How to Effectively Work With Subject Matter Experts In my many years as an instructional systems designer (ISD), I’ve learned about a lot of other jobs in a number of different industries. I started out at a company that focused on government defense and have gone on to projects in automotive, utilities, medical technology, healthcare, […]
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Don’t Just Train, Give Learners an Adventure! Consider this training request scenario: Learning need: A new business process, along with new software, is to be rolled out to employees within a company division. Challenge: The employees must transition to the process at software go-live, three months from now. The software is currently being customized to […]
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Best Practices for Doing Compliance Training Right I know what you’re thinking, “Not another blog about compliance. What more is there to say? Compliance training must be done, so just do it!” But pause a minute… this idea of “just do it” is why compliance training often ends up being so unpalatable. Because it typically […]
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Seek Many Voices When Designing Solutions Imagine you’re an instructional designer (ID) charged with creating e-learning to teach a work process. Which one of the following is the best way to determine the course content? Obtain relevant information from the subject matter expert (SME) Imagine what you would want to know yourself Observe an exemplary […]
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Feedback: An Essential Element for Performance Improvement Feedback: Love it or leave it? Do you like receiving it, do you like giving it, or are you okay without it? Do you know which types of feedback improve performance? I think we can agree that feedback is critical in attempts to improve employee job performance. Whether you […]
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Not Quite E-Learning But More Than a Job Aid One of my first learning industry projects was in the late ‘90s, when printed PowerPoint facilitator guides and corresponding participant guides were all the rage. Within 10 years, e-learning had replaced many instructor-led training (ILT) sessions, which makes sense when you think about it, and why […]
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Increase Engagement in Learning Solutions by Respecting Learner Characteristics Maybe you’ve seen the Salesforce commercial: Matthew McConaughey, dressed as an astronaut but piloting a hot air balloon, tells us “It’s not time to escape, it’s time to engage!” A very thinly veiled poke at certain billionaire tech giants, it asserts that we don’t need to […]
Read MoreBe Responsive and Effective Can you have short, breezy learning opportunities that your learners take whenever and wherever they want that won’t make the training gods cringe? Now more than ever, learners don’t want to spend hours sitting through synchronous learning. They also don’t want to read volumes of text or sit through a lengthy […]
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Relevant, Meaningful Content Creates Great Learning Experiences According to a Gallup Global Emotions survey, people are experiencing a record amount of stress in their lives with 40 percent saying that they experience stress during most of their day. You can say that it’s because of the pandemic or that it’s the result of social polarization, […]
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The Danger of Describe If you’ve worked with me recently and turned in performance or learning objectives starting with “Describe…” you’ve most definitely gotten feedback from me questioning your choice. If you work with me sometime soon, you’ll know this is one of my pet peeves and be prepared for the questions! Yes, I do […]
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