Can eLearning Help Change Behaviour?

As part of judging entries for the Brandon Hall Awards this year, I encountered an elearning module that attempted to teach the company’s sales people its new service orientation and its service oriented products. The elearning module was very well made, full of videos (actually it was practically a ‘video-based-training’ disguised as elearning) with very well written script and extremely professional production quality. The script and production quality was so good that I would have been proud of the product if it had been made by my team. I went…

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Why is Audience Analysis Required?

A worldwide survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was:"Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food shortage in the rest of the world?"The survey was a huge failure:In Africa they didn't know what 'food' meant,In India they didn't know what 'honest' meant,In Europe they didn't know what 'shortage' meant,In China they didn't know what 'opinion' meant,In the Middle East hey didn't know what 'solution' meant,In South America they didn't know what 'please' meant,And in the USA they didn't know what 'the rest…

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Rapid Instructional Design with Thiagi

I came across this video of Thiagi speaking at UMBC Training Forum. This is a longish video, about an hour and 40 minutes, but thoroughly enjoyable. Thiagi is at is irreverent best as always. Definitely worth the time to go through the video fully.Here’re some of the things he talks about in the video. What is contextualized learning? Learning that takes place in the real world to achieve objectives with real world relevance. He gives the example of a course with a mid-term evaluation as a non-contextual learning example. Content…

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Unofficial Salary Survey of eLearning/Content Development Jobs – 2008

Update: See 2009 elearning and content development salary data here.Last year I initiated the unofficial salary survey for elearning and content development jobs in India on my blog. I invited responses as comments on my blog post. The post got 10 unique responses. While the number of responses were not enough to consolidate and provide any trends, what was apparent was that the elearning salary range in India is quite varied. One year down the line, it will be interesting to know what’s the situation now. What are the salaries…

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Engaging, Interactive – Engaging First Amongst Equals

Clive Shepherd writes in defense of page turners and I agree. It is not that page turners as such are boring but the way content is written and presented makes it boring. And the same could well happen to content with high level of interactivity. To me content in any form needs to be engaging. Engaging content is more important than interactive content. I tell my team Harry Potter book is engaging, and it doesn’t have an iota of interactivity. In my personal learning environment, I read many blogs. None…

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Instructional Design – Art or ADDIE

Clive Shepherd makes a case for successive approximation in his recent blog post. Makes sense, after all, most learning professionals in the industry are arguing that ADDIE is not relevant today.I have always thought that as a method, the E looped back to A in ADDIE. Clive talks about how those who work in classroom could teach instructional designers a thing or two. But aren’t trainers implementing ADDIE model, except perhaps in quick succession? Isn’t putting together a quick and dirty design and then trying it out in the class…

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Instructional Design – If, When and How Much?

Learning Circuit's big question for Feb 2008 Instructional Design - If, When and How Much? seems relevant to the ongoing discussion we've been having in my blog.Starting with Death of the Instructional Designer and continuing in Instructional Designer Competencies.There are many related questions asked in Learning Circuit's big question and it will be interesting to see responses to those.

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Dump the Drone – Cathy Moore

I would like to thank Cathy Moore for making Dump the Drone available on Slideshare. Many of the concepts are drilled into training programs at our organization but I just love the way she presents these ideas. Absolutetly great!!! | View | Upload your own

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Deliver a Presentation like Steve Jobs

Communications coach Carmine Gallo breaks down the ace presenter's latest Macworld keynote. The result? A 10-part framework you can use to wow your own audience. Many of these principles could actually apply in creating an elearning course :-).Carmine Gallo, a business communications coach and Emmy-Award winning former TV journalist, is the author of Fire Them Up! and 10 Simple Secrets of the World's Greatest Business Communicators. He writes his communications column every week.

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