“Are you feeling me?” Well, are you? Or, more importantly, is your audience feeling you? Understanding you? Connecting to what you’re putting out there? To get a resounding “yes!” to these questions you need to concern yourself with resonance which is, among other things, “a quality that makes something personally meaningful or important to someone.” Or in the words of Tony Schwartz in his book The Responsive Chord "Resonance takes place when the stimuli put into our communication evoke meaning in a listener or viewer." But why is resonance so necessary to eLearning course design? Another definition for this concept has to do with sound and “the reinforcement or prolongation of sound by reflection from a surface or by the synchronous vibration of a nearby object.” In simple words; this means one vibration causes another vibration or a ripple effect. For your audience, if you pluck just the right heartstring for them, their learning process gets easier because one piece of information will set off reminders of other knowledge, making it simpler to connect them all together, so they don’t feel like so many individual things to remember. And when things are easier they are more likely to continue with your course and retain information. Your lesson will resonate when your audience feels it, understands it and becomes mentally/emotionally invested in it. As an eLearning designer, you need to be in sync with your students, to harmonize with them, their goals and their experiences. This is the only way to fight your way through the content crush, or oversaturation of content and information that your audience is subjected to each day. To do this your eLearning course content should have these attributes:

We’ve come a long way in the ways of corporate training and learning. The history of corporate training and development dates back to 1872 where Hoe and Company established factory schools to help train machinists during the Industrial Revolution. By 1917, corporate training had expanded into “Show, Tell, Do and Check” method from Charles R. Allen where he would walk his shipyard workers through complex processes. By the 1950’s and 1960’s, computers help introduce virtual reality and technology-assisted instruction. As the world becomes more innovative, so are the ways we learn in school, at our jobs, and in life. Gone are the days where onboarding and corporate training is a one size fits all video for employees to learn and engage in. Today, corporate training programs have the choice, from microlearning to custom eLearning development, on how to best train their incoming workforce. As such, these training programs will most likely incorporate current digital trends to not only help engage top talent but help them grow within their career and stay with the company longer. Below are four digital trends that are impacting corporate training and learning, and why organizations should consider incorporating them.

Product designer William Newton wrote a compelling article some time ago on the tiers of good design and the pyramid they form. But this idea can be applied to more than physical product design; it can be used to create better eLearning courses, as well. Find the original article here: The Design Process: A Pyramid Using this same structure, we explore just how the pyramid can help you improve your eLearning design workflow.

If you assume students are only learning from eLearning courses, you are failing to leverage a huge part of the learning process. Ask yourself where do you learn? Most of us might answer “in a classroom”, but, in reality, the majority of learning comes from other places, like Personal Learning Networks. And these networks are personal, meaning there are no two PLNs that are equal; each of us has a unique range of people we learn from including peers, coworkers, supervisors, experts and other professionals. Today more learners use tools like Google and Wikipedia to acquire new skills and knowledge. They subscribe to personal and professional blogs. Or they ask questions through their social media networks to get the most relevant answers from the members of their PLN.

Design resources never stop reminding us how important it is to be consistent when creating any graphic piece. We don’t argue. But as an eLearning designer, you know how challenging it is to walk the talk when it comes to maintaining a consistent look-and-feel throughout the course. After all, we are creative folks and artists at heart. Our brains get weary and scream for some zing by the time we get through a couple of slides.

Have you ever read something where it seems like the material was written by someone who simply wanted to show off how smart they are? When this happens, do you find yourself thinking how brilliant the author is? No, it’s far more likely that you get annoyed with the person who wrote the piece and possibly frustrated with yourself. This is NOT the way to write your courses. As an eLearning designer, there will be times when you know the material far better than the average student, but the last thing you want to do is create a course that goes over students’ heads. You need to strive to be clear without talking down to your audience and engaging without being letting the entertainment value overshadow the information. Additionally, there are certain things that you need to consider when designing for people who will be viewing your eLearning course on a computer screen or other device. People who are learning online have far more built-in distractions over people reading from a piece of paper, which makes online learners: Focus on tasks not an overall experience Read up to 25% slowerbecause there are distractions like links to click on Read only about 20% of text on the average page Skim information instead of reading every single word Because of these factors, your eLearning courses must be concise and organized into easily manageable parts.

Social Learning is not a new concept that has just come out of the factory—cloaked in layers of jargons and giving off the appearance of something that is impossible to wrap your wits around. We have been learning socially since ages and doing great at it; we just didn’t know it till Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory started to gain prominence in recent times. According to this theory, we learn best when we observe another person and imitate his behavior and actions. When we see our “role models” better their lives and that of others with their actions, we are inspired to learn more. You follow your favorite blogs to learn new ways of writing and how the masters play with the language. You follow art and photography sites to pick up Photoshop tricks and learn DSLR hacks. At work, you observe your peers and seniors to learn the tricks of the trade. We read self-development write-ups to learn how the achievers in our society begin their day, keep away distractions at work, and remain consistently productive. We are learning “socially” almost always. It has been proven that Social Learning is an effective training strategy for the workplace too. What is exciting is that with the advances in digital technology and the influx of social tools, the “social” element can be easily incorporated into eLearning. Because this concept is gaining ground steadily, you would want to know more about it, how your organization can implement it to create more effective training modules, the myths that surround this concept, and how to design an immersive learning experience. Luckily, experts have penned tons of material on Social Learning, and we have cherry-picked 10 of the best resources on the Web to help you find your way through the sea of information out there. The following resources are for you if you are new to the world of Social Learning.

ATD International Conference & Exposition 2016, the world’s largest event dedicated to training and talent development was held last week. A massive turnout of over 14,000 L&D professionals attended the annual 4-day conference which included keynote speakers such as Brené Brown, Simon Sinke, Jeremy Gutsche and many others. Networking opportunities and a chance to learn about cutting-edge techniques and trends also greeted attendees of this world-class event. Even if you weren’t able to attend, you can still catch all the leading thoughts, opinions, and insider insights of industry professionals who tweeted about the event using the hashtag #ATD2016. And we’ve captured the highlights for you here: