Editor’s Note: Tom’s opinions are controversial, but he offers an interesting perspective on meeting rapid development needs and making elearning affordable with video. In addition,OpenSesame’s new SCORM video player makes video courses trackable in any learning management system. E-Learning is dead, long live E-Learning. We are experiencing an educational big bang. The world has embraced… Read more »
I spent last week in San Jose with the OpenSesame team for the American Society of Training & Development’s annual TechKnowledge conference, enjoying beautiful weather, great discussion and connecting names (or more likely, Twitter handles) with faces. OpenSesame looks forward to conferences for the opportunity to connect with the elearning community to better understand how we… Read more »
If you are creating or selecting sales training content, how can you ensure that your course will effectively engage and motivate a learner to successfully complete the online learning program? Some learners will motivate themselves. Highly self-directed learners thrive in the online learning or elearning environment, as they can direct their own work and focus… Read more »
Let’s face it. At this day and age, anyone can create a simple Microsoft Word document. But that is the key word: simple. Is that all you want to do? Do you want to create simple Word documents that meet the bare minimum requirements, or do you want to create awesome, polished-looking files that will… Read more »
We all judge books by their covers. Whether we’re picking out a restaurant for the evening or buying a car, we’re all influenced by appearances to make choices that might even be unwise. That tendency to judge applies to training, too. If you ask training participants what they think of an elearning course, odds are… Read more »
In this fourth, and last installment of series taken from our book, The Learning eXPLOSION: 9 Rules to Ignite Your Virtual Classrooms, we address the delivery of a virtual classroom session. The number one concern we hear from new virtual classroom instructors is how to engage learners. The guidance we give these instructors is… Read more »
I work for a technology company, which means that I’m surrounded by genius software developers who actually wear “There is no place like 127.0.0.1″ shirts. I’m not a developer, so I’m usually on the outside of the cool kids club when it comes to discussing Drupal, CSS, modules and so forth. But the computer discussion… Read more »
In the first two posts in this series, we shared our opinions on how to effectively transfer content to the virtual classroom, and what the length of such an experience should be. In this third installment of this four part series taken from our book, The Learning eXPLOSION: 9 Rules to Ignite Your Virtual Classrooms,… Read more »
Social media has made me better at my job. Not just because it’s part of my job to use it, but because social networks make it easy to surround myself with new ideas, great information and useful resources. In this day and age of doing more with less, social networks enable the (free) creation of a… Read more »
eLearning is making education accessible to anyone. This is no surprise to anyone who devotes their days to connecting professionals to learning and development opportunities. But what we’re talking about now is a free, world class, self-paced high school or even college education. Sure, the free option means that you don’t have a certificate or… Read more »
In our first post, we introduced you to the Rule of Knowledge Transfer taken from our book, The Learning eXPLOSION: 9 Rules to Ignite Your Virtual Classrooms, and discussed how much content you should consider using in your virtual classrooms. The second approach you should consider is the length of your virtual classroom. There are… Read more »
This spring, the OpenSesame crew will travel all over the country to connect with the elearning community and fulfill our own professional development goals, and we want to meet you! If you’re hitting the road to attend any of these events, please connect with us. We love to hand out hoodies, meet new people and… Read more »
If I were a venture capitalist, I’d invest in applications and companies that attack the problem of curating content. Content used to be king. The best content attracted attention, consumption and dollars. The quality of your content determined your success. But today, our brains are in a state of constant cognitive overload. I used to… Read more »
Here’s how businesses and organizations used to meet training and development goals: Send employees back to graduate school or other professional training opportunities. Hire trainers to lead in-house training sessions. Purchase books, manuals and self-study materials. OpenSesame is an elearning company because we believe that elearning provides significant advantages over all of these methods. (To… Read more »
Productivity, project management and time management are persistently recurring topics in the learning and development field. We want to promote these skills with learners but we must set the examples ourselves. Herewith, I set forth my top techniques for getting stuff done. I will happily admit that what works for me may not work for… Read more »
Simply put, Microsoft Access is a tool that is used to store and manage information for reports, reference and analysis. It overcomes the data management challenges encountered storing a lot of information in spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel or others. Why not use Microsoft Excel for databases? Microsoft Excel is very simple to use; data entry… Read more »
When traditional instructional designers—who have made their bread and butter conducting face-to-face training—try to go virtual, they are often shocked at the differences between the two modalities.
The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is right up there with ComicCon and Steve Jobs’ annual “And one more thing” for exciting geek news. The 2011 CES is no disappointment – tech companies large and small are unleashing innovative devices with great learning applications. Goggles for More than Snowboarding Recon Instruments is showcasing LCD goggles… Read more »
Right before the holiday weekend, I joined Quora — another social network to which I will inevitably become addicted. I have been enjoying prowling through the thoughtful discussions going on there, and particularly enjoying running into Twitter friends there (hey, @mrch0mp3rs!). A recent Quora discussion has prompted me to think about how fragmented the elearning… Read more »
We are proud to use the OpenSesame blog platform to showcase diverse perspectives on the present and future of elearning. We have shared some insightful guest posts from elearning rock stars like Nicole Fougere and Steve Nguyen in this space in the last few months, and we’ve got some more great ones coming up. Now… Read more »
