We all know that courses must be meaningful and motivational to learners, but, unfortunately, not all Instructional designers know how to engage adult learners. When adults are required to take courses that they have no interest in, or find irrelevant to their needs, their level of motivation and consequently their retention level will be low. Instructional designers need to work hard to come up with motivational strategies for adult learners. In this blog post, we will go over some of the motivational techniques that work. Create real life experiences. Make the course meaningful to your learners by creating scenarios, role-plays, games, and demonstrations that resemble learners’ everyday work environments. This can be easily achieved by asking SMEs to provide realistic examples and anecdotes from their experiences. Then, use your creativity to turn their stories into meaningful interactions. Provide downloadable resources and job aids. It is unrealistic to … [Read more...] about 6 Motivational Techniques for Adult Learners
The ELearning Course Designer’s Blog
5 Things Every ELearning Designer Should Pay Attention To When Proofreading And Editing ELearning Courses
Proofreading and editing your eLearning courses can sometimes feel a little awkward, to say the least. However, both proofreading and editing are the essential components of the eLearning development process. One of the best ways to catch mistakes is to create and follow a style guide. While things that will be included in that style guide will vary from project to project, there are certain things that should be applied to every project. Always check punctuation as misplaced comas may confuse learners. Incorrect punctuation may also cause learners to misinterpret content. Check subject-verb agreement to ensure consistency. Oftentimes, in addition to subject-verb disagreement, writers make errors with pronoun-antecedent agreements. If not corrected, these errors can cause a lot of confusion. Do not trust your spell checker. Even though spell checker can be a great tool, it does not catch all the errors. Therefore, if there are words that sound the same, but have different … [Read more...] about 5 Things Every ELearning Designer Should Pay Attention To When Proofreading And Editing ELearning Courses
Is It Possible to Accommodate All Types of Learners?
All eLearning professionals are well aware of the three main learning styles: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Some of the effective strategies to engage auditory learners include recording lectures and making them available for future use. To accommodate these learners, instructional designers may also consider podcasts and mnemonic devices. As opposed to auditory learners, visual learners must be able to draw a mental picture before they can process the information. To accommodate visual learners, instructional designers can use diagrams, drawings, videos, PowerPoint presentations and other visual aids such as infographics. Kinesthetic learners are those that struggle the most in a distance-learning format. Although it is much harder to accommodate kinesthetic than auditory or visual learners, it is not impossible to do so. Some of the ways to make eLearning materials more hands on include giving learners the opportunity to participate in discussions via chats or discussion … [Read more...] about Is It Possible to Accommodate All Types of Learners?
Five ELearning Graphic Design Tips That Every Instructional Designer Must Know
The responsibilities of instructional designers vary from organization to organization. While some companies do have graphic designers on the team, others require instructional designer to wear a hat of an artist. Regardless of your responsibilities, it is suggested that you become comfortable with basic graphic design theory so that, if needed, you can apply it to practice. Here are a few basic recommendations that many instructional designers should find useful. •If you know how to do something that does not mean you should do it. In eLearning, less is more, so if the tool or an option is available to you that does not mean that you should actually use it in your project. This particularly applies to animations. Try to avoid animation whenever possible. Instead, consider separating information into several slides. •The same principle applies to images. When you add images to slides, always be sure that they are meaningful and are not just there for decoration. Images … [Read more...] about Five ELearning Graphic Design Tips That Every Instructional Designer Must Know
What is the Role of Webinars in ELearning?
Even though webinars have been around for a while now, many organizations still find them intimidating. However, with proper planning, even a non-technical person should be able to conduct effective webinars. Webinars can be used for just about anything starting from teaching people how to use a tool to lecturing or providing information on the topic of importance. Webinars can have a single presenter who speaks to the audience, demonstrates slides or steps needed to do something, and answers questions from the audience. Webinars can also take a form of an interview where two people talk to each other or multiple people can speak and answer questions with a facilitator moderating the discussion. While, all three formats are appropriate, the last two are much more interactive in nature. Just like eLearning, webinars rely heavily on audio-visual presentation of the material. Therefore, it is important to have attractive slides and clear audio. Many facilitators create an … [Read more...] about What is the Role of Webinars in ELearning?
Why Do Employees Forget Their Training?
When employees are sent to training, they are expected not just to retain the information, but also to be able to apply it to the job when they return from training. However, one of the major dilemmas with training is that trainees do not remember most of what they have learned in class. In this blog post, I will cover some of the most common reasons employees forget. The first and probably most common issue is that the training was not engaging enough to begin with, so employees could not concentrate on it. As a result, they did not gain much from it. To solve this issue, instructional designers should aim to make their training, even if it is plain and boring, interesting and engaging. This can be achieved through inserting lively but informative movie clips and role plays into the course. Additionally, short quizzes along the way may be helpful as they ensure that the learner is paying attention. To add additional spark to courses, instructional designers may consider serious … [Read more...] about Why Do Employees Forget Their Training?