Articles by Jane Bozarth
Nuts and Bolts: Opportunity Knocks?
(1/31/12)Formal design process gets a lot of attention, but not every problem requires the full treatment. Consider first what your client needs, before you start working on what the process flow chart requires, and when the problem is simple, keep the solution simple. Jane offers the key to remedies for performance issues.
Nuts and Bolts: New Year's Resolutions, 2012
(1/3/12)By all indications, 2012 is going to be a year of some major transitions in the way we develop and deliver eLearning. However, this should not distract any of us from the fundamentals that support actual learning. Jane offers some suggestions for resolutions that will keep us all on the right track.
Nuts and Bolts: Inviting Interaction
(12/6/11)Instead of asking how to manage informal learning and which tools to use, ask yourself whether you are inviting interaction, and how. Here are some excellent ways to make informal learning more visible to both managers and employees, and to invite interaction and develop something more akin to a partnership with your learners.
Nuts and Bolts: Required Reading
(11/1/11)Even though it’s a digital world for readers of this e-zine, most of us still enjoy good old analog professional conferences and the opportunity to speak face-to-face with our colleagues and heroes. And even more – the secret love of many of us is browsing physical books in the conference bookstores! Jane suggests some great tomes to browse and add to your resources.
Nuts and Bolts: Social Media for Learning
(10/4/11)What's the difference between social media and social learning? How are you using each of them in your organization? This month's article addresses these questions and provides an overview of The eLearning Guild's new Report, Social Media for Learning.
Nuts and Bolts: The 10-Minute Instructional Design Degree
(9/6/11)There are heated debates about whether every instructional designer should have formal training, and about the pros and cons of academic instructional design programs. But in the meantime, you have to get the work done. Here are eight basic points that every instructional designer should commit to memory.
Nuts and Bolts: What's Your Story?
(8/2/11)In Learning Solutions Magazine, a number of authors have suggested using stories to support learning. Sometimes managers object to the idea of using stories as being too touchy-feely. Here’s a new way to look at the process, and some words to replace “story.”
Nuts and Bolts: Do Your Learning Objectives Match Strategies and Outcomes?
(7/5/11)Have you heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy, the system for getting your learning objectives to specify measureable outcomes? Here’s a quick summary and a great job aid for instructional designers.
Nuts and Bolts: “Let The Learners Hold The Spoon”
(6/7/11)Most designers know that eLearning must engage the learner through activity. This does not mean simply having them choose the “Next” button, and it does not necessarily require offering an interactive simulation. The answer can be very simple, as Jane shows in her column.
Nuts and Bolts: From Classroom to Online, Think “Transform” not “Transfer”
(5/3/11)Moving an existing classroom course to online delivery is the way many eLearning initiatives get started. It is also, unfortunately, the way that many initiatives get off to a bad start, or even fail. Jane provides great tips for successful transformation of learning – you can apply them to your first effort, or to any conversion project.
Nuts and Bolts: Building a Personal Learning Network (PLN)
(4/5/11)Trainers and instructional designers have professional development needs too! Social media tools can be as powerful for solving your information and skill needs as they are for your learners’ needs. Here is the way to develop your own Personal Learning Network. It’s simple, and it’s free!
Nuts and Bolts: Working With Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)
(3/1/11)One of the most important things instructional designers do is interview subject matter experts (SMEs). It is also one of the most difficult things to do well. Jane offers insight from her experience to help you improve your results.
Nuts and Bolts: SURPRISE!
(2/1/11)Every instructional designer knows that it’s important to engage the learner. With certain types of content, this is easier said than done, and sometimes our own design standards work against us. Jane shows you how to avoid boring your learners stiff.
Nuts and Bolts: 2011 Resolutions
(1/4/11)Making New Year’s Resolutions? Jane suggests ten for your consideration, from eliminating Clicky Clicky Bling Bling to dealing with clients who have made up their minds.
Nuts and Bolts: Useful Interactions and Meaningful Feedback
(12/7/10)Thought and creativity can turn weak assessments and interactions into feedback that is actually useful to the learner. Here is some practical wisdom about what helps, what supports and what guides, and what supports gain – and how to avoid doing harm.
Nuts and Bolts: Do You See?
(11/1/10)Simple design basics can make or break a program. Choices related to fonts, placement of content on a screen, and application of an organization’s standards like number of screens matter. Jane tackles color issues this month.
Nuts and Bolts: How to Evaluate e-Learning
(10/5/10)Evaluation is something that every instructional designer talks about, but few actually do. This may be because designers only know about the Kirkpatrick “Levels.” Here are two alternatives that may be far more practical.
Nuts and Bolts: Too Many Tools
(9/7/10)Cognitive overload – too much information – is one type of problem for learners. Another type of problem that designers can create for learners is too many distractions from too many tools. Here’s how to recognize the problem, and what to do about it.
Nuts and Bolts: Brain Bandwidth - Cognitive Load Theory and Instructional Design
(8/3/10)Designers often overload learners with information, hurting learning and learner motivation, and thereby undercutting the very thing we say we want to accomplish. A designer can avoid this by understanding cognitive load theory and memory; in particular, the concepts of working memory and long term memory. Here’s some applied theory you can put to work immediately!
Nuts and Bolts: Getting Management Support for Training
(7/6/10)“When developing and launching a new training initiative – traditional classroom, virtual classroom, asynchronous, or a mix – or suggesting a training solution for an individual worker or group, it’s vital to gain management commitment. As with so many issues in training and development, this is another of those “easier said than done” challenges.
Nuts and Bolts: Find Your 20%
(6/8/10)Good practice in instructional design means being aware of cognitive overload and avoiding it – in other words, not giving learners more than they can handle, and certainly not more than they will use. This month, Jane gives you a strategy (and a visualization!) for dealing with the desire to include everything and the kitchen sink in your e-Learning design.
Book Review: The Complete Guide to Simulations & Serious Games by Clark Aldrich
(6/2/10)“I wish that the ‘e-Learning’ business had started with this book … before online training as an industry managed to replicate the very worst elements of the traditional classroom experience. I wish this book as a starter gift: a new person starting with this would not accept flying lines of text supported by word-for-word narration as anything resembling a learning experience.”
Nuts and Bolts: Principles of Multimedia Learning
(5/4/10)Some of the most frequently asked questions among instructional designers are the ones dealing with text, images, and narration and how best to use them together. There are many examples of combinations that do not work, but not so many explanations of the principles behind making the right choices. Here is a simple explanation of three of the most important principles.
Putting People First: Human Issues in Instructional Technology, by Anastasia Marie Trekles
(4/16/10)“ … a readable, solid, extensive, exhaustive, approachable work tightly focused on the position and needs of the learner in the learning experience. Much content focuses on accessibility as it relates to assorted permanent or temporary impairments … but a good deal more of the book is germane to the user-first perspective of any learner.”
Nuts and Bolts: When Training Works
(4/6/10)One of the most-discussed sessions at Learning Solutions 2010 was “The Great ADDIE Debate,” a conversation about the 21st-century relevance of the ADDIE process model (Analyze-Design-Develop-Implement-Evaluate), so often employed in instructional design. Rather than declare ADDIE dead, wouldn’t it make more sense to be sure that we are using it properly? Here’s a simple method to do just that.
Working Smarter: Informal Learning in the Cloud by Jay Cross and Friends
(3/30/10)Jay Cross and his friends have updated Jay’s unbook on informal learning, to reflect the movement of learning into the Internet Cloud. There are checklists, tools, images, charts, and provocative questions that bring the issue down to ground level.
Book Review: Training for Multiple Cultures by Andrea Edmundson
(3/12/10)This new addition to ASTD’s Infoline series is intended for American instructional designers who create instruction for delivery in another part of the world.
