Savvy adult learners are always mindful of what they learn and how they learn it. Old-school and outdated learning approaches just won’t cut it anymore! For instance, if you try teaching with overhead projector slides today, or structure your learning as “click next” modules, chances are you’ll lose 100% of your audience – very quickly! As L&D professionals, therefore, understanding and embracing instructional design trends matter. Why trends matter The Merriam-Webster online dictionary describes “trend” as “…a prevailing tendency or inclination”. Psychologists will tell you that these two character traits, tendencies, and inclinations, also motivate many individuals to commit to certain courses of action. And if, as trainers, you wish to influence learning outcomes, then you need to embrace trending instructional design practices. Trends, by definition, continually evolve and change. But embracing the latest – i.e. currently prevailing - ID trends isn’t just about doing things … [Read more...] about 4 Ways to Leverage Instructional Design Trends: How to make eLearning more appealing to the masses
instructional design for eLearning
Best Practices for Designing Micro Learning Experiences
Learning is not confined into one set way. In fact, everyone learns very differently. We are all familiar with this concept; hence the existence of multiple studies focusing on learning types. A practice that is starting to catch the attention is micro learning. With all of the social media platforms and digital devices, it is no surprise that a person’s attention span fails to be kept for longer periods of time. Keeping this in mind, micro learning has been said to be a very successful learning tool. What Is Micro Learning, Anyway? Micro learning is any short content, chunked into small, manageable pieces for the purpose of learning. This can pertain to online videos, articles, and interactive games. Micro learning is best for: People who have very short attention spans Learning a lot of content in a short amount of time Learning at your own pace Businesses needing to teach employees new skills Smart-phone, laptops, and tablet devices Make It Fun And Engaging The … [Read more...] about Best Practices for Designing Micro Learning Experiences
4 Proven Ways to Create Courses That Support Human Learning and Cognition
The human brain can do amazing things: It can learn new concepts, solve complex problems, and memorize and recall information and facts. How this complex structure works has been the subject of study for millennia. As an instructional designer, you can leverage your learners’ brain power to create more effective course content and design. Here are some tips and best practices that should help eLearning content designers create instructionally sound learning materials. Less is More: This design principle is heavily influenced by Hick’s Law, which, simply stated, guides designers to limit learners’ options as much as possible. The more bells and whistles you incorporate into the design, the less effective the course becomes. The Power of Stories: Emotion and memory come together in our brain. Neurobiology research cited in the Harvard Business Review shows that the human brain reacts more favorably to a well-crafted storyline than to drab facts and figures, or … [Read more...] about 4 Proven Ways to Create Courses That Support Human Learning and Cognition
Content Analysis: How to determine the best learning approaches
The proliferation of learning technologies has given rise to a number of approaches that instructional designers can use to deliver eLearning content. Based on extensive research, the National Training Laboratories (NTL) developed an effective Learning Pyramid that demonstrates a clear relationship between the teaching method of choice, and content retention rates. Your choice of how (the most effective approach) you wish to deliver learning, should be based on what (the content) you want to deliver (not the other way around!). Content Domain Analysis and Content Level Analysis should be conducted prior to selecting the instructional approach. Content Domain Analysis must be carried out in order to determine the fundamental objectives of the content. For instance, does the content address cognitive, emotional or physical characteristics of a … [Read more...] about Content Analysis: How to determine the best learning approaches
3 Easy Ways to Create Effective ELearning Graphics
We all know that graphics can make our eLearning courses fun and engaging, but we also know that our graphics should be relevant to the content, and that we should avoid decorative graphics as much as possible. Designing effective graphic that really works is time and resource consuming, so in this post, I will cover 3 easy ways to create effective eLearning graphics. Crop existing stock photos – Using existing stock images can be a real time saver, but most of the stock images are simply boring. Furthermore, a lot of these images have been used and reused so many times that most of us are so tired of looking at them that we often ignore them to the point where these images become meaningless in the course. Luckily, there is an easy and quick fix for that. Consider cropping photos, so that you only leave the details that are truly pertinent to your message. You can easily crop stock photos using Photoshop, but if you don’t have that tool available to you, you can consider other … [Read more...] about 3 Easy Ways to Create Effective ELearning Graphics
3 Ways To Make Your Multiple-Choice Questions More Effective
In the last post, we looked at some ways to make your multiple-choice questions effective. In this post, I will suggest some other ways to make your multiple-choice items more reliable. Avoid negatives. Oftentimes, learners overlook the word not and, as a result, choose an incorrect response. It is a good practice to record your stems whenever possible. If the stem cannot be reworded, bolding, underlining, or capitalizing the negatives will draw the learners’ attention to these negatives and help them concentrate on the actual question. Also, if instructional designers absolutely have or want to include negatives in their questions, it is suggested to add them at the end of the question stem and use capital letters to bring attention to them. For example: All of the following are ways to make your assessment items reliable EXCEPT: Avoid revelation of correct response. The stems should be written in a way that does not automatically reveal the correct response to any of the … [Read more...] about 3 Ways To Make Your Multiple-Choice Questions More Effective
