For Immediate Release:

Monday, July 28, 2014

In my last post I highlighted some of the most popular recent articles on the Tagoras blog. In this one, I thought I’d highlight the top links to external resources that we have provided in the Leading Learning newsletter during the first half of 2014.
The monthly newsletter contains links to any new Tagoras research (like, for example, the recent social learning white paper) as well as upcoming Webinars (stay tuned for the fall line up). The core of Leading Learning, however, is the “Leading Links” section, in which we highlight and provide brief comments on resources and insights we feel readers may find useful in growing and improving their education businesses. We organize the links according to the key areas of our research and consulting work: strategy and innovation, learning, marketing, and technology.
Here, in descending order, are the most clicked links for the first six issues of 2014. I’ve also included the brief commentary that accompanied each of these in the issue of Leading Learning in which they appeared.
6 Scientifically Proven Brain Facts That eLearning Professionals Should Know
Christopher Pappas briefly covers six areas of brain science relevant to anyone in the lifelong learning business. We liked that “spaced learning” is on this list. There is a lot of room for growth of spaced learning as an approach, and fortunately, there are starting to be a number of technologies to support it.
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The worst error in business strategy according to Professor Michael Porter
If you haven’t read Michael Porter’s major works, you aren’t serious about strategy. Period. This brief post highlights one small, but critical element of his thinking that we feel is particularly important as organizations in the continuing education and professional development market experience more and more competition.
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3 Myths That Kill Strategic Planning
A Simple Nuance that Produces Great Strategy Discussions
These two brief blog posts from Harvard Business Review get to the heart of what successful strategy creation requires and nearly always lacks. Read. Re-read. And be sure to share with other stakeholders before your next strategic planning meeting.
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The Best Research Demonstrating That Lectures Are Not The Best Instructional Strategy
We’re going to assume the highly intelligent readers of Leading Learning are savvy enough to ask “The best instructional strategy for what?” In spite of all the bashing they get these days, lectures do have their place. But, as Larry Ferlazzo’s post suggests, there are plenty of instances in which they are not the best way to go. Find out when and why – and adapt your programming accordingly.
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7 Mind-Numbingly Easy Marketing Changes You Probably Haven’t Made Yet
You may not have it within your control to make all of these changes, but even one or two of them could make a significant difference. In addition to the seven changes, the posts provides a number of valuable tips and resources.
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Conferences Need Quality Measurement Tools And Feedback To Spur Innovation
One of the key points that came out of The Speaker Report that we issued in collaboration with Velvet Chainsaw is that organizations do not really measure the learning that takes place at their major conferences. In this post, Jeff Hurt highlights “The World’s Best Smile Sheet Question” as a way to dramatically improve measurement of learning. The smile sheet comes from Dr. Will Thalheimer, who we have referenced here before. We highly recommend reading both Will’s and Jeff’s/Velvet Chainsaw’s blogs regularly.
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19 Kick-Butt Tools for E-Learning
Hey, who doesn’t want kick-butt tools for e-learning?
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Reimagining education in the digital age
Maddie Grant over at Social Fish posted two very good slide decks on the massive change under way in the worlds of education and learning. While these have the limitations of slides without narration, they are both well done, so you can follow the points even without a narrator, and you will doubtless find some stats, images, etc. that you may want to borrow for presentations of your own.
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Digital Badges for Professional Development
Digital badges were one of the topics of discussion that emerged at the recent Leading Learning DC lunch. In general, we are very bullish on them. This article on the Educause site offers a brief but valuable overview of how digital badges can be used.
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So, those are the most clicked links for the past six months. Naturally, they represent only a sampling of the links that were sent out. If would like to get similar resources going forward, along with downloads of Tagoras research and notification of our upcoming free Webinars, just use the form below to subscribe to Leading Learning today.

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