There have been some big developments in the eLearning space this year, with lots of new tools and technologies to play with. I’ve noticed some really interesting trends and observations this year, so I thought I’d take some time out to share my top five in this blog post.
I purchased the Scenario Design Toolkit by Cathy Moore a little while ago; it’s been something I’ve been dipping in and out of alongside reading Instructional Story Design by Rance Greene and Scenario-Based eLearning by Ruth Clark. I’ve finally completed the toolkit and wanted to share some of my initial thoughts.
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My hunger for podcasts started when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which coincided with my “couch to 5k” challenge. I quickly got bored of listening to music and struggled to find new albums to really get into. In this blog post I share my experiences with podcasts; listening and developing and the pros and cons.
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During my transition from IT techie to education nerd, I stumbled across a trusty three-pronged question which has stuck with me.
What are you doing? Why are you doing it? What does this help you do that’s important?
Since becoming a contractor, I’ve found it difficult to give myself a job title. Technically I run my own business, so I could be director, but who is a director of 1? Seriously? (although fingers crossed for future expansion) I could just be a Contractor, but that doesn’t really describe my actual job. I’ve done some consulting work…so I could use Consultant. I’m mostly an E-Learning Developer, Instructional Designer, sometimes a Trainer….WHAT AM I!
As a learning designer, a lot of decisions I make around content placement and inclusion are based on reducing cognitive load. Many instructional design strategies, for example chunking, are based on Cognitive Load Theory. In this post I look at the definitions of congitive load and outline some strategies to prevent your learners having a meltdown.
I was recently reading a blog post by one of my favourite e-learning developers when the topic of “learning styles” was mentioned. The blog post wasn’t about learning styles, but the author made a passing comment about their learning style and the way they learn best. In this blog post, I explore why learning styles are really just learning preferences.
Elearning courses are unique; some are filled with multimedia whilst others contain simple animations and a few pieces of text. Choosing the right strategy for an elearning course should be based on the learners needs, pedagogy and the learning outcomes.
For example, if I were creating a piece of elearning where the objective was “After this course, the learner should be able to Install Windows 10” then the best method for this would be step-by-step guides, simulation or a video tutorial.
However, sometimes it’s not always possible to create the right training if you are constrained by time, money and resources. There can also be security or licensing constraints. In this post, I will be talking about levels of learning interaction, when they work and when they don’t work.
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Creating learning objectives can be tricky, especially if you are new to the task or don’t have a subject matter expert on hand to help. It’s a skill that comes with practice and when written badly, can affect the learning experience.
Learning something new requires us to understand subject knowledge or know how to perform a skill. When it comes to learning objectives, it’s important to provide the learner with a baseline to assess their knowledge and understanding – so they can work out if they really “know” or “understand” the subject or skill.
Let’s examine this in more detail with a couple of examples.
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In the past, before I really knew what instructional design was, I worked with a few 3rd party contractors. After becoming an instructional designer myself, I realised that there is one aspect of the job that many instructional designers don’t talk about – learning theory. Learning theory is a key element of developing a successful elearning solution and it is often confused with instructional design models.
When learning theory is combined with an instructional model, it provides the basis for which you create your learning strategy – the “how do we get there.” In this blog post I will attempt to deconstruct some of smoke and mirrors behind instructional design. Continue reading