Flexible learning materials Bill’s team has started to use an Oracle product called the ‘User Productivity Kit’, a development environment which simplifies the process of creating course materials, software simulations, assessments and job aids. They allow a community to be built around all those people in Oracle who are responsible for getting the product online. Bill Sawyer, who works in curriculum development within the highly-technical and fast-moving environment of Oracle. The work of Bill’s team results in some $12m of course sales for Oracle. learning architects MORE >>

Is this formal content with high production values, or is it just 'good enough' and rapidly-produced? Today I sat down, just as I did ten years ago, to write a set of checklists and standards for digital learning content as applied to the workplace. While this was, for me at least, a worthwhile and rewarding experience, and will hopefully be of value when released sometime soon to content developers and purchasers of off-the-shelf content, the process was enormously complicated by the changes that have taken place in the scope and application of digital learning content. Instruction? MORE >>

It’s beginning to dawn on me that a wide range of development tasks associated with e-learning, including the use of authoring tools, plus the post-production of graphics, animations, audio and video, are not going to be for everyone. Because they all require you to be incredibly systematic and, above all, organised. There is probably a minority working within learning and development who simply don’t have what’s required to develop these qualities; a more significant proportion simply have no inclination. You’ll be able to find things. You’ll back things up. thought not. MORE >>

Production values play second fiddle to simplicity and effectiveness. In this next profile, extracted from The New Learning Architect , we see another fine example of how a learning and development department has been able to break free from the confines of the face-to-face course to provide support for learning across multiple contexts. Rethinking formal ICT training Working alongside colleague Kerry Baker, Tiina has transformed ICT training at Bupa. This was accomplished using Bupa’s Saba Centra virtual classroom platform. As Tiina says, “It works!" learning architects MORE >>

And for many of us, the situations in which you’re likely to most use a mobile device - particularly on trains, on planes and generally when you’re waiting around - are much better suited to a productive learning experience than when you’re at your desk and very much in lean-forward mode. Just released is the eLearning Guild’s new report, Mobile Learning: The Time Is Now , put together by Clark Quinn, who really knows his stuff on this topic. If Clark says the time is now, it probably is. In fact it probably has been since the first iPhone was launched and certainly once we got the iPad. MORE >>