The Internet is a terrific knowledge repository. The sheer size of the content stored on the web is unimaginable. Within organizational intranets, the amount of content that is available is also impressive, but is it good content? Is it the right content for the right purpose? Is it up to date? Is it understandable? The more you have to ask these questions about online content, the less efficient your search for the right information will be. Even more of a concern is that you might be more likely to find bad content, act on it (believing it is correct), and suffer the consequences.

Modern adult learners don’t always have time to learn in a classroom; they need engaging mobile learning solutions that can be accessed anywhere and at any time. Teaching through podcasting can allow organizations to package training in a manner that is appealing to learners and easy to consume. On-demand narrative audio can allow learners to gain important skills while on the go.

Virtual reality technology is here and getting better every day. Still, there are a variety of different types of virtual reality platforms that all present different pros and cons for use in training. With technology evolving so quickly, learning professionals need to stay informed of what options are available today, what will be available tomorrow, and what VR means for the future of immersive learning.

Content that’s unclear. Links that don’t work. Buttons that aren’t aligned. These things can distract from your eLearning course. You want to make sure your course is good, but if you aren’t careful, you could spend more time in review cycles than it took you to design and build it in the first place. How do you strike a balance between thorough review and your time and cost constraints?

Training professionals work hard to help train employees and produce meaningful behavior change within organizations. But modern cognitive science shows that, in spite of their efforts, people forget most of what they learn. Research indicates startling facts about retention: Within only an hour, people forget 50 percent of what they just learned. A week later, that number jumps to an astonishing 90 percent.

Every revolution requires both dreamers and pragmatists. The xAPI dreamers have been painting a beautiful picture of what is becoming possible. To realize its full potential, the pragmatists need to catch up. The xAPI needs a very specific set of work completed to be successful, and it needs organizations to participate in making the next generation of learning systems and impacts possible.

American Honda Motor Company identified a need to create a consistent and credible customer service experience for a highly technical product—across all employee skill and experience levels. Service employees were not uniformly educating customers, leading to potential lost sales and lower customer satisfaction.

More advanced, nonlinear projects often call for more advanced solutions. In cases such as these, Storyline’s built-in triggers and logic system often lead to an unwieldy and difficult-to-manage course. Using JavaScript in conjunction with Storyline’s built-in triggers and variables, you can greatly expand Storyline’s capabilities while reducing the overall effort.

Many eLearning professionals are attempting to use gamification and serious games to spark employee engagement and drive learning retention; it seems everyone is working to make the best serious game that will enhance learning objectives and retention. The biggest setbacks for some have been little to no planning, tough-to-pinpoint metrics, little to no implementation strategy, and insufficient or nonexistent post-deployment support.

What happens when your current eLearning development tool and your LMS are not enough (and they often are not)? With myriad tools and platforms available, being married to one or only a few is not wise, nor does it provide you the flexibility to create dynamic learning opportunities.

PowerPoint is the basis for much of the training material you design and use, and yet it’s text-heavy, dull, and boring. That switches people off, and they don’t learn anything. It’s poorly used for in-person training, dreadful in webinars, and deathly when converted to eLearning. Quite simply, you can’t keep using PowerPoint like this. You can do better.

Do you have a subject matter expert (SME) who makes everything more difficult than it needs to be? How about the SME who just doesn’t seem to grasp the work you’re doing together? Or the SME whose idea of dates and deadlines is not at all aligned with the project needs? It isn’t their fault. SMEs are a vital part of the process, and of whether or not the project is a success. However, they don’t always understand that fact because, of course, they already have a “day job.” It is your job to build the plan, communicate it well, and stay on top of the details so they don’t have to.

Virtual reality (VR) is a new tool that has the potential to drastically change the way people view and implement training and development. In generations to come, people will use virtual reality like social media is used today. This is the future of how people will learn. But today, this technology may seem too complicated and unattainable for many organizations to implement into their learning portfolios.

Large-scale system transformation initiatives are challenging at the best of times. But when you factor in a rollout that involves restructuring, growing existing operations, and establishing new franchise owners to enable strategic expansion and remarkable customer service as part of the initiative, they become substantially more complex. In 2013, Coca-Cola faced this very issue in North America when it needed to replace outdated systems with a common enterprise solution. With an accelerated plan to transition more than 60,000 users to a new operating solution, this initiative required innovative approaches to train and support users rapidly and efficiently.