ELearning programs have a lot of competition out there.  An employee needs to take a 20 minute program on health and safety, but the lure of other shiny objects is strong:  work deadlines, websites, social networking applications, the guy in the next cubical.  

Who’s got it figured out?  Why the advertisers, of course.  TV Commercials, prints ads have a way of drawing us in, capturing our interest, creating the desire, and then -- when they're really good -- getting us to make the big purchase.

Some of us have recently gotten hooked on the show Mad Men (a stylish tale of a 1960’s New York advertising firm).  While life today may not be as boozy as all that, we like to take a page or two from advertising and marketing.  Let’s explore the classic copywriting model called AIDA and think about how we can apply that to eLearning projects.

We’ve all heard the story by now that storytelling enhances learning; that sharing relevant examples helps both the expert and the novice forge connections with the content to ensure knowledge transfer. We’ve heard that flight simulators save lives and that practice makes perfect.

And yet, scenarios and simulations can feel intimidating. They take time. And money. And fancy 3D worlds with blue-haired avatars.

We’re here to say that it can be all that, but it can also be something simpler.

So let’s look at three approaches to creating scenarios in your e-learning – a bit of a scenario spectrum as we go from simple to more complex.

When should you use audio in e-Learning? Do you need to include audio to meet the needs of auditory learners? Do you also need to include text for visual learners? What’s the best use of audio?

These questions and more set e-learning teams screaming. So how can you quiet down the storm and provide some sound reasons for when and why to use it? (This, of course, assumes that you have the technical ability to run audio in your e-learning).

An important part of ensuring retention – that is helping your learner remember what they’ve learned so they can actually go back and use it on the job – is practice. Practice makes perfect.

Sometimes the best way to practice is to recite things out loud.

Are you one of those people who talks to yourself while working through a problem at the computer? Do you mutter things out loud when you think no one is looking? Does this help you work through the issue? Does this help you…gasp…learn?

We think so. And we think there’s a place for out loud in self-paced e-learning.

“It’s just a little pinch. It’ll hardly hurt and then it will be over.” Tell that to a four year old, sitting in the doctor’s office awaiting a shot.

But it turns out to be true. You take a deep breath, feel the pinch, and then move on. OK – maybe you cried a lot. Maybe your arm feels bruised. But if you’re good, you might get a lollipop from your mommy.

We’re not talking about administering vaccinations to all you learning designers out there – although it would be nice if someone could develop a vaccine for bad e-learning! – but rather suggesting that all of us take some time to learn about learning theory and instructional design theory. Sounds painful, but really, it’s just a pinch…

When teaching someone a new fact or task, it’s best to start simple and then drill down into the more complicated content. Sounds pretty simple, right? Perhaps even intuitive.

But far too often trainers dive right in to the deep end, overwhelming learners from the get go with nitty gritty details and complicated rules.

So how can you combat that tendency? How can you structure content so learners can access and make sense of it from the start?

Well there’s a theory about it, which Charles Reigeluth appropriately termed the “The Elaboration Theory”. Reigeluth is a professor in the School of Education at Indiana University, Bloomington.

So let me elaborate…

What can you throw into the mix to make your learning as appetising as possible and packed with variety and punch? Here’s a few ideas to help you shake it up.

If you know us at Kineo, you know we don’t like to get too bogged down in academic theory. We tend to the pragmatic and practical – what really works in learning design?

That said, it’s good to brush off the books now and then and revisit some of the formal theories behind how adults learn and how that can be applied to e-learning.

This is our first in an occasional series on learning design – little shots of theory to give you some foundational background or to refresh what you may already know. We start with John Keller’s ARCS Model of Motivational Design.

Rapid e-learning doesn’t have to mean sacrificing quality. Nor does it mean using a specific tool. Sometimes, rapid just means you get it done rapidly. A cigar is just a cigar.

Kineo recently completed a project for Canon in 17 days, using high-end Flash for delivery. This award-winning project shows that you really can create quality at speed. But it did mean doing things a bit differently: cutting down on the process bloat, avoiding lengthy project plans and design documents, and getting to a working version as quick as lightening.

In this tip, we’ll look at trimming the project fat so you can deliver sooner.

Learners get the message. They might have to think about the content – and we hope they do – but they shouldn't need to agonise over the meaning of every sentence.

This week, we share some quick tips to improve your e-learning writing – be it for audio narration or on-screen text.

Helping Subject Matters Experts (SMEs) get from a flat document to an actual piece of e-learning can be quite a leap. Learning designers often have the same problem, even with years of experience at creating e-learning. You scope out your course or experience in a Word document and then hand it off – perhaps to a builder or maybe you do it yourself – to create something jazzy in Flash or Articulate. It’s only then that the light bulbs go off – “Ahh, I see how it’s going to work!” or “I didn’t know it was going to look like that!” or “I get it now – can we do it this way instead?”

In this week’s top tip, we’ll share some ideas that work for us – ways to create a visual and comprehensible design sooner rather than later.

We were all guilty of pre-exam cramming sessions. On more occasions than we’d like to admit, we stayed up all night before a final exam to stuff every last bit of learning we could into our little brains. Perhaps you did that once or twice yourself. But how much did you actually retain from said session? Enough to ace the test, I’m sure. But did you actually walk away from the experience with any lasting knowledge?

The spacing effect tells us it’s much better to study for that exam – not in one intense burst – but rather in sessions that are spread out over time.

So how do you do that in the e-learning arena? This week, we’ll suggest five simple ways to help your learners space out for more effective results.

It’s possible that you know what you’re doing. You have a firm grasp of the tools you use to build e-learning and you know how to design just the right solutions for today's learners.

But right now is but a brief moment in time in an ever-changing technological landscape. We’ve seen some big shifts in the e-learning world in the past 10 years. I mean, c’mon – it wasn’t even called e-learning until, when? 1997-ish, right? What’s coming and how should you – a learning professional – prepare yourself for the road ahead? This top tip will help you stay ahead of the curve.

It is time to tear down the e-learning wallpaper and take heed of some top tips on using graphics for instructional use.

After reading this post, you will be able to:

• explain two of the reasons why we don't like traditional learning objectives
• describe your own view of learning objectives
• develop an alternative approach to listing learning objectives in your next e-learning course

Do your e-learning programs typically start with something like this? Quite gripping, isn't it?

Let's talk about some other options.

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.

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. 

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.

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…

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.

If you’re going to develop e-learning rapidly, you need to start with a model in mind. A model will help you to be consistent, to develop to good design principles, and to 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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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

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.

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…’

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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?