“The most important skill is the skill of learning new skills – everything else will become obsolete over time.”
Peter Drucker
Happy Friday! It is my favorite day of the work week and my favorite time of year. I hope wherever you are, you’re able to experience some of your favorite things today.
Thanks for reading!
What I’m Listening to: Beautiful mistakes by Maroon 5 is my new favorite song and it looks like a Maroon 5 kind of day around here.
Last week’s most clicked item:
Feeling Busy & Distracted? It’s Not Your Fault
Top Free Resources Used by a Design Agency
One of the most frequent questions I get is about where to find good, free design assets. Stinson Design has assembled a great collection of high-quality options for photos, icons, fonts and more. (You can also find my favorites for filling your design toolkit in this free ebook.)
https://www.stinsondesign.com/blog/top-free-resources
Catering to Learning Styles Isn’t Just Ineffective: It Can Harm Learning
We all know that learning styles is a myth, right?! This post by Cindy Nebel on the Learning Scientists blog summarized some research to help our understanding of whether and how the learning styles hypothesis might be more problematic than just ineffective.
https://www.learningscientists.org/blog/2021/9/16-1
Are Learner Personas a Useful Design Tool?
One particular practice from UX that now seems to be becoming more widely adopted in learning design is the creation of Personas. But do they add value to the learning design process? See what Neil Mosley has to say about it here. What do you think?
https://www.neilmosley.com/blog/are-learner-personas-a-useful-design-tool
Hard Work Isn’t the Point of the Office
The pandemic disrupted soft work—the gossip, eavesdropping, and casual relationship-building that aren’t a formal part of your job.This is a pro office exploration of “soft work” as revealed in a study of 61,000 Microsoft employees the found that the pandemic caused “collaboration to be more static and siloed”.
Why Do Companies Have So Many Managers?
This is an interesting look at a few studies which have shown that reducing the number of managers usually led to more productivity and profit. Yet 17.6% of the US workforce (and 30% of the workforce’s compensation) is made up of managers and administrators. Learn more about how the pandemic has exposed a fundamental flaw in the system.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/manager-work-life-changes/620096/
Podcasts
- How Presentation Pros Create Their Own Presentations on the Presentation podcast
- Coaching and chatbots with Emma Weber on the Learning Transfer Radio podcast.
- 5 Fundamentals of Workflow Learning with Bob Mosher and Conrad Gottfredson on the Performance Matters podcast.
Tools & Tips
- Scribe automatically generates step by step guides
- Tango makes how-to guides with screenshots in seconds
- Feeds Mage helps you discover great blogs from your Twitter follows.
- Noti lets you take podcasts notes, hands-free, even while you run
- Maool Email Editor helps you create beautiful emails in less time with no coding knowledge
Where You Can Find Me
- Free Elearning & ID Tools with Tim Slade October 6
- DevLearn October 20-22
- New Jersey ATD – Future of Work – November 10
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Mike Taylor 