eLearning Blogs | Allen Interactions

A Commencement Address for e-Learning

By Ethan Edwards, Chief Instructional Strategist

It’s that time of year when our children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews are wrapping up the traditional school year, and many of them are graduating from some defined course of study—high school, college, etc.—marked by graduation ceremonies. Along with commencement exercises come commencement speeches that provide the opportunity to comment on the just-completed shared experience and set the learner on his or her way to future success. Sometimes inspiring, sometimes sentimental, sometimes clichéd, sometimes predictable, these speeches do offer a final review, of sorts, of the experience of education.

What's So Funny About e-Learning?

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

I was watching television the other night and noticed a new advertisement for an online university. It was an institution of which I had never heard before (and I still don’t exactly remember the name) and it shall remain nameless here.

3 Real-Life Lessons Learned from Difficult On-The-Job Challenges

by Hannah von Bank, relationship management assistant

We’ve all made mistakes at work – some more grievous than others. For every mortified person who has accidentally closed a business call with “I love you” instead of “goodbye,” there is someone else whose slip up could have caused injury, lost someone their job or cost their company millions of dollars. We may think of these situations as an exception to the norm and/or the result of a “bad” employee, but in fact these close calls happen more often, easily, and unintentionally than you would expect, and can commonly be traced back to lack of training or misunderstanding of policy due to ineffective training. I’ve interviewed a few individuals as they reflect on their most difficult on-the-job situations.

No Couch Potatoes: A Case for Making Training ACTIVE

by Ellen Burns-Johnson, instructional writer/designer | @EllenBJohnson

A passive learning experience can feel comfortable, but we don’t want our learners to “veg out” during training.

When stakeholders, SMEs, and instructional designers share a meaningful goal, it generates a lot of excitement in the room. I know we’re on the right track when I hear statements like these:

The Serious eLearning Manifesto: A Multidimensional Tool

GUEST BLOGGER:
Will Thalheimer, consultant and research translator, Work-Learning Research, Inc. | @WillWorkLearn

The Serious eLearning Manifesto is NOT a Jewel. It’s a Multidimensional Tool—if We Know How to Use It.

On the Serious eLearning Manifesto website you can read the endorsement statements of hundreds of elearning professionals throughout the world.

“I proudly endorse the Serious eLearning Manifesto. It is a brilliant document, not to mention a much needed one, that every professional in the Educational Technology arena should be familiar with and support.”

“I endorse the eLearning Manifesto! It is the best set of principles to date. Bravo!!”

“AWESOME! I support the Serious eLearning Manifesto and will do my part to live up to the 22 Supporting Principles and pledge to do my best to promote and support Serious eLearning! Thanks for putting this together. I look forward to the future of eLearning!”

Every time I go to the website and read the new endorsements, I get newly inspired. It gives me a great feeling to see how many people are dedicated to building great learning interventions.

Many of the signatories pledge to utilize the 22 principles in their own work and to encourage others to do the same. These sentiments are great, of course. But they are not enough. For e-learning to fulfill its promise, we also need to create second- and third-wave effects.