The world of work has changed significantly since 2020. The need to constantly learn and relearn has grown is growing at an accelerated speed. In this context, it is inadmissible to waste time designing eLearning courses that are not generating the expected results. Take a moment and reflect: Have you ever wondered why your employees don't remember what they learn in your eLearning courses? 

Whether you’re fresh out of school or a seasoned commander of an eLearning design team, you need to make sure your design habits are helping you thrive. In fact, one of the worst traps you can fall into as a designer is allowing consistency to turn into complacency, which is more likely for an experienced professional. To combat this, all of us have to practice looking for inspiration in new places and drawing from the other creative types, trends, and events around us. You also need to look back at your own projects. Do you hate what you did a year ago? Yes? Good! If you look at your past work and think it’s as good or better than your current stuff, that’s when you need to worry because the only way to stay at the top of your field is to be in constant competition with yourself. To get in the habit of increasing your skills while keeping good design theory in practice, we have some tips for staying inspired:

Standarized and "one-size-fits-all” eLearning courses are no longer relevant in today's context. Personalization has become the norm.  Modern learners are used to Netflix, Spotify, Alexa... and they expect their eLearning courses to work the same way. Designing personalized courses is all about offering the right content, to the right audience, at the right time. For this to happen, designers need to pay attention to a series of elements:  Content formats (e.g. audio, video, textual, graphical, etc.) The sequence of the content and the different possible learning pathways Where content will be delivered How students will be evaluated. and many other factors  In this post, we will share some proven ways for creating more personalized experiences.

What do you think is the most important thing you need to focus on right now to GUARANTEE that the eLearning courses you are creating are successful?

Learning something once is enough of a challenge—so how are your employees doing when it comes to retaining that information in the long term? Training leaders in companies have a simple goal: teach workers to do their job more effectively. They try to give them the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in their day-to-day activities, but more often than not, it’s this translation from theory to practice that trips people up. Companies expect employees to get back to work after training and figure out for themselves how to incorporate their learning into their work. No matter how great your eLearning course is—no matter how engaging the content—participants in your course might leave the program feeling, or being, unprepared to actually apply what you have taught them. That application is called “learning transfer,” and when it’s lacking, the company has effectively wasted its time and money training its employees. Without some sort of strategy for reinforcing skills after the end of the training, 90% of the course’s content could fall right out of the learners’ ears. Read more about how to tackle this “challenge of training transfer” here.  Luckily,  training leaders can make the content of their eLearning courses really stick if they follow some simple tricks. Here are some ideas to help your employees apply what they’ve learned:

The end of the year is a time for envisioning a better YOU and setting intentions for the road ahead. It is a time for making resolutions so that you can be your best version, both personally and professionally. As an instructional designer and/or eLearning professional, this is your chance to look closely at how you work and set resolutions that will help you become more effective in your field. 

We are living through disruptive times, where the pace of social, technological, economic, political, environmental, and demographic changes shows no sign of slowing in 2022. This creates an urgent need for organizations and individuals to keep up to date with the latest trends if they don't want to become rapidly obsolete. In terms of business continuity and resilience, for L&D teams this means one thing: They must make a pause, analyze the current situation with an open mind and start adopting the latest trends in their industry without fear or worry. The actions leaders make today will define which doors are open to them tomorrow. To take corporate learning experiences to the next level this new year, L&D leaders must start asking themselves some key questions:

In a year filled with uncertainty and drastic changes, we are proud to announce that SHIFT won the highly coveted and prestigious bronze award in Brandon Hall Group’s 2021 Excellence in Technology Awards. This award is our tenth global recognition since 2009 — but this year is especially important as it comes in a category that represents our present and future as an organization: Best Advance in AI for Business Impact — a new award introduced in 2020 in the Future of Work category.