While a huge portion of our training budgets goes towards creating the content for learning, we seem to ignore that people learn only when they see a strong need. As instructional designers , we need to workscape our training programs so they can provide our learners the affective context around which they can pull and retain information themselves. The purpose of training and development is to accelerate this process - and yet we don't pay adequate attention to 'workplace learning'. Recognising False Elegance I grew up in this industry doing a lot of standup training. MORE >>

Actual thought leaders – elearn magazine’s list. am not sure that I have anything unique to add to those perspectives, but have promised you predictions, so… Being a small, independent consultant in Canada, where my market is pretty localized and my clients are fairly regionalized, I have come to think of myself as an economic bell-weather. When the economy tanked, so did my consulting work, but since late fall 2010, things have picked up considerably. Maybe training groups need to include budget for the dispensation of devices in their project plans too? MORE >>

We explored the waterfall approach towards elearning development in a prior post of this series. Customers get to see working elearning pretty late in the process - as a consequence we run the risk of an endless cycle of amendments. Actual deployment takes months from actual initiation of the project - this delays learner feedback, which is key to evolving the training content and increasing effectiveness. Can we release working elearning quicker, to harness learner feedback sooner than later? This said the outputs of an Elearning Inception should be limited. MORE >>

Are there training departments? What will current members of training departments be doing in 10 years? Some people are suggesting getting rid of training departments and starting fresh. Others, including myself, don't believe training departments will go away any more than educational institutions will no longer exist. There will always be some level of training/education required. ut I think it's fair to say that most every response expects the role of training to either diminish or to change significantly in the next 10 years. What are they doing? MORE >>

Today's post follows on from two of my previous posts of a similar nature, which you apparently found interesting: From Training Specialist to Learning Generalist Instructional Designers need more skills than just writing! My friend Vijay Colaco takes strong objection to the word 'training' and believes it's akin to how we make animals do our bidding. In time, the organisation also learns that elearning or training or social media aren't silver bullets and that every extrinsic effort to creat learning falls flat without the intrinsic support of coaching and mentorship. MORE >>