Most people in the learning and development field didn’t choose the profession because of a deep love for statistics, and few have ready access to data scientists for consultation. But the availability of an ever-growing body of data highlights the value of a fundamental understanding of data collection and analysis. Learning data will only provide valuable, actionable information if curated and evaluated strategically.

You live and work in a world of democratized video production. What once required hired professionals, specialized work, and thousands of dollars can now be accomplished by self-taught amateurs in hours with little to no resources beyond what’s already in their pockets. Video technology is ubiquitous. However, many professionals become so preoccupied with whether or not they can make a video that they often don’t stop to think if they should. Too often, this results in the development of ineffective content that doesn’t support user needs, wastes viewers’ time, and sets a poor precedent for the use of video within the organization.

As Cammy Bean states, “Good writing is the single biggest factor that can make the difference between an eLearning program that bores people to death and one that gets them to pay attention.” Yet many eLearning scripts are written in large part by subject matter experts whose prose is wordy and lifeless. Developers of eLearning must often revise the scripts and storyboards of subject matter experts, most of whom are not skilled writers and who often think everything they have written should be included in the course. It can be a frustrating and time-intensive experience to revise such prose—unless you know certain techniques.

Many client training models are geared to an onsite visit that compacts training into a deluge of information and often does not allow for the interaction of the client to effectively make the change they need to make. Many learning professionals are confronted with the problem of delivering instruction to clients or others who have a hard time understanding the process, the system implications, and the specifics of the content that is being delivered.

From its inception, distance learning at Infectious Diseases Institute (IDI) has covered three priority areas: creating distance learning and blended learning courses, providing post-training support for IDI alumni, and integrating education technology tools into face-to-face courses. However, IDI has faced the significant challenge of battling an environment where prospective trainees have little-to-no access to fast, reliable Internet. To deliver full-fledged, online courses, IDI has used the open-source software Poodle.

Anyone with a camera can post learning content on YouTube, but television and other media have raised the expectations of viewers, who demand highly engaging, interactive content. If it isn’t immediately relevant to their task at hand, they’ll click onto something else. At the same time, corporate budgets are tight, so instructional designers have to find creative ways to produce high-quality, professional content on a budget.

The learning and talent development consulting field has been growing and evolving over the last 15-plus years. With more professionals deciding to become consultants, there are underlying issues that arise and interfere with the day-to-day life of the consultant. Issues can include: finding opportunities to consult, knowing how to price one’s services, invoicing and getting paid, managing client expectations, negotiating changes to the work while it’s in progress, and protecting one’s own intellectual property when licensing it to clients.

Adopting the discipline of an embedded performance support (EPS) strategy has become an increasing imperative for many organizations. EPS remains a curiosity for many more wrapped in the question: “How do we get there?” Answering that question requires a long, hard look at whether the organization is ready to go there, or if they are in a state of readiness to go there.

There are many function and design issues to consider before beginning to build your online course, and it’s often tempting to begin by downloading a template to save time on the front end by eliminating layout and style decisions. There are many advantages to using templates, but there are a few things to consider, including how to implement the template once it’s created and/or customized.

Gamification is a hot topic, but where is the research to back up the use of gamification? Anyone interested in gamification for learning will be interested in seeing empirical results to be better informed about whether or not gamification is appropriate for their learning environment.

Boring page turner eBooks—often created just to get content out to learners—can be taken to a new level with engaging, interactive iBooks Author books. Learners should be engaged with a review or game to help them learn content by doing, instead of just reading.

Virtual training participants notoriously multi-task during live online sessions, which means they miss out on learning opportunities. In addition, there is a common misconception that an online presentation is the same thing as virtual training—it’s not. So virtual classroom designers and facilitators struggle to know how to capture the attention of their audience and keep participants engaged throughout a session so that learning transfer can occur.

Prior to the integration of its learning information sites into the common learning portal (CLP), the National Park Service (NPS) had over 25 different sites for its various learning programs. This made finding learning information complex for its workforce of over 20,000 employees. Navigation required knowledge of the URLs at various sites and each site had different navigation tools and varied widely in appearance. In addition, social learning opportunities in the form of communities were scattered among various commercial sites.

Have you ever gotten way too much content for a module, but you still tried to squeeze it all in? Do subject matter experts (SMEs) give you too much content and refuse to cut any away, because it’s all important? Do you wish you could just do small modules, knowing it is better for your audience, especially in today’s world of short attention spans and busy participants? You may often get content that others think is easy to put into a module, but there is a better way to please the SMEs and give your audience the best experience.

You’re excited about the promise of the xAPI-enabled world, but you’ve still got a learning management system (LMS) and a host of SCORM-based courses that you need. But what if you could get the most out of both a LMS and a learning record store (LRS) at the same time?