Being a Good Coach through eLearning Feedback

The principles that coaches follow to work with children’s soccer teams also apply to writing feedback for eLearning scenarios. This article urges instructional designers to go beyond telling learners that an answer to a question is “incorrect,” and it suggests methods for working coaching techniques into feedback.

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Sparking Innovation in Your eLearning Design

Inspired by another article about innovation, this piece takes the advice of how to inspire new ideas and translates it into instructional design techniques that can inspire learners during training.

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Encore: Employee Engagement Matters for E-Learning

This article first appeared on the Integrated Learnings: eLearning site, and was reprinted (with permission) in Elearning! Magazine.

According to most definitions, an “engaged” employee is a high-quality performer who takes personal responsibility to work toward the success of an organization. This article explores how an organization’s level of employee engagement influences the effectiveness of eLearning. It also suggests how training professionals can use their core skills to help to enhance employee engagement in their organizations.

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What Can eLearning Learn from “7 Ways Video Games Reward the Brain?”

Inspired by Tom Chatfield’s TED talk, this article recaps his ideas about how video games engage and motivate players. The piece offers specific ideas for applying these principles to the instructional design of eLearning.

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Employee Engagement Matters for eLearning

According to most definitions, an “engaged” employee is a high-quality performer who takes personal responsibility to work toward the success of an organization. This article explores how an organization’s level of employee engagement influences the effectiveness of eLearning. It also suggests how training professionals can use their core skills to help to enhance employee engagement in their organizations.

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7 Techniques to Capture Attention in eLearning

Whether you’re a seasoned instructional designer or someone who passed a high school speech class once upon a time, you can probably appreciate the need to gain your audience’s attention before presenting information. Many theorists have written about the importance of gaining and maintaining learners’ attention, and this article describes seven strategies for doing just that.

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4 Reasons We Procrastinate – And What You Can Do about It

Procrastination is one of those things we’re all guilty of from time to time…and some more frequently than others. Despite the fact that keeping up with insurance continuing education credits is critical for many insurance professionals, this training often falls victim to procrastination. Why do we do it? This article explains four common reasons that people put off their continuing education and how to overcome them.

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Writing to Educate and Entertain: What Would Stephen King Do?

Most instructional designers I know are decent technical writers, but many are not as adept at creative writing. However, to keep learners motivated during an eLearning course, designers should apply the techniques of creative writing and technical communication to learning theory’s best practices. This article, inspired from a literature review recently published in Performance Improvement Journal, theorizes about what techniques an accomplished fiction author like Stephen King might apply when writing for eLearning.

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10 Factors that Affect Learning

From lifestyle to momentary circumstance, many types of factors affect our ability to learn new information. Not all are easy to control; however, knowing what what those factors are can help you get the most out of a course or other learning experience. This article explains ten factors that affect learning and offers advice on how to positively influence each.

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Learning Motivation and Doing What Your Kids Do

This post links to two articles.

We’ve all had to complete training courses we weren’t particularly interested in. The purpose of this article, “Motivate Yourself to Learn through Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction,” is to offer learners ideas for making those courses more bearable.

Many parents encourage their kids to adopt productive study skills. But I suspect many parents are guilty of the “do as I say, not as I do” pitfall when it comes to their own learning. The second article, “The Study Tips We Tell Our Kids Apply to Us Too,” sheds light on how the study habits imposed on kids can be productive for professional development as well.

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