, solution-oriented information—on design, development, management, technology, and executive matters—that you can use to make well-informed business decisions to ensure your organization’s success with learning.
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Brain Science: Focus–Can You Pay Attention?
Researchers have reported that the average attention span of American adults has dropped, possibly to even as little as five minutes. Is this due, as other researchers suggest, to changes in the human brain, brought about by modern technologies such as television and the Internet? Maybe, maybe not. Art opens a discussion of what we know about helping people pay attention.
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Make eLearning Better by Making It Complete
Organizations care about documenting training completions because it is important to know who completed training and when, but documenting completion does not guarantee performance. To do that, organizations should focus on the completeness of the training itself. Here are some tips on the importance of completions, the ways they may be inconclusive, and how to make them more meaningful.
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Marc My Words: The Power of Focus Groups
Focus groups can provide invaluable insight when used strategically for many analysis activities in the eLearning field, from needs assessment to usability to evaluating course effectiveness. Here is a complete, yet concise, guide to the what-when-how-who details that shape a focus group that will be a key resource for better decision-making.
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What Makes Great eLearning Content? On-target Questions!
Knowing the right type of questions to ask subject matter experts (SMEs) during instructional design—whether the goals of the questions are strategic, descriptive, performance, or data-driven—will help you create relevant, accurate content more quickly. The pointers in this article will keep you on target during SME interviews!
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Nuts and Bolts: Lean Solutions
One of the never-ending quests in eLearning is the zero-cost, 10-minute-to-build solution. As our tools and technologies evolve, this may not be the impossible dream that it once seemed to be. Jane explores lean eLearning and the tools to create it that are available to you today.
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The Seven Attributes of Highly Effective Development Vendors
Development of learning solutions is complex, and mobile solutions are even more challenging to create. Outsourcing development is often necessary, but can be risky. What should you look for in a prospective development partner as you do your due diligence? Here are seven attributes of highly effective development vendors, along with how to recognize them.
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Ten Tips: Distilling Existing Content for Mobile
For many companies, the first step towards mLearning may consist of adapting or repackaging existing instructor-led or online learning for delivery on mobile devices. This is not the best approach to mLearning. However, if you are committed to re-using or re-purposing existing content, here are 10 tips to guide you.
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Learner Engagement: Tips for Responsive Design
As the learning ecosystem expands, designers of technology-enabled learning must support delivery across a wide range of devices, operating systems, browsers, screen sizes, and resolutions. The key to this complex work is responsive design. Here is a collection of expert tips to help you make engaging experiences for your learners!
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eLearning Guild Research: Survey Data vs. Crowdsourcing Data
Instructional designers often need to have reliable data about how people do things, but no data exists. When this happens, designers can take a chance and go with their gut, or they can do actual research. But formal research is hard and it is expensive. A better answer sometimes may be to collect observations using crowdsourcing. This month, learn how to do effective crowdsourcing.
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Multi-device Development: Adobe Edge Animate
Developers often have no way to know about the environment where users will display their content. “How can I optimize my content for the various devices that access it?” has been difficult to answer. In this article, Mayra Villar explores features of Adobe Edge Animate that allow for flexibility, portability, and continuity of content regardless of the information-access environment.