eLearning: Discover Your Learner’s Thinking Style

by AJ George Follow us on Twitter

Do you wish you could get inside the head of your learners and know exactly how their thought processes work? Me too, but we can't all be Professor Xavier.

Learning assessments provider Pearson TalentLens has managed to make a bit of self-examination possible at least. They have created the My Thinking Styles assessment to help people explore their unique thinking styles. The two part online assessment is free, takes only minutes to complete, and provides a basic report of the participant's thinking styles.

The service is not perfect. The end report focuses mainly on the benefits of each thinking style, rather than giving tips for improvement. Additionally, according to this report, I use nearly all thinking styles to a large degree so it would be difficult to focus on one style if I wanted. That being said, it is a useful free resource and may be one you would like to add to your metaphorical tool belt.

Allowing clients to complete the survey prior to creating eLearning for them (or passing it along for them to administer to all members of their team) might give you another perspective on how to approach their training. In a company setting it might also help you in the hiring process or to delegate tasks best suited to each team member's thinking style.

Give the assessment a try.  How accurately (or inaccurately) does it peg you?

PowerPoint & Articulate Studio: Resolve Performance Issues

by AJ George Follow us on Twitter

While working with a PowerPoint developer this week I learned that she was experiencing performance issues while using PowerPoint and Articulate Presenter.

I looked into her issues and found that it's a bad idea to work from a network or USB drive. In fact, it appears that doing so can cause crashes. The Articulate web site suggests that developers ensure that all associated files (presentations, audio, quizzes, etc) are on the C drive or local hard drive.

If you are sure you are working locally but are still seeing performance issues, try running a repair on Articulate Studio '09.

Still not working? There's one more solution. You may need to repair the software you are trying to use with Articulate (ie Microsoft Office). Click here and select your version of Microsoft Windows for applicable troubleshooting.