Trainlets! | onehundredfortywords

because they're short. duh.

At KC-ASTD’s tech conference last fall, I attended a session by Sue Maden and Tony Maden on elearning pieces they’ve created at Burns and McDonnell. Some were Flip videos, some were screencasts, and some were interactive. Each took around 2 minutes. The whole point was to access the information just-in-time, so they weren’t serving them through their LMS.

Sound familiar? It did to me… We started doing something similar at my company this past year. We call them “trainlets”, and I’m going to get skewered in #lrnchat for spreading new terminology in our field, but the name has caught fire at my company, unlike “CBTs”.

I didn’t invent the term, but here’s what it means to me:

<5 minutes
usually not interactive, but can be
probably not delivered through the LMS

Are you doing something similar? What do you call them?

http://onestoptrainer.bogspot.com Chet Stevenson

Judy,

I’ve been thinking about this concept for a long time, but I framed it based on the Youtube model. I’m finally getting to the point where my organization is okay with the idea. Because of the nature of our business, I’ve been trying to structure training based on:

o Experience
o Organizational Role
o and JIT.

Of course, the concept is not new, I’ve just been calling them “short training modules,” but I really like the sound of “Trainlet”.
Judy Unrein

Cool! I think we really are moving more and more toward JIT models of training. And interactive trainlets can be even more JIT, if they let the learners go directly to what they need.

Saw this article tweeted by @mglazer, @hjarche, @charlesjennings this morning: Give e-learning a second chance http://www.guardian.co.uk/public-sector-training/e-learning. Use of short video snippets is mentioned as one of the trends changing elearning now.