Critical Thinking, Course Navigation, & Design

The Thinking Behind Critical Thinking Courses - Washington Post

Critical thinking is not a skill like riding a bike or diagramming a sentence that, once learned, can be applied in many situations. Instead, as your most-hated high school teacher often told you, you have to buckle down and learn the content of a subject--facts, concepts and trends--before the maxims of critical thinking taught in these feverishly-marketed courses will do you much good. The processes of thinking are intertwined with the content of thought (that is, domain knowledge).

Here's Why Unlocking Your Course Navigation Will Create Better Learning - The Rapid eLearning Blog

No one likes wasting time and in the process being treated like a child. However, the organization commits a lot of its resources to the training and they want to make sure that people take the time to learn the information. They definitely don't want the employees skipping through information that might be critical to the organization's success.

Design for Emotion and Flow - Boxes and Arrows

Note: While this article is direced towards web design, most of the concepts can also be used for learning design.

Information architects and designers play a critical role in ensuring the products they design provide users' with a return on their investment of attention. Also see Completing the Zen in Performance Management. Consumers typically need not worry much about the programming plumbing beneath their online applications. But suppose you're the person on the hook for your company's online expense reporting tool or a start-up planning to build an online music mixer for anyone on the Internet. You'll have to place a bet on which technology is best and which programmers to hire or train.

"Even if I were starting from scratch today, I still think I'd bet on JavaScript and Ajax...It's going to be hard to stop the massive momentum we have," Henrikson said. "Flash is seeing a pretty aggressive growth cycle now, (but) I still think JavaScript is going to be (used in) 10 times the number of Flash apps that launch."