In this article, we’re going to investigate how to help workers develop job skills through deep learning, deliberate practice, and evidence-based training methods known as desirable difficulties.

Sounds pretty exciting, no?

Well hold on to your hat, friend, because it’s more exciting than just that.

We’re going to do this by talking with Dr. Patti Shank, one of the most informed and generous learning researchers out there, and someone from whom we’ve learned a lot about learning over time. We’ll say it below as well, but many thanks to Patti for sharing her time and knowledge with us.

You’ve got two options for taking this all in. Read the article or scroll to the bottom and watch a recorded video of our conversation.

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Learning and development professionals, including elearning developers, have to wear many hats. That’s kind of true by definition, since it’s a field that incorporates a lot of different skills and tasks. But it’s even more true for L&D/eLearning professionals who work in small learning development departments. Maybe it’s a 3-person department, or maybe even a 1-person department. It’s pretty amazing what these hardworking professionals get done.

This article is an interview with Emily Wood, who is her own “elearning department of one” at a non-profit based in Portland, Oregon. She’s also the author of a new book by that same title–eLearning Department of One.

In this interview, she offers some insights into how she gets it all done and offers tips and resources for L&D professionals out there in the same situation. If you’re in a small L&D department, we think you’ll find this interview especially interesting.

We’ve got a recorded video of the discussion for you immediately below, plus if you prefer reading, we’ve typed up a transcript for you too (just click the MORE button to read).

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In today’s economy, it’s important for organizations to support learning. Without doing so, they risk losing market share or even going out of business due to increased competition or by being disrupted in the way that streaming video services such as Netflix disrupted the brick-and-mortar videotape rental business model of companies like Blockbuster.

While all or most organizations try to learn and use the results of that learning to adapt, some organizations do this better than others. Those at the “good” end of the spectrum, who use learning well, may be known as learning organizations.

In this article, we’ll talk more about learning organization theory, learning organizations, and the characteristics of a learning organization.

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A learning management system (LMS) is a great tool for compliance and workforce learning.

But it’s just that. It’s a tool. It’s not a silver bullet, it won’t address every learning challenge your organization faces.

Use it well, and you’ll get lots of benefits. We’ll review some of those for you below.

But don’t think that getting an LMS is the same as having a learning strategy. Because your organization needs to develop, implement, and maintain a learning organization–and an LMS can be a tool that helps your organization act our your learning strategy.

Continue reading to learn more about LMSs and their role in your organizational learning strategy.

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Have you heard the phrase learning ecosystem and wondered what it means? Or did you learn about it just now and is it leaving you scratching your head?

Not to worry. We’ll provide a simple and quick introduction to the concept of a learning ecosystem in this article. It’s an important idea, and even if you didn’t know the term before today, you may well find you’ve already set up a learning ecosystem at work, or at least parts of one.

Read on to learn more about learning ecosystems.

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As you know, there are many new technologies available now or coming soon that may influence learning and development in different ways. So many that it’s a little hard to keep track of them all, not to mention have an understanding of what they are and just exactly what influences they may have on workforce learning and development.

And of course, as often happens when a new technology comes about, it’s also easy to get a little over-excited and think this is the long-awaited, massive game-changer that will completely change learning and development forever, bringing with it all the solutions to all the problems and challenges we face.

To help us get a better understanding of all these new technologies, to see how we might use them in learning and development, and to see which may have some type of “disruptive” effect in workforce training, we’ve asked Dr. Stella Lee, a learning professional with a ton of experience studying technologies for workforce L&D, to share some of what she knows with us.

Before we begin, two quick points: First, we’d like to thank Dr. Lee for sharing her time, knowledge, and experiences with us. And second, know you can watch the recorded video of this discussion immediately below or click the MORE button to read the transcript I typed up for ya 🙂

And with that said, let’s start learning about disruptive technologies and their use in learning and development from Dr. Lee.

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If you’re trying to find the right learning management system (LMS) solution for your workplace, you might be wondering if you should have your LMS installed on your company’s network or if you should get a cloud-based LMS.

Or perhaps you haven’t gotten quite that far, and you didn’t know you could get a cloud-based LMS. Or maybe you’re not even sure what the cloud is or why you’d want a cloud-based LMS.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, then you’ll appreciate this article, in which we tell you what you need to know about cloud-based learning management systems (LMS).

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