Learning design Archives - Page 3 of 5

Applying startup thinking to teacher development

January 31, 2020June 9, 2016 by Jo Sayers

Cambridge English and ELTjam have been working together to create a digital framework for teachers – an initiative to help language teachers develop their digital skills specifically to enhance teaching and learning. This post looks at how we have developed the framework and the results that have come about from starting small, getting out of the office and constantly iterating.

ELTjam LXD Session: Ceri Jones on why we need a ‘CoachBot’

January 31, 2020May 25, 2016 by Tim Gifford

Ceri Jones spoke at the ELTjam LXD Session in Birmingham recently, with the backdrop of the IATEFL Conference. Ceri gave us her take on Learner Experience design and what it might mean for language learning content.

ELTjam LXD Session: Nick Robinson

January 31, 2020May 11, 2016 by Tim Gifford

On the evening of the 13th April, amidst the noise and tomfoolery of the 50th IATEFL Conference, we hosted an underground ELTjam Session on Learner Experience Design (LXD). We invited four speakers to share their thoughts on the subject, while the audience supped on craft ales. First up was our very own Nick Robinson. Here is his opening salvo from that night …

we need to talk about learner experience design

We need to talk about LX

January 31, 2020February 9, 2016 by Nick Robinson

Frustration, anger, confusion, boredom and repetition are all hallmarks of bad user experience (UX); unfortunately, they’re often hallmarks of language learning too, especially when it takes place digitally. But bad UX is not the only reason digital language learning products fail – sometimes it’s the content, sometimes it’s the pedagogy, sometimes it’s the lack of human interaction. Bad UX alone fails to address the complexities of language learning. We need to start talking about bad learner experience (LX). Bad LX could be defined in a number of ways, but at its most basic it’s this: not only did you fail to learn something; you had a horrible time trying.

It’s not about Content or UX, it’s about Product

January 30, 2020November 26, 2015 by Jo Sayers

Publishers often seem to struggle to look beyond content as the primary driver of their products, while for tech companies it’s often not much more than an afterthought. End result? Products that fall flat, create poor experiences and don’t live up to their full potential. How can we move towards a more unified product-driven approach?

Working smarter, not harder: tools for productivity

January 31, 2020September 29, 2015 by Blog Editor

At ELTjam HQ, we talk a lot about working effectively, time management and productivity tools. We like to practise what we preach, and all of us have our own tools and methods for working smarter not harder. So when I set the team homework to write a collaborative post about what they use, the first thing I did was start a Google doc. Here’s what they came up with.

Designing learning spaces for a mobile era

January 31, 2020July 2, 2015 by Paul Driver

The shift from the immobility of PCs to the mobility of tablets and smartphones allows digital space to interact with material space, both in and out of the classroom, in entirely new ways. At British Study Centres in Oxford, where Paul Driver works, this was an important consideration in their decision to integrate mobile technology into the everyday practice of language teaching. Here’s how they transformed their learning spaces.

ELT Entrepreneur – Mark Holmwood

January 30, 2020April 29, 2015 by Blog Editor

ELT Entrepreneur Mark Holmwood of Holmwood Online got in touch with us to tell us about his transition from the classroom to the cutting room, making videos for his online publishing site which produces courses for schools and individuals in English and Chinese.

Applying the Pareto Principle to ELT Publishing

January 31, 2020March 29, 2015 by Nick Robinson

The acronym MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, seems to be popping up in conversations with ELT publishers all over the place right now; and that’s odd, because up until about 2013, I’d never heard a publisher mention it. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, an MVP is a tactic used in product development to gauge customer interest in a new product or product feature. The idea is that you don’t build the whole thing; you just build enough to see whether people might be interested in what you’re proposing. What many people seem to actually be doing with their MVP is applying the Pareto Principle. Otherwise known as the 80–20 rule

ELT Entrepreneurs – StudyBundles

January 30, 2020February 2, 2015 by Blog Editor

Next in our series on people who’ve made the break into ELT Entrepreneurship is the three man team behind StudyBundles, an English language teaching and learning digital product provider specialising in preparatory pre-arrival courses for learners who want to study in English medium Higher Education.

AR we there yet?

January 30, 2020January 8, 2015 by Tim Gifford

We thought it might be worth taking a look to see if our predictions regarding Augmented Reality turned out to be accurate, or if we were jumping any number of guns …

ELT Entrepreneurs – Paul Emmerson

January 30, 2020November 26, 2014 by Blog Editor

For the second post in our ELT Entrepreneurs series we take a look at Paul Emmerson’s recently launched site BehereBethere. It’s a free and fun eLearning website for Business English where students can watch videos and learn about business from business professionals while improving their English. The site caters to three different levels and works on vocabulary and pronunciation.

Brainly: Can ELT learn from social learning?

January 30, 2020October 29, 2014 by Nicola Prentis

I wasn’t brilliant at physics at secondary school. I managed in class, though, with the help of my peers which you could call social learning. Pre-internet, that social network was confined to the real world – and occasional phone calls. Homework wasn’t generally a topic of conversation but I don’t think I had anything like the 2-3 hours school children can have today. On one occasion, my homework included a question about light refraction and where a fish would appear to be to an observer from the surface as opposed to where it actually was. I couldn’t answer, so I just wrote “Don’t know” and handed it in.

#elthack: 10 Microsoft Word hacks all ELT writers and editors need

January 31, 2020October 21, 2014 by Nicola Prentis

You need more time to commission or write the next ELT blockbuster. Or just to share pictures of your lunch on Facebook. But where to carve out time from a hectic day? Microsoft Word. Documents start off in Word for most writers, editors and, sometimes, tech-forward start up founders. Here are some efficiency tips even … Read more

Exploring the British Council MOOC

January 30, 2020October 15, 2014 by Nicola Prentis

Either ELTjam and its community of commenters can see the future, or the British Council closely followed this post from January 2013 when they created their 6-week course Exploring English Language and Culture in partnership with FutureLearn.

There’s one critical difference, though. ELTjam thought an ELT MOOC probably wouldn’t work. The British Council made sure that it did. Although, as we’ll see, that does depend on your definition of ‘work’.

Learning on Rails

January 30, 2020August 22, 2014 by Brian Anderson

It’s possible that we’ll discover that providing the student with highly relevant, engaging content will be more effective than crafting learning experiences on rails (à la our current, item-response-theory-influenced “adaptive learning”).

Developing our own MVP – Flovoco

January 30, 2020July 9, 2014 by Jo Sayers

On my first day at ELTjam, I was pitched at. Tim, Laurie and Nick (the ELTjam founders) sat me down and tried to sell me their product ideas. This week, we take the first step towards testing whether one of these ideas can become a viable ELT product. Today sees the launch of the flovo.co landing page, our own MVP, a little litmus test. But how did we get to this point and why have we made a webpage before the app is ready?

5 things we need to know about BIG data

January 30, 2020July 1, 2014 by Tim Gifford

When it comes to buzzwords you don’t get much bigger than ‘big data’. Here are a few notes that might help us navigate the topic …

Review: Lingua.ly

January 30, 2020June 23, 2014 by Jo Sayers

Lingua.ly offers learners an opportunity to look up and save words they come across when reading online articles in another language and then recommends relevant texts for the learners to read in order to extend their vocabulary and improve their reading skills. Users can click on any word in an article they are reading online and, after … Read more

Introducing Voxy: Learning from the real world

January 30, 2020May 19, 2014 by Tim Gifford

Meet the company that is making some serious waves in EdTech …