The L&D
Word Project

A digital badge is a credential that, unlike a static image, can be displayed, accessed, and verified online.

Digital learning refers to any type of learning that is accompanied by the effective use of technology.

A digital native is someone who was born or brought up during the age of digital technology, who has familiarity with the internet, computers, mobile phones, and other technological devices from a young age.

Digital transformation refers to adopting digital technology throughout an organization to help improve processes and operations.

Discovery learning comes from constructivism and is an inquiry-based learning method where learners pose questions and explore their environment to gain knowledge and information with little instructional intervention from an instructor or teacher.

Distance education refers to a learning experience where the learners and their instructor are separated by physical distance and can additionally be separated by time.

Diversity refers to the wide array of differences among people (including any characteristics by which they identify, such as race, ethnicity, age, sexual identity, and religion) and those people's perceptions of the world based on those differences.

Double-loop learning entails the modification of goals or decision-making rules in the light of experience. The first loop uses the goals or decision-making rules, the second loop enables their modification, hence double-loop. Double-loop learning recognizes that the way a problem is defined and solved can be a source of the problem.

Electronic performance support systems (EPSS) are computer software programs that help users perform tasks, making them more productive in their roles.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software manages day-to-day business activities and operations for core teams, such as finance, sales, supply chain, and more.

ESL is an initialization of the term English as a Second Language, which is used to describe the use of English by people with another native language.

Employee experience (EX) refers to employee's feelings about their journey at an organization, from the hiring experience, to onboarding, to development and career opportunities, and more.

In learning, an ecosystem refers to all the components that contribute to the overall experience, including people, content, technology, data, culture, strategy, governance, resources, and tools.

According to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, educational technology is the study and ethical application of theory, research, and best practices to advance knowledge as well as mediate and improve learning and performance through the strategic design, management and implementation of learning and instructional processes and resources.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is the ability to manage both your own emotions and understand the emotions of people around you. There are five key elements to EI: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Empathy is the capacity to understand, sense, and share the feelings of another person.

Commonly used in design fields, such as UX and service design, an empathy map is a collaboratively created visualization of experiential data from customers or end users, designed to help gain insight into the way they interact with and feel about a product, service, or situation.

Employee engagement refers to the relationship between and organization and its employees. Specifically, it's how much energy and motivation employees put toward reaching organizational goals.

Enablement is the process of providing employees with the information, skills, and resources they need to be productive and efficient in their roles.

In learning, engagement refers to a learner's ability to participate in the learning process or project in a motivated way.

Evaluation refers to the assessments and metrics collected to assess the effectiveness of learning experiences.

An experience refers to gaining knowledge through direct observation or participation.

Experiential learning is learning that happens through doing. Specifically, it is the reflection on the activity that makes learning experiential.

An expert is someone who has comprehensive and authoritative knowledge or skill in a particular area.

Expertise refers to comprehensive or authoritative knowledge or skill in a particular field.

An explained video is a short video created to explain products, services, policies, or topics.

Explicit learning is an intentional learning process, where the learner is consciously aware of what they are learning and can summarize it after the learning experience.

Extrinsic motivation refers to when someone's reasoning for doing something is tied to tangible results, such as money, reward, or notoriety.

Facilitation is the act of engaging learners during a learning experience, which often includes moderating discussions, introducing activities, answering questions, and guiding learners.

A fixed mindset is one in which people believe their qualities, skills, and abilities are innate and cannot be changed.

Flipped classroom is a model that reverses the traditional educational model where students are lectured to during class time and practice problem solving at home. In the flipped classroom model, students receive the lesson material at home and then work on problem-solving and practice during class time.

The Forgetting Curve hypothesizes the loss of memory and retention of information over time.

Formal learning is any learning experience that is intentional and guided, typically taking place either in a classroom or online designated meeting place or platform.

A formative assessment is a planned, structured assessment of student's learning during a learning experience, often used to check for understanding and progress toward learning goals so that the instructor can alter the learning experience as needed to make sure the goal is reached.

The Four Stages of Competence is a learning model that explains the psychological states that take a learner from incompetence to competence, which include unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence.

A framework is a basic conceptual structure of ideas used to support or guide someone.

A freelancer is someone who is considered self-employed but performs work for organizations on a short-term or per-task basis, not committing themselves to any one employer long term.

Future state refers to the long-term goals and greater vision of the business over time and with changing economics and technology.

The GROW coaching model is a framework that helps managers go above and beyond traditional mentoring. GROW stands for Goal (identifying a goal for the coaching session), Reality (assessing the current situation), Options (looking at the different ways to reach the goal), and Way Forward (or Will) (working toward the goal and the steps taken).

A graphical user interface (GUI) allows users to interact with electronic devices through visual indicators or graphical icons, as opposed to text-based interactions.

Gagne created a nine-step process for people to use when designing learning experiences with the goal of maximum engagement and retention. The steps are gain attention, inform learners of objectives, stimulate recall of prior learning, present stimulus, provide learner guidance, elicit performance, provide feedback, assess performance, and enhance retention and transfer.

Game-based learning describes adding games to a learning experience or using games to teach.

Gamification is applying game principles to the design of a non-game experience, which may included adding game mechanics, such as scoring, leaderboards, and badging, to a program, product, or service in order to encourage participation.

Gap analysis is the process of looking at a business's current state and its future state and analyzing where there are issues or areas of opportunity that need to be addressed to reach goals, looking at areas such as operations, resources, finances, and roles.

Generational Theory posits that each "generation" of people born within a 20-25 year time period shares similar characteristics, or a persona, based on shared historical events.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is AI capable of generating text, images, videos, or other data using generative models, often in response to prompts.

In business, a goal is a target or accomplishment an organization sets out to achieve in the short or long term.

The Great Media Debate, started by Clark and Kozma in the 1990s, sought to answer the question, "do media influence learning?"

A growth mindset is one in which people believe their qualities, skills, and abilities can be developed over time through effort.

Human-centered design (HCD) is an approach where designers make the perspective and emotions of the end user their primary focus when designing systems.

Human capital management (HCM) includes the processes for attracting, hiring, managing, developing, and retaining talent in an organization.

Human resources (HR) refers to the department in the organization that deals with everything employee-related.

A human resource information system (HRIS) is software that manages employee information and any information HR uses for business processes and operations, such as hiring and benefit information.

Hard skills are technical abilities that can be objectively and quantitatively measured.

A heuristic is a practical, mental shortcut people use to decrease cognitive load and reach an immediate, short-term goal.

Human capital refers to the organizational and economic value of the collective skills and abilities of the employees of an organization.

Human factors refers to employee characteristics and behaviors that influence how they act in their organization, affecting the overall health and safety at the organization.

Human performance technology (HPT), also known as human performance improvement (HPI), or human performance assessment (HPA), is a field of study related to process improvement methodologies such as organization development, motivation, instructional technology, human factors, learning, performance support systems, knowledge management, and training. It is focused on improving performance at the societal, organizational, process, and individual performer levels.

Hybrid learning is a method of instruction that includes both online and in-person learning experiences or activities.

Hybrid working is a flexible working environment in which employees spend part of their time in the physical workplace and part of their time working from a remote location.

Instructor-led training (ILT) is when an instructor facilitates a learning experience for learners.

Intellectual property refers is any intellectual creation, such as literary works, artistic works, inventions, designs, symbols, and images. IP can be protected by patents, trademark, copyright, or other laws.

IQ is short for intelligence quotient. It is the score derived from a set of standardized tests that are used to determine human intelligence.

In business, impact refers to the effect your performance has on the organization's performance, goals, and stakeholders.

In the ADDIE framework, implementation refers to the plan to release and communicate learning experiences with the intended learners. In technology projects, it refers to the execution of the plan to launch the technology.

Implicit learning is an unintentional learning process, where the learner is not aware that they are learning and retaining complex information.

An individual development plan is a plan created by an employee and their manager that outlines professional goals for the employee for a specific time period. The goals align with the organizational goals and are assessed after the time period.

A infographic is a visual representation of data or information, presented in a way to simplify the data, reducing cognitive load for the end user.

Informal learning is any learning experience that is unintentional and unstructured and takes place outside of the traditional classroom environment.

Input is anything you need (such as the people, money, assets, and tools) to deliver a learning project.

Inquiry-based learning is an educational approach that starts when questions, problems, or scenarios are posed, and learners have to research and explore ideas to answer the questions.

Instructional design is the process of analyzing learning and performance gaps and creating, deploying, and measuring instructional and non-instructional learning opportunities to close gaps and encourage learning and performance improvement.

An instructional design model is a series of steps that can be followed to create learning experiences.

An instructional designer is someone whose main job function is to analyze, design, develop, implement, and evaluate learning experiences.

An instructional or eLearning developer is someone who creates interactive learning experiences for an audience based on instructional materials (such as prototypes, storyboards, or outlines) created by instructional designers.

Instructional systems design was the original term for instructional design because of the systems approach taken to design and develop learning experiences. The term has been shortened to instructional design in most areas, but instructional systems design is still used in some industries, including in government and military.

According to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, instructional technology is the theory and practice of design, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning.

An interactive PDF is one that uses multimedia, including images, audio and video, links, GIFs, and fillable forms.

The technical definition of interactivity from a systems perspective is the ability of a computer to respond to a user's input. In learning and development, this term has been expanded to include any type of eLearning exercise that requires the user to click multiple things or multiple times. It is often incorrectly correlated with engagement, retention, and transfer -- none of which have been proven to be impacted by the number of mouse clicks a user completes. In in-person or virtual training, interaction or interactivity refers to collaborating and discussing with the other participants and facilitators.

Internal mobility refers to an employee's ability to move to different positions in other areas or to be promoted within their own area of an organization. If internal mobility is unclear for employees, many will leave the company.

An intranet is a private network used by an organization to communicate, collaborate, and to store and share information.

Intrinsic motivation refers to when someone's reasoning for doing something is tied to inherent satisfaction that is not tangible, such as enjoyment or a sense of meaning and purpose.

In business, an issue is an unforeseen problem, gap, inconsistency, or conflict that occurs during a project.

Just in time (JIT) refers to learners having access to the resources and information they need at the moment they need it.

A job aid is a set of simple, step-by-step instructions that help a learner complete a task at work.

Job architecture refers to the organizational structure of job roles and their hierarchy within the organization, as well as the requirements and competencies of those roles.

A job task analysis looks for the tasks and activities, as well as resources and requirements, needed to do a particular job successfully.

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a quantifiable measurement of progress toward a performance goal within an organization.

Knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) are the qualifications necessary to perform a job, listed in job postings and on resumes by applicants.

From the Japanese word meaning "visual board," kanban refers to a visual system of organizing work as it moves through steps in a process.

Kirkpatrick's Learning Evaluation Model includes four levels of training evaluation: reaction (measuring how learners felt about the experience), learning (measuring what was learned), behavior (measuring how people apply their learning), and results (measuring the learning against organizational outcomes).

The facts, skills, and information gained during a learning experience.

The process of identifying, creating, managing, sharing, and evaluating information within an organization.

Learning is the process through which we acquire knowledge and/or skills, and development refers to continuous upskilling and training of employees so that they can be successful in their roles or achieve promotions within their organization. Within an organization, learning and development is the team or department that is responsible for creating learning experiences and development opportunities.

A learning content management system (LCMS) is a software creating, editing, implementing, and maintaining learning content for an organization.

A large language model (LLM) is an AI model that has been trained on large amounts of text and data to perform a variety of natural language processing (NLP) tasks, such as recognizing and generating text, interpreting human language, and understanding how characters, words, and sentences function together.

A learning management system (LMS) is a software that allows for creating, implementing, maintaining, tracking, and reporting on data from learning experiences.

A learning record store (LRS) is defined by the xAPI specification as "a server (i.e. system capable of receiving and processing web requests) that is responsible for receiving, storing, and providing access to Learning Records."

LTEM is an evaluation model created by Will Thalheimer that consists of 8 tiers of learning, divided into learning and work metrics. The tiers, from 1 to 8 are Attendance, Activity, Learner Perceptions, Knowledge, Decision-Making Competence, Task Competence, Transfer, and Effects of Transfer.

Learning experience design is another, more modern term for instructional design that aims to take the focus away from "instruction" and place it on the learner and their experience.