Staying Relevant in E-Learning in 2014
As you dive into the new year, keep your sights on what is possible for e-learning. As with any technology-based industry, it is important for e-learning professionals to stay current with the e-learning technology, hone current skills, and add new ones.
If you’re like me, you’re always looking for ways to grow and new things to learn. The e-learning industry has so many outlets for information and growth opportunity. We thought it would be helpful to have a list of them here, in one place.
Conferences:
*ASTD TechKnowledge: January 22-24, 2014, Las Vegas, NV
*Learning Solutions 2014 and Ecosystem 2014: March 19-21, 2014, Orlando, FL
*Lectora User’s Conference: March 31 – April 4, 2014, Los Angeles, CA
*ASTD ICE (International Conference and Exposition): May 4-7, 2014, Washington, D.C.
Learning DevCamp: June 10-12, 2014, Salt Lake City, UT
mLearnCon: June 24-26, 2014 , San Diego, CA
Online Learning Conference: September 22-25, 2014, Chicago, IL
Elliot Masie’s Learning 2014: October 26-29, 2014, Orlando, FL
DevLearn: October 29-31, 2014, Las Vegas, NV
*Artisan will be speaking at each conference noted with an asterisk.
Courses and Certificates:
ASTD certificates: ASTD national offers many courses and certificates to members. Find these programs here.
Authoring Tools Training: E-Learning Uncovered offers tools training on the major rapid e-learning development authoring tools. And we’re now offering free webinars, starting with a comparison of e-learning authoring tools on January 31 from 12pm to 1pm EST.
The Articulate, Adobe, and Lectora websites are also good resources when looking for training on authoring tools. Lynda.com is another very popular training resource.
Local ASTD Chapters:
You can find your own local ASTD chapter by going to the ASTD national website and using the chapter locator. Many chapters offer special interest groups for e-learning, training technologies, leadership, career transition, etc. Chapters may also have geographic interest groups for those in large metropolitan areas.
Forums:
Online discussion forums are a great place to connect with counterparts from other organizations world-wide. I highly recommend the Articulate community forum: E-Learning Heroes. I’ve solved many of my development issues by searching or posting on this forum. Although the Lectora forum and the Captivate forum do not have quite as many contributors, you will find quality information on each of these, too.
Another great place for discussion is in LinkedIn Groups. There are groups for Lectora, Captivate, and Articulate Storyline and Studio.
Blogs:
Cathy Moore’s Save the World
Christopher Pappas’ eLearning Industry
Connie Malamed’s The E-Learning Coach
Craig Weiss’ E-Learning 24/7 Blog
Tom Kuhlmann’s The Rapid E-Learning Blog
Artisan E-Learning’s The E-Learning Uncovered Blog
Websites:
Masie.com: Contains e-learning resources
eLearningGuild.com: Serves as a global community for designers, developers, and managers of e-learning
ASTD.org/Communities-of-Practice/Learning-Technologies: Provides current and archived Learning Technologies articles, webcasts, books, and blog posts
TrainingMag.com: Provides publications and resources for developments in training and online learning tools and techniques
Books:
Search Amazon.com for “e-learning” to find over 74,000 results.
eLearning Guild gives several free e-books.
Let us know if you have additional recommendations. Happy learning!
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One thing we think is important is making the learning relevant with examples, but the examples don’t all have to be work based. Using safe passwords for example, is just as important at work as it is in our personal lives as it is for those we care about. We’ve written a blog about relevance herehttp://whatyouneedtoknow.co.uk/relevant-elearning/
Though this information is given in 2014, very informative and valuable about Elearning!