Why you should read this blog

One of the design principles I always emphasize is how important it is to motivate your learners. So, following my own advice, I thought I should answer the question you may be asking yourself: “Why should I read yet another elearning blog?” The answer, as Kung Fu Panda might say, is “because it’s going to be AWESOME!” … OK, that may not be quite specific enough, so here are the top 3 reasons why you should read the eLearning Awesome Sauce blog.

1. You’ll improve your elearning designs. Effective elearning starts with good design. But what makes a design good? Sometimes, even after reading what the experts have to say, it’s hard to know how to get started. Or, after getting started, you’re still not sure if your designs are as effective as they could be. Well, in our eLearning Design Challenge series, we’ll offer someone in the community (maybe you) a chance to submit a new project, or an existing design for a make-over. By demonstrating the methodic process we go through here at SmartBuilder to generate more effective designs and by gathering feedback from the community, you’ll not only have the chance to learn a proven design process and get ideas for your own content, but you might just get a re-vamped exercise in the process!
2. You’ll learn authoring tips and tricks. Once you’ve crafted an awesome design, you’ve got to roll-up your sleeves and start building. SmartBuilder is capable of creating some amazingly powerful interactions and we discover interesting ways to build cool things all the time. We would like to share these tips and tricks with you (and we’ll encourage you to share cool approaches you’ve come up with.) Also, when we have ideas for making the most of SmartBuilder in conjunction with other e-learning tools, we’ll share these with you too.
3. You’ll get big picture ideas and advice. These days, elearning professionals are expected to possess a Swiss army knife worth of capabilities during the development process from implementing performance support, to managing projects, to calculating ROI. We’ll share ideas and start dialogs on these topics which are important part of what we all do.

Lastly, we’re big fans of rapid prototyping and one of its key principles is to be willing to quickly change or discard ideas that don’t work when shown to a real audience. In that spirit, we’d love to get your feedback on our ideas proposed above. Do you think these topics would be useful? Do you have other ideas? Keep telling us what you’d like to see in the blog and we’ll be responsive.