Fall Conference Event-Learning Design Workshop:

Ethan Edwards, Chief Instructional Strategist, Allen Interactions

E-Learning, mobile learning, technology enhanced learning - these continue to be the hot areas where people and organizations seek to improve their training offerings.  Unfortunately, trends and operational pressures encourage the implementation of a “technology” solution without a particular vision of how it actually impacts learning.  Authorities often tout interactivity as the great benefit offered by e-learning, yet a great deal of online interactivity does nothing to either engage or instruct. In fact, most often, online interactivity only places a barrier between the learner and the content by making the learner experience tedious, unnecessarily cumbersome, and adversarial. Interactivity must be more than testing and simplistic actions. It must be more than passive or thoughtless routines.

In this workshop, attendees will uncover a sense of what SUCCESSFUL e-learning is and the three critical factors necessary in any online learning experience that hopes to have long-lasting benefit to the learner.  From this insight emerges the concept of instructional interactivity, and how it can transform the learning experience, especially for learners working independently in asynchronous e-learning programs. A design model will be illustrated through a number of real-world e-learning applications used by major US companies and organizations. After experiencing the four critical components of the CCAF design model in action - Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback - participants will have a chance to apply this approach to a practical instructional challenge.

This workshop will give you a concrete structure to design e-learning that makes a difference, no matter the depth of content, complexity, or simplicity of the authoring tools.

In this workshop, you will learn:

• The three success factors for effective e-learning
• The value of true instructional interactivity for creating engaging, effective e-learning
• To design engaging contexts, motivating challenges, appropriate activities, and instructional feedback into interactive design
• The critical elements of any authoring tool to use to create instructional interactivity
• To create learner-centered designs to maximize motivation and meaning in e-learning

Event registration and networking opens at 9:00am.

Session begins at 9:30am.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

Ethan Edwards, Chief Instructional Strategist, Allen Interactions

Ethan Edwards draws on more than 25 years of industry experience as an e-learning instructional designer and developer. He is responsible for the delivery of the internal and external training and communications that reflect Allen Interactions’ unique perspective on designing and developing meaningful and memorable e-learning programs. Edwards is the primary instructor for ASTD’s e-Learning Instructional Design Certificate Program. In addition, he is an internationally recognized speaker on e-learning instructional design. He is a primary blogger on Allen Interactions’ e-Learning Leadership Blog and has published several white papers on creating effective e-learning. Ethan holds a master’s degree and significant doctoral work in educational psychology from the University of Illinois – Urbana Champagne.