Training is an essential part of any company’s success in the 21st century. That’s a fact. But instead of simply settling by training your employees and hoping for the best, you should aim higher. A well-planned training program will lead to higher retention rates among employees and faster results for your company. But what makes a successful training program in 2022 and beyond? Some companies are still a decade in past — relying only on long eLearning courses or even worse, depending on instructor-led courses to bring their employees up to speed. This is an ineffective, and time-consuming way to train your workforce.

Mobile learning is a popular (and effective) trend in today's learning realm. When it comes to the format and design of mobile learning, as a designer, you will have many elements to consider. Here are our top ten strategies for designing nuggets of mobile learning goodness:

Chief learning officers, learning leaders, and training coordinators everywhere are well aware of the need to increase mobile training programs. After all, 74% of employees say they access resources from their smartphones to do their jobs— and that number is expected to continue to grow.

Let’s be honest: your employees use smartphones and tablets every day, everywhere — including in your workplace.

When we think of the word, motivation, instantly two things come to mind. First, when we are young, many outside things motivate us, a desire to do something, the reality of punishment from our parents, positive and negative reinforcement of what we are doing, etc. All of these things help to motivate children, and in some cases, it has a positive effect, and in other cases, it does not. The more proactive the motivation, the more positive the response to that motivation, the more reactionary the motivation, the more negative the response. The second picture that comes to mind is a learned reaction to something. Like Pavlov and his dogs, which would salivate when he rang the bell, motivation can be at times subconscious. However, there are much more things that drive the motivation of human beings, and in the arena of learning, there are some critical pieces to the puzzle that have to be developed so that learners feel the value of what they are learning and how it will benefit them. The rewards of their success must be considered from a variety of sources and satisfy them on a variety of levels, and as instructional designers of e-learning programs, we must not only understand these factors but be skilled in utilizing them in the courses that we design.

eLearning designers are often the unsung heroes of effective online learning experiences. They have the powerful role of being the ones that build the content provided by the subject matter expert into a robust and engaging narrative for the learner. However, getting there isn't easy. If you are just starting out, you aren't going to become an expert on day one. But if you follow some expert advice, your road to success will be much smoother. This is a compilation of some things we wish we knew when starting out as a new eLearning designer.

There is a simple way to design effective eLearning courses about any subject: brain-based learning. This instructional approach was defined by Hileman in 2006 and has since inspired many “brain-compatible designers” — those who seek to understand the principle and reasoning behind their teaching.

Adult Learning highlights that adult learners are fundamentally different in their methods of learning in comparison with children. As an L&D professional, you need to understand these differences and figure out the best ways to apply them to meet your learner's needs. With adult learners, you will encounter unique expectations, demands, and challenges. The key is to accommodate these and design training and eLearning courses in a manner that is most effective and engaging for them. While there are multiple methodologies to make this happen, there is a model proposed by Lila Davachi, Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University that is known to be effective. Known as AGES (Attention-Generation-Emotion-Spacing), this model highlights four key elements that are essential for effective adult learning to happen.