When it comes to accurately identifying skill strengths and gaps in a team, many organizations struggle. Typically these decisions are gut-driven rather than based in analytics, and as a result, they often aren’t as effective as they could be. While many organizations want these decisions to be more data-based, it’s not uncommon for them to not know how or where to pull the data needed to create the most successful teams possible.

Page-turners, cluttered slides, click Next to continue, and complex menus. These are all words and phrases that you’ll often hear when your users and colleagues discuss what’s frustrating about eLearning. If your users can’t easily navigate through your content or can’t find what they need exactly when they need it, that means they can miss some, or even all, of your important content. The good news is, you can calm that clutter and inconsistency with great UI design.

Technology continues to advance rapidly, changing how we live and interact with the world around us. Today’s learning professionals face the challenge of staying ahead of this curve and tracking the technologies that are shaping the future of organizational learning, while at the same time recognizing technologies that may be more of a passing fad.

There has been a lot of hype around games for learning. As a result, games are increasingly used in L&D, but many of these games simply target low-level learning using frames such as Jeopardy or Concentration and have only had minimal impact. There is a need to maximize the value from this approach, and to do this you need to design games that support learning objectives and apply proven instructional methods. And to do this well, you need to understand what the research says about the instructional value of games.

There is some debate about whether personas (or learner profiles, as they’re more commonly known in L&D) are a help or a hindrance. Some argue that personas can end up being a representation of what designers wish their users were like, rather than a true reflection of the users, or that they create distance between designers and users. But others push back on this idea, stating that—when used thoughtfully—personas can increase your empathy for the people you’re designing for, allowing you to keep your work tightly focused on the real needs of your audience and to craft the most effective experiences for them.

The cost of copyright confusion can affect every stage of the development and delivery process. How much does fear or avoidance inform your decision-making when it comes to finding and using online media? Have you missed out on using fabulous free resources because you weren’t (or your organization wasn’t) sure whether you had the rights to use them? Have you seen others accidentally infringe on someone else’s work because of a misunderstanding about fair use? Copyright can seem like a daunting or boring topic to learn—but it doesn’t have to be.

More and more people are learning online, independently and at different times. However, in much of the knowledge transfer that occurs, the “learning” is still passed from person to person through social learning. But in L&D it’s not enough to simply bring people together, facilitate learning, and hope for the best. You’ll want to know whether this social learning is effective and how it impacts performance on the job.

U.S. News and World Report named alternative credentials one of the top five education trends to watch in 2017. IBM and Microsoft are leading this trend by offering career-oriented training and learning pathways, as an alternative to traditional universities and in partnership with universities worldwide. Learners who demonstrate knowledge and competency earn open badges that are easily shared to job sites and professional networks like LinkedIn.

Organizational learning is increasingly becoming a blend of multiple assets from a wide variety of resources. How do you combine YouTube videos, a learning vendor course, an SME white paper and PowerPoint, an internal presentation recording, conference proceedings, and other resources into an effective learner experience that you can track and report on? The simple answer is to use a learning stack with a content aggregation front end. But what does that mean?

Caterpillar has a proud history of working with independent dealers to distribute and service its machinery and equipment. However, delivering consistent customer service through a network of global dealers is a huge challenge. Recognizing the need to focus on people development, they decided to build a technology ecosystem that would modernize dealer learning and development on mobile, provide seamless collaboration and communication, and supply real-time data and insights.

Screencasting is a great way to deliver software training, but that’s not the only use for this approach to multimedia creation. What about using it to create internal production resources by documenting your own development processes? Or how about leveraging it to create other video resources, like a reusable eLearning asset library? There is a wide range of other uses for screencasting that you may never have thought of, and incorporating these uses can make a real difference in your daily workflow.

Audiences today expect richer multimedia in their online experiences. As a result, it seems like producing videos, podcasts, animation, interactive video, or some other sort of multimedia is on every eLearning team’s mind. However, few are ready to launch into production without first building their knowledge about producing effective multimedia, much less submit a request for video and audio equipment or software without having a good plan in place.

Shrinking budgets and constrained resources have made it more important than ever to make the most of the resources you have when designing learning experiences. Thankfully, the increasing availability of cloud-based applications and other free tools makes it easier than ever to create and develop learning experiences that don’t have to cost a bundle.