Studies show that using audio narration in eLearning lessons is significantly more effective than using on-screen text. However, adding a human voice to lessons increases production time and makes updating lessons difficult. These obstacles might make you consider using text-to-speech or even cause you to forego the use of audio altogether.

Competency-based education within the University of Wisconsin System’s Flexible Option program allows students to demonstrate mastery of a subject area and earn a degree without adhering to a rigid course schedule. This shift in higher education is part of a larger move away from learning measured by seat time or credit hours to an evaluation of learning outcomes.

Authoring, particularly cloud-based, is a growing segment for L&D. With numerous platforms and approaches to consider, having a strong framework with which to source, assess, and evaluate a tool is critical. Selecting the wrong technology for authoring your learning assets can prove costly to the organization and its learners if critical criteria or processes are overlooked or misunderstood.

Video can be a highly effective form of media for learning. However, adding video to an eLearning course has historically been expensive and something that required a large amount of time and skill to create. That’s not the case today, with the tools for creating and editing video becoming both easier to use and less expensive.

Most often an eLearning program will suffer from poor graphics and design, regardless of how well written it is. Poor design reflects negatively on your company, your products, and your professionalism. Design can impact how content is received and how information is trusted. And many times an organization does not have a professionally trained designer on hand to tackle these issues.

Every organization relies on the Internet these days for many things: a public web presence, sales, marketing, customer service, document sharing, research, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and much more. Every time a member of the organization uses the Internet, there is potential for a security breach. As an employer, an employee, and a private individual, nothing that you do on the internet is truly private, and all of your activities can be linked together by observers.

Regardless of your industry or job focus, learning management systems remain the central focus for corporate learning and the foundation upon which most types of traditional, informal, social, and mobile learning is built, deployed, and tracked. With numerous industry analysts announcing the death of the LMS, you can't afford to miss this critical update for today’s learning leaders, business decision makers, LMS administrators, and learners of all types.

Video is an increasingly used and powerful tool for performance support. Incorporating video into a responsive performance support project, however, can be daunting. How to use it, which tools are best, and when to use video are just some of the decisions to be made.

Subject matter experts (SMEs) are the lifeline of our work as instructional designers, trainers, and facilitators of learning. They bring the content to life and provide both relevance and context. Our goal should be to ensure the working relationship is the best that it can be. However, we are often speaking different languages to each other, causing the instructional design process—and, more importantly, communication—to break down. 

The traditional lecture-based classroom format of corporate training can be time consuming, inefficient, and costly. A number of companies have switched to an eLearning model, which is much more cost effective but can be a difficult platform to teach concepts that require the higher forms of cognitive learning.

Technical training solutions often lack the rigor that leaders want to see when they are trying to answer the question, “Is our technical field ready?” Even when training activities and resources do require learners to go deep technically and to be challenged, the measure of learners’ readiness is too often based on attendance at an event or consumption of training assets.

Have you ever wondered whether there are special tactics for enhancing memory recall that psychologists are keeping locked away in their ivory towers? Well, such tactics exist! Not only do they exist, but many best practices and techniques can be extrapolated from research, and are entirely accessible to eLearning developers to generate high levels of memory retention.

There’s no doubt that employees of the 21^st century are different. The way they engage in workplace tasks is different. The way they consume content is different. Their brains themselves are different. How do you create a more effective learning solution for people whose brains have been rewired by our quick-change, bite-sized content world? Easy. You simply rewire the whole learning experience.

Technology has completely changed the way we live, work, and learn. Technology has brought us the Internet, smartphones, tablets, and many more tools that have changed our lives forever. Of course, these same technologies have also brought us memes like Socially Awkward Penguin, Success Kid, and yes, Grumpy Cat.

The ability to customize content for learners is the best tool in the hands of eLearning authors. Learning is better when you can customize the experience based on learner choices, responses, specialization, and scores achieved in a quiz. It would be even better if you have the ability to serve content to learners based on their location. 

You spend an incredible amount of time designing, developing, and delivering virtual instructor-led training (VILT) or webinar sessions. It can be a challenge to find the time to promote the topics and follow up with participants in a way that keeps the content fresh in participants’ minds without a lot of additional work. Oftentimes, the content and delivery can be reused in a variety of ways along the learning continuum, from generating interest to post-training performance support, without a lot of resources or effort.

When planning to adopt virtual-classroom platforms for learning sessions, successful organizations need a clear idea of what management, design, delivery, and technical issues to consider.

Have you decided to implement a badge program at your organization but are unsure what to do next? Perhaps you are wondering: How do I create the badges? How do I award them? How are the badges displayed? What kind of communications do I send out to those who are awarded badges? How can I promote badges beyond my department? How do I help participants understand the value of badges? Find out how a badge expert used badges to gamify an award-winning developmental math massive open online course at Cuyahoga Community College, and developed a successful badge system for professional development workshops at Kent State University.