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As LAS celebrate 10 years in business I find myself thinking back to what has changed over that time, what hasn’t, and what the future may hold. When I started LearningAge Solutions, it was as a jobbing contractor, working for a number of elearning development houses. Over time I started building content myself and soon needed to hire another developer. Now we have a globe-spanning team of about 20 people, a pretty stellar customer list and a good few awards under our belt. So what’s changed? MORE
The internet. Television. The telephone. The bagless vacuum cleaner. The chocolate bar. The light bulb. The British are a nation of inventors – we like to tinker and try new things. For such a small island we have contributed more than our fair share of world-changing inventions. I’ve heard our infamous British weather be credited with encouraging our creativity – it’s rarely warm enough to spend time lounging on the beach, so instead we Brits have to find something else to do. We tinker. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Being immersed in the digital learning world, it’s easy to forget that there are an awful lot of people out there who are just exploring using technology for learning for the first time and boy can it be overwhelming… what author-tool, LMS, LRS, design methodology do I use? Do I need to gamify it, make it responsive, record user data. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. Being innovative doesn’t mean that you have to come up with big radical new ideas all the time. Sometimes the very best learning innovations are quite simple and subtle or are just improvements or diversions from existing ideas. Having just won an award for innovation, we’d like to share our 10 top tips for innovative thinking with you…. Look beyond what is in front of you and practice seeing more than what is directly before your eyes. MORE
The limitations of human memory are an eternal conundrum for learning designers – how exactly do you create meaningful learning experiences for learners who have a shorter attention span than a goldfish? Or who are only able to retain 7 items in their short term memory 1 ? Perhaps microlearning is the answer? There are certainly a wide variety of definitions of microlearning. MORE
By Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. It is incredibly disheartening to put all of your creative efforts into a piece of learning design for it to be largely ignored by your target audience. You’ve identified the organisational need, followed a robust design process and come up with a killer approach – so why won’t people engage with it? The answer is often that internal marketing and communication about the project has been ineffectual, or even non-existent. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. ‘I I absolutely loath elearning with all of my being. I just spent 1hr 40 answering stupid F-ing multiple choice questions in the attempt to gain a poxy bit of paper for work and the blinking site crashed. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Traditional economics is based on the assumption that humans are rational beings, that we evaluate our situation in a logical way, making decisions based on cost- benefit analyses. Behavioural economics turns this on its head and suggests that, actually, we are myopic creatures whose choices are loaded with emotions and cognitive bias. We make mistakes too – lots of them! MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Why oh why is The Towards Maturity benchmark report – Unlocking Potential – such depressing reading each year! So many good intentions and a stack of really, really compelling evidence on the benefits of implementing learning innovation just don’t seem to be enough fo r many organisations to secure the support and funding needed to propel them forwards. MORE
By Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. My favourite teacher from my high school days, Mr ‘Geography’ Jones, died recently. I remember his enthusiastic an d, at times dramatic teaching style as if it were yesterday. He brought Geography alive for us and his theatrical demonstrations of a glacier powering through a valley have stayed with all of us – we will forever know our terminal from our lateral moraine. MORE
By Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. Technology now affords so many more options to learn new skills without being physically present, but how can we ensure that participants are kept engaged and motivated when they’re not sat in front of us? It’s a constant challenge and one that we haven’t yet completely cracked but we’d like to share some things here that have worked for us…. Validation. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. We’ve put our heads together and come up with our favourite (mostly free) tools for aiding rapid elearning development. As our team are located all over the world, we particularly love cloud-based tools that allow for collaboration: MockFlow Wireframe Editor Screenshot. MockFlow – Cloud-based collaborative design tool. We use Mockflow for wire framing and specifying functionality. MORE
At a party recently I had a flash of insight. A number of disparate ideas suddenly aligned in my head with an almost audible ‘clunk’, lubricated by prosecco and stimulating conversation. I was talking to a couple of friends about the sports I’m into and what I enjoy about them: sailing, skiing and mountain biking. In all three of these I’m not competitive. I’m not bothered about going fast or far. I don’t want to be the best. MORE
by Tess Robinson. Director, L earningAge Solutions). So goal-based learning sounds great but what can you use it for? And how can technology augment this way of learning? Performance support. Learning shouldn’t stop when a learner leaves the classroom. A goal-based approach can ensure that the learning continues into the workplace, making the most of the investment that the organisation has made and ensuring that learners are fully supported in attempting to improve their performance at work. MORE
This month we bid a fond farewell to our much cherished and long-running Rapid eLearning Development (ReD) course. Bac k in mid-2009 the concept of a fictional Ministry of Instructional Design with a secret mission became an itch that I had to scratch. It consumed me and I loved it. Jane Hart, Clive Shepherd and Patrick Dunn all helped to shape ReD in the early stages. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. These days it’s widely accepted that learners don’t really learn much from just sitting passively in front of a screen. It’s all too easy to switch off whilst you’re supposed to be concentrating on what’s in front of you if you’re not required to be an active participant, I’m certainly guilty of popping off to make a cup of tea or feed the cat in the middle of a webinar. But what if there is a need to just impart information, with compliance issues for example? MORE
After a 20-year break I’m getting back into skiing. I’ve just returned from a four-day ski trip to the French Alps. It was awesome. Returning to a soggy grey UK, I’ve been thinking a lot about the trip and reflecting on my learning process. I went with three goals in mind: Learn to parallel turn (turn with my feet parallel). Start to carve (turn using the edges of the skis). Do one red (advanced) run. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. The UK’s recent referendum on whether we should stay in the EU produced a shock result that has led to political and economic turmoil on an unprecedented scale. The VUCA acronym (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) has never felt more apt in this country. This is not to say, however, that all is lost. The organisations that will survive and prosper are those who are well-prepared for change and who can focus on it positively. MORE
By Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. If we’re honest, no one really likes just being told stuff. Cast your mind back to the last conference you attended. I bet there were some sessions where the speak er was just speaking at the audience, where you perfected your doodling, caught up on your emails or drifted off entirely. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director LAS. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ” — Albert Einstein. Our youngest son (7) is the very definition of curious. Every day is a barrage of questions: “Can anything happen in a nanosecond?” What would happen if we just breathed carbon dioxide?” Does the toothpaste come out like that (red, white and blue) because it’s French?” MORE
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” – Mark Twain. The same is true of design, and for the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the design of learning experiences, websites and apps. The secret to great design is simplicity. The challenge is that designing a simple solution to a complex problem is usually a long journey. MORE
By Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Lately I have been spending a lot of time on Webflow, a responsive site builder, redesigning our company website. As the number of devices, platforms and screen sizes grows it’s becoming more important to be able to provide an optimal viewing experience in terms of reading and navigation’ whatever the screen size. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. The latest Towards Maturity benchmark report makes rather depressing reading. Despite being consistently able to show that those organisations who embrace learning technologies perform better, be it through increasing revenue, improving productivity or job performance, the overall situation remains relatively static in terms of budget committed to digital learning or the range of technology used. MORE
Anyone who has attempted some form of learning design project will know that the goalposts have an annoying habit of moving. The objective that you set out initially to meet might evolve or even change co mpletely. This means that traditional approaches to learning design and development can struggle to adapt the design and keep pace with continually evolving requirements. They are simply not agile enough. MORE
This year, I had the great privilege, in my position as Chair of the eLN, to have edited and co-authored the eLN’s first ever book, The Really Useful eLearning Instruction Manual, published by Wiley. The book features contributions from world leading experts in all aspects of elearning and was a fantastic excuse to work with people whom I respect enormously. We wanted the book to be practical, useful and to contribute to the advancement of our industry through best practice. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Our MD recently won an Outstanding Contribution award and was named as one of the Top 10 eLearning Movers and Shakers in the UK for 2016. The award was given partly because of all the voluntary work he has done to support the elearning industry but also because he’s seen as somewhat of a thought-leader in digital learning. Here’s what I have learnt from him: Listen (and hear the things that people don’t say). MORE
By Rob Hubbard, LAS Director. I took a trip down to London recently for AR VR (Augmented Reality Virtual Reality) World. It was a small affair with geeks rather than sales people manning most of the stands. They were more interested in sharing their enthusiasm for their products, many of which were at prototype stage, than making a sale. MORE
In order to thrive in today’s tough economic climate, it’s no longer enough for your people to just ‘know stuff’. Learning needs to be focussed on performance and that’s where goal-based learning comes in. Goal-based learning is an extension of Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping process, of which we’ve been firm advocates for a long time. It concentrates on developing real-world behaviours that will lead to performance improvement. MORE
Whenever I speak at a conference I take the same approach – I look for ways to get people talking to one-another and contributing to the session. I figure; we’ve got a room full of smart, highly experienced p eople – talking at them for an hour would be a huge waste of time. Better to make use of their knowledge and experience – their ‘collective intelligence’ – for the good of everyone. We try to take the same approach with digital learning. MORE
by Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. We’re so used to self-directed learning these days that we forget we’re even doing it. I’m a trainee silversmith in my spare time. If I want to know the best way to solder a joint or set a stone, I’ll Google it, find a video on YouTube or ask my social network of fellow jewellers. I don’t need to wait for my class day to have a tutor instruct me in the technique, although undeniably it’s useful to have an expert on hand to help if I get stuck. MORE
In uncertain times, L&D budgets have a tendency to get slashed. Th is doesn’t need to herald doom and gloom. It’s an ideal time for L&D to reposition yourselves as integral to the business, as consultative partners who help to support wider organisational strategy and goals, rather than as a training shop. So how do you do this with a limited budget? MORE
Rob Hubbard
FEBRUARY 20, 2014
by Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. ‘I I absolutely loath elearning with all of my being. I just spent 1hr 40 answering stupid F-ing multiple choice questions in the attempt to gain a poxy bit of paper for work and the blinking site crashed.
Rob Hubbard
JUNE 7, 2016
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Traditional economics is based on the assumption that humans are rational beings, that we evaluate our situation in a logical way, making decisions based on cost- benefit analyses. Behavioural economics turns this on its head and suggests that, actually, we are myopic creatures whose choices are loaded with emotions and cognitive bias. We make mistakes too – lots of them!
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Rob Hubbard
JUNE 23, 2017
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Being immersed in the digital learning world, it’s easy to forget that there are an awful lot of people out there who are just exploring using technology for learning for the first time and boy can it be overwhelming… what author-tool, LMS, LRS, design methodology do I use? Do I need to gamify it, make it responsive, record user data.
Rob Hubbard
JANUARY 27, 2017
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Why oh why is The Towards Maturity benchmark report – Unlocking Potential – such depressing reading each year! So many good intentions and a stack of really, really compelling evidence on the benefits of implementing learning innovation just don’t seem to be enough fo r many organisations to secure the support and funding needed to propel them forwards.
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Rob Hubbard
MAY 8, 2014
By Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. My favourite teacher from my high school days, Mr ‘Geography’ Jones, died recently. I remember his enthusiastic an d, at times dramatic teaching style as if it were yesterday. He brought Geography alive for us and his theatrical demonstrations of a glacier powering through a valley have stayed with all of us – we will forever know our terminal from our lateral moraine.
Rob Hubbard
APRIL 17, 2013
by Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. We’re so used to self-directed learning these days that we forget we’re even doing it. I’m a trainee silversmith in my spare time. If I want to know the best way to solder a joint or set a stone, I’ll Google it, find a video on YouTube or ask my social network of fellow jewellers. I don’t need to wait for my class day to have a tutor instruct me in the technique, although undeniably it’s useful to have an expert on hand to help if I get stuck.
Rob Hubbard
MARCH 31, 2016
The limitations of human memory are an eternal conundrum for learning designers – how exactly do you create meaningful learning experiences for learners who have a shorter attention span than a goldfish? Or who are only able to retain 7 items in their short term memory 1 ? Perhaps microlearning is the answer? There are certainly a wide variety of definitions of microlearning.
Rob Hubbard
NOVEMBER 13, 2015
As LAS celebrate 10 years in business I find myself thinking back to what has changed over that time, what hasn’t, and what the future may hold. When I started LearningAge Solutions, it was as a jobbing contractor, working for a number of elearning development houses. Over time I started building content myself and soon needed to hire another developer. Now we have a globe-spanning team of about 20 people, a pretty stellar customer list and a good few awards under our belt. So what’s changed?
Rob Hubbard
OCTOBER 3, 2012
by Tess Robinson. Director, L earningAge Solutions). So goal-based learning sounds great but what can you use it for? And how can technology augment this way of learning? Performance support. Learning shouldn’t stop when a learner leaves the classroom. A goal-based approach can ensure that the learning continues into the workplace, making the most of the investment that the organisation has made and ensuring that learners are fully supported in attempting to improve their performance at work.
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Rob Hubbard
MARCH 6, 2013
By Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. It is incredibly disheartening to put all of your creative efforts into a piece of learning design for it to be largely ignored by your target audience. You’ve identified the organisational need, followed a robust design process and come up with a killer approach – so why won’t people engage with it? The answer is often that internal marketing and communication about the project has been ineffectual, or even non-existent.
Rob Hubbard
FEBRUARY 20, 2014
“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” – Mark Twain. The same is true of design, and for the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the design of learning experiences, websites and apps. The secret to great design is simplicity. The challenge is that designing a simple solution to a complex problem is usually a long journey.
Rob Hubbard
OCTOBER 14, 2015
by Tess Robinson, Director LAS. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ” — Albert Einstein. Our youngest son (7) is the very definition of curious. Every day is a barrage of questions: “Can anything happen in a nanosecond?” What would happen if we just breathed carbon dioxide?” Does the toothpaste come out like that (red, white and blue) because it’s French?”
Rob Hubbard
JUNE 23, 2017
By Rob Hubbard, LAS Director. I took a trip down to London recently for AR VR (Augmented Reality Virtual Reality) World. It was a small affair with geeks rather than sales people manning most of the stands. They were more interested in sharing their enthusiasm for their products, many of which were at prototype stage, than making a sale.
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Rob Hubbard
OCTOBER 13, 2016
By Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. If we’re honest, no one really likes just being told stuff. Cast your mind back to the last conference you attended. I bet there were some sessions where the speak er was just speaking at the audience, where you perfected your doodling, caught up on your emails or drifted off entirely.
Rob Hubbard
APRIL 17, 2013
Whenever I speak at a conference I take the same approach – I look for ways to get people talking to one-another and contributing to the session. I figure; we’ve got a room full of smart, highly experienced p eople – talking at them for an hour would be a huge waste of time. Better to make use of their knowledge and experience – their ‘collective intelligence’ – for the good of everyone. We try to take the same approach with digital learning.
Rob Hubbard
OCTOBER 12, 2015
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. These days it’s widely accepted that learners don’t really learn much from just sitting passively in front of a screen. It’s all too easy to switch off whilst you’re supposed to be concentrating on what’s in front of you if you’re not required to be an active participant, I’m certainly guilty of popping off to make a cup of tea or feed the cat in the middle of a webinar. But what if there is a need to just impart information, with compliance issues for example?
Rob Hubbard
MAY 8, 2014
This month we bid a fond farewell to our much cherished and long-running Rapid eLearning Development (ReD) course. Bac k in mid-2009 the concept of a fictional Ministry of Instructional Design with a secret mission became an itch that I had to scratch. It consumed me and I loved it. Jane Hart, Clive Shepherd and Patrick Dunn all helped to shape ReD in the early stages.
Speaker: Dr. Amy Titus, Managing Director in Human Capital at Deloitte Consulting
Join Dr. Amy Titus, Managing Director in Human Capital at Deloitte Consulting, for her exclusive session where she will be discussing the 3 guiding principles for the future of learning, and how these can affect the design of work in organizations.
Rob Hubbard
OCTOBER 13, 2015
By Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Lately I have been spending a lot of time on Webflow, a responsive site builder, redesigning our company website. As the number of devices, platforms and screen sizes grows it’s becoming more important to be able to provide an optimal viewing experience in terms of reading and navigation’ whatever the screen size.
Rob Hubbard
OCTOBER 8, 2013
By Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. Technology now affords so many more options to learn new skills without being physically present, but how can we ensure that participants are kept engaged and motivated when they’re not sat in front of us? It’s a constant challenge and one that we haven’t yet completely cracked but we’d like to share some things here that have worked for us…. Validation.
Rob Hubbard
JANUARY 28, 2016
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. Our MD recently won an Outstanding Contribution award and was named as one of the Top 10 eLearning Movers and Shakers in the UK for 2016. The award was given partly because of all the voluntary work he has done to support the elearning industry but also because he’s seen as somewhat of a thought-leader in digital learning. Here’s what I have learnt from him: Listen (and hear the things that people don’t say).
Rob Hubbard
NOVEMBER 21, 2013
This year, I had the great privilege, in my position as Chair of the eLN, to have edited and co-authored the eLN’s first ever book, The Really Useful eLearning Instruction Manual, published by Wiley. The book features contributions from world leading experts in all aspects of elearning and was a fantastic excuse to work with people whom I respect enormously. We wanted the book to be practical, useful and to contribute to the advancement of our industry through best practice.
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Rob Hubbard
MAY 24, 2013
Anyone who has attempted some form of learning design project will know that the goalposts have an annoying habit of moving. The objective that you set out initially to meet might evolve or even change co mpletely. This means that traditional approaches to learning design and development can struggle to adapt the design and keep pace with continually evolving requirements. They are simply not agile enough.
Rob Hubbard
DECEMBER 10, 2015
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. The latest Towards Maturity benchmark report makes rather depressing reading. Despite being consistently able to show that those organisations who embrace learning technologies perform better, be it through increasing revenue, improving productivity or job performance, the overall situation remains relatively static in terms of budget committed to digital learning or the range of technology used.
Rob Hubbard
JULY 18, 2016
In uncertain times, L&D budgets have a tendency to get slashed. Th is doesn’t need to herald doom and gloom. It’s an ideal time for L&D to reposition yourselves as integral to the business, as consultative partners who help to support wider organisational strategy and goals, rather than as a training shop. So how do you do this with a limited budget?
Rob Hubbard
JULY 13, 2016
by Tess Robinson, Director, LAS. The UK’s recent referendum on whether we should stay in the EU produced a shock result that has led to political and economic turmoil on an unprecedented scale. The VUCA acronym (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) has never felt more apt in this country. This is not to say, however, that all is lost. The organisations that will survive and prosper are those who are well-prepared for change and who can focus on it positively.
Speaker: TJ Seabrooks, former CEO at Rustici Software
Have you ended up with a collection of content inputs and data outputs that might be hard to wrangle? If your organization uses multiple LMSs and has content coming from many different places, or you’re heading in this direction, this webinar is for you.
Rob Hubbard
JANUARY 30, 2013
After a 20-year break I’m getting back into skiing. I’ve just returned from a four-day ski trip to the French Alps. It was awesome. Returning to a soggy grey UK, I’ve been thinking a lot about the trip and reflecting on my learning process. I went with three goals in mind: Learn to parallel turn (turn with my feet parallel). Start to carve (turn using the edges of the skis). Do one red (advanced) run.
Rob Hubbard
MAY 12, 2016
The internet. Television. The telephone. The bagless vacuum cleaner. The chocolate bar. The light bulb. The British are a nation of inventors – we like to tinker and try new things. For such a small island we have contributed more than our fair share of world-changing inventions. I’ve heard our infamous British weather be credited with encouraging our creativity – it’s rarely warm enough to spend time lounging on the beach, so instead we Brits have to find something else to do. We tinker.
Rob Hubbard
OCTOBER 3, 2012
In order to thrive in today’s tough economic climate, it’s no longer enough for your people to just ‘know stuff’. Learning needs to be focussed on performance and that’s where goal-based learning comes in. Goal-based learning is an extension of Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping process, of which we’ve been firm advocates for a long time. It concentrates on developing real-world behaviours that will lead to performance improvement.
Rob Hubbard
APRIL 12, 2016
At a party recently I had a flash of insight. A number of disparate ideas suddenly aligned in my head with an almost audible ‘clunk’, lubricated by prosecco and stimulating conversation. I was talking to a couple of friends about the sports I’m into and what I enjoy about them: sailing, skiing and mountain biking. In all three of these I’m not competitive. I’m not bothered about going fast or far. I don’t want to be the best.
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Rob Hubbard
JANUARY 22, 2013
by Tess Robinson, Director, LearningAge Solutions. We’ve put our heads together and come up with our favourite (mostly free) tools for aiding rapid elearning development. As our team are located all over the world, we particularly love cloud-based tools that allow for collaboration: MockFlow Wireframe Editor Screenshot. MockFlow – Cloud-based collaborative design tool. We use Mockflow for wire framing and specifying functionality.
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