Successive approximation, rapid prototyping, agile methods—they all call for iterative development. With each iteration you take a product out to the learners and gather new input into your designs. Does this completely mess with everything we’ve learned about the ADDIE model? How do you know when to stop iterating? How do you convince your project sponsors to go along? Is this just an excuse for releasing shoddy work?

Engaging learners online in an authentic way presents challenges for instructors and designers trying to create effective and pedagogically sound courses. An ideal educational experience happens when students encounter a cognitive presence, a social presence, and a teaching presence. Such an experience can also be grounded within the community of inquiry model and personal learning environment.

Organizational storytelling can be a powerful learning approach, but it suffers from many obstacles. Storytellers often lack skill in developing a cohesive narrative and delivery. Often the relatability of the narrative misses the mark. Content, relevancy, and usefulness should always be paramount and the current quality of many training-related videos is mediocre at best

Some developers pay instructional design (ID) no attention at all. Some have never heard of it, and do not see any reason to get to know it. You can see instructional design being criticized in blogs, Twitter streams, and other areas. It’s too slow. It’s too wordy. It’s not techie enough. It’s not appreciated by customers or clients. What you don’t find are alternatives or even a shared definition. If you ask 100 instructional designers for a definition, you won’t get just one definition, you’ll get many—or shrugged shoulders. Shouldn’t we try to establish a shared, contemporary perspective on it before we consign it to the scrapheap of history?

Using video for eLearning is here to stay. But it’s almost impossible to answer fundamental questions about whether or not your training video is reaching its goals. In many cases, you don’t even know if the viewer is still in the same room after they’ve clicked play.

With the financial advantages of big data gaining global attention, C-level managers and senior business leaders are beginning to demand better reporting and improved accountability across all organizational divisions. While the goal of measuring learning seems unreachable for most in the training division, the reality is that these technological advancements mean that disruption in the training industry is inevitable. These innovations will enable unprecedented reporting of training effectiveness, business impact, and return on training investment.

The process of getting newly hired salespeople trained and actively selling products is a key concern for most businesses. Organizations typically throw new hires into a classroom for a week or two, and then send them on their way with a couple of three-ring binders and with little or no follow-up. Grainger was seeking faster and more innovative ways to make its new hires successful while recognizing that people learn better over time.

There is an increasing demand for accessibility in learning content, yet many instructional designers are unsure if they are doing a good job of meeting the needs of learners with disabilities. There is a need for instructional designers to discover what they can do to accommodate and enhance content for users of all abilities.

How can you make computer application training interesting and effective for your learners? Software simulations can be an effective way to train employees on new applications. However, creating complex simulations is expensive and time consuming. Simplistic simulations are often ineffective, resulting in boring eLearning (often referred to as death by PowerPoint).

Most learners and stakeholders want an efficient learning experience that can increase their competency as quickly as possible. Most training teams want a scalable, flexible, and sustainable solution. Yet too often training programs fail to deliver on these expectations because we try to cram too much information into too short a timeframe using the wrong type of solution.

Too often, when we get rooted in our projects, we become very self-centered in our work. We forget there are people just like us struggling in the exact same way. We begin to convince ourselves that our way is the only way and, creatively, we can shut down very quickly under the weight of our workload. The panic, stress, and insecurity all lead us to not put our best work out there and, what’s more, to not share our work in pursuit of improvement and feedback.

The concept of using games for learning is a very popular topic right now. It is also a controversial topic, as there are people who support games for learning, and others who question their value. Part of this divide is the existing confusion regarding how games support learning, and what research-based approaches are most effective.

Many practitioners think that learning research is pie-in-the-sky information that is of value for academics but of little value for practitioners. But good practitioner research is practical research that points practitioners and their managers towards better practice and helps them make the important decisions.

Articulate Storyline is a very powerful tool for eLearning. It is also extremely easy to use, enabling novice users to quickly learn how to build courses and add interactivity to content. Interactivity is what can make even the most boring content more engaging.

Research shows that only 20 percent of corporate learning happens during formal training, regardless of the delivery modality. However, 70 percent of learning occurs during on-the-job experiences. One way of bringing more job experience into formal training is through online roleplay simulations. The challenge most organizations have is the belief that simulations are too expensive, take too long to build, or require skill sets they cannot support.