Learning Ninjas®

Everyone deserves a chance to learn.

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Welcome Haley Shust, Lead Instructional Designer!

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We are excited to announce a new addition to the Learning Ninjas® team! Haley Shust has joined us as Lead Instructional Designer.

Haley Shust Profile Picture
Haley Shust
Lead Instructional Designer

Haley brings a wealth of experience in curriculum design, eLearning design & development, and assessment design. Her work includes contributions to large-scale learning experience projects for organizations such as the Smithsonian. She strives to create learning experiences that are meaningful, measurable, and accessible for all learners. Her past experience as a teacher and science curriculum developer adds novel perspectives to the team. You can learn more about her on LinkedIn.

When she’s not designing content, you can usually find Haley doing something active, such as rowing, weightlifting, or walking her Saint Bernard, Eleanor. These activities help her maintain the Zen-like calm that Ninjas need.

We can’t wait to see what creativity and insights she brings to our work creating innovative learning opportunities – welcome aboard Haley!

Gathered Intel #10

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This Week at Learning Ninjas:

We have been designing scenario-based elearning with multi-level feedback loops inside of Storyline, and talking about how important the ecosystem is as we build interactive training and performance support solutions. If we don’t identify and capture enough of the right information from our content, we’re not doing our jobs. We need systems that enable more than just tracking completions. We’re also working on configuring a new online community of practice for the World Health Organization and CDC.

If you’re not aware, there’s a new Curatr MOOC on the Experience API (xAPI) that started this week. You can still sign up and participate, and we’re available if you have any questions.

We’ve also launched our first iteration of eLearning Reviews, a quick and easy way for you to get a thorough review of your elearning course or performance support solution. Learn more about this new product, and we’d love to hear your feedback.

What We’re Reading:

Let’s Face It, Compliance is Not the Same as Learning – Clive Shepherd
“My main concern is the effect that compulsion has on the learning process. In fact, it’s clear to me now that compliance changes everything.” Indeed. We’ve gone so far down the compliance rabbit hole, can we make it back out?

Data Driven Design in the Real World – Smashing Magazine
L&D can learn a lot from marketing and web design when it comes to data-driven design. These industries have been using data to drive design for many years. In this article you will get a good introduction into data driven design including some nice examples.

10 Twitter Accounts Every Entrepreneur Should Be Following – Entrepreneur
We all have lots of people we follow already, but if you are looking for new insights these are some folks to follow. They give great advice and provide inspiration on a daily basis. If you are an entrepreneur or just want to follow some inspirational people, here are a few to look at.

Learning Communities with Purpose – ATD
A great article from Aaron Silvers and Sarah Gilbert on developing a Community of Developing Practice (CDP). The article provides an overview of what a CDP is and how it works. It also provides a real world example of how the Public Health Informatics Institute Academy is using a CDP.

Taming Big Data with Smart Contexts – Paper.li Blog
A great post on making sense of collected data. While the article focuses on the data collected by Paper.li, there is an easy correlation that can be made to learning. The article made us think about ways we could use context for better learning eco-systems.

How To Be an L&D Mythbuster – Cathy Moore
This ties in nicely with the recent announcement that Adam Savage will be keynoting DevLearn later this year (we’ll be there, by the way, for xAPI Camp and hopefully a workshop and some additional sessions). “We work in organizations that believe harmful myths. We’re pressured to work as if the myths are true, and we can’t or don’t take the time we need to keep our knowledge up to date and combat the myths.” So many myths persist in our industry today. It’s time for them to stop.

Covert Communication

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Interface Prototyping for E-Learning

“Don’t be intimidated by prototyping. Common office supplies can be used to build a very crude prototype to show to key stakeholders—and possibly even a few end users how the interface will function. The great thing about doing this type of prototyping is that they can be changed very quickly, making it easy to go through many iterations in just a few minutes.”

Excellent information on prototyping from Sean Putman, who will be presenting this session at ASTD Tech Knowledge in two weeks.

Learning Resolutions: Be Better, Not Right

“When you design this way, nobody has be defensive, and nobody’s reputation is at stake. You try some things, see how they work, and adjust.”

– Julie Dirksen

Defrag Your Brain with a Concept Diagram

Brian attended Scott’s session at the Penn State Web Conference and loved it.

Delivering On the Experience API

In this article Megan Bowe talks about the power and potential of the Experience API for organizations.

Immerse Yourself in Learning for 2014

In this blog post Koreen Olbrish Pagano talks about re-examining your design practices as you begin 2014.

Upcoming Webinars

Covert Communication – Winter 2013

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Wow, what a year! We’ve been hard at work, mostly behind the scenes, in the shadows, and occasionally on rooftops. I’m proud of the projects we’ve selected and worked on this year.

We’ve been:

  • helping improve courses and support materials for the Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program;
  • working with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) on an Emergency Needs Assessment project through the LINGOs Global Giveback program;
  • providing expertise to help improve training for Military Family Readiness centers;
  • developing webinars and workshops so we can help push the learning industry forward.

We’re all excited about doing even more in 2014.

Below are some great resources we’ve curated for our final 2013 newsletter and our upcoming webinar offerings. Let us know if you have a project we can help with. See you next year!

 

Design Thinking For Educators

We’re very excited about digging into this and finding resources for all kinds of learning solutions.

Wait For It

In this blog post Stephen Anderson talks about the anticipation of the reward in a user experience. Instead of showing everything at once, make the user anticipate the reward in the user experience.

Are You Creating an Environment in Which Learning Can Thrive?

Relating the environment design to building a campfire, David Kelly gives advice and things to think about when setting up a successful learning environment.

Nuts and Bolts: Directions

“Sometimes we make it so hard for learners to learn, it’s no wonder they circumvent us.”

Best Practices For Interviewing Your Audience

Great interview between Connie Malamed (The eLearning Coach) and Steve Portigal, master of the user interview.

In January…

Kevin, Brian, Sarah, Sean and Judy are all presenting sessions at ASTD’s Tech Knowledge Conference January 22-24.

In February…

Sarah Gilbert delivers the first of her Rapid Mobile webinar series, Rapid Mobile: Organization, Research, & Design on February 25th.

Covert Communication #2

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Game Over? New Study Says Gamification Not Built To Last
There’s a lot of buzz around the word “Gamification”. More and more organizations are throwing badges and other game elements in their programs. But is gamification an approach that can keep up with business objectives? This new study explores why it may not be. (Ernie Smith)

Accessibility in Learning
All content—web, e-learning, or other—should be accessible. Whether or not you are required by law to meet Section 508 requirements, you should make it a universal design rule to meet basic accessibility standards. Not because you want to avoid a lawsuit, but because it’s the right thing to do. (Brian Dusablon)

Selecting a Digital Curation Tool
In today’s world of ever-growing digital content there is a seemingly infinite amount of information available. Finding what you need, when you need it, is increasingly challenging. Fortunately, there is help: digital curation. (David Kelly)

The Tin Can API – A Non-Technical Analysis
If you’ve been to a learning conference in 2012, chances are you’ve heard something about Tin Can.  Tin Can (also known as The Experience API) is looking to change the way we track learning. In this excellent post, the technical jargon of the API is is set aside so that it’s benefits can be simply explained. (Gary Woodill)

20 Things to Remember About Forgetting
Even though it’s used all day and night, we are usually not aware of our memory’s processes until they fail. Yet remembering and forgetting are crucial phenomena underlying learning. (Connie Malamed)

Why I am Scared About How the Tin Can API Will Be Sold To Businesses
This is what I’m excited about. It’s not about the same, useless information we’ve been tracking, it’s about allowing creative folks to actually DO the things they dream up. (Tim Martin)

Check out the Ninjas LIVE at TechKnowledge

E-Learning Project Management in the Cloud
Brian Dusablon and Trina Rimmer
February 1st – 9:45 am to 11:15 am

Twitter 101 for Learning Professionals
David Kelly
January 30th – 10:45 am to 12:00 pm
January 30th – 1:15 pm to 2:30 pm

Curation: Beyond the Buzzword
David Kelly
February 1st – 9:45 am to 11:15 am

What is Tin Can and Why Should I Care?
Kevin Thorn and David Kelly
January 31st – 10:45 am to 11:45 am

How to Communicate w/ the Visual Cortex: What Learners Don’t See
Kevin Thorn
January 30th – 1:15 pm to 2:30 pm
January 31st – 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm

Free, Open, and Available: Tools and Techniques for E-Learning
Stevie Rocco
January 31st – 3:15 pm to 4:15 pm

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