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The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
― Eleanor Roosevelt
Hey everyone! Sunshine and warmth this week have me dreaming of spring – and that made me think of the brilliant idea my friend Ger Driessen came up with last year called World Learning Content Cleanup Day!
Most of us are great at churning out amazing learning content, but sometimes keeping it fresh and up-to-date can fall by the wayside. #WLCCD is all about giving your content a good spring cleaning – retiring what’s old and refreshing what needs a little love.
To celebrate, I’m thrilled to be hosting a webinar next month with Bianca Baumann! We’ll be diving into how the L&D world can borrow a fantastic idea from marketing: using a rock-solid content strategy. It’ll be a blast, and I’d absolutely love for you to join us!
Thanks for reading!
🎶 What I’m Listening To
I hadn’t heard the term “Dad Rock” until recently, but yeah, I guess it fits — and I like it!
👆 Last Week’s Most Clicked
📰 News & Notes
How Learning Works
Theo Seeds’ article offers a simple guide to learning anything. Inspired by geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci and modern masters like Tim Ferriss, Seeds shares 8 key ideas to become a skilled learner. He explains how our brains can constantly learn new things and how getting feedback, embracing challenges, and staying humble are all important for mastering a skill. The article encourages readers to actively learn every day. It highlights the importance of setting goals and trying new things. Seeds reminds us that learning isn’t just about memorizing facts, but about truly understanding the world around us.
🎯 Take away: Mastering any skill is within reach if we understand that learning is an active, daily pursuit that thrives on feedback, discomfort, and a beginner’s mindset.
The 11 best ChatGPT prompts for better results, according to research
In a groundbreaking study by VILA Lab at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI, researchers tested 26 prompting principles on various language models, including Meta’s LlaMA and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to identify strategies that enhance the quality and correctness of responses. They found that asking the model questions first (Flipped Interaction) improved answer quality for all models, big or small. Interestingly, some tricks that made answers better didn’t always make them more accurate. But some things always helped, like giving examples of what you want and who it’s for, and keeping things simple. This is helpful for anyone who wants to get the most out of language models.
🎯 Take away: By asking the right questions in a specific way (like the Flipped Interaction method), you can get better answers from language models. This helps you find more accurate and helpful information.
The Rhyme-as-Reason Effect: Why Rhyming Makes Messages More Persuasive
Ever notice how rhymes can be surprisingly convincing? There’s actually a reason for that! Psychologists call it the “Rhyme as Reason” effect. Basically, we tend to believe things more if they rhyme, even if they don’t make much sense. This is because rhymes are catchy and stick in our memory. But beware! Just because something sounds good doesn’t mean it’s true. This article from Effectiviology dives deeper into this effect, showing how it can influence us in everything from advertising to legal arguments. It highlights how the way information is presented, even through something as simple as rhyme, can affect how truthful we perceive it to be.
🎯 Take away: Presentation style, even something as simple as rhyming, can affect how persuasive our messages are.
🧰 Tech Tools & Tips
If tools are your jam, check out my new Work Smarter newsletter.
Fillout
Create powerful forms, surveys and quizzes your audience will answer. Great option for learning projects with multiple pages, multimedia embeds, and easy collection of responses.
Training Activity Cookbook from Endurance Learning
The Training Activity Cookbook provides 63 reliably engaging training activities in a structure that helps you implement the activities immediately.
endurancelearning.com/books/activity-cookbook
One tool does it all—ClickUp offers all the features you need in one platform: Tasks, Docs, Whiteboards, Dashboards, Goals… and more!
Get ClickUp for free—no credit card needed!
🎧 Podcast
This is the conversation that caught my ear this week. Check out previous episodes in the Friday Finds podcast playlist.
Reimagining Compliance Training
Compliance programs rely on training, but is it working? This episode explores how to design and evaluate training for real impact.
🧳 Where’s Mike?
- aNewSpring World Learning Content Cleanup Day Webinar, April 9
- ATD ICE, New Orleans May 19-22
- Canadian eLearning Conference, Toronto, June 13-14
- Greater Cincinnati ATD, September 4
If you or your event needs a speaker or workshop that is highly interactive and super practical, we should talk.
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Advanced Course Creation in PowerPoint
Can you develop clear-cut course navigation using PowerPoint? Absolutely! Join our upcoming free session to learn how to build intuitive course structures that ensure your learners will enjoy a seamless eLearning experience.
Department of Shenanigans
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Mike Taylor 