“PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD.” –VOLTAIRE
I’m wrapping up this week’s newsletter from the Las Vegas airport on my way home from DevLearn. Whether you were here or not you should take a peek at the resources and browse some of the great presentations and related resources from all the amazing presenters who were here this week. Bianca Baumann and I had a great full-day workshop exploring some marketing tools and techniques that can help L&D professionals improve the results they see in their learning programs. As always it was bucket-filling to see so many old friends and making new ones.
Here are this week’s finds from the Learning, Design & Technology world. Thanks for reading!
Last week’s most clicked item:
Clive Shepherd: Do We Still Need Elearning?
Research Reveals PowerPoint Is Not to Blame
PowerPoint doesn’t make bad slides and it doesn’t give bad presentations—people do. In this post, John Schwabis refutes the common “death by PowerPoint” arguments. After all, blaming a bad presentation on PowerPoint is like blaming a bad book on MS Word.
https://policyviz.com/2019/10/23/research-reveals-powerpoint-is-not-to-blame/
Neuromyths and Evidence-Based Practices in Higher Education
Educators make countless decisions about their teaching and course design that are likely to impact on how well their students learn. At the heart of these decisions is a set of ideas about how learning proceeds, so it is self-evidently important that these ideas are valid and reflect our current scientific understanding. And yet, a growing body of research is revealing that many of the underlying beliefs of educators about learning are based on myth and misunderstanding – particularly in regard to the brain.
The What, Why, & How of Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is one of the easiest ways to get started with sharing valuable information. There are so many great ways to tap into the benefits of social bookmarking – both personally and organizationally. If you’re not using them, or even if you are, take a peek at this one to see if social bookmarks might be useful for you.
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/social-bookmarking
Can L&D solve problems without using the C word (and the P word)?
Give this post by Myles Runham (@mylesrun) a quick read and see if you agree that L&D too often seeks problems for which the course, a program, an event and some content are the answer. I’d love to hear your reactions?
https://mylesrunham.com/2019/10/08/can-ld-solve-problems-without-using-the-c-word-and-the-p-word/
Taking e-learning back to its roots
This one is a followup from last week’s most clicked item by Clive Shepherd. It goes back through the 40-year history of e-learning to show that it was at its most promising in the early days when there was a strong desire to deliver a personalized instructional experience. There are now few, if any, technical obstacles to achieving those goals, as the latest authoring platforms provide increasing adaptive capabilities. The real obstacles are with us, as humans.
https://www.cliveonlearning.com/2019/10/taking-e-learning-back-to-its-roots.html
Learning, Design & Technology Miscellany
A few other things just because I can.
Tools & Resources
- DevLearn Conference Resources
- Smaply – Online persona
- Xtensio – Online design tool that has some nice persona templates
- Push to GSheet – Send any [[“data”]] to a Google spreadsheet, in a matter of seconds
Conference Roundup
The conference season is heating up. Check out the upcoming schedule.
- L&D webinars and professional development events calendar by Kari Knisely (@KariKnisely)
Check out the upcoming conference action and please let me know if you see any I´ve missed.
You can find me at these UPCOMING EVENTS:
- October 22-25: DevLearn Pre-Conference Workshop & Concurrent Session
Interested in the things that didn’t make the cut here? Follow me on Twitter or even better, subscribe to my newsletter.
I’m always looking for great people and organizations who want to help people learn and work better. If you’re one of them, let’s talk! Speaking and Workshop Information Sheet.
Mike Taylor 