The cost of disengaged employees is not simply an unpleasant workplace: it’s lost productivity, wasted money and inefficient teams. What is a “disengaged employee”? One who has no feeling of personal connection or pride in their work. This disengagement is contagious; research demonstrates that employees managed by disengaged managers are more likely to be disengaged… Read more »
My coworkers and I have been giving a lot of presentations lately, for a variety of reasons: explaining OpenSesame to buyers and sellers, sharing tips and information about the keys to successful elearning development and promoting OpenSesame. We’ve developed some rules of thumb for captivating presentation audiences and focusing on the key information. If you… Read more »
On this month’s Learning Circuit Big Question, Tony Karrer asks the learning & development community how they respond to the “I want it now!” demand from stakeholders. Karrer summarizes the dilemma: “The other day I walked into an executive’s office and they had a site up about “Rapid Instructional Design.” I spent quite a bit… Read more »
Here is what’s not up for debate: Whether or not your training and development programs are being hacked by your workforce. (They are.) That, from a user/learner’s perspective, your rules, tools and T&D programs suck. (They do.) That you are no Easy Button. (Duh. When was the last time anybody compared your efforts to… Read more »
I work for an elearning company. This means I spend a lot of time explaining what elearning is, how it’s used and answering questions like “what does social media have to do with it?” And some of the misconceptions I hear about elearning are incredibly disappointing, because there’s so much innovative work going on “in… Read more »
Each Thursday, I keenly look forward to participating in #lrnchat, the weekly Twitter-based discussion among learning and development professionals. I was very pleased to work with David Kelly, Aaron Silvers and Meg Bertapelle to create a set of questions teasing out the learning lessons from the Star Wars canon. Dave does a fabulous weekly summary… Read more »
I use Twitter every day for personal and professional development. It’s a powerful vehicle for learning, connecting with people, getting professional advice and keeping up on current events. But it’s not just a messaging service; it’s a platform for information, curation and connection. It’s also a great equalizer. If you ask a good question or… Read more »
I spent last evening helping my best friend revise her cover letter and resume for a fabulous job opportunity. As we worked back and forth on a few drafts, the text began to reflect her personal ethic and approach to work in order to make her application stand out from the rest. As my friend… Read more »
In my ongoing love affair with Quora, I recently joined the discussion on a new question: Can specialised social networks replace learning management systems? This question really captures my interest. Of course the LMS is a topic of (sometimes justified) opprobrium – but can large organizations really leave the LMS behind? After some consideration, I… Read more »
If you’re like me, you’re an app addict. Always downloading something new and creating an endless assortment of folders on your mobile device. While some apps are just silly – like the one that turns my phone into a gesture-responsive light saber – some have real benefits for staying organized, connecting with friends and colleagues… Read more »
This week, the OpenSesame crew is celebrating not only our successful April Fools’ Day prank but our partnership eith ej4, an elearning content developer. The ej4 team uses snappy writing and creative video production to create engaging elearning courses. We’re now featuring more than 400 courses from ej4 in the OpenSesame library, and I took the opportunity to… Read more »
OpenSesame is proud to announce that we’re founding a new conference, mLearnSocialDevConLearnGame, which will focus on connections between social learning environments, mobile technologies, instructional design and online learning. From October 29-31, 2011 in Trinidad & Tobago, we’ll convene thought leaders in the elearning, gaming, mobile technology and social media sectors to share ideas and brainstorm… Read more »
OpenSesame is an elearning marketplace with two audiences: the buyers and sellers of elearning. The sellers in our marketplace are content developers and subject matter experts who work hard to create high quality elearning content. Sellers are valued partners for us, and we take our responsibility to safeguard your intellectual property extremely seriously. I wanted… Read more »
“I need to give a training course to the executive team,” someone recently said to me. “Do you have anything good?” Of course I said yes. OpenSesame is in the business of selling elearning courses, and just about every organization needs top elearning courses for managers. But what’s wrong with this picture? This training professional… Read more »
As professional training and instruction moves online, subject matter experts, in-person instructors and offline trainers are facing new obstacles as they reinvent their offline content. As Lesley Price noted on Twitter on Monday, your elearning resources won’t succeed if they’re just “paper behind glass”: they need to be more than your old paper resources or… Read more »
Wouldn’t you love to make a difference in the world? OpenSesame makes it really easy for you to use your instructional design and development skills to make a meaningful difference promoting international development, humanitarian relief, social justice and protecting the environment around the world. OpenSesame is proud to partner with LINGOs (Learning in Non Governmental… Read more »
Last week, I blogged about two of the broken systems in education – timing and testing – and established some possible roles for technology and game mechanics to improve them. It’s time to get serious about short term ways to improve learning systems for learners of all ages. At SXSW, Jillian Darwish of KnowledgeWorks shared… Read more »
At SXSW and at TED, researchers, game designers and teachers (and a former hedge fund analyst) shared diverse visions for the future of education. They got started by explaining what’s broken in our current vision for education systems. These discussions are focused on K-12 and college level education, but we have an opportunity in the… Read more »
Last week, I blogged about three emerging trends in elearning, as revealed by the annual Horizon Report, which analyzes potential uses of emerging technology for learning. While the paper was very insightful, it had one omission: a discussion of the opportunity to use games for learning.
The Horizon Report is an annual report describing emerging technologies and their potential applications in learning and education, produced in collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. This report is infinitely useful for prodding thought about what we need to be working on today to ensure elearning continues to evolve to… Read more »
