Over the years, you have probably noticed that the typically linear eLearning development process has undergone some changes. One change that I’ve noticed are that customers are realizing that we aren’t just creating courseware or writing content and interactions, we are also developing software. This has led to an expectation that the eLearning industry adopt some development models and methodologies from the software industry.

One week into the New Year it’s the right time to look back on the year gone by. So we thought it would be interesting take a journey down our blog for some of the most popular and noteworthy posts of 2011. We have pulled these up based on social signals (views, comments, twitter and more).

So without much ado, here are Top 50 eLearning Posts of 2011 from our blog as determined by you, our readers. Read them. Reflect on them. Debate them. Enjoy them!

There sure are lot of learning design community folks who love to play digital games.

It’s always interesting to hear gamers talk about why they play certain genres of games and what aspects of those games they love.

What is even more impressive is the passion and motivation that gets individuals to play these games.

Perhaps it’s a bit late; but you should check out this great Prezi presentation put together by Amy Burvall; Technotroubadours and Teacherpreneurs .

Last week Towards Maturity published its latest report on e-learning adoption, utilization & effects in the European automobile industry. I worked in the automobile industry for a few years in the early part of my professional life. I remember attending a large number of classroom training sessions and video based training using VHS players which at the time were the only technology assisted learning at that time –between 1997 & 2000.  So I was quite keen to see what the report had to say about the state of learning technology use in the industry today.

I’ve written about Sir Ken Robinson’s thoughts on education before. While it’s been around a while, I stumbled on this today.

He makes some interesting points; and I find these are especially relevant to the Indian education system, which in my opinion is a complete mess. After putting our kids through 16 years of formal education, what we end up with are un-employable adults.

I’ve been away from the blog for a while; work assignments have required that I travel to North America. After some long flights and the resultant jetlag, I’m just starting to get back into the groove now. As I was looking through my feeds this morning, I noticed a post from Karl Kapp in which he mentions a presentation by the Chapman Alliance, which talks about development costs for an hour of Elearning based on a survey.

We’ve been serving the Australian market for more than four years now. It’s not a large market for us but one that has been growing consistently. I just returned from a two week-long business visit to Australia this Sunday, not my first visit to the country but definitely the one where I sensed that the local eLearning industry is gaining momentum. A little googling and I discovered this report from The Canadian Trade Service, claiming the y-o-y growth rates in Australian elearning market to be around 27.3% between 2004 & 2009 and 12.8% for next 5 years. This blog claims that analysts predict Australia is likely to become the 2nd biggest market for eLearning after the USA.

This has bubbled up in my feeds not once, but several times now. It’s an interesting graphic that actually places example iPad applications into Bloom’s levels of performance in the cognitive domain. Focussed around students, and not really workplace learning, but interesting nonetheless. Check it out.

In my recent play sessions with my six-year old (soon to be seven) I realize that one critical element of children’s play, and indirectly learning, is the ability to tell stories and just plain make them up going along. As adults, I think some of us lose that ability somewhere along the way; perhaps its one reason why society values storytellers and makers so much (writers, singers, film-makers, animators…). Typically, the kid and I indulge in play sessions that use Lego as the base toy and then build an imaginary world for our Lego models to inhabit and interact with. Somewhere along the way, events with effects are added and stories occur in the imaginary environment with the models playing roles. This allows the most ordinary Lego models to become characters in the narratives children are creating when at play.

IDEO is one of the companies I admire for solid and contemporary product design and especially follow their Play and Digital Experience areas on their website. I recently heard on twitter that they’d launched a toolkit for educators to assist with Design Thinking at http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/

Came across this article in the NYT Bits Blog – Multitasking Takes Toll on Memory ; states quite simply that the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has published research which shows that multitasking takes a significant toll on the working memory of older individuals. There has been other research suggesting that this ‘divided attention’ will hurt learning and cognitive performance. Some interesting insights to be found in the article, it’s worth a read.