Do I Have Your Attention?

Now that I've got your attention, I'd like to discuss the subject of attention with respect to the creation of eLearning materials. Getting the learner to pay attention can be very difficult for various reasons, among them:

• Lack of interest in the subject matter (for example, a course mandated by the employer that is relevant to very few employees)
  
• Feeling that the material will be of no use to the person's job or career
• Distractions outside of work
• Lack of sleep (this one is big!)

Please post what you have done, or are planning to do, to increase the amount of attention that is paid to your courseware. Also, you may want to join the following groups that are dedicated to the subject of attention:

• Facebook: Attention Economy
• Plaxo: Ronald Wopereis - What is Attention?
  

If you know of other good links on this subject, please post them here, too.

Other Blogs of Interest

This new blog area contains links to other blogs that may be of interest to the readers of this blog. You can find this area at right, just below the Blog Archive.

Please take a look at these blogs, and post any comments here. Also, please post any suggestions for other blogs that you would like to see listed.

Are you content with your content?

Are you content regarding your content, or are you a content malcontent? Either way, check out the Content Wrangler Community.

I just joined this Ning community yesterday, and already have met several very nice people who are into eLearning development. The look and feel of the site is very good, and the membership seems quite knowledgeable. I definitely recommend this community to any of you who have an interest in content development and/or management!

Kudos - LinkedIn CwDev Group - 100+ members

Congratulations to the LinkedIn Courseware Development Group for reaching the 100-member mark!

eLearning can be fun - really!

What have you done to make the training you create more enjoyable for the learner? How do you balance fun vs. silly? How do you keep things from getting too juvenile, or too boring, for adult learners?

Please post your thoughts (including any links and graphics) here.

Industry Trends

Where do you feel the eLearning Industry is going in the short term? Long term? How is this going to affect the development of courseware? Is everything going so mobile that all courses are going to be presented on cell phones? Only kidding - I hope!

You get the idea - please post your comments here, including any interesting links.

Development Tools - Experiences

There are numerous tools that people use to develop courseware. These include Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Lectora, Toolbook, Flash, PowerPoint, Photoshop, FireWorks, Javascript, and others (as well as combinations of some of these).

Please post your experiences here, good and bad, with the tools you use, or have used.

Professional Groups and Societies

There are a number of groups and societies available for those people who are interested in eLearning. Among these are:

• ASTD (American Society for Training & Development)
• eLearning Guild
• ISPI (International Society for Performance Improvement)
• SALT (Society for Applied Learning Technology)
• STC (Society for Technical Communication)

Please click the desired link above for more information.

LatitudeU: Teach the World

is the world's first open training community where any person or organization can learn, teach or share knowledge for free or fee. We believe that everyone has something to teach and many things to learn. LatitudeU is an online community that easily brings those who want to teach together with those who want to learn:

• Take a look around
• Join LatitudeU
• Want more? Join the Yahoo LatitudeU Group

Welcome to the Blog

Welcome to the Courseware Development blog - please suggest anything that is relevant to this subject!

You are also invited to join one or more of the Courseware Development groups listed below:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Plaxo
• Viadeo
• Konnects
• Xing