Learning professionals all struggle to measure the transfer of skill from the classroom to the job, especially with geographically dispersed learners. Designers need advice on how to solve this measurement challenge and involve managers in the solution. How do you observe and assess your remote employees performing critical job competencies?

The use of badges, points, leaderboards, and other concepts that are commonly found in games have enthusiastically been incorporated into online training by instructional specialists hoping to create a more engaging and motivational learning experience for end users. But is the gamification of learning actually yielding the results that warrant the hype?

New eLearning instructional designers often hear about the need to incorporate interaction into courses and the power of effective simulations. Some find it difficult to get started and the examples they find give a basic tree structure but do not explain how to develop the tree into a full simulation. What can you do if you are feeling overwhelmed and don’t know how to implement the best practices you are learning about?

Writing is an underdiscussed aspect of instructional design. In fact, many people get into the field without realizing that writing is a significant part of a learning designer’s job. It is difficult to do it well, and learning designers may be required to write in at least 10 different forms that involve unique styles. Yet there is no single source of instruction for writing in all of these styles.

Most corporate and adult continuing education eLearning courses include audio tracks, mostly as voiceover, but also for animated characters. As a result, many eLearning professionals find themselves writing audio scripts as part of their work. What are the skills needed to produce better audio?

Habits—the automatic, unconscious behaviors we undertake daily—have historically been viewed as a negative. However, habits, and how they form, have become a hot topic in fields like health care, management, and energy conservation. Positive habit building can have a major impact on organizations and individuals. And app developers are leveraging smart devices as digital support tools for habit formation.

Curation is a term that is becoming more and more common in the learning field. Unfortunately, most people do not understand what curation is, why curation is important, how it will impact their role, and how to leverage it for their organization. And yet it is a critical future competency for those in the field.

Many training videos are not compelling; too many are just shot against a beige cinderblock wall. Video must be visually compelling to hold the viewer’s attention, but most video producers don’t know what tools and techniques are available, or think that they are too expensive.

Taking a hands-on technology class and providing it online can be tough. How do you keep the interactivity of the course? How do you transform the exercises? How do you make the lecture parts engaging enough? When an online session can match the effectiveness of its ILT counterpart, you can reach more learners, lower travel costs, and even generate revenue.

Intellectual property law affects every stage of the development process. Yet it is daunting and complex. Trying to gain a working knowledge can be overwhelming. As a result, decision making is rooted in ignorance, fear, or frustration, none of which contributes to project goals. The continuing struggle to quickly develop content may lead you to infringe on someone else’s work, expose your work to an unpleasant legal action, or miss out on using free media to enhance your projects.

How do we enable learners to practice and improve their ability to respond appropriately in a conversational context? Obvious examples for conversational training are: people who are learning a new language, new hires in call centers or in customer service, or trainees in the hospitality industry. While person-to-person conversational training is ideal, the time available for individual training in person-to-person settings is often limited.

Do you feel stuck in a rut because of outdated learning methods and the limitations imposed on you by your learning management system? You’re not alone. Today’s learning methods and technologies are not adapting quickly enough to keep up with the evolving needs of organizations and the entry of millennials into the mainstream workforce. Though there are many stand-alone technologies available, it can be challenging to know how to organize the various tools under one over-arching learning strategy.

As a learning leader, you want to build a world class learning model. But the problem is you need executive support, funding, IT support, etc. A learning ecosystem that satisfies today’s learner requires changing the conversation with all the stakeholders.

By now, learning professionals are likely convinced that curation should be one of their skill sets, and many articles have offered them advice on essential tools and the qualities of good curation. But the articles assume that everyone knows how to search for material on the Internet and how to find and vet a solid set of learning resources to recommend. It’s usually not as easy as typing keywords into the search box and picking a couple of items off the first few pages of results.