I recently finished reading The eLearning Designer’s Handbook by Tim Slade. I found all 225 pages of this guide to developing eLearning not only informative but also interesting and enjoyable!
Here are the top 5 reasons I loved this book:
1: It's Beautiful
It’s no surprise that someone who’s website tagline is “I Help People Design Beautiful eLearning” would create a book that is also very well designed. The graphics are captivating and consistently designed throughout the book. Tim illustrates concepts with relevant graphics to really help the learner understand what he is talking about. He does a great job of modeling good learning design throughout the book and his use of graphics is just one example of this. Which brings me to my next point…
2: It's Chunky
The longest chapter in this book is the chapter on planning your project, which comes in at about 48 pages long. If your anything like me, you may be thinking “Good grief! I don’t have time to sit down and read 48 pages at once!” Yeah…me either!
That same chapter has 6 subheadings which break the content into shorter chunks, making for a much more manageable length for reading. And remember the graphics I was just talking about? Those take up significant portions of several pages, giving your eyes and brain a short break from the words. Plus, a lot of the content is presented in charts and pictures of documents. There are also “common questions” and “pro tips” presented in their own boxes on some pages to draw your attention to a short snippet of information.
All of these are great examples of “chunking” information for your learners. Learners are able to make better use of their short-term memory capabilities and process information when it is presented in small pieces. Not only is Tim teaching us about good eLearning design through the words and content in the book, but here is another example of how he is demonstrating good learning design in the layout of the book itself.
Tim talks about this concept on page 191 with a wonderful image of a big fish chasing after a school of much smaller fish! You can also read more about this and other ways to reduce cognitive load in Tim’s blog post:
3: It's Interactive
Another way Tim reduces cognitive load and breaks up the content in the book is by adding questions for the reader to consider. He leaves space for you to write your answers directly on the pages of the book, making it more like a workbook than a text book.
Yet again, here is an example of good learning design! Your learners need to actually DO something with the information you present in order to retain it. They need to practice it, think deeply about it, or apply it to their own life or work. You don’t typically think of books as being interactive, but Tim found a way to do it in The eLearning Designer’s Handbook.
4: It's Practical
Ok, I’m not just saying this because Tim calls this book “A practical guide to the eLearning development process for new eLearning designers” on the cover. I truly did find this to be a very practical and useful guide which I am sure I will continue to reference over and over again. I feel like this is what makes it a “guide” more than just a book.
Tim takes the reader through a step-by-step process for designing and developing an eLearning experience. It doesn’t just teach you about designing eLearning but actually demonstrates how to navigate the entire process, complete with screenshots of the planning documents he uses (many of which can be found for free on his blog.)
5: The Author is Awesome
Even if you never buy his book or join his paid academy, you can gain so much valuable knowledge from the FREE content that Tim produces. I have watched countless hours of him on YouTube, read lots of blog posts, and had several questions answered in The eLearning Designers Community. Tim is very active in the community and it’s great to see someone who seems to genuinely care about the people in his audience. I was pleasantly surprised to get a video response from him to my first post!
Tim is also very accessible on LinkedIn. I posted a few times about my takeaways from the book while I was reading it and he commented on every post:
As I was writing this post, I messaged him to ask for permission to share a picture of the cover and one page of the book and he responded with an offer to share more images AND a free copy of the book for one of you!
Want in on the giveaway? You’ll get one entry for each of the following actions and I will draw on Friday, March 17th.
- Share this post on LinkedIn
- Comment on my LinkedIn post
- Comment your thoughts below
Maybe you will be the lucky winner this St. Patrick’s Day!
