When Informal Communication Succeeds: A Tale from the Trenches An interaction catalog: one way to efficiently build great elearning How do you design successful elearning while operating within constraints like budget, time, and resources? As recently discussed on our Learning Dispatch blog, one way is to have a formal template interaction catalog, and consciously ensure that designers and developers operate only within those limits (it can be more creative than it sounds!).[…]
READ MORE about Does Your Elearning Team *Always* Need an Interaction Catalog?Instructional Design
Using Pattern Libraries for Accessible Elearning: Insights from CSUN 2018
Making elearning accessible is the right thing to do. It’s also often a project requirement. Senior Learning Architect Kevin Gumienny shares conference insights from CSUN ATC 2018 on how to include accessibility in your elearning development process. He’ll introduce using pattern libraries for accessible elearning development, explaining how they can make your development process more efficient. CSUN Session Takeaways for Developing Accessible Elearning The 33rd California State University, Northridge Assistive Technology Conference[…]
READ MORE about Using Pattern Libraries for Accessible Elearning: Insights from CSUN 2018Getting Started with Accessible Elearning (and 2018 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference Takeaways)
Accessibility can be huge, and it can be overwhelming if you’re just starting….Where do I start? Well, the answer is you just start wherever you can. Being partially accessible is better than not being accessible at all.” – Kevin Gumienny on getting started with accessible elearning A few days after returning to Austin from the 2018 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in San Diego, Microassist colleagues Vivian Cullipher, content specialist, and Kevin Gumienny, senior[…]
READ MORE about Getting Started with Accessible Elearning (and 2018 CSUN Assistive Technology Conference Takeaways)But What Could *Possibly* Go Wrong? Testing Your Online Course
Testing Your Online Course: How to Evaluate Elearning Functionality before Launching How does testing fit into elearning development? It’s tempting to assume, when an elearning course has been created, that everything will just work. Advancing through the course will perform as expected; when questions are answered, the correct feedback will appear; completion will be properly registered with the user’s account. And yet… Here are some things that I’ve seen go[…]
READ MORE about But What Could *Possibly* Go Wrong? Testing Your Online CourseGame-Based Learning: How to Give Your Learners a Safe Place to Fail
Ethan Edwards of Allen Interactions likes to make the point that we can’t make people learn. You can’t learn someone to do something. You have to create the conditions where they want to bring the information to themselves. And games are a great place to create a sense of engagement. Games create a new world, one with rules that put constraints on actions. In terms of training, this creates a[…]
READ MORE about Game-Based Learning: How to Give Your Learners a Safe Place to FailElearning Development Resources: Develop the Elearning Your Program Deserves
We had a great turnout during our recent webinar, Develop the Elearning Your Project Deserves—for the Training Results You Want. As promised, here are elearning development resources from the webinar, as well as a few extras. We covered a lot of ground in the presentation, so if I’ve missed any resources on any of these elearning subspecialities, please feel free to note it in the comments below. Elearning Development[…]
READ MORE about Elearning Development Resources: Develop the Elearning Your Program DeservesInstructional Designer and Course Developer: One Person or Two?
Why Use Both an Instructional Designer and a Course Developer: Won’t One Person Suffice? Continuing our discussion about roles in a training team, this month we’re looking at the advantages of separating the roles of instructional designer and course developer. It’s pretty common for an elearning development team to have a single person who is responsible for building elearning. They analyze the need for a course, design the course, build the course[…]
READ MORE about Instructional Designer and Course Developer: One Person or Two?Corporate Training Development Tip #2: Draw on Other Fields
Corporate Training Tips & Tricks—Save Your Money & Prove Your Worth, Book Excerpt #2 NOTE: The following article is taken, with minor changes, from Corporate Training Tips & Tricks: Save Your Money & Prove Your Worth by Katrina Baker. It is one of three articles by Microassist Senior Learning Architect Kevin Gumienny. To hear more training tidbits from Kevin and other learning and development professionals, we encourage you to get your copy of[…]
READ MORE about Corporate Training Development Tip #2: Draw on Other FieldsTraining for Behavior Change Can Be Harder than It Looks
Tips for creating and delivering training that influences behavior Whether it is due to a new process, business goals, or regulations, any time you need to change your staff’s behaviors or ways of doing things, you’ll need to plan your training campaign carefully to ensure you’re positioning the participants for success. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking training for behavior change should be an easy task. After all, it[…]
READ MORE about Training for Behavior Change Can Be Harder than It LooksMeet Instructional Designer Brandon Winston [Audio Interview]
Instructional designer Brandon Winston joined the Microassist curriculum development team in May 2016. In roughly three minutes, Brandon gives insight on what an instructional designer does and why he’s so passionate about the process of developing custom training. Interview transcript VIVIAN CULLIPHER: Hi, I’m Vivian Cullipher with Microassist. I’m here with Brandon Winston, one of our newest employees, our newest staff members here at the company, and I just wanted to introduce him[…]
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