Hack ID
Resources for Self-Taught Instructional Designers
Accessibility for Teams
Accessibility Guild
A ‘quick-start’ guide for embedding accessibility and inclusive design practices into your team’s workflow.
This guide provides:
- An overview of how each team member can contribute to a product’s accessibility
- A framework for thinking about accessibility and inclusive design in your role
- An understanding of the human need behind accessibility practices
Game Accessibility Guidelines
Various
A straightforward reference for inclusive game design. Supporting the industry since 2012, through award winning guidance and examples of how to cater for gamers with disabilities and other impairments
The Training, Learning, and Development Community
TLDC
The Training, Learning, and Development Community’s focus is on Everyday Improvement for all of our Members and Subscribers. And one of the best tools for maximizing your Professional Development is Conferences.
TLDCast is an “every weekday” hour-long, online, video/audio/text broadcast focused on Training, Learning, and Development. It’s not a webinar – it’s a mix between a conference session and a hallway conversation — because we all know that’s where the true value of a conference resides.
Project Management for Instructional Designers
David Wiley et al.
Project Management for Instructional Designers (PM4ID) is – as the name suggests – a book about project management tailored specifically for instructional designers. This book is a revise / remix of a pre-existing, openly licensed project management textbook which was donated to the commons by a benefactor that desires to be attributed as Anonymous.
Build Your E-Learning Portfolio!
Ashley Chiasson, Sprout Elearning
Regardless of your job title, if you’re working within the field of E-Learning, particularly within a production capacity, you need an e-learning portfolio.
An e-learning portfolio will promote you as a developer, acting as a visual resume for your peer, colleagues, or prospective clients. This is especially important if you’re seeking a new profession or looking to add independent contracting or freelance development to your resume.
By the end of this course, you should be able to:
- Identify the importance of an e-learning portfolio
- Recognize common challenges related to building an e-learning portfolio, and how to overcome these challenges
- Identify methods for building out and/or hosting your portfolio
- Outline methods for promoting your portfolio
Building an e-learning portfolio doesn’t need to be an overwhelming task, and my goal is to walk you through the process of creating and sharing one e-learning sample that you can include in your portfolio. Don’t worry - We’ll do this together!
The Lounge Podcast
Jacqueline Hutchinson
A podcast about “elevating corporate learning and educational technologies”
Give All: Every Creative and Strategic Method You Need
verynice
This toolkit series was created by verynice, a design strategy consultancy in Los Angeles that wanted to share everything they’ve learned with people like you:
- Brand Strategy & Identity: Craft a strong and authentic brand strategy.
- Marketing & Storytelling: Create a strategic marketing campaign that will inspire your audience to engage.
- Mission Statements: Write a mission statement that your entire organization can rally behind.
- Value Proposition: Uncover your perceived and projected value while writing a value proposition statement that can clearly communicate your niche.
- Information Architecture: Organize your website content into an easy-to-follow site map.
- User Experience & Interface: Collaboratively and quickly sketch a user experience that works.
- Collaborative Analysis: Better define existing collaborations, or imagine new potential ones.
- Competitive Analysis: Map out your direct and peripheral competition while also positioning yourself amongst them.
- Strategic Planning: Write 12-month strategic plan that maps out key milestones and activities to get you where you need to be.
Our digital download is available on a pay-what-you-want basis, and includes easy-to-understand instructions.
GitHub Learning Lab
Github
Get the skills you need without leaving GitHub. GitHub Learning Lab takes you through a series of fun and practical projects, sharing helpful feedback along the way. The Learning Lab bot will guide you through projects and provide feedback right from your GitHub repository, helping you build every step of the way.
Build experiential offline learning with Evolve
Matt Cleghorn, Appitierre Ltd
Build a course to promote offline practice using experiential learning.
This free demonstration course is designed to encourage the learner to try out their learning offline. We explore a complex topic, frying an egg, using a branching scenario, local storage and offline learning.
Dash
General Assembly
Dash is a fun and free online course that teaches you the basics of web development through projects you can do in your browser.
The Online Lecture Toolkit
Judith Dutill/Melissa Wehler
This site is designed to provide you with the tools you need to create engaging and effective online video content for educational purposes. The approaches outlined here are practitioner and evidence-based and designed for educators at every level of technological fluency.
Go Design Something: Building Your Job-Winning Portfolio
Kristin Anthony, knanthony.com
This course will walk you through a repeatable process that you can use, whether your building your first portfolio from scratch or looking to update an existing portfolio. Instead of wasting your time fiddling with a WordPress theme, this course will start you on the right track to actually creating a portfolio that works.
Creating a Design System: The Step-by-Step Guide
UX Pin, UX Pin
Scaling design through hiring, without putting standards in place, is a myth. With every new hire, new ideas for color palettes, typography and patterns appear in the product, growing the inconsistency and increasing the maintenance cost. Every new hire increases the design entropy.
There’s only one way to stop the growth of the chaos. Committing to running a design system process. Gradual growth of a design system equals gradual decline in consistency and speed of software development.
Design scales. But it scales only with a design system.
A design system is a set of standards for design and code along with components that unify both practices. Think of it as the same instructions and Lego kit for everyone.
Breaking Into Instructional Design
Connie Malamed, Elearning Coach
Curious about a career in instructional design?
Then you’ve come to the right place. I’ve created a free 12-lesson eCourse for people who want to know more about an Instructional Design career. Breaking Into Instructional Design explains one of the most fulfilling and smartest careers of the 21st century.
What’s inside:
- Learn about the varied work instructional designers do.
- Find out how the field is changing.
- See the competencies required for an instructional design career.
- Get the scoop on whether you need a degree.
- Discover the best places to network and find jobs.
- Jump ahead of your competition with this suggested reading list.
- Start working on an eLearning portfolio to develop your skills.-
Writing for Instructional Design
Connie Malamed, The eLearning Coach
Instructional designers write for a myriad of purposes, often with no training for specific types of writing. This guide covers several types of writing commonly practiced by instructional designers: technical writing, scripting for audio and video, and persuasive writing.
How to create great e-Learning content from A to Z
iSpring
In this series, Michael Sheyahshe, an e-Learning expert, will guide you through the whole process of crafting a course — from initial roadmap to final content distribution.
xAPI for Interactive Ebooks
Sarah Gilbert, meLearning Solutions / Sean Putman, Learning Ninjas,
A Deep Dive into the Whys of using xAPI in your elearning, wrapped up in a how-to on creating your own interactive ebook that reports out xAPI statements!
Accessibility from the Ground Up: A Guide to Making eLearning Barrier-Free
Pamela S. Hogle, Elearning Guild
If we create content that is accessible from the ground up—if we build in ease of access and assistance for people who are new to technology, are English-language learners, have trouble distinguishing colors, need high-contrast designs, are hard of hearing, or use screen readers to navigate or access text—all learners will benefit. Accessible content is easier for everyone to use.
Web Accessibility by Google
Udacity
Not every user approaches their applications with the same abilities. Whether it’s age, vision concerns, limited hearing, a broken arm, or other limitations, everybody deserves access to their apps. This course dives into the why and how of making web applications accessible. As a bonus, accessible sites also tend to be more usable for everybody!
Start Building Accessible Web Applications Today
Marcy Sutton, Egghead.io
Accessibility (or a11y) is an important but often neglected in the world of web development. Many developers find themselves coding user interfaces without any knowledge of keyboard or screen reader requirements.
The fact is that accessibility doesn’t happen by accident. Often it is seen as too hard or time consuming. This doesn’t have to be the case. By following a handful of high-value patterns and practices, we can open our web apps to humans that otherwise wouldn’t be able to interact with them at all.
This course will introduce you to accessibility through hands-on, technical examples that are way more effective than reading 10-year-old static web content.
Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast
Bonnie Stachowiak
Bonnie Stachowiak interviews higher ed professionals and shares tips about instructional design, teaching, educational technology, and educational psychology.
Eliminate Nonessential Content
Patti Shank, eLearning Industry
How we write learning content is as important as what we write. For example:
- Complex writing makes the message hard to understand.
- Mixing unnecessary content with important content makes it difficult to find and remember the most critical messages.
In this eBook by Patti Shank, PhD, we concentrate on five critical tactics to remove unnecessary words and content in order to make it content more learnable.
Designing for Mixed Reality
Kharis O'Connell, O'Reilly
Today’s interaction designers generally operate within well-researched and documented constraints for both web and mobile applications—but not for much longer. By mixing the real and virtual worlds, new products such as Hololens, DAQRI, Meta, and Magic Leap clearly demonstrate that designers no longer have to confine user interfaces to a screen.
In this O’Reilly report, author Kharis O’Connell guides you through the new realm of mixed reality. You’ll discover the difference between designing for arenas rather than web or mobile screen rectangles, and examine some of the supporting tools, technologies, and techniques that will enable you to make the transition.
Pay Me Or Else
Lior Frenkel, The Nu School
I freaking hate it when clients don’t pay. So I wrote a book about how to avoid and deal with such clients.
Free Code Camp
Free Code Camp
Free Code Camp is a friendly open source community where you learn to code and help nonprofits.
We help our campers build job-worthy portfolios of real apps used by real people, while helping nonprofits.
You start by working through our self-paced, browser-based full stack JavaScript curriculum. By working through our curriculum, you can earn four certifications:
- Front End Certification
- Data Visualization Certification
- Back End Certification
- Full Stack Certification
Devices Everywhere: Designing for a Multi-Device World
Michal Levin, Designers + Geeks
People today use multiple connected devices—PCs, smartphones, tablets, TVs, and beyond—switching between them, and using them together in order to accomplish a single goal. Still, most products merely replicate the same experience across devices, substituting solos for what could be an orchestra. In this session, I’d like to introduce ‘The 3C’s”- an ecosystem approach for designing multi-device experiences, one that focuses on context.
Designers for Learning
Designers For Learning
This project-based course focuses on a real-world instructional need. As a participant in this course, you will evaluate and adapt open educational resources for adult basic education. You will begin the evaluation process by dissecting the adult basic education design scenario to explore key aspects of the opportunity.
As part of the instructional evaluation, you will select an open educational resource that was designed and developed in a prior Designers for Learning cohort to evaluate the extent to which the instructional materials are effectively and efficiently designed and developed to meet the needs and constraints. Based on this evaluation, you will then adapt the materials you reviewed into a new lesson or revise the open educational resources to enhance the:
- instructional strategies and assessments,
- learner experience features, such as directions and help, aesthetics of display, lesson sequencing, and overall ease of use,
- affective considerations, such as arousing curiosity, establishing relevance, offering appropriate level of challenge, and maintaining learner’s attention, and
- display features, such as images, graphics, audio, animation, video, or print materials.
xAPI Learning Cohort
Torrance Learning
Join the cohort for another dive into xAPI and what you can do to make it work for you, your organization, and the entire industry!
No xAPI experience necessary. Lots of friendly, curious folks. Real, live projects with real, live products. Virtual meetings so anyone in the world can participate. It’s all plus with no minus!
xAPI: An Introductory Guide
Margaret Roth, Yet Analytics
Consider this introductory e-book a crash course – everything you’ll need to know to have a basic understanding of the Experience API™, otherwise known as xAPI. xAPI is an open data interoperability specification originally developed to get a better picture of how, when, and why learning happens both on and offline.
The Essential Guide to Working with Subject Matter Experts
Articulate
If you’re like most e-learning developers, working with subject matter experts (SMEs) is one of your toughest challenges. But don’t worry, we’re here to help.
Download this e-book to learn effective strategies for partnering with your SMEs to create awesome e-learning. You’ll learn how to get the information and feedback that you need—and how to make collaborating on courses a positive experience for everyone.
The Fundamentals Of User Experience
Cassius Kiani, Mikleo / Go Highbrow
Change the way you think and look at products (digital and otherwise) forever. Learn what user experience is and how it affects every decision you and your users will ever make.
Unity Programming for Human Beings
Jessie Glove and Pablo Farias Navarro, Zenva.com
We are stoked to announce the launch of our free ebook Unity Programming for Human Beings, authored by software engineer and game developer Jesse Glove, in collaboration with Pablo Farias Navarro, founder of Zenva.
In over 230 pages of awesomeness, the book starts from zero and covers all the way to building simple 2D and 3D games with Unity.
How to Use Typography to Improve Your E-Learning
Heloisa Kinder, Articulate
Typography—or the art of creating characters for print—is a powerful tool for setting the right mood and tone for your e-learning course. Choosing the right typefaces will help you create clear, beautiful, and legible text that complements the content, interactions, and graphics in your course.
In this rich guide to typography for e-learning designers, we’ll show you how to create a professional, elegant look for your course by choosing the right typefaces.
Sponge UK Elearning Podcast
Sponge UK
Getting to the heart of great elearning with absorbing interviews, ideas, and tips. The perfect show for L&D professionals, instructional designers, and anyone interested in digital learning. We cover the technology behind learning, as well as the theory and practice that goes into absorbing online learning.
The Secret to Create Great E-Learning Videos
Articulate
Videos let you show a learner what they need to know, not just tell them. And for soft-skills training, they’re invaluable for capturing the subtleties of personal interactions. In this e-book, we’ll share our expert tips on creating compelling videos and screencasts.
Learn how to set up a professional-quality studio with simple, affordable equipment, including lighting you can find at your local hardware store. Get tips for speaking or narrating with a natural, authentic tone. Save time by effectively preparing your desktop for screen recordings. Enhance your videos with captions and interactions to make sure they communicate key points.
Sales: Blended Learning That Works
Kirstie Greany, Kineo
Helping organisations improve the sales and product knowledge training they deliver, focusing in increasing ROI and sales performance through blended learning.
How To Shoot Rich Cultural Training Videos on a Smartphone (A Guide)
Wisetail / Elearning Guild
The value of creating rich, engaging cultural stories using video is often outweighed by the perceived time, expertise and outside resources needed to produce these videos. Especially in the L&D world, where video creation is one area where content creators and instructional designers don’t feel as comfortable giving it a shot.
In this guide, we will take you step-by-step through the proven Wisetail video production process from a filmmaking novice’s point of view. We’ll give you both the insight and techniques needed to tell your rich cultural stories using the tools (smartphone & laptop) already at your disposal.
Responsive eLearning Design & Development
Geera Bellare & Sonal Sheth, Elearning Guild
Today’s learners use multiple computing/communication devices during the course of the day - for learning, work, entertainment, and decision making. They are on the move, both within and outside the workplace, and want to use their “downtime” effectively. Responsive eLearning helps organizations to leverage this “downtime” while extending the reach and availability of their training.
Like any other approach, Responsive eLearning comes with its own set of planning, design, development and testing considerations and guidelines - and it forces those of us who create responsive eLearning to think beyond just one fixed display size and one uniform use context. Hence, understanding the key features, benefits, types, examples of Responsive eLearning is important in drawing up a strategy that works for your organization. With respect to the strategy, decision factors like when to use responsive eLearning, how to get started and the various challenges you may encounter in the design, development and testing process are crucial to the success of your strategy. Learn about it all in this eBook.
Resonate Multi-Touch Book
Nancy Duarte, Duarte.com
Resonate Multi-Touch Book is like having a portable story writing workshop in your hands as you prepare your next presentation. You’ll learn a new presentation development methodology informed by cinema, literature, and the greatest speeches of all time.
Ready, Set, Curate!
Curatr
Let’s face it, the internet isn’t getting any smaller. How do we separate the valuable content from the noise, how do we organise the good stuff in ways that tell coherent stories about our businesses and our interests? In this latest offering from HT2 you’ll be able to inform your own practice by taking a look at ‘Curation’ and answering these questions.
- What is it (and why do we need it)?
- What are the ‘pros’ & ‘cons’?
- What do I need to think about before I get started?
- What tools are available for me to use?
Product Psychology
Product Psychology
This content is designed for people who want to know the deeper reasons behind why people do what they do. This is for the busy entrepreneur, designer, or marketer who wants to know techniques they can use to help build better products and ultimately improve people’s lives.
We’ve asked our friends and colleagues for their top three to five resources on important topics related to product psychology and user behavior. They’ve taken the time to dig up their favorite articles, videos, and resources to get you up to speed quickly.
What Type of Presenter Are You?
FassForward
Presentations are planned conversations and prescheduled leadership opportunities where you have a chance to shine as a leader - and influence conversations. Take a short survey and receive a deeper profile of your Presenter Type. By understanding your Presenter Type, you will be better able to reframe your audience’s thinking and incite them to action.
Platform games: a primer
Scott Rogers, Mr. Boss Design Blog
Little Big Planet will turn everyone into a platform game designer - however, it might not make them a good game designer.
So here is a primer on platform games I’ve put together for anyone who wants to make their game a little better or, more importantly, a little fairer. Enjoy!
Performance Support: Insights From Jane Hart
Trivantis
Want to get results with performance support? Just want to know what performance support is and how it can benefit your organization? This eBook is for you! Jane Hart, Founder of the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies, shared her knowledge with us for this eBook.
Onboarding: Blended Learning That Works
Kirstie Greany, Kineo
Helping organisations use blended learning to create engaging and informative onboarding programmes, ensuring staff retention long beyond the first 90 days.
A Mobile World Needs Responsive Course Design
Trivantis
Designing for mobile learners becomes more complicated with each new cell phone and tablet release. However, it doesn’t have to be. Download this eBook to learn more about Responsive Course Design and how you can easily create content that looks great on all devices.
Mobile Learning in Context
Janet Clarey, Elearning Guild
When people talk about customary approaches to eLearning, they usually envision self-paced courses, tutorials, and synchronous virtual classroom training. Still popular after 20 years, this “traditional” type of eLearning is typically designed and structured as a formal solution. It originated in one-way communication (web 1.0), much like email originated from traditional mail. Done right, for the right reasons, it works.
Mobile learning, on the other hand, originated in two-way communication (web 2.0), defies the customary approach to eLearning, and shifts the control and responsibility for learning. From a design perspective, mobile forces us to rethink our approach to learning. It forces us to see learners as mobile. Done right, it also works.
A collection of essays curated by Janet Clarey, Mobile Learning in Context explores topics from implementation to how to motivate learners to complete training. Written by an international group of mobile innovators, their writings might inspire you rethink where mobile learning fits in your existing learning ecosystem.
Making eLearning Accessible
Trivantis
Discover why you should be creating accessible content, plus tips and tricks for making accessible content interactive.
Make this Year
Crew
Join over 21,470 members and get one step-by-step lesson a month taught by the best side project makers.
Level Zero
Ankur Prasad & Allen Wu, Scirra.com
This recently published book “Level 0” is a resource designed for the absolute beginner. You’ll learn how to set up characters and backgrounds, apply in-game mechanics and implement if – then functions and end up with five fully functional mini-games. The book will also show you how to publish your games to app stores and make them available to millions of potential customers around the world.
The goal of Level 0 is to give aspiring game developers the basic building blocks to apply their creativity and bring their vision to life. For example, one of the mini-games you’ll learn to build is a simple sound board app where you click on an image and the corresponding sound will play. Through this exercise, not only do you pick up the skills to build a virtual keyboard or maybe an educational app that teaches kids the sounds farm animals make but also learn how to use sound, music and touch functions that can be used for subsequent arcade and action games.
Each of the 5 mini-games covered in the book has already been used by thousands of Construct 2 users to build their first game on Construct 2.
Run Your Own LRS in 4-Weeks or Less
Curatr
This course focuses on the technical side of xAPI: getting up-and-running with a Learning Record Store.
You won’t need to be a programmer to take part, but you will need some experience of implementing servers, software and systems administration in general.
You’ll also need access to a server (either on cloud, like AWS, or on your own devices) and administration rights to install new software.
Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design
Shawn Lawton Henry, UIAccess.com
Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design provides:
- The basics of including accessibility in design projects
- Shortcuts for involving people with disabilities in your project
- Tips for comfortable interaction with people with disabilities
- Details on accessibility in each phase of the user-centered design process (UCD)
- Examples of including accessibility in user group profiles, personas, and scenarios
- Guidance on evaluating for accessibility through heuristic evaluation, design walkthroughs, and screening techniques
- Thorough coverage of planning, preparing for, conducting, analyzing, and reporting effective usability tests with participants with disabilities
- Questions to include in your recruiting screener
- Checklist for usability testing with participants with disabilities
Intro to HTML5 Game Development
Pablo Farias Navarro, Zenva.com
Learn from scratch to create games that run on all platforms and devices!
In this online training you will learn the basics of HTML5 game development by creating your first Mario-style platformer game. All of it using 100% free tools and frameworks!
We’ll be using the Quintus HTML5 game framework, which is a lightweight yet powerful JavaScript library used to create professional 2D games.
Idea Validation
Omar Zenhom, $100 MBA
What if you launch a business…and nobody buys?
What if you could skip ALL of the guesswork?
You’d never have to wonder, “is this a good idea?” or “are people going to want it enough to pay for it?” Don’t you wish you could peek inside your customers’ brains? It would let you make sure that you’re working on something they’ll actually buy. So much pain and heartache could be avoided.
This is where we come in & show you how to create something YOU KNOW your customers REALLY want.
How To Validate An Idea
Ryan Kulp, Go Highbrow
Have you ever had a good idea but weren’t sure what to do next? Do you file for a business license? Build a website? Quit your job?
This course demystifies the idea validation process without fancy jargon like “lean startup” or expensive software. Learn from a three-time founder how to think deeply about the problem you’re solving, as well as learn tactics to freely distribute your ideas to potential customers.
How To Be Creative
Hugh Mac Leod, GapingVoid.com
MacLeod, an advertising executive and popular blogger with a flair for the creative, gives his 26 tried-and-true tips for being truly creative. Each point illustrated by a cartoon drawn by the author himself.
If you’ve ever felt the draw to do something creative but just haven’t been able to pull it together, you’ll love this manifesto.
Hack Design
Hack Design
An easy to follow design course for people who do amazing things. Learn at your own pace. With articles, videos, and tutorials curated by some of the world’s best designers, there’s no easier way to learn design this year.
Going Mobile: How to design great multi-device elearning
Paul Welch, Kineo
Having learning that meets the demands of today’s learners by creating responsive, multi-device elearning.
Go Design Something: 5 Steps to a Kick-Ass Instructional Design Portfolio
Kristin Anthony, knanthony.com
Are you new to instructional design, trying to start a freelance career, or trying to find a new job? You’ve heard that you need a portfolio online but, in spite of all of the conference sessions and talks and blog posts, you still don’t know how to get started.
Go Design Something will give you 5 practical steps to creating an instructional design portfolio that gets results. This isn’t hand-waving, motivational talk. This book concentrates on getting you started right now with what you have.
Getting Started with Articulate Studio
Articulate
If you’re new to Articulate Studio ’13, this quick-start guide is for you. It’ll help you ramp up on core features, so you can begin turning your PowerPoint content into e-learning courses.
Getting Started with Articulate Storyline
Articulate
If you’re new to Articulate Storyline, this quick-start guide is for you. It’ll help you ramp up on core features, so you can more quickly build whatever you imagine.
Gamification. Fad or Future?
Curatr
In this latest offering from HT2 you’ll be able to inform your own practice by taking a look at ‘Gamification’ and answering these questions.
- What is it?
- Who’s using it?
- What benefits does it bring?
- How could you use it?
As well as some ‘behind the scenes’ peeks at how Curatr uses Gamification and how you can get access to Curatr to experiment with Gamification for yourself.
Intro to HTML5 Game Development
Kristen Dyrr, Pablo Farias Navarro, Renan Oliveria and Ben Sparks, Zenva.com
This book has over 420 pages and covers all the way from basic to advanced game development techniques using Phaser. The only prerequisite is basic to intermediate JavaScript skills – no prior game development experience is expected from the readers. Phaser is the most popular HTML5 game development library, used both by indie developers and large corporations.
The Freelancer’s Bible – Tips and Tricks for Your Design Business
Route1 Print
Our FREE eBook, The Freelancer’s Bible, gives you all the knowledge you need to make your design business a success.
By downloading your copy today, you will learn:
- How to market your business
- How to find your USP
- How to licence your work
- How to manage client relationships
- How to complete tax returns
- And much more!
Flat Design & Colors: Elegant Web UI Design Techniques
UXPin
See the best techniques for using colors & flat design with 40 examples from Google, Squarespace and more.
For flat design, topics include the intersection of Flat & Material Design, pros/cons of flat design, techniques popularized by flat design, flat design resources, and more.
For colors, topics include flat color palettes, high contrast colors, the emotions of color, how to pair color and texture, and more.
Real-world advice on how to stay current with these powerful design techniques.
Exploring Social Learning
Curatr
Social has been one of the watch words in L&D trends in recent years. Some experts suggest that all learning is social, some say you can design social learning experience - others say you can’t touch it and that L&D professionals should just stand back and let it happen.
But do we even have a common understanding of what it is?
In this latest offering from HT2 you’ll be able to inform your own practice by taking a look at ‘Social Learning’ by exploring:
- The changing world and workplace.
- Various social learning theories.
- The relationship between social, formal and informal learning.
- Various strategies, tools, methods and approaches.
Essential Guide to Visual Design
Articulate
You’ve heard the old adage, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” While the most tattered, sorry-looking book can hold delightful, exciting stories inside, we often overlook it in favor of a gorgeously designed hardcover. The same is true about e-learning. Even if your content is Pulitzer-worthy, your learners will find it difficult to be engaged if your course doesn’t appeal to their visual senses.
The good news is that you don’t have to be a visual designer to build beautiful courses. There are five simple ingredients to good visual design: color, contrast, repetition, alignment, and balance. In this e-book, we’ll look at each of these key ingredients and show you how to use them.
9 Steps to Better E-Learning Project Management
Articulate
For e-learning creators, the success of any e-learning project often hinges on how it’s planned and managed. You can have a fantastic idea, design it to perfection, and even line up awesome tools to build your course. But without a solid project management plan, you might find yourself facing some frustrating—and unnecessary—challenges.
This e-book walks you through the steps you need to manage your e-learning course projects effectively, from start to finish. You’ll find effective tips, resources, and strategies to help you create and deliver an e-learning course that meets everyone’s expectations.
The Elearning Guys
David Charney and Nejc Žorga Dulmin, TheElearningGuys.com
The eLearning Guys is a discussion show about Articulate Storyline development and all things eLearning by two guys passionate about education, multimedia, creativity and problem solving.
Nejc and David have been working in the eLearning industry for over a decade and they share their experiences with Articulate Storyline and their eLearning adventures with you.
Elearning Coach Podcast
Connie Malamed, Elearning Coach
Connie Malamed from The eLearning Coach site shares fresh ideas and actionable tips for success with creating online and mobile learning experiences. Listen to interviews with expert designers, developers, authors and professors who provide strategies for both learning architects and educators. If you have a passion for instructional design, cognitive psychology, visual communication, social media learning, mLearning, and related topics, this podcast is for you.
elearning.... beyond the next button!
Curatr
In this latest free offering from HT2 we’ve taking something of a brave (some might say foolish, but we prefer ‘experimental’) approach to our design.
We’re intending to facilitate a year-long conversation that will focus initially on the term ‘elearning’ and considering what that means in 2016, before using each month of the year to a look at a current or emerging technology that could be used to enhance the practice of those of you in a people development role. These monthly topics will become available on the 1st of each month.
eLearning 101: A Practical Guide
Trivantis
Learn the foundations of eLearning development in this complete guide for new training industry professionals.
10 Principles For Good Design
Principles by Dieter Rams, perpetuated by Vitsoe, reiterated by Oliver Klein., Oliver Klein
Dieter Ram’s 10 principles of good design in website form.
6 Best Practices for Designing Accessible E-Learning
Articulate
If you’re struggling with creating e-learning that meets the highest standards of accessibility, we’ve got the e-book for you.
In this free guide, we’ll walk you through the many choices you’ll need to make to design courses that meet popular accessibility standards, such as Section 508 and WCAG.
Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking
Stanford Design School
We know not everyone can make a trip to the d.school to experience how we teach design thinking. So, we created this online version of one of our most frequently sought after learning tools. Using the video, handouts, and facilitation tips below, we will take you step by step through the process of hosting or participating in a 90 minute design challenge.
If you choose to participate, in 90 minutes you will be taken through a full design cycle by participating in The Gift-Giving Project. This is a fast-paced project where participants pair up to interview each other, identify real needs, and develop a solution to “redesign the gift-giving experience” for their partner. NO PREVIOUS DESIGN EXPERIENCE REQUIRED. We’ll provide all the information you need to be successful, whether you are just pairing up with one other person or you are gathering a large group (great for organizations, schools, or companies).
Through this experience we hope you will take away some of the basic principles of Design Thinking and start to adapt them into your personal and professional routines.
Dear Instructional Designer
Kristin Anthony, DearInstructionalDesigner.com
The show for instructional design newbies.
What is the life of an instructional designer really like? This show is going to delve into all of the mess and how we can deal with it.
The Crisis of Context in Corporate Learning
Inkling / Elearning Guild
Learn how context has usurped content as the new king in the enterprise, and why this shift should be your learning and development team’s number-one priority.
Content is the foundation of your learning programs, but it is no longer the whole story. Putting your content into context—providing employees with instant and easy access to the content that is relevant to them—is the new standard for learning and development.
With numerous studies pointing to a majority of companies pouring their focus (and money) into generating more and more content, prioritizing context has never been more necessary. This eBook explains why context matters in the modern mobile enterprise, and how you can build it into your learning programs successfully.
How To Create An Outstanding MOOC
Curatr
In this course from HT2 we’d like to offer you not only the opportunity to discuss MOOC design in the fantastic social setting that is Curatr, but you’ll also have the chance (and support) to build your very own MOOC - in Curatr!
Compliance: Blended Learning That Works
Kirstie Greany, Kineo
Helping organisations move beyond the tick-box, using blended learning to create engaging and compelling compliance programmes.
The Building Blocks of Visual Hierarchy: Designing Visually Intuitive Web UI
UXPin
In this ebook:
- See how to design visually intuitive interfaces for the web.
- Learn how size, colors, space, layout, and style affect visual understanding.
- Get quick tips for designing clear visual hierarchies.
- 18 examples of the best sites analyzed from companies like MailChimp & RelateIQ.
Building Compelling Interactions: What You Need to Know
Articulate
Engaging e-learning courses give learners opportunities to take action, make decisions, and engage with content. In this e-book, we’ll share our pro techniques for building interactions that tempt your learners’ curiosity and invite them to explore.
Let learners discover relationships between key concepts with interactive activities. Ask absorbing questions that help learners process new information. Create thought-provoking scenarios that challenge learners to apply what they’ve learned to realistic situations. And design decision points that keep your learners wanting more.
The Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro
Tom Kuhlmann, Articulate
This free e-book by world-famous e-learning guru Tom Kuhlmann, author of The Rapid E-Learning Blog, will turn you into an e-learning pro in no time.
Tom will walk you through foundational e-learning concepts, explain common terms, and introduce you to the different types of tools you’ll use. He’ll also give you a top-to-bottom framework for partnering with stakeholders, gathering needed resources, and developing your online course effectively and efficiently.
5 eLearning Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Trivantis
Are you making these eLearning mistakes? Find out the worst offenders and how to avoid them. This eBook is based on original content by Joe Ganci of eLearningJoe and our extremely popular 5 eLearning Mistakes webinar.
Atomic Design
Brad Frost, BradFrost.com
Atomic design provides a clear methodology for crafting design systems. Clients and team members are able to better appreciate the concept of design systems by actually seeing the steps laid out in front of them.
Atomic design gives us the ability to traverse from abstract to concrete. Because of this, we can create systems that promote consistency and scalability while simultaneously showing things in their final context. And by assembling rather than deconstructing, we’re crafting a system right out of the gate instead of cherry picking patterns after the fact.
An Articulate® Storyline® User's Guide to Lectora®
Trivantis
Considering adding another eLearning authoring tool to your skill set? This detailed guide covers everything you need to know about switching from Articulate Storyline to Lectora, or adding Lectora Inspire to your toolbox.
AR, VR, and Enhanced Realities: Seven Perspectives on the Potential and Risks for Learning
Elearning Guild
Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality applications are poised to explode into the consumer market. The inevitable explosion will mainstream this technology and transform how we look at content, opening new opportunities not only for how we entertain ourselves, but also for how we connect, share, and learn.
For this eBook, we reached out to members of the eLearning Guild community who are already exploring the possibilities of these emerging technologies. What follows is a collection of seven different perspectives examining the possibilities and implications that virtual, augmented, and mixed reality applications have for learning and performance.
Anatomy of a Tin Can API Statement
Brian Miller, TinCanAPI.com
This book isn’t for the casual Tin Canner—it’s a deep dive into the technicalities and best practices of creating Tin Can API statements. We dare say that it’s the most exhaustive single resource for information about creating Tin Can statements!
Writing Tips to Grab Your Learners' Attention and Keep it!
Hannah Hunter, Allen Interactions
On-screen text can be a powerful tool to motivate, inspire, entertain, and educate. Instructional designers can use many tools to help make onscreen text Meaningful, Memorable, and Motivational.
This e-book, perfect for all instructional designers, outlines 5 practical writing tips that can be used to grab learner attention and keep it!
Using Instructional Interactivity to Improve e-Learning Designs!
Ethan Edwards, Allen Interactions
In this e-book, Ethan Edwards covers the concept of instructional interactivity, and demonstrates how it can transform the learning experience for learners working independently through an e-learning program. Gain understanding of the four essential components of instructional interactivity, CCAF, which include: Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback.
Avoiding Ugly e-Learning: Lessons from Holiday Sweaters
Ethan Edwards, Allen Interactions
Tis the season of holiday sweaters—each lovingly created with good intent, sometimes gaudy, sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes utilitarian, but rarely as beautiful as imagined. The same can often be said about e-learning course designs.
We start out with the intention to create something uniquely satisfying for our learners, but after accounting for strained resources, limited time, imperfect development tools, complex subject matter, and unpredictable learners, we end up with something not quite as beautiful as we’d hoped.
Saving the World from Boring Training
Cathy Moore, CathyMoore.com
In this 23-page ebook, you’ll learn 6 steps for saving the world from boring training courses.
6 Rules to Designing e-Learning for Maximum Motivation
Ethan Edwards, Allen Interactions
In an individualized learning setting, like asynchronous web-based training programs, active learner engagement is necessary for learning to occur.So while it is important for the instructional designer to get the content “right,” it is even more vital (and usually more challenging) to design interactivity to draw in the learner to commit to the authentic behavior needed for learning to occur.
This e-book presents six straightforward and effective design strategies to create learner motivation in e-learning.
10 Practical Principles for Creating Impactful e-Learning
Ethan Edwards, Allen Interactions
Instructional designers of e-learning face a constant challenge of how to create learning experiences that actually make a difference. Too many of the accepted and easy approaches result in e-learning courses that fail to motivate, engage, or empower learners. Sophisticated simulations and technically-sophisticated designs seem out of reach for many instructional designers.
In this e-book, learn:
- 10 practical principles that should be implemented at any level of complexity to create training experiences that are transforming and memorable.
- Actionable tips to implement these principles into your e-learning designs.
7 Steps To Improved E-Learning Challenges
Ethan Edwards, Allen Interactions
The Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback (CCAF) Instructional Design Model is a powerful tool to guide the design of engaging and effective online interactions.
Instructional designers appreciate the power of these elements and are impressed when presented with finished interactions that exemplify these principles. However, when faced with designing an interaction from scratch, many designers find it difficult to break out of the traditional tedious multiple choice and true/false formats that are used so often.
This e-book provides seven small steps to improved interactions while recognizing that capabilities with authoring software might be quite limited. If you begin applying these steps while you are designing questions, you will quickly open up a world of much more powerful design possibilities.
E-Learning for Beginners
Articulate
New to e-learning? Our in-depth e-book will tell you everything you need to know. You’ll be creating great courses in no time!
Unleash the Potential of Elearning in Your Business
Ant Pugh, E-Learning Architect
Are you thinking about implementing an e-learning programme within your business but not sure where to start? Or are you already delivering online training and not seeing the levels of engagement you know are possible? Then this course is for you!
In this email crash course you’ll learn:
- Why many e-learning programmes fail
- How to guarantee engagement with your audience
- How to demonstrate a tangible return on investment
- The basic components required for a successful e-learning programme
- Specific, actionable techniques you can apply to your business today
5 Highly Effective Strategies for Creating Engaging E-Learning
Articulate
Want to create more engaging e-learning courses, but aren’t sure where to start? In this go-to guide, you’ll learn how to attract—and keep—your learners’ attention.
From demystifying visual design principles to uncovering the secret to building great interactions, this e-book shares the pro strategies you need to make more compelling, more engaging, and more effective courses.
Disney Princesses Reimagined As E-Learning Disasters
Ethan Edwards, Allen Interactions
One of the more robust Internet trends has been reimagining the well-loved Disney Princesses in different situations. From the imaginative Disney Princesses Reimagined as “Real Life” Women to the provocative Disney Princesses Reimagined as Different Races to the absurd Disney Princesses Reimagined as Hot Dogs, these iconic characters seem to be useful in revealing aspects of our world that might otherwise go unrecognized.
In this spirit, Ethan Edwards puts this lens to the design of e-learning to shed new light on some problems and risks that we face and have become blind to by illustrating 12 Disney Princesses Reimagined as e-Learning Disasters.
The Definitive Guide to Multi-Device E-Learning
Articulate
Learners don’t just access e-learning from their desktop computers anymore. They’re using all kinds of devices, including smartphones and laptops. That means e-learning professionals are being asked to build courses that work on any device and screen size.
This request comes with a lot of new design and development considerations. How do you create e-learning that’s effective and looks great across multiple types of devices? How do you choose the right mobile learning development tools?
This e-book answers those big questions and more. In this definitive guide, we explain what multi-device e-learning is, break down the approaches to creating multi-device e-learning, and talk through what to consider when evaluating different mobile e-learning solutions.
You’ll also get insights, tips, and tricks for creating multi-device e-learning that you can apply immediately, whether you’re just getting started or want to take your courses to the next-level.
A Bite-Sized Guide to Microlearning
Ellen Burns, Allen Interactions
You have heard the buzz and excitement in the learning industry about microlearning—but how do you put the principles and theories behind microlearning into action?
Explore the basics of microlearning design and get foundational knowledge on implementing microlearning at your organization!
This e-book delivers insights into what makes successful microlearning gleaned from Ellen’s experience working with varied companies and organizations.
14 Tips for Preparing an e-Learning Feast
Ethan Edwards, Allen Interactions
As we all get ready to join our family and friends for the Thanksgiving holidays and prepare for the big meal, it’s nearly impossible to avoid the endless advice on TV, radio, and online about how to prepare the perfect feast.
As it turns out, so much of that advice can easily be related to planning and preparing perfect e-learning.