You write a great objective, put it on a slide, and then the instructor presents it to your learners. What happens? Given a technically perfect learning objective Your learners will… Yawn Space out Stop paying attention Pretty much 100% of the time But wait! Objectives are the heart of the instructional design process. So true—but… Continue Reading
Part I—Describing the purpose of your work. Part II—Creating focus areas so that you can look at your life in smaller pieces. Step Three: Divide, List, and Conquer Once you have your main focus areas, it’s time to add goals, projects, and tasks for each one. We (mostly) can’t do more than one thing at… Continue Reading
It’s a tough thing to talk about instructional design (not to mention performance consulting) during a noisy cocktail party, especially with people who’ve never heard of either one. Trees. Forest. Ecosystem. Scratch the surface and describing what we do becomes complex pretty quickly. Photo © Jeanne Farrington I’m at a conference with people from many… Continue Reading
Part I is about describing the purpose of your work. Step Two: List Your Major Focus Areas Armed with an awesome or even “okay” purpose for your work, there’s still the whole of your life to take into account. But yikes! That’s what causes the “I can’t do anything” reaction in the first place. Never… Continue Reading
For too many mornings of my life I’ve felt a little (or a lot) overwhelmed. Many things that needed to be done would be clamoring, “Me, me! Work on this right here!” It’s hard to choose when they’re all vying for attention like that. After reading many books, articles, and blog posts and after trying… Continue Reading
Time is almost always short. Training is expensive. Quality interaction between learners and instructors is at a premium. How can flipping the classroom help? What is it? Blended learning with video lectures online (first) and practicing in class (second). Schools. Students watch online video lectures at home and then do their homework in class, where… Continue Reading
Over the years I’ve sat through many, many courses, both live and online, and sometimes it’s amazing how bad they can be. The fault can be the design, the delivery, glitches in the system, or all three. We know this, and we know what to do about it. Therefore, there’s no good excuse for bad… Continue Reading
Let’s say that you’ve just met someone new, or you attended a meeting with people you like and respect. Want to make a stronger connection? Here’s how: send a handwritten note. It doesn’t take long to write a few lines and address an envelope. The people you send notes to are likely to say how… Continue Reading
Sometimes, when I look at my to-do list, I feel a little overwhelmed. There are a lot of items, and I can be unsure where to start. Do you ever feel like that? Here’s what I tried this week, which you might like, too. Big focus areas. Before taking action on anything, I listed a… Continue Reading
When something isn’t working right, managers often ask for training. Is training the right answer? Not as often as people think. I’m sure you’ve seen times when people wanted to make things better, assumed training would be the right answer, but didn’t get the result they wanted (no matter how great the training was). Here… Continue Reading
