Trend Data Shows More Focus on Compliance, Job-Specific, and Industry-Specific Training; Coaching and Informal Learning; and Increase in Outsourcing

Economic constraints have taken a toll on corporate training budgets. Bersin & Associates' just-published 2009 Corporate Learning Factbook shows that over the last year, companies have cut training spending and staffing; changed training program priorities; moved to coaching, informal learning, collaborative activities, and other less costly training methods; and increased reliance on outsourcing.

What is an Instructional Designer?  Why are they so essential to helping create great E-learning.  Debby Kalk, who did our ROI class says
"Compared to the role of the instructor who actually teaches, the instructor would be more like the construction manager, I’m more like the architect, I develop the blueprint."

Cathy Moore in here e-learning blog Ideas for Lively E-learning lays out an excellent technique that can help you focus  eLearning on intended outcomes based on desired actions. 

Moore recommends working backward from the intended business goal--an action. This avoids the trap of a linear information content dump and piling up irrelevant information that does not really help learners get to the desired goal. Action mapping is a four-step process as follows:

1. Identify the business goal.

Research by Kathleen Vohs, Nicole Meade and Miranda Goode, reported in Science suggests that using money to motivate a money can be counterproductive.   In a series of experiments, Vohs and her colleagues found ways to get people to think about money without explicitly telling them to do so. They gave some people tasks that involved unscrambling phrases about money. With others, they left piles of Monopoly money nearby. Another group saw a screensaver with various denominations of money.