Love is in the air! It is that time of the year when we express our love to and gratitude for everyone that makes our lives worth living. This year, let’s send the customary chocolates and roses to our jobs. (Yes, you read right.) We spend the greater part of our day writing storyboards, thinking up ID strategies, moving around visuals, and designing attractive screens. But instructional designing is not the easiest of jobs around. The deadlines are tight. Many clients don’t understand your POV. Your team members are not always supportive. You are expected to churn out ideas at the drop of a hat, every day. We signed up to be eLearning designers because we love designing. So isn’t it natural that we express love for our jobs?

There is no question that working with adult learners is different than working with “traditional” college students. Someone with several years’ worth of career experience and additional responsibilities outside of work is most likely going to have different expectations from their instructors and coursework than someone who is still in the exploratory stages of learning and focused on the overall college experience. Many adult learners are there specifically to build skills to advance their careers and are making sacrifices in other areas of their lives to do so, so it’s important for those developing adult training programs to focus on what matters to these students in order to keep them engaged.

Human beings communicate with one another incessantly in different (and even unconscious) ways. If you are not speaking, then you are probably gesturing with your hands to get across your point. The tone of your voice and even the speed of which you speak conveys some message to the receiver. We also signal with our eyes—frowning to disapprove or raising our brows to express surprise. Many of us choose to make a statement with our attire, hair color, and the accessories we wear. Our stance, gait, and posture also transfer meaning. These are the myriad of symbols that we use to convey our message. We use some symbols intentionally. At other times, we use symbols unintentionally and end up projecting an image or sending a message that we didn’t wish to or had not planned for. What is equally interesting is how others interpret the meaning we convey. The meaning you want or try to send might not be what other people understand. In fact, different people might read differently into the same set of symbols and interpret our messages differently. People understand a message based on their gender, age, education, cultural upbringing, intelligence (both cognitive and emotional), and the unique experiences that one has been through. It is no wonder miscommunication, and misunderstandings are common. You have to get so many things right to communicate effectively.

Millennials will make up 75 percent of the workforce by the year 2025. As more millennials become a part of your team, the discussion of how to properly onboard them floats to the surface. Training millennials isn’t the same as training their predecessors—they’ve grown up in the age of technology where they’re always engaged and stimulated by phones, social media and more.

Technology is changing at an incredible pace. Marketing, data analysis, HR and collaboration tools are part of our lives, and with new tools coming out daily, new terms arise all the time.

SHIFT by Aura Interactiva, the mobile eLearning development platform has just won two more Brandon Hall Technology Awards, taking Gold in the Gaming and Simulation Technology and Bronze in Content Authoring. SHIFT has won multiple Brandon Hall Awards since 2009 in categories ranging from rapid authoring to rich media authoring, mobile learning, gaming, testing, and evaluation.

Feedback is an essential aspect of any eLearning system. Good feedback is what makes sure that the learning process is maximized both at the present and in future eLearning programs. Whether you're talking about the simplest forms of eLearning or the more sophisticated ones like role-playing, simulation, or playing games, there has to be an effective feedback system in order for the learning process to work.

There is no question that mobile devices are changing corporate learning forever. However, this doesn’t mean classroom-based training or formal eLearning courses are going away, it just means the mobile movement is demanding companies to rethink their training strategies and to create learning programs especially for mobile devices.