How do you make learning truly memorable and transferable? This topic explores techniques beyond basic recall, focusing on designing for retention and application through storytelling, powerful scenarios, emotional connection, and maybe even a little unexpected fun.
You’ve heard of eLearning scenarios. And maybe you’ve even tried creating some. But did they have the impact you were hoping for? Creating great eLearning scenarios is more than meets the eye. Some people think it’s just good storytelling. While yes, that’s part of it, it’s much more than just stories. Other people think eLearning […]
For a lot of reasons, eLearning is an amazing way to train people. It helps you deliver a consistent message to your trainees. It’s almost infinitely scalable, with virtually no incremental delivery costs. And it allows you to set up situations that would be difficult (or impossible) to safely arrange in a real environment. That […]
How challenging learners can contribute to better learning outcomes Did you know that some teachers aren’t allowed to use red pens for making corrections? This concept has been circulating for about a decade now. Red means something is wrong, which can be seen as “too aggressive” and that might hurt someone’s feelings. So teachers are […]
If you asked 100 employees what the worst type of training is, what do you think they would say? Answer: required training. *ba-dum-tss* Seriously though, the overwhelming answer would be compliance training. Compliance is typically so packed with boring policies and regulations that there’s no room left for engagement. Fear not, there is a way […]
As an ID, you create courses that people need to take. The problem is, even though the knowledge is good for them, we know they don’t actually want to take the course.
Whether it’s a popular movie, TV show, or YouTube video, they’re all about connecting with our emotions. Some aim to make you cry, others to make you laugh. Either way, it’s this emotion that forms the connection with the media we embrace the most. In fact, that’s the single common ingredient of viral videos. Leveraging […]
Ever since our school days, the learning and testing pattern has been the same. Study content…take test on content. Even in today’s age of eLearning, that’s still what we see. Present content…knowledge check…more content…final quiz. Guess what, it doesn’t always have to be that way. Depending on the material (and your users) sometimes it makes […]
Despite the continued growth of eLearning, classroom training is still alive and well. That said, not all ILT is created equal. In our last article, we touched on how instructors can be made better with the right materials. So in this article, we’re going to dive a bit deeper into those same materials (namely the […]
Let’s get this out of the way up front; most software training sucks. No wait…it REALLY SUCKS! Having spent a significant part of my training career at various software companies, I certainly saw more than my share of software training approaches. Some were good, but most of them – not so much. So let’s talk […]
Welcome to the completion of week nine as we progress through our 12-week service course, Instructional Design Service Course: Gain Experience For Good. We are entering into the final stages of this course, and at this point, have entered into the Evaluate phase of their design process. Evaluation Phase Last week we developed a prototype so we […]
Welcome to the completion of week seven as we progress through our 12-week service course, Instructional Design Service Course: Gain Experience For Good. In this module, we are developing a prototype of our lesson materials based on our Design Proposal. After completing the prototype in this module, the prototype will be part of a round of […]
Welcome to the completion of week seven as we progress through our 12-week service course, Instructional Design Service Course: Gain Experience For Good. The focus this week was on drafting a design proposal, also referred to as a design plan. For the purposes of this course and for this stage of our design project, the […]
Welcome to week four of 12 on our journey through the Design for the Greater Good Instructional Design online course. Over the past two weeks, we have been focusing on the ‘Synthesize’ phase of the design process, where we have made our initial design decisions. It was at this point where we chose our subject, […]
Welcome to week two of 12 on our journey through the Design for the Greater Good Instructional Design online course. This week, we focused on the ‘Analyze’ phase of the design process, learning more about both the learners and the instructional opportunity there. Empathy and eLearning Design The main approach this course uses is called […]
Like virtually everyone, we here at ThinkingKap can tend to get caught up in our own, and our clients’, situations and lose sight of what’s going on outside of our personal and professional networks. We have a general philosophy to try and give back when and where we can, and as such, a FREE online […]
You want your trainees to remember what your training course taught them, right? That’s kind of the main objective for any eLearning course—to get participants to retain information and then use what they’ve learned in their roles at work. But research tells us that people generally forget about 50% of what they learn after one […]
Sometimes working in the eLearning field means re-working existing courses. Say a client comes to you with a course they’ve been using for years, and they want you to breathe some new life into it. Seems like no big deal, right? But when you take a look at the course, you realize that you’ve got […]
Think of a storyboard for an eLearning course like a comic strip: Each frame tells a part of a larger story and moves the course along. Without a storyboard, your course can be all over the place. It would look a little something like this: Lesson 1! Irrelevant interactive game! Lesson 5! Pop quiz! Matching […]
As someone who lives and breathes eLearning, you probably feel comfortable with terms like ‘Authoring Tool’ and ‘LMS.’ But when you go to a client or meet with executive leadership to explain what you’ll be doing when you design the eLearning course—you get some blank stares…and a lot of questions. The technical language means nothing […]
Training adults requires a unique approach that is different from how we were taught in our primary education. In order to create a compelling training course for adult learners, one needs to consider the set of motivators that drives an adult to retain (and later apply) lessons learned from a course—be it in a traditional […]
