online learning insights Stock Photos, Royalty-Free Images and Vectors - Shutterstock Technology - Gamification: Is it game over? Taking the rules of video games and applying them to everyday life was billed as the next big thing, something that would transform everything from dull office work to how we exercise. But can it really work? Brushed your teeth this morning? If this all sounds like an Orwellian nightmare, think again. Gamification is a buzz word used to describe systems that take elements of everyday games like chess and Donkey Kong and applies them to everyday life. But if you think it is just tech-savvy teens hoping for a cheap latte that are in on the game, think again. But now there seems to be a growing backlash. Power up The ideas that underpin gamification stretch as far back as 1937, when American psychologist BF Skinner proposed a system he called operant conditioning. But on their own, these ideas were not enough. The other trend that allowed gamification to grab the limelight was so-called big data. This kind of example is well known to Paharia. Mysterious medium Rewards scheme
The Top 15 eLearning Statistics for 2014 Mobile, gamification, MOOCs: the list of new and emerging eLearning trends is endless. In this rapidly shifting and growing market it pays to stay aware of constant developments. That’s why I’ve gathered a list of the most important statistics and numbers for eLearning and training in 2014. 1. 93% of CEOs plan to increase or maintain their training budget, and 85% already have a mobile training strategy, or will soon implement one. (Source: Skillsoft) <<Tweet this stat! 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 10 million students have taken at least one Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). 7. 8. 9. 47% of organizations use mobile devices like tablets and smartphones for learning and training. 10. 11. 84.2% of enterprises use eLearning for training and development. 12. 75 Learning Management System vendors so far have adopted the Tin Can API (or the “Experience API,” a replacement for SCORM). 13. 14. What other stats and numbers should we paying attention to in the evolving eLearning universe?
Edutech for Teachers Prezi For The Win? Ten Top Tips To Make a Good One Update, May 2013: I’ve re-updated a newer guide to Prezi, actually in Prezi itself: See also: 6 useful things Prezi can which even experienced users miss The ten tips of the title are near the top of this post – it’s quite long, so don’t worry about reading the examples bit if you just want the nuts and bolts. [Update: I've also created a slide-deck which acts as a simpler version of this post - you can read and view it here. I’ve created or had a hand in creating three Prezis that have made it into the public arena (plus some previous attempts that I’ve deleted). Incidentally, if this top 10 tips had to be just a top 1, it would be: a good Prezi is a balance between exploiting the capabilities of the medium, and ensuring these capabilities don’t become and end in themselves. Ten Top Tips Create your structure first, fill in the details afterwards. Example one is the first one I ever did – for this blog post on tomorrow’s information professionals. So what’s bad about this?
How Minimalism Improves Training Effectiveness A steely Edwardian writer once gave this advice to his self-indulgent peers: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it – wholeheartedly – and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings. Decades later, William Faulkner abbreviated it to “kill your darlings”; healthy advice for any writer and for instructional designers or training content developers. It wisely tells us to put aside what we want to say and focus instead on what’s useful to the audience. More to Do, Less to Read Minimalism brings great value to the training experience. Easier Said Than Done? It’s tempting for a writer to include certain elements in training content due to many factors: deep involvement in the subject; a kitchen-sink approach is faster than paring down to the essentials; or plain old client – and supervisor – pressure. But a minimalist approach has serious rewards for trainers: Step 1: Form learning objectives around end goals.
SHIFT eLearning Blog What MIT Should Have Done Ten thousand students have just taken the final exam in MITx's course "6.002x Circuits and Electronics." The sheer size of this course (120,000 first registered back in March), the high-wattage backing of MIT for a certificate of completion to all those who make it through to the end, and the free, open access nature of this MOOC (a "massive open online course") seemingly ushers in a fundamentally new paradigm in higher education. When coupled with the recent headlines about similar ventures such as Coursera, Udacity, and MIT's own new partnership with Harvard to form edX, the policy world has been positively aglow: David Brooks calls it a "campus tsunami"; John Chubb proclaims it an "historic transformation"; Thomas Friedman writes, simply, "welcome to the college education revolution." In one respect, such adulation is completely understandable. Indeed. But there is a problem. MIT could have done so much more. Until now. And that makes sense. About the Author Dan W.
8 Tips for Designing Great Presentation Slides Previously, we talked about some presentation tips for making your courses more enjoyable, more memorable, and more useful to students. Now it’s time to dive into the actual mechanics of designing great slides that will make your presentation pop. Here are some tools that we find extremely valuable when designing presentations, no matter who the audience is. Make Sure Your Presentation Material Works The first step is to ensure you’ve got high quality content that engages your audience. Design Your Presentation Slides to Complement Your Talk Slides should complement your talk, not the other way around. Use a Professionally Designed Colour Palette Colour may be more important than you realise, and is a great way to make your presentation stand out and give it a professional edge. ColourLovers.com – quickly search and find palettes, and sort by popularity or create your own. Spend Some Time Choosing a Font Supersize Your Text For presentations to groups, larger text is always better.