Virtually There session recap

Our learners have a lot going on. Work, media, and the responsibilities of day-to-day life bombard them with data. Their brains must process a metaphorical mountain of information. Individuals consciously and subconsciously determine which stuff to pay attention to, and which to ignore.

Theoretically, training content focuses on critical information, right? We may think so, but if our learners have other priorities, our L&D programs get lost in the noise.

Virtually There Recap

Did you know that you have stories constantly running through your subconscious mind? It’s true! Without realizing it, you frame every interaction through narrative, creating underlying bias. Good, bad, or indifferent, your bias influences how you navigate the world.

This fundamental brain biology impacts professional relationships, too. Before every conversation or task, you anticipate how it will unfold.

Virtually There Recap

Think about your day-to-day role. Do you host meetings? Facilitate training? Give presentations? Whether you run these events or not, they represent an important part of our professional lives. Often, we see these events as time wasters, rather than important investments of our focus.

As learning professionals, team members, and managers, we strive to engage and involve our audiences so that they can remember the information we share with them. We hope to take them beyond listening and towards true learning. With the right approach, we can achieve that lofty goal.

Brain-based learning expert Sharon Bowman shared her presentation model and guided our Virtually There participants through a process for getting the brain to pay attention.

Virtually There Session recap

Have you heard? Modern learners love games. In fact, with the right design, these games have the power to increase learner engagement and boost retention.

Our organizations and stakeholders, though, often struggle to understand the value of games. “Having fun doesn’t equal skill building,” is a common refrain. How do we prove them wrong if they won’t buy in?

Take the first step by walking them through “Serious Games 101.” Andrew Hughes, President of Designing Digitally, graciously shared his serious game secrets with our Virtually There learners. This blog details the basics of serious games and game-based learning, allowing you to apply his model to your own corporate L&D.

Virtually There Session Recap

Agile’s all the rage with our organizations and teams right now. And for good reason!

Agile provides a function model to address many of the nuances involved in work today, including multitasking and unclear boundaries. Agile allows teams to purposefully come together to focus on a single project in an environment that learns from failure. That’s a big deal in today’s competitive landscape.

Virtually There Session Recap

During his recent Virtually There session, JD Dillon shared a fascinating story,

"The week I joined a previous organization, our eLearning Developer quit. It wasn’t cause and effect, but I was suddenly the eLearning Developer. In my first project, I was picking up from behind and needed to find source info for this project. I was scouring through SharePoint Sites – I was having a hard time finding info I needed. If I can’t find it and I have admin capabilities what is happening to the frontline employee? What’s their life like if we can’t find info as the training person? It was a much bigger problem that we needed. I met with my boss and said, 'What if we built Wikipedia, but for here?' He thought it was great idea, so we wrote it on a post-it. It sat on my computer monitor for two years.”

Does this story sound familiar to you? You identify an information sharing-related challenge in your organization, you may even come up with a solution, but solving it feels out of reach.

JD believes there’s a fundamental reason for that: it’s not technically our job.

InSync Training welcomes Lou Russell to the Virtually There series on April 24, 2018. Ahead of her session, The Accidental People Challenges From Agile Development, Lou shares helpful background information about the people-side of Agile implementation. We thank her for her insights, which first appeared on her Russell Martin blog  

Things have changed all around you.  No matter how young or old you are, you have experienced change.  Dial phones and Blockbuster have been replaced by cellphones and Hulu. 

It’s not as obvious that our jobs and roles are also changing dramatically as well.  In every field, individuals must constantly evolve to stay on top of "now" and the rate of change is increasing.   

Virtually There session recap

Twenty years ago, if a student needed information to complete an assignment, they would turn to their teacher, the Encyclopedia Britannica, or a library’s card catalog to find the answer. Today, a very different reality exists for modern learners. We hold the world’s information literally at our finger tips, thanks to the advent of Google and the prevalence of mobile devices and computers.

All instructional designers have a toolkit: a set of processes, applications, and approaches they use to create modern learning programs. High-tech, low-tech, paid, or free, they rely on a myriad of sources to design training that sticks.

While toolkits may vary, many instructional designers face a common obstacle: communication. How do we make sure that our stakeholders and teams understand the design vision, execution plan, and associated benefits? More often than not, designers spend a majority of their time in meetings, talking about the nitty gritty details and the high-level overview of programs. Every element discussed and revisited. Designers, by default, can’t extract themselves from their work.

Virtually There Session Recap

The last ten years brought us a digital revolution. New technologies and applications changed the way we live our lives. More interestingly, perhaps, is the impact this decade has had on how we behave. As consumers, we are radically different than previous generations. We want effective solutions to our problems immediately, and thanks to platforms like Amazon, that’s not an unreasonable request.

Did you know that this consumerism has spilled into how we learn? In fact, as guest Virtually There speaker Treion Muller recently pointed out, seven consumer realities specifically impact learning and development, creating challenges for L&D professionals in this space.

What pain points are we experiencing? Treion posed this exact question to his learners and shared his expertise for overcoming them. Two questions in particular caught my attention, and Treion’s answers may help you improve the functionality of learning within your organization.