Avoiding Assumptions When Writing

..most books on writing and instructional design emphasize the importance of knowing your learners — not on the use of that knowledge in the choice of sentences and phrases to avoid offending them...

Check out my new article on avoiding assumptions in writing in Learning Solutions Magazine at http://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/833/avoid-making-assumptions-that-backfire?utm_campaign=lsmag&utm_medium=email&utm_source=lsm-news

Even Hotter off the Presses

The peer-reviewed version of the analysis of trends on spending in training was just published in Performance Improvement Quarterly.

As noted in the article, after adjusting for inflation, total spending has only grown 1.5 %, even though the US workforce grew by more than 30%.  

Here's the full citation, in case you want to track down the article:

Carliner, S. & Bakir, I. Trends in spending on training: An analysis of the 1982 through 2008 Training Annual Industry Reports. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 2 3 ( 3 ),  77–105.

Hot Off the Presses

The blog has been quiet the past month because I'm back from my sabbatical and spending most of my time preparing for classes (that I insisted on major revisions to one course and finishing the majority of my class preparations before the end of September only added to the workload), working on my research, and actually writing.  

Here's a couple of new publications:

• Qualitative Research in Technical Communication, edited by my friends and colleagues, Jamie Conklin and George Hayhoe, was just published. The book contains a mix of methodology and actual studies. One of the studies featured is my study of the design of museum exhibits. To order a copy, visit http://www.amazon.com/Qualitative-Research-Technical-Communication-Conklin/dp/0415876362
• Developing the Business Case for a Major e-Learning Courseware or Infrastructure Project, was just published in the e-learning Guild's Learning Solutions magazine. It includes a template for creating a business case. To read the article, visit http://lnkd.in/Z9GdsH