Wow – Tom! This is perfect!
Here Are 12 E-Learning Books to Read This Year
January 5th, 2016
One of my goals each year is to read one book a month that will help sharpen my course-building skills. I’m always asked for book recommendations. Some of the recommendations are for those getting started, even if you’re an experienced course designer it helps to review familiar course design concepts or expand to other fields like UX or graphic design.
If your goal is to read twelve books this year, here’s a list to help you get started. Even if you don’t read them all this year, some of these are good to have on hand in your elearning reference library.
Instructional Design Books
- Design for How People Learn (recently updated with 3 new chapters)
- ISD From the Ground Up: A No-Nonsense Approach to Instructional Design
- Understanding by Design
- E-Learning Fundamentals: A Practical Guide
- Michael Allen’s books. I recommend starting with one from his E-Learning Library series.
Gamification Books
Gamification is more than a buzz word and the principles that make games work can be applied to course design to create more engaging and effective elearning.
Graphic & UX Design Books
Courses are more than content. The look and feel of the content is also important as well as the user experience. Here are some good books to help you learn more.
- Non-Designer’s Design Book (4th edition)
- About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design
- Graphic Design for Non-Designers
Video Production
Video is viable for elearning now so it doesn’t hurt to learn more about using it in your courses. The challenge for many of us is how to do it on a budget. Here are two books that have been recommended to me. I haven’t read either yet. If you have, let me know what you think.
- Rapid Video Development for Trainers: How to Create Learning Videos Fast and Affordably
- Creating Video for Teachers and Trainers: Producing Professional Video with Amateur Equipment
The links to Amazon books may produce a slight commission.
12 Free eBooks
I’ve mentioned this before, but there’s a good list of free ebooks in the elearning community. If you don’t want to spend money, this is a good place to start. You have one free ebook for each month.
My first book to read will be Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play. What are you reading this year?
Events
- Everyday. Check out the weekly training webinars to learn more about Rise, Storyline, and instructional design.
Free E-Learning Resources
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Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community. |
Here’s a great job board for e-learning, instructional design, and training jobs |
Participate in the weekly e-learning challenges to sharpen your skills |
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Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images. |
Lots of cool e-learning examples to check out and find inspiration. |
Getting Started? This e-learning 101 series and the free e-books will help. |
17 responses to “Here Are 12 E-Learning Books to Read This Year”
Good list. I have many of those books. I do recommend Ruth Clark’s eLearning & Science of Instruction.
Thanks for the recommendation for Design for How People Learn. That led me to Usable Learning, which led me to a your talk on Cultivating a Shared Practice Community. This is EXACTLY the information I’ve been looking for, your experiences and stories are great to help people understand the challenges of ‘building’ a shared community.
I value the 5% and pay homage to you and the other 4%.
I agree with the other commenter who recommends Ruth Clark’s “eLearning & Science of Instruction” book. It provides guidelines based on research evidence (“grounded theory”).
Hey Tom – Where will you be traveling in 2016? Do you still put your schedule at the end of each post?
Here’s a book from my list. I’ve designed ILT forever and just started designing eLearning. I really liked Technology for Trainers by Thomas Toth. I learned a lot of best practices from the book.
Tom, a good list, but you might want to add the most important book in the learning space, Performance-Focused Smile Sheets: A Radical Rethinking of a Dangerous Art Form. I’m biased, because it’s my book, but others are raving about it. It’ll be published February 2nd, but people can reserve a pre-publication discount now by going to: http://SmileSheets.com.
Hey Tom,
Congratulations — once again — on being in the Top Ten list…
You really worked for that one!
Michael
Definitely think you should add Robert Mager’s books (http://magerconsortium.com/product/a-new-mager-six-pack/) to the Instructional Design category of must-reads! I use Making Instruction Work with all new trainers as a kind of instructional design “survey course,” and the other books in his “Six-Pack” are really great for diving a bit deeper into some of the topics MIW introduces. (I particular like Preparing Instructional Objectives as the first follow-up.)
I know that these books aren’t about e-learning instructional design, per se (and maybe that’s why you didn’t include them), but I think that, before you learn about ID for e-learning, you have to already be conversant with the basics of ID.
Oh, and I agree with the others who have suggested adding e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, too!
Tom, Thank you for this recommended list. I will definitely check out many of them. Some to be mentioned “Gamification of Learning and Instruction” and “Design for How People Learn”. At the moment, I’m getting started to read “Learning Theories and Instruction” textbook as part of my graduate school study. From your list here, I sure I can use a lot of them to reference for my class research and etc. Thank you again for this awesome list.
Thank you for this recommended list. agree with the other commenter
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