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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Nuts and Bolts: Happy New Year 2014
As 2013 fades away, take time to remember and apply what we learned. Here’s a summary of some key ideas from Nuts and Bolts.
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Moving Beyond MOOCs: Experiments in Non-traditional Product Education
There is considerable controversy over MOOCs, and their value is still a matter for debate. However, there are examples of MOOCs that work. The question is, why? Another question is, how? The engineering education team at Google has found strategies for creating MOOCs that appear to be effective, and in this article you will find some of their “lessons learned.”
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Book Review: Innovative Performance Support, by Conrad Gottfredson and Bob Mosher
Performance support is not a new concept, but it is undergoing a renaissance; the appearance of new resources for performance support design is providing help and structure for practitioners who wish to add this important discipline to their repertoire. Gottfredson and Mosher make an excellent contribution in this regard, as you will learn in this review of their new book.
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Stop Trying to Formalize Informal Learning!
Most people learn about their jobs informally, from colleagues and mentors, and by observing (or asking) more experienced employees. Learn here about two key types of informal learning, and how a central knowledge hub can encourage unofficial, unscheduled, and impromptu learning, while making it available to the entire organization—without killing it by making it formal.
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Designing Mobile-enabled Game-based Experiences
Mobile users, as a group, display three different mindsets; game designers need to be aware of these mindsets and to cater to them. Fortunately, there are best practices to help you do this. Here are some considerations that can guide you through the process of creating mobile-enabled games.
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Marc My Words: Holiday Training Treats; or, Let Them Eat Bagels
Does everything that’s done in the name of learning always make sense? Here are 11 stories about performance improvement gone awry, from getting away (far, far away) from the office to total makeover to the edifice complex and more. Enjoy!
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If Training Is So Important, Why Can’t I Get the Funding I Need?
If learning is so important to organizational success, why do so many training departments (including those who invest heavily in eLearning initiatives) struggle to get the funding they need? Mature learning organizations get the funding that others do not. Here are the critical success factors, and some key guidelines for developing a mature learning operation.
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Nuts and Bolts: Directions
One of the most basic, seemingly most simple, elements of instruction—giving directions—seems like it ought to be so easy. Unfortunately, “simple” often turns out to be anything but “easy.” Giving clear instructions is something of an art, and here are some resources to support mastering it.
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Human Design for Engagement and Critical Thinking
It’s great that online instruction scales to global availability, but if it doesn’t engage learners and encourage them to think critically, what’s the point? Here are five ideas for building content that takes advantage of the Internet, uses creativity to get engagement, and does what is right for the learners.
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Assembly Line: Instructional Designers as Content Curators
How can an instructional designer deal with the mass of content available online today? There’s too much information pouring in on us every day to remember it when we are searching for examples, and there’s no practical way to keep a mental catalog of all those details. Content curation is the answer, and here are some tips on the subject, tailored to your needs as an ID!