The education and corporate training landscape is evolving faster than ever. Workers are distracted, impatient and overloaded with information. Their expectations, training needs, and learning preferences are diverging from the well-beaten paths we've mapped out in the past. People are busy, they multi-task, and work from anywhere, including their mobile devices. As learning & development professionals, we must always be looking out for ways to help our employees keep learning in this fast-paced work environment. Let's provide them with the bite-sized modules of training they need to achieve their goals. Let's make the shift from long courses to bite-sized resources to better suit the new fast-paced work environment. For many eLearning professionals, bite-sized has always been the right size. Imagine it, more useful content that fits smaller screens or just about any screen. Learners can work on any platform, switch back from their mobile device to the desktop, anytime. Snackable content also makes it easier for them to savor every lesson step after step—something that's not possible with lengthy materials. Offer your audience light, short yet substantial content. They'll surely come back for more.

A good-looking eLearning course is not a guarantee of its instructional effectiveness. Think of all those magazines with glossy covers that you flip over expectantly only to find that the pages are filled with trash. Unfortunately, many course developers have no clue of how visual design can increase (or decrease) learnability of the material.

Your organization no doubt sees the value of an eLearning program. You may have invested in a user-friendly Learning Management System (LMS), on-demand training and the necessary number of developers to create sufficient content. However, your results may not be what you expect if you don’t add a human touch to eLearning. You need to incorporate a social learning component. Social Learning Theory was coined by Albert Bandura in 1977. Among its key components are the ideas that learning must be active and that it takes place in social contexts. This theory also espouses the view that learning occurs when people observe others.

Undoubtedly, one of the most important steps when adopting an e-learning solution in your organization is implementation. Successful execution of this step is strongly related to proper planning. Proper planning in regards to tasks, project leaders, cost and other implementation elements make up the basis for adequate execution and control. This step is to project implementation what blueprints are to a construction project. Therefore, changing anything after this step may have costly consequences.

Employee engagement is serious business. In 2015, a Gallup study poll found that incredibly, only 30% of employees say that they’re engaged in their job. More than 50% of employees said they weren’t engaged, and almost 20% of employees stated that they were “actively disengaged.” That’s a severe problem in the workplace. This isn’t just a single piece of research, either; other surveys have found that just 25 to 35% of the workforce across the U.S. are engaged in their work. This really is a silent epidemic. However, all is not lost. There may be a way out. Companies are finding smarter ways to boost employee engagement through the use of technology.

You might be thinking deeply about cognition and the acquisition of knowledge when you’re creating an eLearning course, but are you considering the emotions of your learners? The human brain needs to feel emotions or it can’t learn. Check out this research. The learning experience has to engage feelings of inspiration before it can be life-changing, and isn’t that what we’re striving for? Here are some tips for creating emotionally charged courses:

Cognitive load. What's that? You may not be aware of the jargon, but you are up to your neck in it! Try searching for information on the Internet. Kudos to you, if you can manage to find what you need right away in the midst of spammy websites and pop-up ads. We have to be on top of the cognitive load aimed at us in our daily lives, else we would be lost in the maze of useless information. Spare a thought for your learners when you create courses for them! Learn about the cognitive load that could creep up in your course (unknowingly, of course) and how to manage it.

Creating a good learning experience requires a collaborative effort to combine the knowledge of different stakeholders involved in the process. Instructional Designers have to keep in mind the business goals, the learner’s objectives, gather information and know-how from the subject matter experts, and use that information to create engaging content. Here are some tips that can help achieve better collaboration at each stage of the instructional design process: