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Get a Free Copy of the “Design For How People Learn” Book

A friend of mine just tweeted this a little while ago:

Which means that YAY! The book is shipping! And it’s a whole week earlier than I thought! Which is great! Except that I’m not *quite* ready! But it’s still great!

In my last post, I asked folks for ideas about promoting the book, and one of the ideas from @tmiket was to have contest for some free copies, which I thought was an excellent idea.

So here’s how it will work – I’d like to know about your design ideas/tips/questions for how people learn. So all you need to do is:

  • Post a favorite learning design tip / resource / best practice / question.  You can post it in the comments below, or better yet on a blog, twitter (hashtag #designlearn), or some other location.  It could be a problem that you are tackling, or a pointer to a favorite resource like a book or website (if you are stuck for an idea, you can just post a link to this post, too).
  • Come back and put a comment on this blog post with a link to the post/tweet/whatever in the next week (by EOD 11/23/11 Central US Time) , and I will choose 3 people at random to get free copies of the book (there won’t be thousands of entries, so your odds might be pretty good).
And, I think @tmiket might have to get his own free copy for suggesting it.

Thanks!

38 thoughts on “Get a Free Copy of the “Design For How People Learn” Book”

  1. Will be looking forwards to reading this book!

    This is a problem I want to find an answer to as I go about my graduate studies: How to design e-books/platforms for informational text (to-be hosted on e-readers) in a way that is both compatible with our cognitive processes and the affordances of the e-reader.

    Reply
  2. Valuable knowledge is usable knowledge. Knowing exactly what we don’t yet know is also valuable, but is also often context or problem-specific. Instead of asking learners “How can you apply this knowledge to real contentious situation x?”, give learners the tools to develop usable questions that can then be taken back and used in response to their own contexts.

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  3. Again an excellent book to come…in English. I am a French elearning consultant and I come across every day upon tons of knowledge I would like to share with my communities. But even if English is daily used at work, people won’t read entire books though when coming back home because their level is not enough to have pleasure in this. I was wondering: are you going to have you book translated into French? If not yet, don’t hesitate to contact me I would love to have a chance to to this job (part of my curriculum and first pasion before) to participate into the spreading of good ideas.
    Best regards

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  4. I like to start with the idea of what a beginner needs to do the task or perform the job. My job is to be the bridge which connects that beginner with success.

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  5. A lot of Designers spend so much time on creating the “look” of their materials instead of critically thinking about the value of the learning experience they are designing. Valuable learning experiences are created when the bulk of our time is spent thinking of ways to keep learners involved, in control, and tuned-in to his or her individual learning experience.

    Reply
  6. Question: What organizations have successfully developed their own learning content design and how is it disseminated to their instructional designers? I’m interested in best practices and processes for doing this for an organization with no formal or central learning design team.
    Looking forward to reading this book, too!

    Reply
  7. When creating classroom/online learning course Objectives for corporates, forget “Understand”, “appreciate” and all the other things that can just stay “…in the learner’s heads”.
    Design objectives around “What would this look like if I saw someone doing it?”, and link that to measurable corporate objectives like increased profit, reduced loss, or reduced risk.
    @ BrucUK
    http://brucemgraham.wordpress.com/

    Reply
  8. Another tip…after spending a couple of grueling days making screencasts, I’d have to say that thinking about how you explain it to someone else is where “the rubber hits the road”, I’m glad I asked the subject matter expert to explain it to me, as she realized a lot of things were assumed to be clear, when they really weren’t!

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  9. Hi guys, here my tip for a good design :
    “Make your teaching: perhaps not hilarious but funny, perhaps not a masterpiece but attractive, perhaps not interactive but thoughtful, perhaps not shocking but unforgettable.”
    My english is not good but I hope you catch the idea.
    Greeting from Chile.

    Reply
  10. Here is my tip…
    Use your white space effectively. Solid and clear text with nothing else draws attention. Highlight information that you want to impact this way. I often like to use a black background and bright contrasting coloured font to add emotion. You don’t have to fill all the space with design, sometimes that is the design.

    Reply
  11. I’ve found the following article to have applications in interface design:
    http://www.teachervision.fen.com/learning-disabilities/bilingual-education/10260.html

    In particular, when introducing the user to new functionality in a complex system, you need to provide enough context for them to understand it. If something normally behaves one way, and they turn on a new setting, it can be good to point back to the setting when it behaves differently than they’re used to. Seeing it in action with enough context to understand it makes the light bulbs go off, and creates the effect that it is “intuitive”.

    Reply
  12. Hi

    I’m South African based in a large corporate financial institution. I am researching starting my own training company targeted at the youth. The idea is to prepare them for the outside world- especially when the outside world is worse than the striking teachers or poor educational resources.

    I cant change the world – but if I can prepare someone for their dream job with skills not in their school curriculum- HELP ME start this dream – it will definitely change ME!

    Reply
  13. Your book sounds interestings. BTW, excellent way to market it.

    Here’s my tip….

    Understand your learner and build the learning material to challenge them.

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  14. My mantra is to keep my head in the learner’s mode. “Would I want to take the course I’m designing?” I don’t always reach it, but it’s the goal.

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  15. Hey folks – thanks for all the great responses! I’ll do a random drawing and announce winners in the next day or two.

    Thank you!!

    Reply
  16. Hey folks!

    Sorry this has taken me a few days — still recovering from being out of town for holidays, etc.

    Anyway, thanks so much for all your entries — I really enjoyed reading the different tips. I’m going to collate them into a blog post soon, but I wanted to let people know about the book drawing.

    I did do a random drawing (actually I did something overly complicated that involved spreadsheets and random function, but the end result is the same 🙂

    The three free copies go to:

    Holly MacDonald (@sparkandco) 
    Nancy Fuenffinger 
    Charles-Axel Dein (@d3in) 

    I will send you individual emails about contact information,

    Thanks everyone!!

    Julie

    Reply
  17. Tip: Do not forget accessibility issues when designing !!!! When trying to address accessibility issues have in mind all kinds of possible learners’ needs (LDs, EDs et. and not only physical impairments)

    Are there distinct differences between Andragogy and Pedagogy in Distance Learning or have they become an “amalgam”?

    Reply

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