ReThinking

AEmeritus has been renamed: AEmeritus Relevant Training. Why?

I have done a great deal of background reading on elearning and training online. There are long articles from sources that roam and twist ideas around one another like jumbled roots under an old house.
There are companies selling LMS and LCMS systems that are easy or complicated -- some impressively expensive. There are beautifully authored, professional ads and websites. Huge campaigns (and smaller) from gigantic companies that seek with the friendly active voice of business writing to establish a marketing label for themselves.
There are people out there who are making money spinning yarns about their expertise like mad fairy tales all over the blogosphere and Net.

As a small company, AEmeritus can't compete with the the kind of talent and expertise huge budgets can employ. One of the guiding principles of AEmeritus is to not re-invent the wheel.

The Holy Grail Metaphorically I have found a map to the Holy Grail. It is a simple map. The Grail is easily reached. There are a thousand trails that lead there. Yet so many strive for it and fail. We call ourselves, "Instructional Designers", and our Holy Grail is "Relevance." If the instruction we design -- However it is designed. -- is relevant to our audience, then we are there. This is the one simple test of all design that is most poignantly applied to instruction.

The test of every design is simple: Is it relevant?Of every module, step, goal, or strategy in design: What is its relevance? There are literally thousands of people and companies on the Net searching for this Grail. Like any good story, some find it and it slips through their fingers like sand falling away in the winds. The technology or ideas pass them by. Some Relevance survives, of course.
Because once found, like Love, it lingers. Many of these crusades are the work of passions whose expression never completely dies away. We see their relevance in context, like learning the archaic meanings in old poetry.

But the test remains: Is it relevant? A new context has been described, if not defined: "Instructional Design." And a new context: "online." No matter how technically superb, if the training is not relevant to the audience, it has failed. No matter how deep the subject is explored, if the exploration is not relevant to the audience, it has failed. No matter how simple or modern, if the training is not relevant to the audience, it has failed.

How do we, as Instructional Designers, achieve "Relevance"? There are a thousand answers, each one potentially relevant; each also potentially -- or in time certainly, not relevant.
The first step toward Relevance is to know your audience. The next step is to apply Raymond Loewy's MAYA principle: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. Acceptable? Yes, to your audience; not the designer. The test of your choices is to avoid Damaging eLearning Myths.
From there, constantly testing the relevance, immediate and stategic relevance, you proceed. Paul

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting. - Mark Twain