Someone once said all learning starts with a story. They probably went on to tell a story about how they realized that. Right idea. If you can hook and engage your audience up front, all the more likely they'll stay the journey. Stories are one of the best ways of doing this.

So why are stories effective? What's in a good story for learning?

Last time we wrote about the benefits of stories in learning. They're easy to remember, they're compelling, they're great shorthand for real experience, and of course they're authentic, which is maybe the most compelling aspect of all.

So how can you bring stories into your e-learning? Here are some practical tips.

For the last few weeks we've talked about stories in e-learning and why they're a great way to make your e-learning memorable, authentic and engaging. What else can you do to bring a narrative into e-learning? What are the practical points when it comes to writing dialogue?

The bookshelves heave with screenwriting manuals. Save yourself a few quid and start with a few basic tips for good dialogue writing in e-learning.

Samuel Beckett described his approach to life as ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.’ Too existential for you? Try American actress Tallulah Bankhead: “If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

What’s the point? Mistakes are good. They’re our best teachers. So how to get mistakes into your e-learning?

Last week we explored the value of mistake-driven e-learning. If you can home in on the mistakes, misperceptions and performance gaps that’s causing 80% of the issues for your target audience, you’ve got the fodder for creating e-learning that adds real value. E-learning can do this by creating safe environments in which your learners can make mistakes, and providing the coaching and support to reduce risk that they’re repeated on the job.

How to work mistakes into your e-learning design?

We’ve looked in our previous e-learning tips at mistakes and the key role they play in e-learning design. But a mistake’s not worth making if you don’t learn from it. We’ve all been there: the e-learning leaves you hanging with the worst feedback you can get: ‘wrong – try again’. It can sound enigmatic coming from Yoda, but it doesn’t really cut it as feedback in e-learning. To make sure your mistakes are coupled with support and feedback that will actually help learners, follow these tips.

The new economic realities mean that every manager up and down your organization is going to have to fight to spend money on anything. You can expect e-learning to come under as much scrutiny as the next line item. It pays to be prepared. If you’re responsible for commissioning e-learning or running an internal team, be ready to fight the good fight. For this insight, let’s concentrate on the cost savings from e-learning, compared to instructor led alternatives. Here are a few bullets to have ready when someone comes asking why we should spend on e-learning.

Last week we looked at some of the arguments for e-learning from a cost viewpoint. You may find your stakeholders saying “We get that it’s cheaper. But is it better?” Here are some of the reasons you can use to explain why e-learning’s better than classroom – most of the time.

“If I'd had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.”
T.S. Eliot (probably)

In an earlier insight, we talked about the value of dialogue, and how it can give your e-learning pace and authenticity. A client recently talked to us at Kineo about how some of their in-house programs were suffering from too much dialogue, with the result that the learning points were getting lost. So as a companion piece to an earlier insight, here are a few words of caution about dialogue in e-learning.

Why do e-learning projects go wrong? Often because the scope wasn't clear. It ends up too big to achieve with the budget or the timeline, or not achieving the aims that the stakeholders had in mind, or delivering the experience that learners need. So what can you do to ensure you’re building on solid foundations? Follow these steps for a rapid approach to scoping e-learning.

A lot of effective e-learning relies on a goal-based scenario approach. What are they and how do they work? Let’s not fret about definitions and instead look at what goes into an effective goal-based scenario.

Ever been bored by e-learning? Ever seen an opening screen riddled with bullet after bullet of objectives, with a ‘screen 1 of 98’ counter in the bottom right, as if to say ‘think you’re bored now? Just you wait until screen 45…’

The only way to start 2009 is to show how you’re going to do more for less. If your boss hasn’t asked you how you’re cutting costs in e-learning yet, it must be because your name is towards the end of the alphabet – because believe us, the conversation is coming. So, there are three quick tips from us for making your e-learning more cost effective in 2009.

The Subject Matter Expert and the Designer: This week we look at the need for a little love and understanding...

If you’re in retail, you know that despite all the cuts you need to make, you can’t cut back on supporting your front-line sales team. More than ever, they need to know how to connect with customers, recognize opportunities to sell, and have the product knowledge information at their fingertips. But you’ve got to do it faster and cheaper than ever. How can rapid e-learning help? Get the design right and you’re on your way.

As e-learning evolves, one welcome trend is the movement away from large formal courses and towards more informal methods - providing support to your learners by any means necessary. Open source tools like Moodle provide very cost effective ways of providing what one expert has called ‘surround sound’ support to learners. One of the more cost effective, and high-touch ways of supporting learners is through online tutoring.

One of the mantras of these crunching times is (or at least should be): if it’s worth doing, you better have a look at doing it yourself, before you pay someone over the odds for it. Ok, so there’s probably a snappier version of that statement. Let’s just say ‘You should look at rapid e-learning authoring tools’. You won’t have to look too hard – the market’s flooded to its banks with them. But what’s right for you? Here are five questions to ask during your search:

They’re quick, easy to produce and can add great value to your e-learning. Maybe podcasts are the quintessential rapid e-learning? We’d encourage any designer to consider adding value to their e-learning through podcasts. Here are a few pointers for making the most of them.

Last time we looked at getting yourself set up for success with podcasting. This week we get down to the basics of making the podcast interview itself sound like…well, like someone might actually want to listen to it.

If you’re going to develop e-learning rapidly, you need to start with a model in mind. A model will help you be consistent, develop to good design principles, and create a consistent experience for your learners. One tried and trusted model that should be in any designer’s toolkit is the Knowledge and Skills Builder model.

Audio. It’s cheap to do and quick to make. But so is a pot noodle – and we all know, you shouldn’t add those to your e-learning. So when does audio enhance, and when does it start to be more noise than content? Here are some tips for using it sensibly in e-learning:

After many years in the wilderness of e-learning, with fear for its safety, video’s back, baby. It’s about as cheap and quick to produce as audio and can do a whole lot more. What can it do for you? A few points before you shoot…

When Oprah joined Twitter a few weeks ago, everyone started claiming that Twitter was all over. But those of us in the know, know that we're just getting started. Not tweeting yet? Kineo’s new VP of Learning Design, Cammy Bean, tweetingly invites you aboard.

Twitter + your company – rest of world = Yammer?

Previously we wrote about Twitter.  Hard to miss Twitter these days, it’s the talk of the town. As you, and probably your mother, knows, Twitter is a 140-character microblogging platform.  It’s different from an instant message system which lets you talk in real time with one person.  With Twitter, you talk in real time to a whole crowd. This is great when you’re sharing the love with the big wide world and want to seek expertise and input from those outside your company’s walls. But sometimes you want to tap the expertise inside your walls. 

We will be looking at webinars over the next few editions of our newsletter. We will also be running an online seminar on running webinars later this summer.

But to get the ball rolling, here are our top ten tips for running successful webinars.