From the Coleface

article thumbnail

How would you design learning with an unlimited budget?

From the Coleface

Recently I was given what many instructional designers would consider the best brief ever: there’s unlimited budget, there’s no major urgency, just come up with something innovative and interesting. After the shock had worn off, I felt a mix of elation and fear.

Budget 124
article thumbnail

Don’t waste your budget on a magic bullet

From the Coleface

In a time of rapid change and economic uncertainty it can be more difficult to make the holistic/ process approach work, but the rewards for doing so are that L&D budgets can potentially go much further.

Budget 100
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

12 performance consulting questions for L&D

From the Coleface

What is the budget? What do you see as the main barriers to success? Other than a learning intervention, what else needs to happen to achieve success? What would happen if we did nothing? Which stakeholders need to be involved? What do the stakeholders and target audience care about? What is driving the timelines?

article thumbnail

Chain of fools

From the Coleface

So they give a budget to L&D. So they think “let’s make this into e-learning” They give the budget to an e-learning company.

Our readers want you
article thumbnail

Beautiful data, frightening conclusions

From the Coleface

In the UK Budget 2014/15 central government spending was forecast to be £648b. In the Budget, the Government’s required addition to borrowing was £84b, funding an overspend of 13% for the year. This represents an annual spend per head of £10,109 (UK population 64.1m). people who are aged 16-64.

article thumbnail

Let’s focus on the learning (with a little help from Cynefin)

From the Coleface

The way that the budget and approvals process works in most organisations is that a learning designer is typically presented with a fait accompli e.g. “We’ve got 45 minutes of learner time to get our learners from A to B.”

article thumbnail

Are confidentiality concerns holding back the e-learning industry?

From the Coleface

There’s the money argument: marketing generally gets more budget than learning and for businesses like Amazon the website is central to the business strategy. I’m sure there are more ‘borrowings’, but let’s move on to identifying why web design has evolved faster than e-learning.

article thumbnail

Why buying e-learning is like buying a fitted kitchen

From the Coleface

Although in real life I do dabble in the kitchen, for the sake of keeping the analogy afloat, lets assume that I am the budget holder and my wife is the user. I could get in a bespoke kitchen specialist to design something.

Learning 100
article thumbnail

e-learning on the up in professional services

From the Coleface

Budget cuts have moved the goalposts; it used to be a choice of “face to face training or e-learning”, increasingly it’s a choice between “work it out yourself or e-learning” This has driven up e-learning usage and consequently driven down scepticism. It’s the recession, stupid.

article thumbnail

Content? or malcontent?

From the Coleface

”, let’s enter the kind of world where the starting point is “I have x budget to spend on engaging my audience with this subject, what’s the most effective way to communicate my message in an engaging & interesting way, that delivers change & performance linked to business results?

Content 100
Our readers want you
article thumbnail

Wii Fit and compliance e-learning

From the Coleface

Oh, and don’t forget (as Nintendo did n’t) a hefty marketing budget often helps… Although it’s far too early to tell whether Wii Fit will have an impact on the nation’s wellbeing, it’s worth pausing to think how many of the above ingredients you have incorporated into your compliance e-learning.

article thumbnail

21st century Learning Management Systems

From the Coleface

an internet paradigm), or do the budget holders have the real power? (an Whilst you have to hope that there will be scope to cover both needs, in the short term it looks like there will be a power struggle where LMSs are the battlefield…do the users have the real power? (an an unwritten rule of business).

LMS 100
article thumbnail

More e-learning benchmarking, vicar?

From the Coleface

Many thanks to those who made time to answer the questionnaires, and for feeeling confident to share some pretty sensitive data; I have even been able to calculate average e-learning budget per head as a result.

Learning 100
article thumbnail

Why the time is right for self-managed learning

From the Coleface

As the pressure for L&D to do more with less budget continues, improving learners’ capacity to self-manage learning will result in more workplace transfer of learning and hence return on L&D investment.

Learning 100
article thumbnail

Calling all you customer service trainers?

From the Coleface

At a time of training budgets being cut further, good customer service seems like a way for companies to differentiate and therefore grab a larger slice of a shrinking pie. As money gets tighter, the Buffet metaphor of seeing who’s wearing swimming costumes when the tide goes out applies.

Our readers want you
article thumbnail

Formalising the informal?

From the Coleface

The more critical question is, do you feel politically brave enough to make the case for increasing the use of informal learning when the budget that your salary comes out of might be put under yet more threat?

Informal 100
article thumbnail

Did the e-learning revolution flounder because the trainers carved it up?

From the Coleface

Is there a reasonable budget? It’s a pretty flow diagram that I’ll reproduce slightly more prosaically here: Q1. Is the content really interesting? Yes: Face to face course. No: Go to Q2. Yes: Comission e-learning. No: Leave it to Nellie (informal/ on the job learning).

Learning 100
article thumbnail

Is Enterprise search the answer to L&D’s interruption problem?

From the Coleface

Get on board: somewhere in your organisation someone is already considering Enterprise search and committing budget to it. If you want your course on negotiation skills to appear at the top of the listings when someone types ‘negotiation tips’ into the intranet search box, you can. accountancy e-learning legal training'

Search 140
article thumbnail

Balancing the tangible with the intangible in e-learning

From the Coleface

games attract far larger budgets than e-learning ever has/will and hence look better). Hence it will only ever get more important that L&D departments create the time, energy and confidence to communicate successfully just how useful and engaging their forthcoming e-learning is going to be.

Learning 100
article thumbnail

Mind the gap: culture vs. good practice

From the Coleface

However, you may want to spend some time exploring different approaches on a small scale as they may offer you creative ways of stretching budgets further and place you well to take advantage of the up-turn when it comes.

Culture 100
article thumbnail

Advanced personal learning? Can we get solar power instead?

From the Coleface

Power and budgets are centralized. In professional services the focus on billable hours tends to mean that learners want their learning packaged by experts so that it is over as quickly as possible. It will take considerable cultural shift and leadership to empower learners to act as mature learners. Too much top down.