Data privacy is an issue that is rising in importance around the globe. As more examples of privacy violations are becoming public, the need for learning professionals to focus on data privacy increases. However, most learning professionals have never really put much thought into data privacy or how privacy factors into our design and development.

In the world of Big Data, organizations are increasingly using data and technology to better understand the value of their investments and efforts. As training professionals, it is imperative that we also use data to communicate the impact of our work. Many learning professionals avoid data and measurement because it seems like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be.

Organizations often recognize that the best way to improve performance is through practice, but they have struggled to shift their learning design from knowledge acquisition to performance improvement. Immersive learning is a new way of thinking about training design, and companies are looking for examples to help them see how immersive design can help them with their unique needs.

One of the most challenging aspects of developing learning programs is managing the sheer volume of content generated on a daily basis. There are eLearning modules, demos, simulations, videos, job aides, quick-start guides, webinars, ILT decks, graphs, flowcharts, assessments, animations, podcasts, and the source and media files to go along with each. The most frustrating aspect of all this is the number of times developers are forced to reinvent the wheel because, while the perfect content may already exist in one format it is incompatible with content in another format.

Experience is the most meaningful type of learning learners can engage in. Experience implies using skills in context and applying critical thinking to any situation. We have to provide as realistic an experience as possible to learners without putting people at risk. Multiple-branching and multiple-outcome simulations help learners develop critical judgment to address what to do in real scenarios, creating true experiences that will translate easily to real-life situations.  

Choosing an authoring tool can be very challenging, especially as the number of authoring tool options continues to grow. In 2014 there are almost 190 different authoring tool options available to organizations. Understanding which authoring tools work best in different contexts is critical in order to make the best purchasing decision.

When well-conceived and executed, games can greatly enhance learner engagement, but randomly adding game principles to learning can result in colossal failure and many hours of wasted time. One way to assure a positive impact on learning is to approach designs from the game perspective first, rather than trying to gamify existing or planned learning.

Today’s employees need to use different types of tools and they must learn how to assimilate and perform their job with limited training time and support. By using a social-networking site for a virtual-learning environment (VLE) learners can interact with experienced employees, learn how to properly use the company’s internal social network, and properly navigate through systems and repositories.

A conversation begins, most often, with a question. IT blogger Selena Deckelmann suggests that when those in control “ask women directly to speak up, we open the door for participation,” and diversity and inclusion can begin. “If we insist on equal participation, the structure of our organizations will change. The first time I spoke up in a user group was terrifying, but I did so because a peer politely, but repeatedly, asked me to speak.”

Most instructional designers can recognize a strongly designed and developed eLearning program. However, there is a noticeable gap between the accepted standards of what makes quality eLearning, and the reality of what the industry produces. We understand what quality eLearning looks like, but too often we fail to deliver on that standard. Many instructional designers struggle with maintaining eLearning quality standards when confronted with the realities of organizational project constraints.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to touch and transform every facet of our lives. From industry automation and automobile connectivity to wearable devices and smart-home appliances, it will make our way of living more enriching. Learning will also undergo many changes as a part of this evolution, though it will likely be a bumpy road getting there.

Chances are that your organization already has one or more learning management system in place. Chances are that you also have a learning content management system, enterprise resource planning, a human resource management system, knowledge management, and/or customer relationship management systems in place. Now you are looking at adding performance support to the mix. Technology can be an enabler and driver of efficiency, but it can also be complex, cumbersome, and confusing. But all systems have one primary intent: To increase the performance of employees.

Most organizations focus on the quality of the eLearning they develop, but have you ever considered the quality of the workflows used to create that eLearning? We always face the challenge of doing more faster but with fewer resources. As such it is critical that an organization’s eLearning-development workflows are organized and efficient. Many organizations resist the need for more organization under the reasoning that the process is time-consuming; the opposite is actually true.

Interest in the Experience API has grown steadily in the last few years, but most of the conversations exploring the topic were either conceptual or technical in nature. There have few case studies showing the xAPI in practice, and those that did exist focused more on the technical application of the specification rather than on business value.

When you limit your design to the default question slides in Captivate, the result can often be a boring assessment. Being aware of the basics of these slide designs and of the quizzing system variables allows developers to extend the functionality of the default slides. By tweaking these default slides you can create simple games that can turn a basic quiz into a challenging experience.

Video will become increasingly important as a method of imparting knowledge as our populace transitions from a linear written-word culture to a global and visual culture. Many instructional designers and developers would like to implement “how-to” videos in their programs but do not know how to go about it. Practitioners are unable to leverage the power of video instruction into their presentations and eLearning projects.

There’s a growing demand from organizations to create courses that work on both mobile and desktop platforms. The currently available tools have a hard time doing this, and many times you must create multiple courses for each type of screen. In addition, content only resizes to fit these various screens; it doesn’t truly change based on each device.

The availability of (and demand for) data around learning has grown dramatically. Tools like the Experience API (xAPI) make it increasingly easy to acquire data about learner’s activities, but this will provide little benefit to instructional designers or learners if we do not design to acquire meaningful data, know how to interpret that data, or know how to improve our learning design based on that data.

Games and gamification are the latest fads, but getting learners to play games only exposes them to learning content and develops first-level reflexes. This risks confining learning to superficial understanding of the subject matter. We need games to solidify what the trainee has learned, but to do that we must redefine the responsibilities and the role of trainers.

With the successful rollout of the Experience API (xAPI) the foundation for a new SCORM standard has been laid. By itself, xAPI is not a replacement for SCORM. Instead, xAPI defines communication between a learning experience and the learning record store, or LRS. While most of us agree that the majority of learning occurs outside the LMS, there is still some formal eLearning that will be maintained in the LMS.

Have you ever reached a slide in an eLearning course where you were unsure what to do, or where to click? If so, you were the victim of bad navigation design—a common eLearning problem. One of the most challenging aspects of eLearning development can be designing clear and cohesive navigation that is easy for learners to follow, and that doesn’t lead to dead-ends.

Preconceptions of eLearning, lack of instructional design insight within organizations, disjointed learning ecosystems, and the perceived size of the task in front of them mean organizations have lacked the confidence to take their more complex programs into the online domain. However, online learning is opening the doors to more flexible, sustained, and comprehensive support for learners than ever before.

In their clinical training, physicians and other clinicians are not learning the skills they need to lead their organizations through the rapid changes happening in health care. It has become more and more difficult to pull clinicians away from patient care to teach them core leadership skills. As a result, health care organizations are struggling to provide these critical skills with shrinking time and resources.

There’s a great deal of buzz in our industry about HTML5. Chances are that the development tool you’re using to create eLearning can output to HTML5, but most instructional designers are not sure why that feature is important. HTML5 is also a subject that, for many, is clouded in confusion, with learning professionals often unable to translate the technical discussion into understanding of what the technology makes possible.

Remembering is a major challenge for all of us. Estimates range from zero to 90 percent on the amount of forgetting that occurs within days after training occurs. At times, this matters little because the focus is on compliance rather than actual performance. However, do learning professionals need to take a different approach in those instances when remembering really matters?

“I need the content to work on a phone and a tablet as well as on a desktop.” This is a request we’re hearing more and more each day. In the new era of multi-device delivery, instruction designers struggle to find the one design to rule them all. How can you ensure solid instructional design across all those devices if your aim is to only build one course?

Like many organizations in today’s increasingly global marketplace, the Asia Pacific Region of World Bank Group has a workforce in 20 countries. The regional team has the daunting task of training global staff in an efficient manner. Since World Bank knowledge workers are also mobile and tech savvy, moving training to a virtual classroom that can be accessed on a laptop or mobile device was a logical solution.

Training for sales professionals at global pharmaceutical firm is robust, thorough, and frequent. However, the training curriculum of its marketing staff, who were being asked to be its commercial leaders, creating and delivering on business objectives and strategies as well as leading salespeople, was almost non-existent. Fixing this multi-layered challenge wouldn’t be as simple as implementing new training for marketers. Because so little training had existed previously, the company needed to change its culture to take its marketers’ attitudes from “why training?” to “I want more training!”

I’ve often heard managers tell me that they have a course they like that meets their requirements, but it isn’t what they wanted or envisioned. I find myself asking “If it is what you asked for, but not what you wanted, why didn’t you ask for what you wanted?” This problem exists in many forms. The results can range from a disappointed client to the world losing the next great idea, all because we don’t always know how to ask for what we really want in our products.

We have all experienced huge courses, documents, and texts that are barely manageable by the instructional designer. In fact, much of how we design courses and even our documents makes it impossible for an employee to find the one piece of information they need at the time they need it. Since content is so dense, it makes finding meaningful information difficult, and it makes tracking anything useful in it even more difficult.

Rapid instructional development tools provide us with the ability to add narration and text-to-speech to eLearning courses, but many instructional designers aren’t using the audio medium to its full potential. Bringing quality audio design together with engaging stories can transform a click-and-read presentation into an immersive experience.

In today’s training departments, a learning management system is a usually a necessary technology for organizations that utilize eLearning. However, these systems can be expensive, especially for organizations with minimal budgets. Finding low cost learning management system options that still provide the needed features for organizational learning can be a challenge.

Gamification is the integration of game mechanics, or game dynamics, into a learning experience. Game-based training can be defined as a game designed for the purpose of solving a problem. However, these words are being used in parallel by the industry and it can be quite confusing.

The two goals of any eLearning program are to teach learners new information and then to enable them to transfer their new knowledge into their work. Learning transfer is a complex process, and most eLearning designers do not understand the simple steps that they can take to ensure that knowledge does transfer from the computer where the learners learn it to the work place where they need it.

Flat design seems to be everywhere now. It’s the new look of our computer operating systems, our apps, websites, posters, book covers, and so many other places. Is this just a new fad or is this a fabulous new design trend that we in the eLearning industry need to pay more attention to in order to understand the fine points of flat design?

Instructional designers and eLearning professionals are often faced with the daunting task of designing learning interventions to meet the needs of multiple stakeholders quickly and effectively. Many eLearning solutions are perceived as boring, ineffective, or incapable of meeting learning goals effectively, leaving designers with an uphill battle to sell new ideas and concepts to colleagues. Even strong concepts and well-designed projects face barriers and challenges.

Technological advances disrupt the status quo. We’ve seen this happen a number of times in the way we address learning and performance interventions. In the last few decades, the emergence of home computers brought us eLearning, and the proliferation of mobile and smartphones have brought us mLearning. Both of these technological advances have fundamentally changed how we look at learning and performance programs. Another technological advance is coming—one that will once again change some of our definitions and how we address performance issues: wearable technology.

eLearning has a broken feedback loop, and it’s holding us back as a field. Because we usually can’t see our products being used, we lack the most basic information necessary to improve what we do. Traditional evaluation at best is costly and difficult to measure, and at worst either ignored all together or implemented in such a superficial way that it’s meaningless. Even good evaluation measures are not granular enough to inform future design decisions.

Learning to leverage the specific tools and capabilities in mobile devices can be challenging for eLearning developers. Effective mLearning goes beyond converting traditional eLearning for use on mobile and actually applies techniques of responsive design and maximizes technologies like geolocation and gestural inputs to become authentic mobile learning.  

Your course users demand more quality and sophistication in the eLearning content they interact with. A growing expectation is for attractive eLearning content that is close to virtual reality with 3-D animated and interactive content. Interactive 3-D content can help teach more effectively, and make the courses more attractive and competitive. But is it worth the effort and the costs?

There’s an increasing awareness of the value of social learning in the workplace. Knowing that it exists is one thing; creating the scaffolding and support that allows people to capture, categorize, retrieve, and share what they learn is something else entirely.

Modern eLearning courses are technology solutions developed and implemented using many of the same techniques and tools that software developers use. Both share similar challenges: subject matter experts to navigate, aggressive deadlines to manage, assorted files and assets to organize, and an integrated approach to delivery, accounting for various hosting and browsing systems plus ongoing user support.

Currently, a lot of eLearning can be defined as a high-level PowerPoint presentation that includes animated text, images, and narration. The problem is that this type of eLearning doesn’t grab and hold the learner’s attention. Many times the learner can’t relate to what is being presented to them, or understand how they can apply it to future situations.

There is no definitive process for instructional design. Regardless of how much research we conduct, we can modify every theory and every process to meet our individual project needs. Modifying these needs and/or techniques becomes much easier when facilitating live, instructor-led training where learners provide both verbal and visual feedback. When it comes to eLearning, there is no facilitator available to modify the experience based on feedback. Therefore, instructional design plays a key role in determining the success of any training experience.

As you start to explore the Experience API (xAPI), it is easy to feel intimidated. If you lack the necessary coding skills to build a solution from the ground up, taking advantage of xAPI might not be possible without outside help since being able to prototype a solution is critical to the success of your project. Successful prototypes can help show what data is important and what changes you could make before creating a final product for release.

We’ve all been there—as a participant in a one-way, presentation-only style webinar. Presenters may know how to click through a series of slides, but that type of session isn’t very engaging to the learner. Also, although Adobe Connect is one of the most popular platforms for live online learning, it’s also one of the more complicated to learn to use its full feature set.

Instructional designers tend to define what is possible by the limitations of our chosen authoring tools. We remove ideas like responsive courses from consideration because our authoring tool does support the capability. Sometimes common modern web practices don’t always transfer over to eLearning authoring tools until it is too late. Why not take control over what you can do in your eLearning authoring by building it yourself?