People have talked about the WIIFM (“What’s in it for me?”) factor in educational theory for decades. It’s the idea that is if people know what benefits training has for them personally, they’ll be more invested. It’s easy to simply insert a sales pitch at the beginning of your course and consider your WIIFM quota met. Motivation is more complex than that. Let’s take a look at what motivation is, and how we can build it into training.
Read more over at GLAD solutions.
Here’s some bad news: cyber security threats to businesses of all sizes increased exponentially last year.
2016 was the year that hacking and politics collided spectacularly during the US presidential elections. It was also the year when more individuals and small businesses lost valuable time, data, money or assets through breaches in information security. In the UK, 54% of businesses were targeted by some form of cyber attack (Computer Business Review).
Read more about how elearning can combat cyber security issues over on GLAD Solutions!
It’s late. The test is tomorrow. You have a stack of textbooks on your desk and 12 hours to somehow transfer the information within them into your brain. What could go wrong?
It’s an experience that too many of us can relate to from our days at school. Unfortunately, we probably also relate to the usual consequence – the information you gained from cramming quickly disappears. Best case scenario: after the test. Worst case scenario, you’ll forget as you walk in to take the test. The problem transfers to elearning, where learners often feel like they have retained information long enough to make it through the experience, before having it vanish into the ether of other things which preoccupy our minds. We might be able to tackle this problem with the concept of spaced learning.
We all know that the best employees aren’t company-policy quoting automata.
A good worker also needs to be able to implement their knowledge in an open ended and complex world. You can’t train for every possible scenario, and so people must have the skills to adapt. That’s why the concept of “soft skills” is increasingly important to employers.
When I was 12, my school made me fill out a form purporting to be able to tell me my learning styles. Apparently, I was either an auditory, visual or kinaesthetic learner. My teacher said that how you learn and revise should be different, depending on the form’s conclusions. An auditory learner might create a revision song while a kinaesthetic learner might count on their fingers.
My sensible classmates ploughed through the test and got on with their lives, but I was feeling cantankerous. I didn’t want some stupid label. It seemed silly. I could see myself learning in all three ways. In protest, I spent most of the lesson creating an information sheet on a new style of learning which I called oditory learning. An oditory learner, I decided, learned by smelling things.
I know, I know. I was a bit of a smartypants.
As an instructional designer, I still run into the concept of learning styles. But here’s a secret which shouldn’t be a secret: 12 year old me was right. The evidence behind learning styles is shaky at best, and could be a barrier to the creation of great learning.
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