eLearning Best Practices

Instructional Design It’s not about what they need to know. It’s about what they need to do. Let them know what’s in it for them. Make the narrative human. Avatars make the course more human and more emotionally approachable. Let the learner explore on their own. Let them freely navigate on their own. Make them ...

Interactivity, Instructional Interactions, and Performance Interactions

There is a difference between the traditional “levels of interactivity” for asynchronous e-learning and interactions. Actually, they are very different. Interactivity Levels of interactivity are usually used during the Request for Proposal (RFP) and Proposal stages of business development/sales/contracting to figure out scope and pricing for an e-learning project. Based on my experience, I use ...

It’s Time We Think About Assessments

Tell–>Test, Tell–>Test, Tell–>Test. Next–>Next–>Next–>Next–>Quiz. This is traditional e-Learning and I disagree with it.  It’s a passive and punishment model.  First, you passively read/watch/listen to content, then you get a superfluous test on it, usually multiple-choice.  I hate multiple choice, matching, true/false, drag and drop, pull-down menu quizzes. I think they miss the mark for several ...

Learning Objectives—Yes, No, Maybe 1

I hate Learning Objectives.  Yes, they are a necessary evil.  Yes, they do help shape and mold the learning experience.  Sometimes they do this well, sometimes they completely miss the mark.  Yes, we should ban forever the verbs “learn” and “understand” from our learning objective writing. Why are the necessary?  Because, when done well, they ...