“Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible.”
— Rebecca Solnit
It’s so cold here that I’ve practically become one with my heater, and I’m seriously considering some battery-powered clothing. But if Monday night’s national championship game turns out the right way, nobody will care the slightest about the temperature, and Columbus will be an inferno of scarlet and gray.
Tired of Technical Fluff and Empty Promises When Choosing an Authoring Tool?
Join a live demo of iSpring Suite — the comprehensive authoring tool for creating advanced courses right in PowerPoint. Explore real courses created with the tool, see how they’re designed, and discover what they include. No sales pitch — just a preview of what you can achieve!
The Rundown: Emotions significantly influence adult learning by guiding attention, enhancing engagement, and affecting memory retention. However, their intentional incorporation into learning experiences is often overlooked.
The Context:
Role of Emotions: Emotions are biological responses to significant events, shaping our cognitive processes. Negative emotions, like fear and anger, narrow focus to address immediate threats, while positive emotions broaden our openness to new experiences.
Impact on Learning: Positive emotions enhance engagement and creativity, leading to better problem-solving and knowledge retention. Conversely, negative emotions can hinder learning by limiting cognitive flexibility.
Strategies for Educators: Incorporating storytelling, humor, and varied activities can evoke positive emotions, making learning experiences more effective. Additionally, creating a safe environment allows learners to express and manage emotions constructively.
Why it Matters: Recognizing and harnessing the power of emotions in educational settings can transform passive learning into dynamic, memorable experiences. By intentionally designing with emotions in mind, educators can facilitate deeper understanding and long-term retention of information.
Rundown: Anna Maria Dorgo has a conversation with Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner, which focuses on building and sustaining successful Communities of Practice (CoPs) and social learning spaces. It highlights the importance of collaboration, storytelling, and leadership for shared learning and problem-solving.
The Context:
Strong leadership is crucial. Successful CoPs often start with an enthusiastic leader who fosters open communication and a shared purpose.
Facilitators should encourage participant ownership and storytelling rather than simply providing services. Stories help members understand challenges and adapt solutions to their specific situations.
Sustaining a CoP requires ongoing learning. Regularly review past discussions to evaluate real-world outcomes and adjust based on shared experiences.
Why it Matters: CoPs offer a human-centered alternative to traditional training. By emphasizing storytelling and collaboration, they create dynamic environments for professional growth. This empowers practitioners to navigate uncertainty and drive innovation.
Scaling Evidence-based Instructional Design Expertise Using AI
The Rundown: Philippa Hardman summarizes recent research on using AI to scale evidence-based teaching approaches that have traditionally been too resource-intensive to implement broadly.
The Context:
By creating a single “perfect” template and using it to generate multiple variations with AI, instructional designers can significantly reduce development time while maintaining quality.
Designers can start with one high-quality module, perfect their AI-assisted approach, and then scale that success across the entire course. This iterative process allows for continuous refinement and maximizes the impact of AI.
Implementing structured human review processes that complement AI’s capabilities is crucial. This might involve multi-stage reviews focusing on factual accuracy, pedagogical effectiveness, and inclusivity, with continuous improvement of the review process itself.
Why it Matters: Using AI-powered language models in teaching offers a way to apply what we know about effective teaching methods on a large scale. This has the potential to improve learning outcomes for students in many different educational settings.
Last Chance to Register – AI in L&D: Friend, Foe, or the Future?
Knowledge is power! Empower yourself and your team with the latest AI innovations for L&D. Don’t miss out on game-changing insights that could revolutionize your L&D strategies.
Can you confidently position yourself as AI-proficient, meeting the evolving expectations of future HR roles? Join our workshop to master AI tools with HR-specific use cases and prompts. Save time and supercharge productivity by becoming 10x more efficient.
Do learners understand your instructional graphics?
Are we all a little over-confident about the graphics we use to promote learning? Elizabeth Boling has done research that demonstrates we are. We assume people can understand our intent in the instructional graphics that we or others produce. But this is not always the case.
What do you think of book clubs for professional development?
I’ve seen them transform reading into collaborative learning in tech, marketing, and leadership. I’m thinking about developing a toolkit to make these experiences more impactful and would love your input! Share your experiences: What worked? What didn’t? How did you structure discussions? Let’s learn together!
If you or your event needs a speaker or workshop that is highly interactive and super practical, we should talk.
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I do believe that if you haven’t learnt about sadness, you cannot appreciate happiness. Nana Mouskouri
I’m in New Orleans today for the inaugural edition of the Click! Presentation Design Conference which is part of Creative Pro Week (@CreativeProWeek). I’m excited to be part of a panel discussion hosted by David Blatner (@dblatner) with Richard Goring (@RichardGoring), Rick Altman (@rickaltman), and Joe Buchwald talking about presentation and elearning design. This is a particularly rich week with valuable finds on these types of learning, design, and technology topics.
A Visualization Prescription for Impactful Data Storytelling
If you find your presentations are often met with a lukewarm reception, it’s a sure sign it’s time for you to invest in your data storytelling. Learn about Lea Pica’s (@LeaPIca) prescription for telling impactful stories in her Whiteboard Friday episode with Rand Fishkin (@randfish )
A New Paradigm For Corporate Training: Learning In The Flow of Work
Work is learning. Josh Bersin (@Josh_Bersin) dives deep into this idea of learning in the flow of work and the fact that “…obstacles to growth are not always technical, they’re in our own minds. We don’t really use new technology well until we change the way we think.”
Launched back in May 2016, the GoodPractice podcast is a weekly show that has fast become a must-listen for anyone working in Learning and Development., They’ve reached the 100 episode mark and these are their top 5.
The latest in Patti Shank’s (@PattiShank) wonderful series on learning, this one covers 21 evidence-based and easy-to-apply tactics that support memory while learning and beyond. Like the previous books in this series, this is a valuable addition to your personal library.
How to design user interfaces with the Golden Canon Grid
Not to be confused with the Golde Ratio, Jule Terberg (@JulieTerberg) tipped me off to Adrián Somoza (@AdrianSomoza) and the Golden Canon Grid that he uses for designs ranging from websites to other smaller pieces like Facebook covers, profile pics, etc. Be sure to grab the free template so you can give it a try yourself.
5 Easy Steps To Becoming A Better eLearning Designer
No matter where you are in your career, you should always be looking for ways to improve. Here are five things you can do to become a better elearning designer.
There is tons of great stuff coming from the #CreativeProWeek conference. If you design anything, (and we all do!) you’ll want to take a look.
Meanwhile down in Australia, they’re #AITD2018 conference has been in full swing this week.
Looking for your next conference? Check my global collection of L&D events.
Design Resources
Pandacolors – Pandacolors is simple online web tool for generating colors in one single click. Because graphic designers are not the only ones who have to think about choosing the right colors.
Apps I’m trying out this week:
ImageBlur.io – Ever need to blur private or any other info in a screenshot or graphic? ImageBlur lets you do it right in your browser and it is super quick and easy!
Book/Podcast
Dream Teams: Working Together Without Falling Apart – This book takes you on an adventure through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business, exploring why collaboration so often fails and how to succeed.
I enjoy sharing my ideas and experience with corporate professionals via workshops, keynote presentations, podcasts, and webinars. Learn more in mySpeaking and Workshop Information Sheet.
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