Learning Design that engages, excites and enables performance

Learning design is so much more than cutting and pasting text and images. It is about understanding the psychology of learning and designing learning experiences that engage, excite and enable people to practice, store, retrieve and apply the learning.

Designers have expertise in how learning experiences can be designed.

There are a number of factors and principles that underpin a design and recommendations, including:

Knowledge about learning theories and how those work online and in face to face environments
Ability to create different types of learning activities
Create ways to engage students through the learning experience
Ensure learning activities are aligned to learning outcomes

Developing Wizardry with the Stories We Weave

Joy Wilson2023-08-10T07:36:20+00:00Categories: Learning Design|Tags: Tales for Training|

As a learning designer I believe in the power of stories to sustain attention. Our brains are attracted to the stories we weave in which the characters struggle and eventually surface unknown abilities to triumph over adversity. This is why our Learning by Design course is so successful. It places [...]

Learning – press pause this isn’t working

Joy Wilson2023-08-10T16:50:26+00:00Categories: Learning Design|Tags: Designs for Learning|

She’s there, the attendance register says so, ticks will go into boxes and records of learning will be kept. But she’s there in body only, her mind is elsewhere. She thinks is this Learning? I need to - press pause this isn’t working Today’s class is about the history [...]

Learning Design and The Art of Seduction

Joy Wilson2021-06-14T11:44:57+00:00Categories: Learning Design|Tags: Designs for Learning|

One of the most important, difficult and common decisions that designers of learning make is whether to add interesting text, sounds, or visuals to learning material. We want to arouse interest,curiosity, engagement but it's important to know when these elements seduce learners and when they become a distraction. Learning Design [...]

Calibrate Learning

Joy Wilson2023-08-05T14:45:01+00:00Categories: Learning Design, spectrain, Training and Development|Tags: Accelerate Learning,, Designs for Learning, Trainer Tips, Training & Development|

we design training programmes based upon guidelines, criteria, a syllabus (A map), only to find of course, that it looks slightly different from delegates real world experience their territory

The Curse of Knowledge

Joy Wilson2020-01-08T16:22:14+00:00Categories: Learning Design, Training and Development|Tags: Designs for Learning, Training & Development|

Learning designers have many tools and resources at their disposal these days so it’s easy to understand why they would choose to throw all of them at every development challenge in the hope of making something stick. Today I have been reviewing a blended learning programme. I use the words [...]

Design Crimes in Learning & Development

Joy Wilson2019-02-01T10:16:34+00:00Categories: Learning Design, spectrain, Training and Development|Tags: Accelerate Learning,, Designs for Learning, Trainer Tips, Training & Development|

Recently I have been “Optimising” a huge library of learning and development materials for an organisation who wish to transfer traditional teacher-focused learning to a flexible blended approach. The collection of learning materials has been "designed" by a variety of individuals and consists of a mixture of styles, templates, fonts, [...]

Pond Life Professional Parasites and Plagiarists

Joy Wilson2019-02-14T10:28:47+00:00Categories: Learning Design, Training and Development|Tags: Consulting in the Middle East, Trainer Tips|

I received an email message from a lady in who had been on our Problem Solving Course, energised and enthused by her mastery of the tools and techniques she had recommended the course to her colleagues. Her organisation publishes a schedule for it's in -house courses. This particular course was [...]

Feedback is the food of progress, sometimes it doesn’t taste nice

Joy Wilson2023-09-19T08:00:11+00:00Categories: Evaluating Training and Development, Learning Design|Tags: Accelerate Learning,, Designs for Learning, Evaluating training|

I admire and encourage people who can express their creativity with whatever tools are available, but having access to PowerPoint and Clip Art does not make you a learning designer. I have owned a hammer for many years but that doesn't mean I can build a house. So when a customer asked me [...]

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