As usual for me, I'm breaking away from an existing train of thought in these posts for something different. When you work with VLEs/LMSs you deal extensively with the text-based communication tools that exist in all systems. The 3 biggies are the discussion/forum tool, the blog/journal tool and the wiki tool. Explaining how each can be used to facilitate learning within learning activities is a key challenge for the Learning Technologist. What's really important is that you articulate clearly the subtle differences between these tools and what their pedagogical affordances are. MORE >>

To provide effective instruction, it needs to be as authentic to the actual experience as possible. The context of an online course or the context of a classroom is not authentic. Most people do not work in a classroom (except teachers or trainers) so learning how to perform a task or negotiate an outcome in a classroom setting doesn’t always translate well to the work environment because of the disconnect between the environments. May times in a classroom or in an elearning module, there are no consequences for wrong decisions or actions. are most people impacted by that. Design MORE >>

Previously we have talked about when we should test learners. Now let’s focus on writing successful test questions that support course objectives. Keep these tips in mind when writing test questions: Write test questions first. Once your course objectives are defined, write your test questions before writing your course content. This prevents the trap most of us have fallen into of writing test questions as an afterthought once the course is completed. Create a question bank. Create a bank of test questions to choose from. Randomize questions and answers. Remediation. MORE >>

A few months ago, I got an opportunity to interact with learning professionals from behavioral and technical domains in a reputed company. Given below are a few things I noticed: 1) All domains require instructional design to ensure that the sessions are interactive and engaging. Most of the technical training is handled in-house because it is vital to the business. When I spoke to the learning professionals in technical domain, I realized that they were plagued with concerns about boredom, dropouts, retention of information, design of presentations, and so on. What strikes me is? Keep it real. MORE >>

You're reading fresh content from Dan Pontefract at Brave New Org: There, I said it. Social media is not social learning. Let’s start our analysis with a few definitions first. Brian Solis took a crack at defining social media as follows: <the> democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism, one-to-many, to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers. and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content. So why is social media not social learning? MORE >>