These days, not every e-learning course is designed by an instructional designer. In-house DIY e-learning and rapid development mean that training managers and subject matter experts (among others) have to put on an e-learning design MORE >>

Last week I decided to save up my Find 15 slots and attend Chat2Lrn – a new tweetchat, and my first. If you’ve not yet been initiated into the world of the tweetchat, it’s a scheduled conversation on Twitter using an agreed hashtag to bring all contributors together. Last Thursday, 60 people joined the first Chat2Lrn, sending nearly 800 tweets in an hour! Once I’ve attended a few more, I’ll try to share some of my tips for making the most of them. In the meantime, take a look at David Kelly’s post.) All in all, it was a fascinating discussion. MORE >>

I’m slightly late to the party, so you may have already seen the debate prompted by Craig Taylor’s recent blog post ; if not, take a look. Craig was shocked at a recent event when some people expressed discomfort at him taking notes on his iPad. Perhaps surprisingly for someone in my kind of role, I’m a pen-and-paper girl at heart: I love my Kindle but buy my very favourite books in paperback; I take great joy in browsing the beautiful stationery in Paperchase; and, yes, 99% of the time I take notes the old-fashioned way. At work I’m the same. For me, some of it is down to speed. MORE >>

Today we’re going to take a look at the interactions in your e-learning course. We’ll review what you’ve got, where they are (or where they should be, if there aren’t currently any interactions), and what they are focused on. Take a big picture view. We’re going to start with my trusty ‘screen type index’ tool. ve talked about this in detail in a previous post  so I’m not going to harp on about it too long here. Essentially it’s a table that allows you to review the balance and distribution of interaction in your course as it stands. Do you need to make any changes? MORE >>

I just came across a real gem of a letter  on Letters of Note , sent by C.S. Lewis to a young American fan in 1956. Isn’t it lovely and quite remarkable that he replied to his fan mail in such a thoughtful and personal way? Aside from that, though, this letter stood out to me because of a particular piece of advice shared in it, which I think all e-learning designers (indeed, all writers!) should be mindful of: In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. Are we guilty of laziness when we do this? MORE >>