24 Tips

Video – costly, difficult, time-consuming. Everything you thought you knew about video is wrong – now it’s easier than ever to add video to almost any elearning project. Rob Hubbard tells you how.

Having encountered hundreds of multiple choice questions whilst training to become a chartered accountant, I subsequently turned trainer and e-learning developer and have designed hundreds of questions. This article is designed to help those who are designing questions or are commissioning them.

Ensuring effective transfer of learning is always a challenge – even more so in virtual classrooms when you have to compete with multiple distractions for your learners attention. Kate Graham introduces the GEAR method:Gather, Expand, Apply, Receive feedback.

Poorly crafted multi-choice questions do not provide a great learning experience or result in behavioural change. The better alternative is the scenario based question, but how can you ensure that they are effective? Grant Williams gives some useful foundation pointers.

What is gameification? And why is it useful to eLearning professionals?

This post looks at two ways to approach adding game-like features to Digital Learning design.

Still reliant on the pale-skinned, wide-eyed gollums of the IT department for getting your wonderous elearning creations out to the world, or even for putting together a simple wiki? Or want to show off your latest CSS theme for Moodle on your 10″ netbook? Dan Roddy will show you how…

Fewer than a fifth of business leaders believe L&D strategy is aligned with that of the company. What can we, as learning professionals, do to change this view? Lesley Price outlines some simple steps that you can take to ensure learning is taken seriously.

One of the enduring features of elearning design, the storyboard is often misunderstood, and in today’s rapid approaches, seeming passed over altogether. John Curran has written more than a few in his time and in this tip shares not only his ideas on storyboard design, but even a little present for you too!

Things that go before often shape what follows. So it is with the elearning “course”. In today’s tip Lars Hyland argues for a more prolonged approach. The course is dead, long live the campaign…

Over the last couple of years I’ve found myself spending far more time working virtually than ever before, and it’s definitely something that I welcome. I save time, I travel less, it’s more efficient and all of that brings benefits to clients too. However, when I talk to people about running virtual classroom sessions, virtual [...]

In e-learning, speech is one of our most valuable media elements but writing for the spoken word is different to writing text as Clive Shepherd explains.

Okay, you’re reading 24Tips already, which is a great way to learn more about elearning – but what other options do you have? Jane Hart takes a break from all these tips for helping our learners and instead comes up with suggestions to help elearning professionals themselves to learn.

Online forums have a lot of potential for leading to productive learning, but how can you be sure to set your learners off on the right path? Nancy Weitz gives some pointers to organising successful online discussions.

Accessibility should not be an afterthought, it needs to be designed in from the start. But how? Rachel Sefton-Smith gives some practical tips for designing, writing, developing and testing accessible e-learning.

Compliance training is usually mandatory for a reason – somebody somewhere expects you to know something. But mandatory is hardly a phrase conducive to learning – so all the more reason to ensure your elearning is not boring, wordy or uninspiring. Here are some solid pointers to avoid you and your learners facing a ghastly fate.

Audio can add an extra dimension to your courseware and increase both user engagement and retention. But like every other aspect of instructional design, it needs skill to do it well. Peter Phillips shares a few tips from his experience.

So you’ve assured the client that there will be lots of concept checking questions but the rapid tool they’ve asked you to use assumes any question just has to be scored, right? Karyn Romeis steps up with a nifty little trick to slip a crafty question in where learning, not points, is the prize.

There’s so much great advice available on how to create effective learning that you have to get truly creative to think up excuses for why your last course was so rubbish. Matt Brewer shoots down your excuses first so others don’t have to…

What do you do when you have a Dickensian SME whose insistence on sticking to the facts might make a policeman happy but bore your learners? Nick Simons shows you how to reach a win-win solution.

Tony Frascina clambered his way up the mountain of learning design and he came back with some rules on a pair of tablet PCs…

So Facebook is banned and Twitter is laughed at? How can you get social networking in to your organisation? With a little tool called Yammer. On day four of 24Tips, Sam Taylor explains how you could use it for learning in your organisation.

Have you ever struggled to explain a software function to somebody over the phone? Have you ever struggled to understand a software function over the phone? We’re always told that “show” beats “tell” and showing now is easier than it’s ever been – Craig Taylor tells us more in this very festive tip.

What if I could show you a way to develop a learning experience more immersive than most computer games but for a fraction of the cost, in a fraction of the time? There is, so come and read my post and find out how…

What types of elearning interactions will really engage your learners? In the opening entry for 24 Tips, instructional design superstar Cathy Moore lays down the rules for improving your elearning, no matter what your budget.