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15 of the latest e-learning books we should all read — March 2016

A collection of just published or soon to be published books on e-learning. We’ve taken the time to research these books, authors and editors. We've presented books we believe can be part of your e-learning toolkit and which we have our eye on as future must reads. The book details are republished from Amazon and the publishers websites where you’ll find some useful book reviews.

 

Published in 2015

1. E-Learning Fundamentals: A Practical Guide

If you're delving into e-learning and are coming up with more questions than answers, this guide is the high-level overview you've been looking for. These e-learning development experts deliver a comprehensive examination of the e-learning process from the ground up.

E-Learning Fundamentals provides the base of knowledge necessary to tackle everything from early concepts of e-learning down to its execution. Throughout, you'll find vignettes that bring concepts to life as well as checklists and practical tools for designing and developing your first e-learning course. You will:

  • Dive into the basics of e-learning design and development
  • Explore the e-learning course design and development process ― from analysis through to evaluation
  • Learn to write and storyboard a course, construct test questions, choose media, put the course together and establish a thorough review process.

2. Start Your Own eLearning or Training Business: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Success

Exploring varied opportunities aspiring business owners will be given business ideas, teaching and training methods, and an overview of essential tools. A range of industry examples will be given for:

  • Accreditation, certifications and credit
  • Adding training onto an existing business as a side income
  • How to sell media/training tools
  • How much to charge clients
  • Start up costs
  • Software types used
  • The legal obligations around taxes, business registration, working from home, and content confidentiality
  • Growth planning and writing a business plan 

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February 2016

3. Learning Greatest Quotes - Quick, Short, Medium Or Long Quotes

Three example quotes from this book:

  1. "The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books"
    — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  2. "A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring"
    — Alexander Pope
  3. "I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship"
    — Louisa May Alcott

March 2016

4. Be Bad First: Get Good at Things Fast to Stay Ready for the Future

As new knowledge — and the possibilities that arise from that knowledge — propels us forward, leadership readiness expert and renowned author Erika Andersen suggests that success in today’s world requires the ability to acquire new knowledge and skills quickly and continuously — in spite of our mixed feelings about being a novice.

This book explores how we can become masters of mastery; proficient in the kind of high-payoff learning that’s needed today. With assessments and exercises at the close of every chapter, she encourages readers to embrace being bad on the way to being great — to be novices over and over again as we seek to learn and acquire the new skills that will allow us to thrive in this fast-changing world.

5. An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization

In most organisations nearly everyone is doing a second job no one is paying them for — namely, covering their weaknesses, trying to look their best, and managing other people’s impressions of them. There may be no greater waste of a company’s resources. The ultimate cost: neither the organisation nor its people are able to realise their full potential.

What if a company did everything in its power to create a culture in which everyone — not just select “high potentials” — could overcome their own internal barriers to change and use errors and vulnerabilities as prime opportunities for personal and company growth?

Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey (and their collaborators) have found and studied such companies— Deliberately Developmental Organizations. A DDO is organised around the simple but radical conviction that organisations will best prosper when they are more deeply aligned with people’s strongest motive, which is to grow. This means going beyond consigning “people development” to high-potential programs, executive coaching, or once-a-year off-sites. It means fashioning an organisational culture in which support of people’s development is woven into the daily fabric of working life and the company’s regular operations, daily routines, and conversations. An Everyone Culture dives deep into the worlds of three leading companies that embody this breakthrough approach.

It reveals the design principles, concrete practices, and underlying science at the heart of DDOs — from their disciplined approach to giving feedback, to how they use meetings, to the distinctive way that managers and leaders define their roles. The authors then show readers how to build this developmental culture in their own organisations. This book demonstrates a whole new way of being at work. It suggests that the culture you create is your strategy — and that the key to success is developing everyone.

April 2016

6. Corporate Knowledge Discovery and Organizational Learning: The Role, Importance, and Application of Semantic Business Process Management (Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning)

This book uses real-world cases from insurance, food safety, innovation and funding to help illustrate and analyse important organisational learning topics.

Today more than ever, organisations need knowledge for the right people at the right time and the right place. This book discusses a range of topics that will help organisations facing continuous complex organisational change. These include:

  • The possible connection between business process models and corporate knowledge assets
  • Knowledge extraction approaches based on organisational processes
  • Developing and maintaining corporate knowledge bases
  • Semantic business process management and its relation to organisational learning approaches

It reveals different knowledge management solutions designed to extract, organise and preserve the knowledge that is embedded your business processes. The result can:

  • Enrich organisational knowledge bases in a systematic and controlled way
  • Support employees in acquiring job role-specific knowledge
  • Promote organisational learning
  • Steer human capital investment

7. Knowledge and Practice in Business and Organisations

In one accessible volume, this book gives an introduction to a set of knowledge and practice concepts across a range of disciplines. Knowledge and practice are explored in a range of organisational and policy settings through six context-specific discussions. Examples discussed are:

  • Craft working
  • Accounting
  • Public sector
  • Creative industries
  • Health care

This makes the book distinctive and enables readers to connect debates and ideas from a range of sectors and disciplines. The collection helps shape the field, identify areas for future research inquiry, and suggest implications for practitioners. 

8. Facilitating Learning with the Adult Brain in Mind: A Conceptual and Practical Guide

This book explains how the brain works, and how to help adults learn, develop, and perform more effectively in various settings. Recent neurobiological discoveries have challenged long-held assumptions that logical, rational thought is the preeminent approach to knowing. Rather, feelings and emotions are essential for meaningful learning to occur in the embodied brain.

Using stories, metaphors, and engaging illustrations to illuminate technical ideas, Taylor and Marienau synthesize relevant trends in neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy of mind. Readers unfamiliar with current brain discoveries will enjoy an informative, easy-to-read book. Neuroscience fans will find additional material designed to supplement their knowledge.

This book provides facilitators of adult learning and development a much-needed resource of tested approaches plus the science behind their effectiveness.

  • Appreciate the fundamental role of experience in adult learning
  • Understand how metaphor and analogy spark curiosity and creativity
  • Alleviate adult anxieties that impede learning
  • Acquire tools and approaches that foster adult learning and development

Compared with other books on brain and learning, this volume includes dozens of specific examples of how experienced practitioners facilitate meaningful learning. These "brain-aware" approaches can be adopted and adapted for use in diverse settings.

9. The Knowledge Manager's Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Embedding Effective Knowledge Management in your Organization

The way an organisation manages and shares its knowledge is key to informed decision making, effectiveness, and maintaining a competitive edge. Companies need a knowledge management framework that is customised to their particular needs and priorities.

Nick Milton and Patrick Lambe draw on their experience as consultants and project leaders to act as guides through each stage of creating and defining an effective knowledge management framework. Taking into account people, processes, technologies, and governance, they show how each of these components can be optimised to unlock knowledge from the company and make a sustainable change in the organisation's knowledge management culture.

10. Wiley Handbook of Learning Technology

An authoritative and up-to-date survey of the fast-growing field of learning technology, from its foundational theories and practices to its challenges, trends, and future developments. This book offers an examination of learning technology that is equal parts theoretical and practical, covering both the technology of learning and the use of technology in learning.

Individual chapters tackle timely and controversial subjects, such as gaming and simulation, security, lifelong learning, distance education, learning across educational settings, and the research agenda.

Designed to serve as a point of entry for learning technology novices, a comprehensive reference for scholars and researchers, and a practical guide for education and training practitioners.

Includes 29 original and comprehensively referenced essays written by leading experts in instructional and educational technology from around the world.

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11. Digital Badges in Education: Trends, Issues, and Cases

A digital badge is an online-based visual representation that uses detailed metadata to signify learners’ specific achievements and credentials in a variety of subjects across K-12 classrooms, higher education, and workplace learning.

In recent years, digital badging systems have become a credible means through which learners can establish portfolios and articulate knowledge and skills for both academic and professional settings. Digital Badges in Education provides the first comprehensive overview of this emerging tool.

Focusing on learning design, assessment, and concrete cases in various contexts, this book explores the necessary components of badging systems, their functions and value, and the possible problems they face. These twenty-five chapters illustrate a range of successful applications of digital badges to address a broad spectrum of learning challenges and to help readers formulate solutions during the development of their digital badges learning projects.

12. Alternate Reality Games: Gamification for Performance

While formal training and communication are a foundational approach to developing employees in the workplace, alternate reality games (ARGs) provide a framework for increased and sustained engagement within business organisations.

This book leads you through the fundamentals of ARGs, including:

  • What is and is not an ARG
  • ARG examples
  • Business challenges that can be addressed through ARGs
  • ARG case studies that illustrate different types of ARGs and the issues to which they can be applied, such as improving performance and critical communication situations
  • Guidelines for creating your own ARGs
  • The beneficial roles ARGs can play in the business environment

A comprehensive overview of the advantages of applying ARGs to the workplace as well as methods for designing and using them.

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May 2016

13. Guide to E-Learning: Building Interactive, Fun, and Effective Learning Programs for Any Company

This second edition presents best practices for building interactive, fun, and effective online learning programs. This engaging text offers insight regarding what makes great e–learning, particularly from the perspectives of motivation and interactivity, and features history lessons that assist you in avoiding common pitfalls and guide you in the direction of e–learning success. This updated edition also considers changes in technology and tools that facilitate the implementation of the strategies, guidelines, and techniques it presents.

The key to creating a successful e–learning program lies in understanding how to use the tools at your disposal to create an interactive, engaging, and effective learning experience.

  • Gain a new perspective on e–learning, and how technology can facilitate education
  • Explore updated content, including coverage regarding learner interface, gamification, mobile learning, and individualisation
  • Discuss the experiences of others via targeted case studies, which cover good and not so good e–learning projects
  • Understand key concepts through new examples that reinforce essential ideas and demonstrate their practical application 

14. Knowledge Games: How Playing Games Can Solve Problems, Create Insight, and Make Change

Imagine if new knowledge and insights came not just from research centers, think tanks, and universities but also from games, of all things. Video games have been viewed as causing social problems, but what if they actually helped solve them? This book seeks to uncover the potentials and pitfalls of using games to make discoveries, solve real-world problems, and better understand our world.

In addition to investigating the intersection of games, problem solving, and crowdsourcing, Schrier examines what happens when knowledge emerges from games and game players rather than scientists, professionals, and researchers. This accessible book also critiques the limits and implications of games and considers how they may redefine what it means to produce knowledge, to play, to educate, and to be a citizen.

15. Strengths-Based Recruitment and Development: A Practical Guide to Transforming Talent Management Strategy for Business Results

Traditionally, organisations have hired employees based on what they can do and have done in the past (competency-based recruiting), rather than what they are naturally good at and love doing, or Strengths-Based Recruitment (SBR). Companies, such as Starbucks and Gap, have adopted SBR and have reported increases in productivity and customer satisfaction and decreases in sick days. Through case studies and interviews with executive board level leaders, Strengths-Based Recruitment and Development takes a more strategic look at developing SBR and provides valuable insight into how SBR has been successfully implemented in organisations to improve performance and the bottom line.

It goes beyond simply recruiting the right people, to keeping employees working at their best through development and performance management, and creating a culture that brings out their strengths. Chapters explain: 

  • The differences between SBR and competency-based recruiting
  • The benefits of using SBR
  • How SBR works in practice
  • How to implement an SBR strategy while avoiding pitfalls
  • The financial and human impact of an effective strengths-based strategy
  • Strengths-based performance management and development

We hope you find this list of e-learning books a useful resource. Do let us know if you have read a recently published book that you feel others in the e-learning sector could benefit from. 

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