The problem comes down to this: When great training, including great eLearning, comes up against a lousy organizational culture, the culture wins every time. In addition, great technology cannot overcome a bad learning culture. What many organizations fail to grasp is that culture can promote or kill any learning effort, and therefore must be part of the overall learning strategy.

eLearning has a satisfactory set of options if your goal is information delivery or procedural training, but what about creating meaningful eLearning for complex skill development or for the not-so-procedural problems that show up more and more in the workplace? What about creating learning for those situations where your SME can’t tell you what good performance looks like except to say, “Well, you know it when you see it”?

For decades, there was only one dominant learning platform that most training departments used: the learning management system (LMS). However, in recent years the learning platforms landscape has expanded. Not only have LMSs evolved over time, but additional platforms—such as ESNs, LRSs, intranet portals, and EPSSs—are also growing in functionality and popularity for learning and performance. This makes an organization’s decision on learning platforms much more complex, as it’s no longer a discussion of which platform, but which suite of platforms will meet an organization’s needs.

Instructional design remains at the core of all formal learning solutions. However, as the nature of work changes and technology advances rapidly, how is the science and practice of instructional design evolving to answer the bell?

Buzzwords drive the trends that in many ways shape our world, but buzzwords are also problematic by their very nature. What drives a term to buzzword status is when its usage spreads at a much higher rate than understanding of the term. That can lead to misinformation being shared that shifts and often dilutes the perceived meaning of the term. In the L&D industry, there’s one term that fits right into this scenario: microlearning.