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What e-Learning and Elmo Lewis Have In Common

If I can get your attention, make you interested in my product/service, create an incredible desire in you to use my product, and propel you into action by getting you to buy my product, would that be of interest to you?

From an Instructional Designer’s perspective,this may sound a lot like something you would hear coming out of your Marketing department. In fact, it is the steps or events that are often undergone when a person is selling something. According to our friends over at wikipedia, the term AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) and the approach I just described are attributed to American advertising and sales pioneer, E. St. Elmo Lewis.

Here’s how AIDA breaks down:

1. Attention (Awareness): attract the attention of the customer
2. Interest: raise customer interest by focusing on and demonstrating advantages and benefits
3. Desire: convince customers that they want and desire the product or service and that it will satisfy their needs
4. Action: lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing

Ever wonder how you could use this as an Instructional Designer in creating e-Learning materials? Wonder no more! Our friends at Kineo have an excellent article I think you should read.  In the meantime, I’ll summarize some of the article’s key points.

Attention: What is your hook for getting them to look at your course? Consider putting the “What’s in it for me” factor out there as early as you can. Another way is to ask a question to get them engaged, share a powerful statistic, etc.

Interest: Avoid feature dumps and instead focus on how the new process you are teaching is going to make a difference.

Desire: Although we can’t sell people that e-learning is going to make them stronger, sexier, or smarter, we can incite desire by letting them know they’ll make fewer errors, be more efficient, etc.

Action: At the end of the e-learning program, you want them to go out and do something.

 

 

Do Cows Really Drink Milk and Other Musings from Brad Barton and Thiagi Thiagarajan

This past week I attended the ASTD Cascadia Chapter’s Regional Conference in Salem, Oregon. If you didn’t make it, you should have! With two great keynote speakers (Brad Barton and Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan) and numerous breakout sessions, opportunities were plentiful to expand your comfort zone.

I thought I would share a quick summary of what the two speakers covered. I would also encourage you to visit their websites to learn more.

Brad Barton | http://www.bradbartonspeaks.com/

Got Magic?!

 

• Consider making a “To Do List” of the things you want to stop doing. So many of us create a “To Do” list to track things we need to get done but, few of us use it to remind us to stop doing things that are not beneficial to our career and/or well-being.
• Misdirection, a tried and true magician’s trick, can also help learning professionals. Instead of just delivering data, think of more subtle ways of getting your message across. Focus on putting fun into your training. If participants are having fun during your training session, they don’t realize they are learning in the process. Yes, it is possible to have fun and learn at the same time!
• Mental conditioning- What are you saying about people around you?  What are you saying to yourself? “Our life follows our language.” If you focus on what is going wrong and start to create your own pity party, you are in store for more of the same!  Remember, when you are having problems or things aren’t going so well, look first inside yourself. You are most likely the source!

Brad also discussed the Hedgehog Principle from Jim Collins’ book “Good to Great”.  The Principle revolves around the answers to three questions. What are you passionate about? What can you be the best at? What can actually make you a living? The answer you come up with must meet all three of these criteria. In other words, it is about doing one thing and doing it well.

 

Thiagi “Designing Interactive Strategies” | http://www.thiagi.com

During Thiagi’s presentation, he focused on topics such as structured sharing, split-half format, textra games, simulation games, and sequential jolt activities. If you are a trainer, I would strongly recommend you visit his site to see how you can improve interactivity in your classroom.

 

• Structured sharing represents a special type of frame game that facilitates mutual learning and teaching among participants. Typical structured sharing activities create a context for a dialogue among participants based on their experiences, knowledge, and opinions.
• Split-half format is a technique used to create an interactive lecture. The key idea is that participants receive two different tests. Its purpose is to understand and recall key facts, concepts, and ideas from a presentation by having your participants pair up and help each other score their answers and discuss any discrepancies between their answers and the “official” answer. In our session, Thiagi, had one person learn to say his first name and the other person his last name. Then, the two people paired up to work together to learn his entire name. What a great way to get your name out there! All joking aside, it demonstrated an excellent way to get your participants involved in absorbing and learning the key concepts you present in the classroom.
• Textra Games are activities where you create dynamic activities from existing documents. In the example taught at the session, the focus was on reading a specific breakout session overview and distilling it down to something that could fit onto a bumper sticker. Basically, the learning outcome involves identify key points and being able to summarize them. To learn more, visit Thiagi’s Website.
• Thiagi also discussed simulation games which are designed to allow participants to experience “real events” without the expense, difficulty, or danger of the real event. He indicated this type of activity works well in conflict management training sessions.
• Jolt is another activity that delivers a powerful wake-up call to your participants. The training objective for a serial jolt is to increase participants’ awareness of the assumptions they are making. To learn more go to http://www.thiagi.com/article-serial-jolts.html

Before you go, I thought I would share this brain exercise game we learned. Try this the next time you think your participants are not as alert as they should be. Ask them to say the word “white” eight times in a row then ask them the following question, “What do cows drink?” I bet they say milk!

That’s about it for now, I’ll post more about another breakout session I attended on moving your e-learning to the global arena. Don’t miss it if you are considering expanding your e-learning to the international level!

The Top 10 “Top 10″ Lists

Here are the top ten “Top 10″ lists regarding learning and development topics. Enjoy!

1. The Top 10 things you should not do when designing e-learning
2. The Top 10 tips for new trainers/ teachers
3. The Top 10 qualities of the ideal instructional designer
4. The Top 10 e-learning trends for 2010
5. The Top 10 steps for boosting your creativity
6. The Top 10 tips for distance learning success
7. The Top 10 ways to engage digital learners
8. The Top 10 ways social media will impact employee development and training in 2010
9. The Top 10 visual design ideas for designing guru-style e-learning
10. The Top 10 things to consider before you choose a learning management system

In Search of Color and Inspiration?

Hey everyone! During every learning project, there comes a time that you will need to pick your colors. Here are a few tools I use daily to assist me in finding the right ones!

To convert RGB to HEX or HEX to RGB, I use the following online site JavaScripter.Net:

For finding the right color combination, I go to Colorblender or Color Scheme Designer.

For inspiration on graphics and colors, I read magazines, look at graphic designers’ online portfolios such as David Airey and Bernard Barry, I also look at PowerPoint template websites and NotCot to get ideas. Of course, I use Google and Bing’s image search capabilities to search on key words associated with the concept/topic I want to write on.

That’s it for now, I hope this provides you with a few tools you may not have thought of. Of course, the best graphic color of all is sometimes “white”. White space or negative space as it is sometimes called can be used between letters, words, and/or in and outside of graphics. This is one of the most overlooked techniques by Instructional Designers! Online, more strain is placed on the eye; use white space to make things more readable, emphasize graphics, and provide balance!

Graphic File Formats for Instructional Designers

Instructional Designers create and use graphics extensively in the PowerPoint slides they create for instructor-led training courses and for their e-learning courses. The question is, should you use a JPEG, a GIF, a TIFF, or a PNG file the next time you insert a graphic? We’ll, wonder no more! It starts with understanding compression and color depth.

Color and Culture, Improving Audio, and Capturing Attention in E-Learning

3 articles you should read this week:

Article #1: As Instructional Designers, we have learned about the impact of using color in our training content. With so many companies moving into the global arena, I did a little research to find out how color is interpreted in other cultures. Did you know that Orange means royalty in the Netherlands and courage in Japan?  Green, on the other hand, is associated with money in the U.S. but is considered not to be a good color for packaging in France? Did you know that in Western cultures (European and North America) violet and purple represent royalty but in Brazil they represent mourning?

To learn more, visit The International Business Edge Blog

Learning and Development Project Management

Are you someone that works in the learning and development industry? If so, I would appreciate your comments and insights into the following questions.

1. How do you feel learning and development projects differ from traditional projects?

2. What tools(s) do you use to manage your learning and development projects?

3. What would you say are the top 3 reasons why projects you have been involved with in the past have not been successful?

Measuring Success: Who Needs Business Results Anyway?

In their 9/3/2010 report “Getting Started in e-Learning: Measuring Success,” the eLearning Guild provides the following key findings:

• Only 2% of respondents said they don’t bother to measure the success of their efforts.
• Of those who measure using Kirkpatrick’s four levels:
  • Most tracked students completion of a course
  • More than 1/2 tracked learner satisfaction
  • Most used recall questions for critical information, but don’t use somewhat or realistic scenario or simulation questions that require realistic decision-making
  • Few are tracking business results

Basic Competencies for Instructional Designers

As the field of instructional design continues to evolve, we will constantly be challenged in a variety of ways. With that in mind, I’m interested in hearing from you on what you think are the most basic competencies for a new and/or existing Instructional Designer to develop.  Will the IDs of the future need to improve their communication skills? What about their ability to manage projects? Do they need to understand instructional design models?

I’ve listed a few that come to mind but would really like to hear what you have to say.

1. Communication skills
2. Project management skills
3. Knowledge of Instructional Design models
4. Technology skills
5. Problem solving skills
6. Decision making skills