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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Five E-Learning Design Strategies That Keep Learners Coming Back for More
This week’s article looks for an answer to the question, “How can you create courseware that your audience will enjoy and want to come back and experience again and again?” Motivation is a complex problem for designers, and here are some answers.
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Being An e-Learning Developer Doesn’t Excuse You From Being Careful
Today’s tough economic times make it tempting for e-Learning developers and providers to devise new ways to find new revenue streams or save money. But in doing so, they must be careful to avoid finding themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
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Gestalt Your Graphics: Improving Instructional Graphics
No more muddy graphics! That’s the message of this week’s author, an experienced designer and artist. In this article, you’ll learn four “laws” that will help you get your point across by treating pictures as information.
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The Continuous Learning Environment: Surviving Learning Solution Discovery
One of the most significant changes in the last two decades has been the transition from event-driven instruction to continuous learning. Unfortunately, the design process has not kept up. While the classic ADDIE still describes what has to be done, it requires refinement and iteration in order to be effective, and the Discovery phase (needs assessment and analysis) is key to the change.
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aLearning: A Trail Guide for Association Learning
Writers of books on instructional strategy have seldom addressed the design of online curriculum for professional and non-profit associations. A new book by Ellen Behrens has corrected that oversight, and the result is an outstanding contribution that may belong in your library even if you don’t work for an association!
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What’s Your E-Learning Strategy for Compliance Training?
Compliance training is a huge application area for e-Learning. Yet much of this training has its basis in reaction rather than a strategy based on risk assessment. There is a rational, measureable, and aligned approach to compliance training. Use it and reap benefits in better compliance, reduced costs, greater brand value, and increased revenue!
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Social Networking: Bridging Formal and Informal Learning
The growth of social networking applications attracts attention from e-Learning designers and developers. The application of social networking to informal learning is obvious, but its role in formal learning is not clear. Reframe the question: What needs for social support are not being met in formal learning applications?
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Speeding Towards Design … Seven Gotchas
The instructional design process is seldom as smooth as the ADDIE flow chart would lead you to believe. Here are seven issues that come up time and time again, and that continue to make the designer’s life difficult. But fear not! There is a way to handle every one of them.
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A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words: Visual Design in E-Learning
The visual pathway is enormously important to human learning, yet much of our attention in instructional design goes to text and sometimes to audio. Visual design is a complex topic, but it relies on a few basic principles. Even without “artistic talent,” you can learn and apply these design principles. Quickly improve the effectiveness of your e-Learning with the ideas in this article.
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The True Heart of Blended Learning
In blended learning, especially in a global context, people are the true heart of the process. People make the connection between information, content, and experience. Here are some tips from real life that will help you optimize your blended offerings, even from half a world away.