If you’ve been following our blog, you probably recognize some of the top blog articles below. If you haven’t, that’s ok, too. This post will help you catch up on what we’ve been talking about for the past year.
1. 6 Steps to a Mobile Mindset: Mobile Learning Basics
By Jake Huhn
*This article is a 2017 eLearning Learning MVP Award Winner in the Mobile Learning category.*
Early in 2017, BLP’s Senior Marketing Technologist, Jake Huhn, wrote this article to provide mobile learning tips and best practices. Jake coined the term Mobile Mindset to encompass a broader range of programming and design that’s accessible to all organizations—the ones trying to roll out mobile now and those who still have hurdles to overcome. Mobile Mindset means thinking about programming and design in a way that is adaptable for the future. It means improving the design of even your desktop eLearning courses so you’re prepared for whatever device/browser/version comes our way.
2. Microlearning: What It Is and What It Isn’t
By Holly Bradbury
In our 2017 Learning Trends Survey, we asked respondents to tell us what learning trends or new training delivery methods they are most excited about for 2017. The number one answer? Microlearning. 18% of respondents said they’re excited about microlearning for the year ahead. But just because people are excited about microlearning, doesn’t mean they know the proper way to incorporate it into their training strategy. This article will help you discover what microlearning is, what it’s not and how to effectively blend it into your 2018 training strategies.
3. 6 Pervasive Corporate Training Pitfalls
By Holly Bradbury
Remember when you were new to learning and development? If you really are new, congratulations and welcome to the field! If you’ve been around for a little while, I want you to think back: what do you wish you could tell your former self about what he/she is getting themselves into? Maybe you would warn “past you” about how easy it is for learners to tune out during training. Or perhaps you would tell a cautionary tale about how upper management is not easily convinced that the creative approaches you will want to try are worth the investment. Are any of these challenges yours? This article takes a closer look at the top six training “pitfalls” and how you can avoid them.
4. The Forgetting Curve: What It Is and Why It Matters
By Steven Boller
This article is a must-read because there are lots of conflicting claims out there about what the forgetting curve actually is, how quickly people forget, and what trainers can do about it. But despite the confusion, trainers can’t afford to ignore the forgetting curve. When forgetting is properly planned for, it is just another design constraint. But when we pretend forgetting won’t happen or assume forgetting doesn’t matter, it becomes a value killer.
5. Emerging Learning Technologies: Promise vs. Hype
By Sharon Boller
For almost a decade now, we’ve been hearing that these “emerging” technologies will become viable solutions to add to the L&D practitioner’s toolbox. After watching and waiting for numerous years, Sharon felt like this year is the year where all three technologies reached a tipping point, of sorts. So in June 2017, our Director of Technology, Brandon Penticuff, along with a great team of people, hosted an “emerging technologies” day so everyone at BLP could experience the new tech in the span of a two-hour hands-on lab. Afterward, we talked about what we saw as promise, and what we saw as “hype.” This post summarizes what we explored, how we felt about it, and what we learned.
6. How to Successfully Implement a Training Program
By Sharon Boller
This is one of our top ten articles for good reason! Reinforcement and spaced practice are important components to help someone actually use and remember what you are trying to teach them. It’s one ingredient to ensuring successful implementation, but Sharon says it’s not enough. You also have to plan out everything else that needs to happen for your solution to really solve a problem. Excellent learning design and great content are important, but they miss the mark if we fail to consider what’s required for a solution to be implemented well and sustained over time.
7. Show and Tell: Gamified eLearning in Articulate Storyline 3
By Holly Bradbury
In early Fall of this year, BLP Learning Technologist, Kathryn Steele created an eLearning course in Articulate Storyline 3 called “Abby Goes to the OBGYN.” This course is a learner-controlled eLearning experience. It makes a linear course feel interactive and engaging because learners are able to actively participate. In a course, active learning goes beyond passively reading content, listening to a lecture, or watching a video. The results demonstrate how an eLearning course can use game elements to simulate a learner’s journey and make the learner part of the experience. This article includes video tutorials that give the reader a behind-the-scenes look at how the course was created and how learners interact with the course.
8. Design Thinking: Level-Up the Learner Experience
By Sharon Boller
*This article is a 2017 eLearning Learning MVP Award Winner in the Design category.*
Sharon wrote this article on design thinking – a topic she is personally passionate about and one that has gained significant traction in the L&D world just this year. Design thinking evolves solutions through an iterative process of observation, insight, ideation, experimentation, and testing. Its goal is to produce solutions that find the ”sweet spot” between human needs, business viability, and technical feasibility. The end user of the solution is the focal point. And any solution you create must involve the user in the formulation, design, and testing of that solution.
9. From Three Phases to Four: The Toolkit Approach to Product Launch Training
By Steven Boller
Have a big product launch on the horizon? This article is for you. Product launch training vendors have long encouraged clients to adopt a three-phase product launch model. Basic facts and foundational knowledge are introduced in the pre-work. The launch meeting builds and deepens this knowledge and provides practice opportunities. Then post-launch tools are created to help reps commit what they’ve learned to long-term memory… or at least know where to look it up. Three phases are a great start, but they aren’t enough. It turns out a fourth phase is needed to make product launches successful over the long haul.
10. The Learning & Remembering Equation (Infographic)
By Sharon Boller
Sharon and I recently collaborated to create an infographic that showcases her Learning & Remembering Equation. The concept is simple: there are certain design factors you must include in your solutions for people to 1) learn and 2) later be able to recall and apply what they learned. But our brains are wired to forget things. When today’s world is filled with so many distractions, it can be difficult to attend to anything, let alone remember it later. The Learning & Remembering Equation will help you devise training solutions that truly help your learners recall information when they need it.
Download our 2018 Learning Trends Report
Our goal is to write about stuff that matters to YOU. So in late 2017 we launched our 2018 Learning Trends Survey. The information we collected in the survey gave us insight into the different challenges trainers face, what trends they’re excited about for the future, and how they plan to deliver training in 2018. Now we’ve compiled that information into a detailed report. Download it below!
Access Report
