Product Description

Praise for Michael Allen's e-Learning Library

This is the first volume of six in Michael Allen's e-Learning Library a comprehensive collection of proven techniques for creating e-learning applications that achieve targeted behavioral outcomes through meaningful, memorable, and motivational learning experiences. This book walks readers through the revolutionary processes of rapid prototyping and iterative design as a means of sorting the conflicting and hidden agendas of organizations, winning essential support, and generating creative learning solutions.

"Too many learners have been frustrated and too many careers have been derailed from poorly designed, ineffective e-learning. Michael Allen is finally sharing his 'secret sauce' with the world. The Savvy Start technique alone will go a long way to ensuring that every e-learning project turns out to be a successful one."
--Kevin Kruse, founder, e-LearningGuru.com

"Michael Allen has written a terrific book for courseware developers and business leaders who are interested in launching e-learning programs that will have a true impact on people performance and the business. It is a must-read for everyone who wants to take e-learning to the next level."
--Nick van Dam, global chief learning officer, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; founder, e-LearningforKids.org

"Michael Allen knows instructional design from the ground floor up. For four decades he's lead the field. Now he shares his hard-earned knowledge with the rest of us."
--Will Thalheimer, president and principal researcher, Work-Learning Research

"In this short volume, beginning with rapid analysis, rapid prototyping, and rapid evaluation, we find not only the details of the successive approximation process for developing superior e-learning, but also corporate and academic case studies to provide context for the design and development approaches recommended."
--Michael E. Echols, vice-president, Strategic Initiatives, Bellevue University; author, ROI on Human Capital Investment

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #657617 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 220 pages

Review
"The book has a simple set of processes that can help any in company project manager." (Learning Light)

From the Back Cover
Praise for Michael Allen's e-Learning Library

This is the first volume of six in Michael Allen's e-Learning Library a comprehensive collection of proven techniques for creating e-learning applications that achieve targeted behavioral outcomes through meaningful, memorable, and motivational learning experiences. This book walks readers through the revolutionary processes of rapid prototyping and iterative design as a means of sorting the conflicting and hidden agendas of organizations, winning essential support, and generating creative learning solutions.

"Too many learners have been frustrated and too many careers have been derailed from poorly designed, ineffective e-learning. Michael Allen is finally sharing his 'secret sauce' with the world. The Savvy Start technique alone will go a long way to ensuring that every e-learning project turns out to be a successful one."
--Kevin Kruse, founder, e-LearningGuru.com

"Michael Allen has written a terrific book for courseware developers and business leaders who are interested in launching e-learning programs that will have a true impact on people performance and the business. It is a must-read for everyone who wants to take e-learning to the next level."
--Nick van Dam, global chief learning officer, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu; founder, e-LearningforKids.org

"Michael Allen knows instructional design from the ground floor up. For four decades he's lead the field. Now he shares his hard-earned knowledge with the rest of us."
--Will Thalheimer, president and principal researcher, Work-Learning Research

"In this short volume, beginning with rapid analysis, rapid prototyping, and rapid evaluation, we find not only the details of the successive approximation process for developing superior e-learning, but also corporate and academic case studies to provide context for the design and development approaches recommended."
--Michael E. Echols, vice-president, Strategic Initiatives, Bellevue University; author, ROI on Human Capital Investment

About the Author
Michael W. Allen pioneered multimedia learning technologies, interactive instructional paradigms, and rapid-prototyping processes, bringing each forward into leading corporate enterprises. He is the chairman and CEO of Allen Interactions Inc. that builds universally acclaimed custom e-learning, provides strategic learning consulting, and trains e-learning professionals in collaboration with ASTD. With a Ph.D. in educational psychology from The Ohio State University, he is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, a popular conference speaker, and a prolific writer.

Customer Reviews

Take content from Michael Allen's previous book, remove sample elearning, add fluff and whitespace and you have his new book
First, let me say that I enjoyed Michael Allen's first eLearning book. It had solid content. My only beef with it was that there weren't enough chapter breaks and that made it tougher to read (some chapters went on for 70 or so pages). That is certainly not the case with this book; many of the chapters are 5-10 pages in length, which to me, feels too short, almost like a bathroom reader. This book is all about white space.

This new book is mostly just a rehash of the first half of Allen's last book. It only contains 180 pages of actual text before you reach the indexes etc. so for $25+ one would assume their would be a lot of content packed into those precious few pages, right? Alas, instead the author uses oversized type, wide line spacing, and 2 inch margins on the outer edges.

The text is in a two column format
and with so little page space
actually being alotted for it,
each line is only about 35 or
so characters long. This makes
the whole book hard to read
because your eyes are always
having to dip down to the next
line after only a few words
(you would think an elearning
designer would take text line
length a little more seriously).
I noticed that the next book in
this series does the same thing.

Back to the content, very little new information is presented that could not be found in Allen's previous book. Yes, this one does give a few extra pages on each topic covered, but that is about it. Most of the additional information if fluff. I liked the examples of elearning given in Allen's previous book. None are included here, just a fictitous story about a fictitous company trying to implement elearning. A story that is neither engaging, nor insightful (fluff).

I gave this book a 2 star rating only because if you haven't read the first book, it does have some useful information and interesting insights into elearning development...but like I said, it is mainly just rehash.

A practical handbook in an industry sorely in need of its practicality
In my experience, creating eLearning is a very difficult thing (understatement of the century). You have to balance so many factors not the least of which is keeping up with the vast sea of books on learning theory. Don't get me wrong, the learning theory is certainly important, but at some point you have to get to the doing...the practical application. What I needed in a book was to hear from someone with experience. Someone who would be willing to cut through the theory and just write about how to get it done. Dr. Allen has done that with this book. I don't think that the book is perfect, but it is the most referenced book in my work library (needs more examples and more illumination on this whole "bonus babies" idea and how to pull that off).

I hope that his next book in this series (on Instructional Design), is just as practically useful as this one is. How do I think you make a book on Instructional Design practically useful...lots of examples! That's right...just like what Dr Allen did with his first book (Micheal Allen's Guide to e-Learning), I would love to read about the learning theory, but I think that each theory should be backed up with a practical example. Screenshots work, but I would love to actually be able to try the examples. The first book did this well with its accompanying example CD. This book needs the same type of examples, but new stuff. I know that Dr Allen's company (Allen Interactions) has been very busy making award winning learning solutions...so lets open the coffers and see some of the new stuff.

The information in this book is very valuable. Thanks Dr. Allen for being so generous in sharing it.

Helpful resource for very early stages of e-learning consideration and design
This book provides valuable insight into the most important considerations for developing e-learning. I would say this is more of a prep book that focuses on gathering info, getting input, etc. not so much on production of actual e-learning modules. Good high level process overview, useful in the early stages, including some good checklists like Design Proof Evaluation Checklist.