Ten Ways to Work with Greater Intention This Year


The eLearning Coach Newsletter

For Curious Learning Professionals

Greetings Reader,

I hope your new year is going well. I've concluded that the true purpose of productivity is working with intentionality. In the first article, I looked for compelling ways to grow the intentionality habit and captured them in the first article.

We often advise course designers to arouse curiosity in the audience. I recently realized that we rarely say how to spark curiosity. So, I slogged through many academic articles to interpret the research into practical strategies. That's in the second article.

Last, if you feel that you create ghastly color combinations, the last article will help you easily find a color palette that works.

BTW, if you're going through a career transition, such as breaking into instructional design, working towards a promotion, switching to contract work, or just tired of standing still, I invite you to take a look at my learning community Mastering Instructional Design. You'll gain access to all the courses, live events, guest speaker recordings, a forum, a toolkit, and the wonderful members that make it a special place. Best of all, you'll start moving forward.

How to Work with Greater Intention This Year

Here are ten strategies strategies I’ve gleaned from productivity experts that focus on being more intentional in work and life.

Research-backed Strategies to Spark Curioisty in Adult Learning

\Here are four research-backed ways to spark curiosity in adult learning with several strategies for each approach.

Eight Ways to Choose A Color Palette for eLearning (or anything)

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Now on to the goodies below.

If you're starting out in ID and want to add something to your portfolio, iSpring is having a Course Creation Contest. You’ll have access to their authoring tool through March 11th. There's a category for new designers. You can sign up immediately and get started on your course. Be sure to publish so you have a copy to show and submit. iSpring Authoring is easy to learn because it integrates with PowerPoint and I often recommend it to my ID students. Good prizes too > https://ispri.ng/RyJ9v

GOOD FINDS

Before downloading files, please be sure to check that they are virus and spam-free. Note that freebies often require some form of registration.

FEED YOUR MIND

MULTIMEDIA

COOL TOOLS

  • SmallPDF: A PDF summarizer. Upload document, get a summary. Make sure you have the legal right to do so.
  • DeepL Write: AI app to improve your writing.
  • Taskade AI: An app that lets you train a variety of AI agents to make you more productive. Haven't tried it yet.

MY COMMUNITY AND COURSES

MASTERING INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

This is a learning community of smart and friendly members that want to move forward and expand their instructional design skills. We have 15+ self-paced courses, monthly speakers who are industry leaders, member calls, and a discussion forum. All courses are open to all members.

BREAKING INTO INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN

My free 12-lesson email course about transitioning to a career in instructional design. The course explains the variety of instructional design careers, tasks of the profession, places to network, salary ranges and more. You'll get two email lessons a week for six weeks. Or receive all lessons at once by purchasing the eBook.
Would a colleague like this newsletter? They can sign up here: The eLearning Coach Newsletter. See you on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and at Instructional Design Newbies on Facebook!

Stay inspired!

Connie Malamed

PO Box 1623, Frederick, MD 21702
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