As we came to the end of 2018, many of us were reflecting on the year we had just had. Our achievements, what we learnt and the connections we had made. So without further ado, here are the top takeaways that Belvista Studios took from the eLearning world in 2018!
1. The Death of Adobe Flash Player
Adobe Flash Player coming to an end was of great interest to us at Belvista Studios. Whilst it didn’t provide us with design inspiration or a new eLearning framework to use, it was a cold hard fact that we knew would impact us and most importantly our clients.
We discovered that the end of this common player would result in some eLearning not working, leading to potential non-compliance, time wasted dealing with technical glitches and even legal implications.This is why we spent the time to research the impact of the announcement and put ourselves in the best position to support our clients, old and new, through the transition.
If you look after eLearning in your organisation we suggest checking out our blogs that provide you with an explanation of the transition as well as clear instructions on how to save your eLearning. If you know someone in the industry who looks after eLearning, be their hero and let them know!
Is your eLearning at Risk of Not Working?
Have Existing eLearning modules? The Golden Time to Update Them
2. Our Love for User Experience (UX)
We are not going to lie, at Belvista Studios, we became absolute fangirls of UX in 2018. Each of our team members found themselves booking into session after session to learn as much as they could about the process (and boy, did they love it!). In a nutshell UX is all about designing for the end-user, putting yourself in their shoes and putting great effort into designing a valuable experience for them.
We like to be practical in our blogs, so you have something you can use for your projects. With that in mind, we would like to share with you, our top UX tool that we use when designing eLearning solutions.
- Personas
A persona is a representation of your end user and answers the question:
“Who are we designing for?”
This involves collecting as much information as possible about your end-user so you can gain a deep understanding of who they are and what their experience of using your product/learning solution would look like.
We absolutely love this free online persona tool by Hubspot and find it very useful for our projects. Check it out here https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona.
To discover more about how you can use UX for your learning solutions, check out this blog on ‘Two Awesome UX Tools When Starting a Learning Solution’.
3. Using Marketing Tactics
As learning professionals, our work life revolves around planning, developing and delivering learning solutions that make a real difference in the lives of our learners. A challenge that is associated with this is creating enthusiasm and ‘buy-in’. You can create the most valuable learning solution out there, though if your learners aren’t motivated to complete it, its potential goes completely untapped. This is why we went on a mission as team to discover the key to human motivation. Marketing techniques stood out to us and we grabbed them by the reigns.
Here are our top marketing techniques that we recommend utilising when designing an eLearning solution.
- The Value of Data
Before you jump into designing a learning solution, spend time collecting data that can help you gain a deep understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Making decisions using data enables you to design and advertise your learning solution in a way that appeals to the people who will be using it (Wallace, 2017).
In the learning and development world, you can collect data through interviews and observations as well as through the exploration of documentation and processes related to the problem.
Check out this blog on ‘How to Conduct Successful User Interviews to Get the Information You Need’ to discover how you can collect data on your end-user, in turn enabling you to design a solution that is aligned to them.
- Clearly Articulate the ‘Why’
You are not going to buy a product if you don’t know how it can positively impact your life, so why should we expect our learners to complete learning without knowing ‘why’? You buy food because you know it will satisfy your hunger, you sign up for the gym because you believe if you go you will look and feel healthier and you learn a new skill because you know you will require it at some point in your life.
You need to be able to clearly articulate what you do, why you do it and how the learnings you offer will positively impact the lives of your learners (Akhundov, 2017). If you understand your ‘why’ as a learning and development team, your learners can begin to build trust in what you offer.
We have been very interested in expressing ‘the why’ at Belvista Studios (Hannah is a dedicated Simon Sinek fan, for anyone who knows ‘Start with Why’!). If you are interested in understanding how you can discover and explain ‘the why’ for each of your eLearning solutions check out this blog on ‘Explain the Why and Increase Motivation'.
Those were our top three eLearning tips from 2018. It was hard to narrow down our learnings to three because we feel that we have been lucky enough to be exposed to amazing content, frameworks and principles through blogs, LinkedIn, conferences and last but not least the amazing connections that we have made in the industry. We hope that this short and simple overview of some of our favourites added value. If you want to explore the other golden nuggets we found in 2018, feel free to check out our blog platform here.
If we could leave you with some final tips as an eLearning designer it would be to always be curious, connect with people in the industry and share your learnings with others (because what goes around comes around).
What did you learn in 2018? Share in the comments below, we would love to hear about what else is out there!
References
Akhundov, E. (2017). Marketing in L&D? Why Not? Retrieved from https://trainingindustry.com/articles/strategy-alignment-and-planning/marketing-in-ld-why-not/
Hubspot, Inc. (2018). Make My Persona. Retrieved from https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona.
Wallace, D. (2017). 3 Proven Marketing Strategies to Enhance your Next Learning Program. Retrieved from https://www.td.org/insights/3-proven-marketing-strategies-to-enhance-your-next-learning-program.
Here are our top marketing techniques that we recommend utilising when designing an eLearning solution.
- The Value of Data
Before you jump into designing a learning solution, spend time collecting data that can help you gain a deep understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Making decisions using data enables you to design and advertise your learning solution in a way that appeals to the people who will be using it (Wallace, 2017).
In the learning and development world, you can collect data through interviews and observations as well as through the exploration of documentation and processes related to the problem.
Check out this blog on ‘How to Conduct Successful User Interviews to Get the Information You Need’ to discover how you can collect data on your end-user, in turn enabling you to design a solution that is aligned to them.
- Clearly Articulate the ‘Why’
You are not going to buy a product if you don’t know how it can positively impact your life, so why should we expect our learners to complete learning without knowing ‘why’? You buy food because you know it will satisfy your hunger, you sign up for the gym because you believe if you go you will look and feel healthier and you learn a new skill because you know you will require it at some point in your life.
You need to be able to clearly articulate what you do, why you do it and how the learnings you offer will positively impact the lives of your learners (Akhundov, 2017). If you understand your ‘why’ as a learning and development team, your learners can begin to build trust in what you offer.
We have been very interested in expressing ‘the why’ at Belvista Studios (Hannah is a dedicated Simon Sinek fan, for anyone who knows ‘Start with Why’!). If you are interested in understanding how you can discover and explain ‘the why’ for each of your eLearning solutions check out this blog on ‘Explain the Why and Increase Motivation'.
Those were our top three eLearning tips from 2018. It was hard to narrow down our learnings to three because we feel that we have been lucky enough to be exposed to amazing content, frameworks and principles through blogs, LinkedIn, conferences and last but not least the amazing connections that we have made in the industry. We hope that this short and simple overview of some of our favourites added value. If you want to explore the other golden nuggets we found in 2018, feel free to check out our blog platform here.
If we could leave you with some final tips as an eLearning designer it would be to always be curious, connect with people in the industry and share your learnings with others (because what goes around comes around).
What did you learn in 2018? Share in the comments below, we would love to hear about what else is out there!
References
Akhundov, E. (2017). Marketing in L&D? Why Not? Retrieved from https://trainingindustry.com/articles/strategy-alignment-and-planning/marketing-in-ld-why-not/
Hubspot, Inc. (2018). Make My Persona. Retrieved from https://www.hubspot.com/make-my-persona.
Wallace, D. (2017). 3 Proven Marketing Strategies to Enhance your Next Learning Program. Retrieved from https://www.td.org/insights/3-proven-marketing-strategies-to-enhance-your-next-learning-program.
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