The Importance of Having a Graphic Designer on your Learning Development Team Do I need a graphic designer on my learning development team? Yes. Generally, I prefer to weigh the sides of an issue and make a carefully nuanced decision; but when it comes down to it, you need a graphic designer on your team. Of the information transmitted to the brain, 90% is visual. Articles with images get 94%[…]
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Accessibility Expertise: Determining Where It Belongs in Elearning Development
Building accessible online courses requires specialized skills—but do all accessible elearning development skills reside in a single role? Manage Accessible Elearning Development by Looking at Processes We talk a lot about making sure that elearning is accessible to all learners. Accessibility, in the context of elearning, means ensuring that people with disabilities (generally related to cognition, mobility, hearing, and vision) experience the course in the same way as those without[…]
READ MORE about Accessibility Expertise: Determining Where It Belongs in Elearning DevelopmentBut What Could *Possibly* Go Wrong? Testing Your Online Course
Testing Your Online Course: How to Evaluate Elearning Functionality before Launching How does testing fit into elearning development? It’s tempting to assume, when an elearning course has been created, that everything will just work. Advancing through the course will perform as expected; when questions are answered, the correct feedback will appear; completion will be properly registered with the user’s account. And yet… Here are some things that I’ve seen go[…]
READ MORE about But What Could *Possibly* Go Wrong? Testing Your Online CourseThe Indispensable Role of Clients in Learning Projects
The Client Role in Learning Development: How Much Do You Really Need to Be Involved, Anyway? If you engage a learning company to help create training, there’s a temptation to hand off development and then not touch base with the learning company again until the training’s ready to be implemented. Just write the check. What more is needed? Such an approach is…problematic. A client has an essential role—ofttimes several essential[…]
READ MORE about The Indispensable Role of Clients in Learning ProjectsA Note on Details: Which versus What?
When writing multiple choice questions, do you ever wonder whether the stem should read “what option should you choose” or “which option should you choose”? And should options begin with a capitalized letter, even if they are incomplete sentences? Should options have closing punctuation? Should the stem end in a colon? Will anyone even care? And, of course, it’s not just about the quiz. Throughout your curriculum, there are decisions[…]
READ MORE about A Note on Details: Which versus What?Corporate Training Development Tip #2: Draw on Other Fields
Corporate Training Tips & Tricks—Save Your Money & Prove Your Worth, Book Excerpt #2 NOTE: The following article is taken, with minor changes, from Corporate Training Tips & Tricks: Save Your Money & Prove Your Worth by Katrina Baker. It is one of three articles by Microassist Senior Learning Architect Kevin Gumienny. To hear more training tidbits from Kevin and other learning and development professionals, we encourage you to get your copy of[…]
READ MORE about Corporate Training Development Tip #2: Draw on Other FieldsTop Tech-Based Ways to Train a Distributed Workforce
One of the enduring challenges in the learning and development world is disseminating training classes to the largest audience in the least amount of time. Supporting a distributed workforce through effective training is an increasingly important challenge as companies expand across larger geographic regions. Conquering Distance Education: Top 4 Ways to Train Staff Across the Miles It isn’t uncommon for offices to be spread across the country (or even the globe)[…]
READ MORE about Top Tech-Based Ways to Train a Distributed WorkforceLearning and Development: Why Hire an Outside Company?
Why hire a learning and development company? You don’t need to. That’s kind of important to point out. Companies perform training functions internally all the time. They develop and deliver employee training, they create and deploy training for their customers, they write and distribute training for their channel partners. They may have a training department or they may leverage internal resources. And it can be effective. And yet… even very[…]
READ MORE about Learning and Development: Why Hire an Outside Company?The Client’s Critical Role in Custom Elearning Development
Recently I was asked about common issues for our clients to be aware of when contracting for custom elearning. After all, our goal at Microassist is to provide our clients with a final, custom-built online training product that gets people to learn in a new, engaging, and all-around satisfying format that enables learners to acquire a new skill and perform at a higher level. So how do we get there? It turns out that the[…]
READ MORE about The Client’s Critical Role in Custom Elearning DevelopmentDilemma: Training in an Era of Budget Constraint
Traditional Training Has a Lot of Peripheral Costs but Failure to Train = Catastrophic Liability As an agency head, I was constantly coping with the ebb and flow of funding. Sadly, the latter years saw more ebbing than flowing. Budget reductions and unanticipated shortfalls necessitated a relentless cycle of reprioritization, force reductions, equipment replacement, schedule modifications, reductions in services, deferred purchases, consolidations, and all the other things that executives do[…]
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