Psychological safety, at work or in a professional environment, is when people feel comfortable bringing their full, genuine self to work and when they feel comfortable sharing ideas, asking questions, sharing concerns, or making mistakes and owning up to those mistakes.
Push and pull learning refer to how content is delivered to the audience. Push learning is where the audience is told how much, when, and where to learn -- the learning is pushed out to the user. Pull learning is where the audience is able to access the information they need, when they need it -- the learning is available to be pulled on demand.
A question bank is a collection of assessment questions that are stored so they can be used repeatedly, typically used in eLearning design and as a feature of many rapid authoring tools.
Rapid Prototyping is the process of creating a preliminary version quickly in order to test its validity. It is also the name of an instructional design model created by Tripp and Bichelmeyer.
Remote working is when an employee does not commute to a central office location but works from somewhere else, generally from their home but sometimes from anywhere.
Created by Dr. Michael Allen, the Successive Approximation Model (SAM) is an instructional design model based on ADDIE but is considered agile because the design and development stages are each iterative.
SCORM stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model and is a set of technical standards for eLearning that allow eLearning to communicate with the learning management system (LMS).
According to Ruth Colvin Clark, scenario-based learning is an instructional environment in which participants solve carefully constructed, authentic job tasks or problems.
Self-Determination Theory states that people are motivated to change by three psychological needs: autonomy (the need to feel in control of their life), competence (the need to master their environment), and relatedness (the need to make connections and feel belonging).
Single-loop learning is a type of organizational learning that involves evaluating successes and failures to improve future outcomes. It involves people, organizations, or groups modifying their actions based on the difference between expected and achieved outcomes. The goal is to make adjustments to correct mistakes or problems, and to focus on doing things correctly.
Also known as a skill taxonomy, a skill hierarchy classifies skills into different categories based on their complexity and importance. It helps organizations quantify the scope and diversity of skills across departments, roles, and experience and leadership levels.
A skills framework defines the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for every role within an organization so the organization can have a shared understanding of the skills expected.
Social learning commonly refers to the theory proposed by Albert Bandura, that people learn by observing, imitating, and modeling others' behavior. In a more modern work context, it refers to learners coming together to collaborate, share perspectives, and solve problems together.
A steering committee is an advisory group that oversees and manages progress on an organizational project and makes decisions about the direction of the project.
Stock refers to something available for use or sale. In learning and development, you might hear terms like stock photos, stock videos, or stock assets, which refer to multimedia assets that can be used for learning projects for free or for a fee.
A storyboard is a visual representation that uses panels for descriptions, dialogue, and illustrations or images. They are used to design a learning experience and present the idea to stakeholders.
Strategy is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term goals. In learning and development, strategy can refer to how the learning and development team is staffed, the processes they use to create learning projects, or the ways in which learning is communicated to the audience.
Succession planning is the process of identifying talent within the organization and upskilling them so that they can fill critical leadership roles when someone leaves.
A summative assessment is a planned, structured assessment at the end of a learning experience, often used to check for understanding and progress toward learning goals so that the instructor knows if the learning experience was successful.
Systems thinking is a holistic way of looking at a problem that examines the big picture and how things are connected and interrelated, as opposed to breaking something down into its parts.
Talent acquisition refers to the screening, sourcing, identifying, interviewing, and hiring of candidates within an organization and any processes related.
According to the Association for Talent Development, talent development efforts foster learning, employee engagement, talent management, and employee development to drive organizational performance, productivity, and results.
A talent management system is a software that handles processes related to talent management, including recruiting, learning and development, onboarding, performance, and succession planning.
In business, turnover can refer to the amount of business does in a period of time, but it can also refer to the rate at which employees leave a company and are replaced by new people. In customer education, turnover can refer to the amount of customers who have decided not to renew a contract, subscription, or business arrangement with a company or their product.
According to the creators, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn.
Virtual instructor-led training (VILT) refers to training that takes place in a virtual or simulated environment, where the instructor and the learners are geographically separated.
Virtual reality (VR) is a computer-generated simulation where an artificial environment is created so that users can interact with it as if they're in the real world.
VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous and has been used since the 1980s to describe general conditions in the world as well as business situations.
A vendor is a seller of services and/or products. Examples of vendors in learning and development include learning design agencies, external training providers, content library businesses, and EdTech companies.
A virtual classroom is an online environment where the instructor can communicate with learners and where they can interact with the learning materials.
A workshop is a meeting where a topic is discussed. Workshop is also used to describe the act of discussing an topic, e.g., "We spent all afternoon workshopping ideas for the new safety training."
Vygotsky created the term Zone of Proximal Development to describe the "space" between what a learner can do independently and unaided and what a learner cannot do, even with support and guidance. In the Zone of Proximal Development, a learner can accomplish something under the guidance of an expert or instructor.
eLearning is short for electronic learning and technically describes any training or educational material delivered digitally. However, the term has become synonymous with the output of rapid authoring tools.
The Experience API (or xAPI) is a technical specification for eLearning designed to capture a broad range of experiential data from online and offline learning experiences.
This is a living glossary we try to update regularly. If you can't find what you're looking for, please drop us a line at wordproject@getusefulstuff.com
