Want to show that your elearning adds value? Tom Kuhlmann recently suggested these steps:

• Meet your customer’s expectations
• Align your projects to real measurable objectives
• Control production costs

Measurable goals and controlled costs are vital. Of course, we also want to meet our customer’s expectations–but are those expectations always best for the business?

Sometimes we get the best results by challenging our customers’ expectations–in a helpful way, of course.

“Put this PowerPoint online and make it look slick. We need it in a week.”

Many of our customers want us to put lipstick on a pig, fast. Let’s say we’ve got one of those customers. They have a PowerPoint presentation about safety on the shop floor. Here’s a typical slide: (more…)

Want to make a difference outside your company? The United Nations connects online volunteers with non-governmental organizations around the world. All you need is some time and an internet connection.

A quick search of the opportunities at the UNV Online Volunteering site turned up several projects that might need you. Here’s a sampling:

Create a short online cartoon: The Child Rehabilitation Centre of Sri Lanka needs a short cartoon to communicate what they do and attract donors and volunteers.

Train teachers online: Gwalior Children’s Hospital helps the poor and disabled of the Gwalior and Chambal regions in India. They have a school and hospice for children with profound learning disabilities; they need teachers to help train their staff online. (more…)

Probably everyone on your team agrees that elearning should be concise and lively. But does everyone agree on what “concise and lively” looks like? Here’s one way to get everyone on the same stylistic page.

Quantify, quantify

When we talk about writing style, we can get bogged down in personal preferences that are hard to communicate. But if we use readability statistics to quantify style, it’s easier to guide writers.

I’m not talking about the nearly useless “ninth-grade reading level” requirement in your corporate style guide. Instead, let’s look at the Reading Ease measurement that’s part of Word’s readability check. It’s a much more practical guide, especially if you compare your score with that of familiar publications.

What does this chart tell us? (more…)