Planet eLearn from Monarch Media

Getting Tough with
Soft Skills
How to Teach Behaviors Through Online Training
By Veronica Phillips

Exercising soft skills

Teaching to impart a skill is inherently different than teaching to impart knowledge. With an eLearning course, designers have the added challenge of creating a course that allows learners to practice behavioral skills, also known as soft skills, in a medium that does not always lend itself to interpersonal interactions.

By employing the tips in this article, you can facilitate the process of learning behavioral skills online. These tips will help you ensure that your course motivates your learners, that you’ve made the material relevant by providing examples of behavioral indicators that they can observe and detect, and that you’re enabling the learner to apply the material to his or her own life by structuring assessments and feedback throughout the course, and by including take-home messages.

> Read more about best practices for teaching soft skills online

The Case for Soft Skills Training
By Christopher E. Bush

Reach your full potential with soft skills training

For the past three decades, a growing body of evidence has pointed to the value of soft skills. Research shows that individuals with good interpersonal and self-management abilities have better career success and contribute far more to their organizations than people with only excellent technical skills.

Despite this, many businesses continue to under-invest in soft skills training. There’s a common misconception that capabilities like interpersonal communications, leadership, or coping with change are innate and can’t be taught or learned. There’s also a tendency in organizations to avoid what’s hard to measure.

Luckily, these perceptions are changing. Research shows that soft skills can indeed be effectively learned, and studies have identified a number of best practices for teaching them. Many of these methods also translate well in an eLearning context. By making soft skills a priority, organizations can drive success, growth, and greater return on their training investment.

> Learn more about the value of soft skills training

Gamification 101
What Gamification and Badging Mean for eLearning
By Amber Yearta

These days, receiving requests to help a friend harvest enough wheat to build a new barn, buy a shinier silo, or even breed a special purple-spotted cow is routine. Social games like Farmville and its many clones inundate our social media feeds, with millions of users logging in and playing daily in an ongoing quest for virtual goods. Though many people find the Farmville model irritating, it is part of a larger trend sparked by the surging popularity of online gaming and social media known as gamification—the use of game mechanics to entice users and influence their behavior, particularly by encouraging and rewarding continued use.

The gamification trend has extended into the eLearning realm, and is often touted as the newest way to enhance the learning experience. Although its definition varies according to its source, for the most part, eLearning designers either interpret gamification literally—that is, using games to actually teach or as a supplement to traditional learning—or as a process—that is, utilizing known game-like mechanics to “gamify” any piece of learning content.

> Discover how gamification and badging encourage learner engagement

Connect to Us on LinkedIn

Join the Planet eLearn group on LinkedIn and take part in an ongoing conversation about eLearning trends.

Monarch Media to Present at mLearnCon

Monarch Media will present at mLearnCon 2012, held June 19-21 in San Jose, Calif. The event is the premier mobile learning conference and expo in North America. Please join CEO Claire Schneeberger at a session about "Publishing Training Content for Tablets." If you would like meet with a representative from Monarch Media during the conference, please email us and we'll set up an appointment.

> Learn More About mLearnCon

Monarch Media Volunteers Contribute to Project Homeless Connect Santa Cruz

We have some amazing project managers at Monarch that know how to make things happen. In April, Nicki Nelson led a team from Monarch Media to put those skills to work for the local community. As volunteers, we helped bring services such as housing support to Santa Cruz's homeless community.

> Learn more about Project Homeless Connect

CEO Claire Schneeberger Presents at USDLA Conference

Monarch Media CEO Claire Schneeberger presented at two sessions during the U.S. Distance Learning Association's 2012 Annual Conference, held April 29-May 2 in St. Louis. The first was a panel on mobile learning and the second was a presentation about measuring eLearning outcomes. If you would like a copy of the presentation slide deck, please email us and we'll send it to you.

> Learn More About the USDLA 2012 Annual Conference

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