Ashley Chiasson, M.Ed

When developing courses, I tend to take the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) approach. There’s no point overcomplicating things that some may already find complicated.

Tip #1 – Put yourself in your learner’s shoes. While you might be the Subject Matter Expert (SME), try to present information in a meaningful way, avoiding industry jargon at all costs. When a course isn’t successful, often times the issue is in the structure and presentation of the course, not the ability of the learners.

Tip #2 – Engage the learners my providing concrete examples that may allow learners to activate their prior knowledge as a foundation for new learning opportunities.

Tip #3 – CHUNK CONTENT. The last thing a learner needs is to spend hours scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling through content.

Tip #5 – Be concise. I don’t think I can emphasize this point enough – maybe I could make a marquee banner? Learners likely spend a lot of their time scrolling through PDFs and reading textbooks or other course materials. Value your learner’s time by concisely structuring your content. Doing this will also allow you to easily chunk your content.

Tip #6 – Provide assessment opportunities coupled with meaningful feedback. Learners want to know they’re on the right track. If you allow them to apply their knowledge through assessment opportunities, you open up a door to provide them with meaningful feedback, which will likely contribute to higher academic achievement and learner satisfaction.

Tip # 7 – Add appropriate media. This is tricky because everyone has a different idea about what might be considered ‘appropriate media’. What I mean by this is engaging the learner with multimedia, when appropriate. For example, you’re teaching an individual about car doors and how they can open and close. For this example, a side-by-side static graphic of the car door open and then the car door closed would be sufficient. Creating an animation to illustrate this may enhance engagement, but is not necessary to meet the learning objective.

Tip #8 – Be smart about your use of audio. I’d like to think that most folks can use their heads here and make good judgement calls, but I’ve worked on projects where the client requested, and truly believed it was necessary, to have 1.5 minutes of audio narration for an animation lasting 45 seconds (cut to a classroom of sobbing learners). Use audio when it makes sense. You might explain a procedure in detail in the onscreen text, but in the audio you should paraphrase the procedural steps to line up with what’s happening in the onscreen media.

I was reading some publications by David Kelly this weekend, and I stumbled upon Which Technologies are Changing the Way People Learn? In particular, there was one passage from this article that really made me reflect on the way learning has evolved through the years:

The era of “push” is ending. People no longer have to wait to be spoon-fed the information they need to do their jobs. We live in an era of self-service, where people expect to be able to do things in their own way, without needing assistance. This is the future of organizational learning.

With the emergence and growth of the Internet, information on (nearly) any topic imaginable is easily accessible. Furthermore, organizations are busy, and what could be more helpful than e-learning resources to facilitate the completion of a task and/or learning experiences?!

Organizations, particularly those which tend to have higher turn over rates, may benefit immensely from the implementation of such resources, as they will serve to decrease the amount of time and resources spent on training, and may also serve to enhance employee satisfaction and retention. Even if not used as formal training resources, e-learning modules can enhance operational efficiency by allowing staff to easily locate necessary information, without having to spend time searching the Internet or asking colleagues for assistance. For example, e-learning modules developed and sold with packaged software, can often allow employees to troubleshoot issues encountered with the software instead of spending time talking to a help desk professional. Such resources may provide organizations with a streamlined operational approach, leaving the potential for increased efficiency, productivity, and profitability.

Kelly (2013) confirms this concept by explaining how learning has become embedded into work, and if employers are leveraging available technologies to provide their employees with a repository of resources to solve common problems or to address training needs, these employers are ensuring that their employees can effectively do their jobs with minimal interruption to work.

Learning will only continue to evolve – What are your thoughts on the future of learning?

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Alright – Learning Solutions 2014 Conference and Expo!

Sadly, I will not be attending this year because I have several contracts on the go; however, I plan to attend in 2015. What I’m most sad about missing is the sunny weather and the unending list of concurrent sessions I would have loved to attend. My top picks include:

• Variables and Advanced Actions in Adobe Captivate by Yewande Daniele-Ayoade – This would have been a great Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL) to enhance my current Adobe Captivate knowledge base.
• Professional Portfolio Primer: Build, Brand, and Empower Your Career by John DiMarco – It’s always great to encourage professional development and expand your career, so this would have been a nice primer as portfolios can be incredibly powerful.
• How to Convince your Manager or Stakeholders to Adopt Virtual Classroom Tools and Training by Karen Hyder – This will be a great session for anyone struggling with convincing anyone else of the impending need and demand of e-learning. Sometimes it can be a tricky sell, but the benefits are huge!
• Quick and Dirty Needs Assessment 101 by Brad Minor – I once conducted some very detailed research on needs assessments, and feel my research made me a bit jaded, so I feel like some quick and dirty tips would do well to restore my faith 😛

In addition to the concurrent sessions, I am most sad about missing out on two certificate programs in particular:

• The Accidental Instructional Designer by Cammy Bean – I’ve been reading Cammy’s blog for awhile now and admire her. Because my own path to Instructional Design has been paved accidentally, it would have been great to attend this program.
• Using Advanced Features of Articulate Storyline to Build Complex Learning Modules by Ron Price – As I work extensively within Articulate Storyline, this would have been a great program to attend in order to leverage my full potential within the tool – maybe next year!

The conference is fast approaching, and I look forward to reading everyone’s conference updates next month – have fun!