By Shelley A. Gable. post from a couple weeks ago explained that there are instructional design models that offer formulas for assembling training in a way that captures learners’ attention, conveys content, and provides learners with an opportunity to practice and receive feedback on new skills. That post described Robert Gagne’s nine events of instruction , which is one of the more popular instructional design models and is based on cognitive and behavioral psychology. Another well-known and broadly accepted instructional design model is M. David Merrill’s first principles of instruction. MORE >>

By Shelley A. Gable. We know that meaningful images provide a memorable and efficient way to learn information. Yet, in the tradition of building bulleted lists in PowerPoint, text dominates many eLearning courses. As a text-oriented person myself -- someone who finishes reading an article's text and then goes back to view the tables and charts -- translating text into images does not come naturally for me. So, over the past year, I've made it an informal personal goal to get better at it. a flowchart, labeled image, etc.). Image Cue: Process Overview. Image Cue: Anatomy. MORE >>

By Dean Hawkinson. Imagine that you have been assigned the task of creating a series of eLearning courses to teach a particular job. In addition, this job is quite complicated with numerous skills and tasks that need to be taught. Imagine that this job is so extensive that you just don’t know where to begin. Your first step, of course, is to elicit a team of subject matter experts (SMEs) to assist you in completing a task analysis to determine which tasks must be taught and eliminating other tasks that either are not relevant or are “nice to haves” but not required. Hints. MORE >>

By Dean Hawkinson. recently attended a webinar led by Steven M.R. Covey, the author of the book, “The Speed of Trust.” In this webinar, Mr. Covey talked about teams working together, and discussed the differences between coordination and collaboration. began to think about this in the context of an instructional design project team made up of subject matter experts (SMEs) and other project team members. Mr. Covey had us imagine a continuum, with Coordination being at one end and Collaboration at the other. In order to do this, he talked about the differences in the ends of the continuum. MORE >>

By Shelley A. Gable. We’ve talked about the value of storytelling for conveying tacit knowledge in eLearning and a formula for telling stories. So once we’ve assembled an instructional story, how can we include it within an eLearning lesson? Here are a few ideas to explore. Comic Strip. Who doesn’t enjoy a quick comic strip? They’re a relatively quick read, an effective method for displaying dialog, and visually engaging. If the rest of an eLearning lesson follows a standard, templated look, using fun images can contribute to the story’s attention-grabbing effect. Interactive Timeline. Video. MORE >>