Products, technologies, and workplaces change so quickly today that everyone is continually learning. Many of us are also teaching, even when it's not in our job descriptions. Whether it's giving a presentation, writing documentation, or creating a website or blog, we need and want to share our knowledge with other people. But if you've ever fallen asleep over a boring textbook, or fast-forwarded through a tedious e-learning exercise, you know that creating a great learning experience is harder than it seems. In Design For How People Learn, you'll discover how to use the key principles behind learning, memory, and attention to create materials that enable your audience to both gain and retain the knowledge and skills you're sharing. Using accessible visual metaphors and concrete methods and examples, Design For How People Learn will teach you how to leverage the fundamental concepts of instructional design both to improve your own learning and to engage your audience.
[...]... than it seems Learn how to determine your destination with accuracy Chapter 4: How Do We Remember? Learn about how the brain works to focus on and retain information Chapter 5: How Do You Get Their Attention? The first prerequisite for learning is to get your learners’ attention Learn strategies for getting past the distractions and helping your learners to focus Chapter 6: Design for Knowledge The most... 8: Design for Motivation If you’ve ever heard a learner say the words “I know, but ” then you are probably not dealing with a knowledge gap, but rather a motivational one Learn strategies for getting your learners not only to learn more, but also to do more Chapter 9: Design for Environment We can get people to hold more information in their heads, or alternately, we can learn better ways to make information... learning experiences are “learning for the sake of learning,” I won’t really address those in this book (Disclaimer: I work with adult learners, usually in a professional setting, so while the book will address examples from multiple contexts, the majority will relate to adult learning experiences.) For me, the goal of good learning design is for learners to emerge from the learning experience with... knowing information And of course that will hold true for much more than Alison’s class Let’s take a look at some of the kinds of gaps can exist for learners Knowledge Gaps Before we examine other types of gaps, let’s take a closer look at knowledge or information gaps In most learning situations, it’s assumed that the gap is information—if the learner just had the information, then they could perform I... Interactions Inc CEO, Allen Learning Technologies LLC Contents Introduction 1 Where do we Start? The Learner’s Journey Where’s the Gap? Identifying and Bridging Gaps Examples Why This Is Important Summary 2 Who are your Learners? What Do Your Learners Want? What Is Their Current Skill Level? How Are Your Learners Different from You? Learning Styles Methods for Learning About Your Learners Summary 3 What’s... the Challenges Will They Remember? Helping Your Learners Understand How Much Guidance? A Process to Follow Summary 7 Design for Skills Developing Skills Practice Feedback Design for Accomplishments Summary 8 Design for Motivation Motivation To Do Designing for Behavior Summary 9 Design for Environment Environment Gaps Knowledge in the World Putting Resources in the World Putting Prompts/Triggers in the... environment Learn how to identify each of these Chapter 2: Who Are Your Learners? Your learners see the world differently than you do, and to design effective learning experiences, you need to understand their view of the world Chapter 3: What’s The Goal? The best learning experiences are designed with a clear destination in mind, but sometimes a clear destination can be harder to pin down than it seems Learn. .. not—even if the learners memorized the exact information on each of those slides, that wouldn’t mean they were able to use it well But certainly, having the right information is part of the equation Information is the equipment your learners need to have in order to perform Having information doesn’t accomplish anything by itself Something is accomplished when the learner uses that information to do... it’s an e-learning course, there’s no teacher at all How is a really good e-learning course different from just reading a textbook online? Even more important, what’s the difference between a learning experience that’s effective versus one that gets forgotten as soon as the learner is done? Even “awesome” classes are useless if the learner doesn’t do something different afterwards While some learning... identify those gaps, you can design better learning experiences For example, consider the following situations What could be the gaps for each of these scenarios? • Alison is a project manager for a web design company, and she’s just agreed to teach an undergraduate projectmanagement class at a design school Her students will mostly be students in the second year of the creative design program Most of the .