Brainy Resources

As instructional learning professionals, it is imperative that our industry utilize and reference the knowledge that has been gained regarding cognitive neuroscience, the brain, and information processing. In the past decade, advancements in research to understand our brain and how it contributes to learning play a vital role in how we, as learning professionals, can effectively and efficiently do our jobs and advance our field. Knowing how and why individuals learn, or don't learn for that matter, will allow us to create training initiatives that "enhance and embrace these differences in learning to gain more competitive advantage for individuals and for the organization" (van Dam, 2013). This week, I found two resources that I find extremely information on the topics of learning, "neurolearning", and information processing.

The article quoted above by Nick van Dam, entitled Inside the Learning Brain, is an excellent resource for instructional learning professionals seeking to utilize information about "neurolearning" with the corporate learning environment. As most of us do work in a corporate setting, his article and the resources he provides are an excellent jumping off point for someone looking for direction and suggestions on how to use the research and apply it to a more effective corporate training scheme.

In the article, Nick discusses tips and tricks to help enable learners to better utilize and form memories, focus attention, and support individual learning. He using research based evidence to support his ideas and provides additional readings that can be used to further implement and solidify how understanding "neurolearning" will make for a more productive organization.

The second resource I found particularly helpful, especially as a newbie to the world of IDT, was an article on the elearningindustry.com website called Instructional Design Models and Theories: Information Processing Theory. This article is great for the new learner hoping to gain a fundamental understanding of information processing theory. Although I have a big fancy text book that thoroughly explains it to me in very collegiate terms, this article provides very simple text with very useful information; not to mention a very convenient slide show that can be embedded into your own blogs and presentations about information processing. I also found the authors additional resources quite useful as I continue to explore different learning theories. 

I hope you'll find these resources as useful as I have and look forward to hearing what you think! 

Resources:
Pappas, Christopher. (2014). Instructional design models and theories: Information processing theory. Retrieved from http://elearningindustry.com/information-processing-theory 

van Dam, Nick. (2013). Inside the learning brain. Retrieved from https://www.td.org/Publications/Magazines/TD/TD-Archive/2013/04/Inside-the-Learning-Brain

New Training Resources

Being new to the world of Instructional Design and Technology, I set out to locate and bookmark a few online resources that I felt would be useful to my studies and to my immediate role as a training specialist. Below you will find links to the sites I found most interesting, as well a brief synopsis of their content and usefulness.

1. The ELearning Coach – Connie Malamed is the author of this blog and resource site and has a Masters in IDT with many years of experience under her belt. The site features a wide plethora of informational posts about topics that vary from e-learning, instructional design, cognition, career goals, and much more. She also provides a lot of resources for her audience that ranges from elearning freebies, storyboards, PowerPoint grids, photo and icon collections, podcasts, ID apps, and so much more. The site is easy to navigate, well maintained, and up-to-date with fresh ideas that pertain directly to the world of IDT. As I continue to explore my role and learn about the intricacies of training and design I will refer to Connie’s resources and keep abreast of her thoughtful critique on the issues pertaining to IDT. In addition to her own point of view, I especially like that Connie introduces many other professionals and experts to her readers through interviews and podcasts.

2. Training – Training is a print and digital magazine for Learning and Design specialists. It offers a wide variety of resources and information about the Training industry. The print version is free and available 6 times a year for qualified positions within the USA. The current issue covers topics such as Learning Management Systems, managing conflict, talent management and much more. The site itself offers information on face-to-face trainings, expos, online conferences, webinars, career resources, professional development and other events. I find this resource to be very helpful in a number of ways, primarily for the professional development that it offers its readers. In my opinion, too often the training and development department spends so much of their time teaching and training other individuals that their own professional development goes unnoticed. With this resource, I can continue to gain valuable insight into industry happenings and current information, while having the option to explore areas for personal development and growth. I have already signed up for the weekly email updates, as well as registered for the free print subscription. I am excited to go back thru older issues online and explore the articles to investigate further.

3. Nicole’s Instructional Design & ELearning Articles - This was a site I found from Nicole Legault’s main page Flirting w/ ELearning. Both are great resources for an Instructional Designer and focus on a number of different areas that would be useful to an ID specialist. The ID & Learning Articles page, in particular, is a sub-site of the E-Learning Heroes page on the Articulate blog. Nicole is a contributor and writes a number of posts per month about ID and ELearning topics. Some of the ones that I found useful in my perusing were An Introduction to the ADDIE Model for Instructional Designers, How to Empower Your SMEs to Create Awesome Training, and How I Built This Interactive Timeline With PowerPoint. Just these three articles alone gave me some really great information as a new trainer and showed me, in very plain English, how to accomplish some basic tasks. What I really like about these articles as well is that she includes links for her favorite resource sites in order to help you build your own arsenal of “go to’s.” In addition, her posts get really interesting feedback and comments from other professionals and experts that sometimes offer extra resources, advice, or corrected information about a specific topic. I am really enjoying both of her pages so far.

These are just three of the resource sites that I will continue to monitor and return to in the coming months. I hope that you find them useful like I did and I look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback.