By the end of this session, you’ll be able to:

• Structure your content using techniques that work for screen readers, including how to think critically about headings, groups of links or buttons, and other elements that affect navigation.
• Make strategic decisions about which elements need labels or alt text and which should be marked decorative.
• Write contextually appropriate alt text for different types of instructional images.
• Balance visual design needs with screen reader accessibility.

The post Creating Exceptional Screen Reader Experiences in Learning Design appeared first on Learning Guild.

You will leave this session with an understanding of:

• How to use the Checklist to ensure accessible, inclusive, and WCAG-compliant eCourse development.
• An enhanced understanding of Storyline- and multimedia-specific programming techniques.
• Greater confidence in your understanding of accessibility and ability to apply inclusive design principles.

The post Beyond Compliance: Using the University of California Checklist to Build Better Courses appeared first on Learning Guild.

So why do so many leaders hesitate to move on? It’s rarely because they think the system is great. It’s because change feels messy. The sunk costs, the thought of migrating data, the worry that the next platform will be just as disappointing. It’s easier to limp along than to risk a big switch. Until it isn’t.

This white paper dissects all these issues. It looks at common complaints and issues and offers remedies to help you. And if you decide to move it in gives a practical step-by-step guide in involving your whole team, getting management approval, and how to run an RFP. Real practical advice written by industry leaders who have been through it and come out the other side. And the grass can be a lot greener!

The post LMS Fail? How to Recognize a Failing LMS and Remedy It appeared first on Learning Guild.

Slide decks are one of the most commonly used visual aids in learning and development—yet they also commonly suffer from poor design.

You’ve likely observed these unusable visuals before: slides created with big blocks of text, with odd formatting of text and images, or with clunky templates that haven’t been tailored to the learning outcomes at hand.

These graphical bad habits impair learners’ ability to absorb the content and they represent information dumping and visual clutter, rather than information design and visual prioritization.

Thankfully, L&D professionals can blend two frameworks that already exist in the field of instructional design to level up their slide deck game.

By blending Bloom’s Taxonomy and Mayer’s Principles, we can better align our educational intentions with our graphic design choices. In other words, certain visual guidelines are particularly advantageous for helping learners engage in certain levels of cognitive activity.

Clarifying the usage of frameworks

For our purposes, mentions of Bloom’s Taxonomy refer to its revised version, published in 2001 by Lorin Anderson.

Mentions of Mayer’s Principles refer to the most current and comprehensive edition of Richard Mayer’s book Multimedia Learning, published in 2020. (The Digital Learning Institute has provided a publicly accessible summary of the principles defined in the book.)

Each level of Bloom’s is paired with its most aligned Mayer principle. This leaves seven principles unassigned, which is intentional: Many of those, like the Multimedia Principle (use images and text together), are inherent to slide-based learning and less directly tied to visual design strategy.

Finally, Level 6 (creating) is not matched to any Mayer principle, as generative tasks typically depend more on open-ended prompts, collaborative experimentation, and real-world sandboxes than on the kinds of visual guidelines that Mayer’s Principles provide.

Level 1: Remembering & The Coherence Principle

The Coherence Principle helps ensure learners are only exposed to visual cues that are absolutely essential to the cognitive activity at hand. This focus pares designs down to what makes the material clear, actionable, and, well, “coherent.”

The cognitive task of remembering—activating learners’ prior knowledge as a foundation for building new knowledge—leaves little room for distraction. Coherence is all about uncluttered visual cues that aid with the learning task at hand. By contrast, the overuse of visuals increases the risk of informational disjointedness, while lowering the chances of successful recall.

Let’s imagine that you are asking learners to recall a slide deck that they are proud of having created, in order to surface design principles that they already practice.

Do this!

• Focused: The graphic captures only the most essential anchor points for this moment of recall: 1) the context of eLearning, 2) the act of creation, and 3) the feeling of satisfaction.
• Simple: A single, full-screen image avoids distractions and lets you neatly overlay verbal instructions: “Think of a slide deck you created that you were deeply satisfied with. What about its visual design made you most proud?”

Don’t do this:

• Complicated: This slide tries to support recall with too many visual cues at once: layered questions, three logos, bold text, and a figurative illustration—all of which split the learner’s attention and blur the central task of remembering.
• Disjointed: Rather than reinforcing a core recollection from which more nuanced memories can branch, the slide lacks a unifying visual thread. And thus, the facilitator’s message and the learners’ task become incoherent.

Level 2: Understanding & The Redundancy Principle

The Redundancy Principle is actually about reducing redundancy, and thus preventing cognitive overload due to unnecessarily repeated information. Commonly, slide decks neglect this principle by combining images, text, and narration that all say the same thing. (You know the person who reads whole blocks of text straight off their slides? Well, they need to start adhering to the Redundancy Principle!)

The cognitive task of understanding—processing and summarizing brand new information—is already a large jump in challenge from the task of remembering. By avoiding redundancy, we reserve cognitive capacity for the new information itself, rather than for muddling through a messy delivery of that new information.

Let’s imagine that you are illustrating the Redundancy Principle, a concept that your learners don’t already know.

Do this!

• Intentional: Every visual element adds new information. The only redundant details are the tongue-in-cheek repetitions of “This is a triangle,” which, together, lead to the stressed out and confused figure in the bottom right-hand corner—yet another visual element that adds new info!
• Illustrative: By engaging learners in the constructivist thinking on which comprehension thrives, the slide offers a graphic that requires learners to infer what the Redundancy Principle is (which checks for understanding can redirect).

Don’t do this:

• Heavy-Handed: This slide presents the same idea in different ways. With this overabundance of cues, it is less clear for the learner where to focus their attention. Ironically, no matter where they focus, the learner will likely get the same idea anyway!
• Insistent: This slide tries too hard to make sure the message lands, as if one version of the idea wouldn’t be enough. This impulse is understandable, especially given the importance of new information—but by giving into this instructional insecurity, we tend to overwhelm rather than reinforce.

Level 3: Applying & The Segmenting Principle

The Segmenting Principle is all about chunking and pacing: that means breaking up larger pieces of information into more manageable bits, and presenting those bits one by one. If you’ve ever animated a slide so that text or images only appear when you need them, then you’ve practiced the Segmentation Principle!

The cognitive task of applying—using new information to carry out tasks, interpret scenarios, and solve problems—is often a step-by-step process. Naturally, we can associate the “steps” of application with the “segments” of visual pacing.

Let’s imagine that you are instructing learners to create a simple, single slide on their own that adheres to one of the prior principles we’ve discussed: the Coherence Principle, or the Redundancy Principle.

Do this!

• Distinct: Each step is clearly sequenced and visually separate, thanks to the use of color, boxes, and horizontal spacing. The simple graphics further distinguish info; they support and symbolize their respective text without redundantly repeating it.
• Tidy: Even after each step would have been animated on-screen, the slide altogether remains legible. The “full picture” isn’t suddenly a cluttered mess; instead, it still allows learners to stay neatly oriented within the task.

Don’t do this:

• Blobby: This slide is just that—a “blob” of text. Formatting the text as a list does not save the day: Without differentiated spacing, distinct visual anchors, or prudent use of color, every step easily feels the same and unsegmented.
• Puzzling: It’s hard to tell what belongs to what. Sub-points blur into main points, and the eye has a nonlinear path to follow. Instead of guiding the task, the layout makes learners work to decode the structure.

Level 4: Analyzing & The Signaling Principle

Another name for The Signaling Principle could be the “Pointing” Principle: it’s all about pointing to information that is vital and connected, using simple graphics like arrows, as well as simple formatting like highlighting and bolding.

The cognitive task of analyzing—breaking down information into parts to see how they are ultimately synthesizable—is all about relational thinking or about relationships. By adhering to the Signaling Principle, we can literally draw those connections for our learners.

Let’s imagine that you are guiding your learners to consider how our prior principles—the Coherence, Redundancy, and Segmenting Principles—come together to fulfill one unifying purpose: visual clarity.

Do this!

• Explicit: Arrows and lines make the structure of the sequence unmistakable. The viewer can immediately track what comes first, what follows, and how each step contributes to the larger whole, all while reiterating prior knowledge.
• Cohesive: The design highlights how each step functions on its own while still contributing to a unified process. Visual consistency across color, layout, and structure helps learners track relationships between parts without losing cohesion.

Don’t do this:

• Disconnected: Although the content is broken into columns, the slide lacks hierarchy or flow. Each section sits at the same visual weight, making the message feel static rather than structured. Even adding graphics wouldn’t provide much help here.
• Isolated: With no visual connection between the three principles, they read as unrelated facts. The alignment is consistent, and the colors help to distinguish those facts, but the relationships between ideas remain unnecessarily implicit.

Level 5: Evaluating & The Spatial Contiguity Principle

The Spatial Contiguity Principle is a fancy way of saying “place images close to their related text, and vice versa.” It’s one of the most practical, tactical principles for improving visual clarity—minimizing the mental effort it takes to match information across a slide.

The cognitive task of evaluating—assessing and improving situations or performances based on a holistic understanding of criteria—requires sound, informed judgments. Such judgments are easier to make when the criteria and the content being assessed are close together and clearly associated.

Let’s imagine you are asking learners to evaluate and suggest revisions to a weak slide design by using the principles we have discussed so far.

Do this!

• Guiding: Taking inspiration from the Signaling Principle, this slide draws connections between criteria and the subject of evaluation using brackets. Learners can clearly trace which elements are being evaluated by which criteria.
• Adjacent: Criteria regarding text is placed near text; criteria regarding images is placed near images; criteria regarding the subject of evaluation as a whole is bracketing the whole. The slide positions criteria as “magnifying glasses” through which the learners need only look, think, and apply what they’ve learned.

Don’t do this:

• Detached: Although the prompts and subject of evaluation are technically “next to each other,” learners have to visually leap back and forth between them to make judgments, which interrupts the flow of evaluation.
• Unprioritized: Each evaluation question is given the same graphic treatment, with no cues to highlight where learners should visually begin (other than the sequence in which the principles have been listed). Consequently, evaluation is less directed.

Sights for sore eyes

Essentially speaking, poorly designed slides are more than just eyesores: they unnecessarily get in the way of learning and higher-order thinking. We don’t need to become graphic designers to design better learning—but we do need to be more intentional about our visuals. Together, Bloom’s Taxonomy and Mayer’s Principles equip L&D professionals with a more comprehensive structure for instructional graphic design than either framework offers alone. When we approach graphic design not as separate from instructional design but as part and parcel of it, we not only make our visuals more attractive, but more pedagogically effective. After all, greater pedagogical effectiveness remains the guiding principle behind any framework we integrate into our work.

Image credit: VectorMine

The post Blending Bloom’s & Mayer’s: Visual Design That Scaffolds Learning appeared first on Learning Guild.

The post Making Virtual Learning a True Multiplayer Learning Experience appeared first on Learning Guild.

One of the things I enjoy most about Miller’s approach is her understanding that in struggling to get this right we are often dealing with guidelines rather than carved-in-stone rules, shifting as technology changes. Despite the extensive standards, we still sometimes work in murky areas: She acknowledges that interpretation of the standards is sometimes subjective. I always value practical and pragmatic over theoretical and conjecture and especially appreciate Miller’s L&D focus on improving learning experiences—including those that go beyond “courses”—rather than just generating web content.

In addition to her discussion of standards, Miller shines when discussing disability. Case studies and statistics support the cases she makes—ethical, legal, business, and learning—for digital accessibility. Too, she shines light on designing for different access needs—cognitive, speech, hearing, vision, and motor and assistive technologies.

The book is, on the one hand, highly technical, offering in-depth specifics around WCAG 2.2 levels A and AA, as well as a look at the best-but-perhaps-not-always-achievable AAA level, and includes detail particular to popular authoring tools like Storyline and Captivate. But her deep understanding of disability elevates this work beyond a technical manual, opening a valuable window into why we should care about this in the first place. Her interest is especially poignant in this new edition, as Miller shares insight from her own journey since being diagnosed as dyslexic. This empathy extends to her readers as well. If there is a single quality attached to Miller’s work—a tone, if you will—it is the sense that she sincerely wants to help. Her purpose is not just to enforce rules but, as she says, to assist practitioners in untangling the complexities of guidelines and becoming “more confident.”

Miller again does a wonderful job demystifying and simplifying the daunting standards for designing web-based content and conveying the idea that we need to move toward building accessible content as our default, not exception. We will continue reaching for this goal with every new tool and technology; with her help, we can step up to it. As she puts it, “Accessibility is a journey, not a destination.”

Image credit: Kobus Louw

The post Book Review: Designing Accessible Learning Content appeared first on Learning Guild.

The first step in any instructional design is to know the learner. When we hear that learners are not tech-savvy, we often assume they are older, but this is not true in many cases. One particular case that comes to mind is when I designed training for forklift drivers and construction workers. These learners work outside, doing and creating things rather than keeping up with the latest tech gadgets. It wasn’t that they hadn’t grown up with technology, but that it didn’t appeal to them to know more than they had to.

Another case I encountered involved parents returning to the corporate world after extended parental leave. Technology develops at an astounding rate, and if you find yourself not using it for a year or two, you can feel overwhelmed and potentially intimidated by what you once found comfortable.

There are also instances of users not having had the privilege of growing up with technology due to financial concerns or lack of technology infrastructure. Additionally, some learners have conditions that have made using computers or tablets more of a pain than a pleasure.

Casting a wide net

With these considerations in mind, the net has now been cast much wider for users who may not be thrilled to jump at the chance to take an eLearning course. The question now becomes, how do we, as instructional designers and learning professionals, approach designing for users who may not be tech-savvy for a variety of reasons? Within my design work, there are four simple guidelines that I follow.

1. Keep it consistent

Variety may be the spice of life, but consistency is the key to delivering replicable results. Change can be jarring for anyone, and if each course has a different look and way of navigating, training can quickly become overwhelming or confusing. For instance, if half your courses have a next button that users can click at any point and the other half have it disabled until they complete everything, learners may become frustrated. If you are designing a series of courses, use the same icons and interactions throughout the series. Be thoughtful as you create courses to ensure consistency across your learning offerings.

2. Include navigation instructions

Speaking of navigation, include a simple slide at the beginning of your course to talk about navigation. Let learners know whether they need to complete all interactions on the screen before they will be able to advance or if they can advance freely. Introduce any icons you will use, such as a mute icon if a slide does not include audio or if highlighting a box means they should click there. The best part about this approach is that you can design the basic shell once, copy it into future designs, and update it as necessary.

3. Build a narrative

People are creatures of storytelling, and everyone loves a good story. It’s easy to think that to make something engaging, we need to include all the bells and whistles to keep learners interested in our content. A more effective way to engage learners, especially for the tech-averse, is to build a narrative into your courses and questions that allow the learner to see how they will apply the information. A good story will keep all learners more engaged with your content than any interactive component.

4. Use plain language

We all know to avoid technical jargon and simplify complex concepts, but instructional designers must go a step further to truly use plain language. As you read through your course, ask yourself, am I using contractions? Are there places I’m using one long word when two or three smaller words would do? Is this how I would explain this topic to a friend? We can often associate using plain language with ‘dumbing down’ the content, but this approach actually makes the content accessible. Users who are already reluctant to engage with technology don’t need the added cognitive task of translating what is written in the course to plain language. When you are able to take a more conversational tone, you can create a learning experience that meets the learners where they are and helps lighten their cognitive load.

Start small

These four guidelines require no additional tools and do not add a line item to the budget, but they can take time to implement. If you need to design for the technologically disinclined, start small and focus on one area to avoid overwhelming yourself. Over time, you can incorporate additional guidelines until they all become standard operating practices. In the meantime, keep learning about all new trends and techniques. Who knows, you may be able to find ways of making them accessible to all of your learners.

Learn more

The Learning Guild’s eLearning Foundations online conference, February 12–13, explores essential skills and knowledge that can elevate your instructional design. Join us for two packed days of engaging sessions on designing and creating compelling training that gets results. Register today!

Image credit: invincible_bulldog

The post Not All Learners Love Tech: 4 Ways to Create More Inclusive eLearning appeared first on Learning Guild.

 Youwill leave equipped with a practical roadmap for implementing innovativestrategies that prioritize engagement, inclusivity, and learner empowerment

In this session, you will learn:

• Promote holistic learning: Recognize thatlearning occurs within a broader context, encompassing community dynamics,motivation, and personal growth
• Implement learner-centered approaches: Shift thefocus from content delivery to learner empowerment, allowing individuals totake ownership of their learning journey 
• Centralize information: Utilize internalwebsites or knowledge hubs to streamline access to information, enhancingaccessibility and optimizing the learning process
• Foster community: Recognize the importance ofbuilding a supportive learning community beyond the course material to enhanceengagement and retention

The post Elevating the Learning Experience: Leveraging Holistic Support Systems appeared first on Learning Guild.

“UX” in this case refers to User Experience Design: the process of defining the experience a user would have when interacting with a company, its services, and its products. This is different from User Interface Design. UX design encompasses all aspects of a user’s perceived experience with a product or website.

There are currently eight Pip Decks and plans to cover additional topics. Each deck consists of about 54 cards (the number may vary a little by deck), each card providing information and tips on key elements of the topic. There is a suite of supplemental materials that you can purchase separately for each Pip Deck including videos, drag-and-drop cards for use with the digital whiteboard Miro to build storyboards, and PDF duplicates of all the cards in the deck.

The deck that deals with The Laws of UX is a bit different from the other guides. It is a collection of best practices that designers can refer to when building user interfaces in order to reduce the amount of cognitive overload for the interface user. The cards cover the concepts of UX that a designer, author, presenter, or consultant would need to be familiar with. The cards address:

• UX theory
• Interactivity principles
• UX methods
• Psychological concepts
• Introduction/How to use The Laws of UX

To get the user started, the “How to use The Laws of UX” card explains, “At the bottom front of each card there is a list of the related cards in the deck. To use the deck, begin by sorting through all the cards, starting with the UX Theory group. Connect related psychology concepts, interaction principles, and UX methods as they support your topic interest. In other words, pair your design principles with the UX Theories. The result is a strengthened connection between what the principle is seeking to accomplish and the psychological reasoning behind it. This creates a shared collective knowledge and vocabulary. With this, you will be able to articulate your design decisions to peers and stakeholders by tying them back to psychology.”

The author, Jon Yablonski, is a senior UX designer with a passion for designing. Jon wanted to “focus on delivering the best possible user experience by removing the complexity debt that oftentimes becomes a focus during the development process.” He has published a book based on this project with O’Reilly Media: The Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products and Services.

I have to add some observations that you should keep in mind. First, this not an inexpensive product. Second, the cards are not a course on UX—they are intended to assist the user in designing “better products and services.” In other words, this product is not for everyone. UX is an important discipline for designers, and it requires thoughtful application. Actually, those comments apply to all of the Pip Decks as far as I can tell. I use one of the decks in my work and the benefit is that the process saves me time and gives me better results. It doesn’t make the work or the effort required any less, it is just faster. Read the reviews on the Pip Decks site and make your own decision. For myself, the Pip Deck that I use has been well worth the price and that has apparently been the experience of others.

The post The Laws of UX: A Guide to Creation and Leadership appeared first on Learning Guild.

This case study shows how Fannie Mae partnered with Watershed to push learning analytics design. You’ll see how Fannie Mae started its journey by using personas to identify needs. A hands-on exercise will help you develop personas, requirements, and mockups—essential tools for bridging the xAPI gap with stakeholders.

In this session we’ll discuss the types of insights Fannie Mae has discovered, and how its investment in learning analytics enables L&D to move from being reactive to proactive. Discover how smart analysis of data can improve the learner experience and help you deliver more effective learning programs by identifying current pain points and factoring this into future learning design.

The post Taking a User Experience (UX) Approach to Learning Analytics appeared first on Learning Guild.