A Video Veteran’s Guide To Compelling Content With Mark Lassoff, Framework Tech Media on the eLearn Podcast

This is the e -learning podcast, episode number 80. The thing about learning video is learning how to tell a story in the video medium. And that story for us sometimes is as dry as,

you know, what is HTML? But, you know, a lot of other types of training videos have a story and it’s using the video format to tell that story.

That can be done with an iPhone. Welcome to the e -Learn podcast.

My name is Ladek and I’m your host from OpenLMS. My guest for today is Mark Lassoff, founder of Framework Tech Media. After achieving tremendous success on platforms like Udemy with his quality video content,

Mark shares with us his wisdom and expertise on his video experience learning platform, as well as in communities and the world’s most popular ed tech conferences. In this visually focused conversation,

Mark and I talk about his experience with creating compelling video. Newsflash, it’s not about equipment, it’s about telling an engaging story. We also talk about mastering video,

which rather than knowing about lighting or sound, which, okay, they do matter, it has to do more with things like storytelling, character building, and making sure you’re connecting with your audience.

We also talk about raising your online teaching bar by raising your video game, by doing things like checking new trends and tools, playing around and experimenting, and maybe considering lowering your PowerPoint dependence.

And then finally, Mark and I talk about how to achieve a satisfying experience because it’s best not to compare your work with other educational content, but to your learner’s ideas of compelling and entertaining media.

But before we get started, a quick word from our sponsors. The eLearning podcast is sponsored by the eLearn Success Series, a uniquely valuable set of events that bring together sector experts and thought leaders to offer solutions to the most critical challenges and issues at the intersection of education and technology.

Get your free ticket to all four sessions at elearnsuccessseries .com and OpenLMS, a company that provides world -class LMS solutions that empower organizations to meet education and workplace learning needs.

Learn more by visiting openLMS .net. – Hello, Mark, welcome to the eLearning Podcast. How are you today? – I’m doing great. Thank you for inviting me to join you. – My pleasure,

as always, on all of these shows. Mark, where do we find you sitting in the world today? – I am in beautiful Westport, Connecticut. It is the town that Martha Stewart used to live in.

And when she left, wrote an article in the New York Times telling everybody why. – Oh, why she left or why she used to live there? – Why she left, yeah. Why she got the hell out.

That was her big article in the New York Times. And it is all proud. – I don’t even know what to do with that. Like, do I ask about Martha?

No, this is about you. This is about you and video and eLearning, essentially. – Martha, ironically, is also about you. Well, Martha is about Martha. Yes,

let’s move on. – So, you are the CEO, the founder of Framework Tech Media. You are a face, many people and a voice, many people have heard before in the Eastern Guild and around the circuit talking about why video is so important in eLearning and those kinds of things.

I’m really excited to have you on the show today. Really kind of put your opinion on the table about not only video and online learning, but how to do it better, what people do wrong.

And whether or not it’s, whether it’s not something we even need to worry about. But before we do that, I want to give you the opportunity to have 30, 60 seconds to just sort of put yourself on the stage and say,

explain who you are and kind of what you focus on. – Yeah, so my name is of course Mark Lassoff and I have been involved in online learning for the past 20 years,

mostly as an instructor. So I have developed rich systems systems for developing video -based training classes and delivering them both for clients and in our own off -the -shelf library of courses that are available for license and for resale.

And then I contribute to, I hope it’s a contribution, but I contribute to the profession by speaking and training at various conferences. You’ll find me at all the Guild conferences and ATD.

So if you see me somewhere, come say hi and strike up a conversation. I’m always trying to learn about other parts of the business and meet new people, because this is a really fun business to be in,

I’ve had a lot of great people and great friends, and so that’s basically me. – Fantastic, and I’m sure, you know, what I love is, you know, we know our audience is people who,

who probably know who you are. I guess I’m interested to see like what their reactions are. I want to see the smiles, you know, behind the voice. So we’ve had other people on the show,

but also in the e -learning success summit, that people know about, that we’ve run in the past couple of years. Talk about video, but I want to hear, you know, this is somebody who’s been doing this for 20 years. We’re now in 2022.

You and I are recording this sort of in January, late January, 2022. What do you need for, you know, for actually doing good video or for shooting video for online learning? What’s your minimum list of things that you need to have?

– So a lot of people make the mistake about thinking that good video is about expensive equipment. And, you know, setting up an expensive studio. And even though I have a studio right over here,

that’s not the way to start in video. And it’s not necessary to shoot good learning video. The thing about learning video is learning how to tell a story in the video medium.

And that story for us sometimes is as dry as, you know, what is HTML? But you know, a lot of other types of training videos have a story and it’s using the video format to tell that story.

That can be done with an iPhone. The iPhone today has a better camera than most cameras that were available 10 years ago.

So it’s really about how to create shots that inform, that educate, and that entertain. And I think the other important thing to remember is we are in a much more media rich world than we were 20 years ago when I started in this.

With YouTube, with advances in video games, movies, special effects, and people’s constant connection to internet and media, the expectation level for learners has gone up.

I think sometimes our industry acts as if we’re in some kind of vacuum and other media isn’t out there. But the fact is people aren’t comparing learning content to other learning content.

They aren’t saying, “Wow, that course on diversity in the workplace was much more entertaining than the one I took on learning to use Excel.” They’re really making comparisons to other media that they consume.

And that’s YouTube, video games, Netflix, and the serial media that people binge watch. So video, I think, is a necessary component of raising the bar in learning.

So people are as engaged as they are by other media. And one of the case studies that we can point to is the rise of masterclass, where this is self -paced,

asynchronous learning at its best, but the value proposition or the business proposition behind that entire effort was, “Let’s really put a lot of production into this.” And then get big names.

right? Obviously, big names help as well, but they’ve created an experience that is, would you, I don’t know, would you agree has it set the bar for delivering instruction? Yeah.

I mean, so my bar is different than a typical instructional designers bar. I think a typical instructional designer goes into this and looks at adherence to learning theory and outcome basis,

and they list all the learning objectives in the beginning, and all of those things that I think can be important, but my scale is engagement and what’s more engaging than getting the inside scoop from your favorite film director,

graphic designer, chef, or a personality. So I mean, I think in that level, masterclass is extremely successful. I actually had a conversation with one of the executives at LinkedIn learning about it,

and the delineation though is it’s really at the cross -section of entertainment and learning. It’s not the best solution if you want to learn graphic design,

but if you are a passionate graphic designer and you want to take a course from someone at the absolute top, if you are a passionate writer and you want to see how top film writers execute their craft,

I think masterclass is great. There’s a whole range and video has enabled that. I would look at another case study. Let’s look at Udemy, which is an open marketplace where people can sell their classes.

Well, Udemy has now been around 12 years. I was actually one of the first instructors to earn a million dollars in commissions on the Udemy platform. – Congratulations. – Thank you. I have some insight into how that works,

and over time, what has risen to the top? Well, good video. People who haven’t produced good engaging video haven’t seen success on the platform,

but people who know how to use the video medium to teach really have seen a great deal of success. Most people on Udemy, myself included, don’t have an hour of instructional design credit,

but we’re able to engage audiences and get audiences to separate, you know, to actually put their credit card in and spend their own money to purchase learning content.

You know, in the corporate environment, people most often have to be compelled to do the learning in an LMS. So, you know, I think that corporate ID,

in which I, you know, this is my industry, has a ways to go when it comes to engaging. And I think video is really key because it is the easiest place to tell a story. And,

you know, if they say a picture is worth a thousand words, well, what was a thousand frames of video worth then? It’s one of the richest media with which to inform if we use it correctly. So,

let’s take it down. I, you know, I’m looking at it as there’s several different layers of where video is appropriate and also the type of video that you’re using,

right? Because I’m right now, I’m thinking of the audience, you know, like, as you and I were talking before in the green room, you know, it’s about 75 % teaching professionals. These are professors. These are teachers. These are,

you know, people who are in the training room or used to be in the training room. I often hear from them, it’s just like, I already have an overflowing plate of stuff I’ve got to do in terms of delivering and just terms of keeping up with schedules.

How in the heck am I now going to be an actor or an actress or, you know, you know, think about putting video together. Where does video work? Where does it like, where, you know,

is, do I have to be master class quality in all different places? You know, is, is compliance training as important that I, that I kill the video as, as, you know, as a leadership training?

Like, what’s your opinion on that? I think any place where there’s a story to be told, where there’s a visual demonstration to make, and where you want to best connect with learners,

video is appropriate. So let’s, let’s, take those three categories and kind of unpack them a little bit. Well, for storytelling, nothing is more efficient than video.

I mean, if you’re giving people paragraphs and passages of text within a new learning, they’re not gonna read it, and it’s inefficient. When you can tell the story much faster with video and appeal to a much broader range of learners.

Secondly, were you’re demonstrating something? I’m sorry, visual demonstration for visual processes just as natural and makes sense. So I cut my teeth as a tech instructor,

you’re teaching people coding. That’s obviously very visual, and I can easily do a video of me completing a process and explaining the code as I go.

And I think third, for making the connection with the learner. Boy, we’ve learned over the COVID period that there is quite a bit of value to in -person,

not so much in the information transfer, but in the social aspects of learning that are so important. People constantly talk about the isolation and damage being done to school kids now who don’t have,

who haven’t had through the crisis, a social outlet. Not social outlet, primarily for kids with school. So I think we’ve learned a lot, but I think the one thing that’s often missing from e -learning when you choose to have a narrator versus an instructor is that relationship between the instructor and student,

that level of transference that occurs, that warmth that makes people wanna learn, that engages people. I learned a lot from really good teachers in high school and college on topics that I wasn’t particularly interested in,

but because they were able to engage, they crossed that bridge for me. When we start with, be typical in this class, you will learn A, B, and surprisingly C,

we’re already disconnecting from, with a disconnected voice that doesn’t belong to everyone, that doesn’t sound natural, we’re already disconnecting from learners who are seeking that connection,

and many can’t seem to learn without it. You know, and one of my qualms with a lot of the research that’s done, when it talks about, you know, for example, there’s research that shows that it doesn’t matter whether or not you show the instructor in a video.

All that, all of that research comes from people who actually completed the videos. What about people who abandoned when they heard the disembodied voice and said this isn’t for me and closed the window?

Those didn’t seem to get into the research from as far as I can tell. So, you know, I think for those three areas, again, where you’re telling a story,

demonstrating something visual from coding to flying an airplane, and three, creating that relationship between instructor and learner, I think that’s where videos that it’s most powerful.

What do you think about, does this also, if I could add a fourth category just for your opinion, there has been a lot of emphasis and rise of peer to peer learning,

especially in this online space, because again, with that connection that people are making, but also just they’re finding the engagement levels are, you know, incredible, as well as retention levels and whatnot. How does video play into that scenario,

if at all? Or is this, is this really where it’s like, you kind of flip the script and it’s like, look, we’re not instructing anymore. We are engaging as humans and teaching each other. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, that’s social learning,

right? And social learning has been an extremely important component of success. I think it’s part of the larger package of information, transfer, skill building and behavior change that are the goals of almost any course or learning or content that we develop,

right? right? So I think, you know, getting people to engage one -to -one in that peer -to -peer aspect can be extraordinarily important. And, you know, I think for people who do what has been called MOOCs,

which is a word I hate, but these massive online classes, and I have some online classes that have hundreds of thousands of people in them, you know, the difference between success and failure is getting the learners to interact with each other and to interact with the instructor.

And so, I mean, I think peer -to -peer is a component that’s a large part of the larger kind of learning milieu that should be encouraged in order for people to retain information,

change behavior, et cetera. – So then my other follow -up to that is one of the things that I’ve been preaching or what we’ve heard preached for quite a while here is stop building it,

right? Stop building your course from scratch. Stop building your lessons from scratch, and I think because there’s so much great material already out there that’s built for you. Where would you, you know, I guess,

again, just sort of let me give you the table about either using other people’s video, repurposing video, you know, finding it somewhere, you know, in sort of either open source or, I guess,

even licensed video. Do you have either opinions or resources there? – Well, I’m obviously gonna be biased because, you know, one of the ways that we make money is we create video that others license.

But, you know, I think there’s two types of learning that employees, we’re talking strictly, you know, kind of corporate ID here, that they need,

right? First is things that are common problems throughout companies for which learning has been developed. You don’t need to develop your own QuickBooks course. You know,

you don’t need to develop your own HTML course. All of that is out there, and frankly, most of a lot of what’s published is gonna be better than what you’re going to do in -house because, you know, it’s published by resource studios and distributed by companies who like kind of jury the content and only distribute stuff that’s good.

But then there’s a type of learning that, you know, is particular to your organization, the tribal knowledge, right? right? How does our sales system work? How do we,

what is our corporate branding standards? Things like that, that all needs to be developed in -house and for that, you’ve got access to all the tools that large content publishers do to be successful with.

So I think it’s a combination. I don’t think it’s an either or. I think based on the learning need, there’s either going to be pre -made material available to address it.

What some companies try and do in my experience, which I think is silly, is try and reinvent the wheel just so they can slap their logo on some learning content that is essentially a commodity,

right? I mean, word training, to a large extent, there’s probably a hundred places you could get word training from. I hope you would purchase ours, but if not, I understand because there’s lots of word training out there.

You’re not using word differently at your company. You might have a different workflow and that unit can need to build content around. So I really think it’s a combination. – Fantastic.

– I want to pivot for just a second. I’ve heard you say and you’ve, other people have heard you say that instructional design, which is actually putting something together,

putting in class together, putting a course together. It’s not just one job. And this is something that we’ve actually been talking about a lot on this show as well, but you’ve said that it’s actually two jobs. So I’d love to hear your opinion and what do you mean that the instructional design profession is actually two jobs?

– Well, I think the industry’s been broken by rapid content development tools that are ubiquitous throughout the industry because it’s quick and it’s cheap, but it’s also required instructional designers to become an island unto themselves.

So I think in my, what I always thought an idea was, because I know I’m not one, is someone who applies best practices, learning theory, research,

analysis, and project management to the tasks of, again, information, transfer, behavior change, and skill development.

And that could simply mean selecting outside materials for people to use internally and learn from, or editing those materials, or presenting a live class.

But somehow we’ve gotten to the point now where IDs, for the most part, are lousy content developers. And then it’s not their fault,

they haven’t been trained in graphic design, audio, video, motion, and all the things that go into producing high quality video in 2020,

high quality content in 2022. So what we have is a bunch of people who’ve been trained in lame tools without necessarily the back design skills in order to produce content.

They’re not using their skills necessarily in research, analysis, project management. So I think the first role is that traditional ID, that project manager role, that person who decides what’s the path do we need to take,

is training even needed here. Maybe it’s just a job aid, maybe it’s just support, maybe you just need to sit down and talk to somebody, give them this information. Maybe it’s not a training issue,

maybe it’s a bit, maybe it’s a behavior issue, you know, and that’s what an ID should be sorting out. And then managing the process of developing the content. That’s role number two.

Someone like me, I come from a development, web development, and design background. That’s what I did before I entered learning. So I can create engaging content that gets the message across.

I certainly, for years, didn’t come up with the message, that should come from the instructional designer. But if we have skilled people on both ends, we have skilled people who are providing the instructional structure,

managing the project, evaluating, making sure that we are moving towards stated educational goals or stated behavioral change goals. And then we have someone else who is really skilled at putting together a slick package that engages people in the modern media era.

We’re going to be much further ahead. And if we have someone using some rapid offering tool that is just basically a PowerPoint plug -in to make media that looks like it’s from 1995.

Nice. All right. What about, so, I guess, where do I want to go next with this? You’ve talked about the importance of visual design and digital learning,

right? And we all know it. I mean, anybody who is silly, you can’t… We don’t all know it. I put this up on LinkedIn a couple of weeks ago. I got pilloried by people who were very,

very oriented towards the research that said, “Oh, you can learn from stuff that’s not visually attractive.” And my argument, again, is if you consume it, but I think a lot of people judge a book by its cover and judge its credibility,

entertainment value and engagement value by the look of the first slide in that deck. I mean, I’ve been to sessions called visual design free learning that were undermined by the quality of the title slide.

So, I don’t think it’s a given that people think visual design is important. How much of that is that people don’t think it’s important as much as…

I kind of… My mind kind of goes back to the university with, you know, 500 professors, or, you know, where they just don’t…

They don’t have access to a designer or design team or anything like that. And so they’re going to be delivering the best that they can when, you know, their, their, their real wheelhouse is physics or,

you know, French literature and design isn’t, isn’t that. And so, especially sort of from a young adult learner perspective, that’s the best that is that can be put on the table.

What do you think about that? I think, I think a lot of people’s opinions on some of these issues, I get the feeling are based on their need to survive at their job and in the industry.

And if they are not trained in it and can’t do it, the importance level in some ways is reduced. You know, if you are not skilled at,

haven’t been trained at, learned to make things visually appealing and credible and pleasant for the user, then you know,

you might, as a matter of survival, try and imagine that those things are unimportant. But visual design is inexorably linked to user experience and user interface design.

And we know that a bad user interface and any electronic mediated media, like kind of mediated media, that probably isn’t a correct term. But in any electronic media can be a hindrance to completion.

I don’t see, I don’t see how we’re different. I think sometimes there’s, we give ourselves a special dispensation because it’s learning content from creating,

you know, good user experience. And that doesn’t have to be complicated. But, you know, I always make this argument, right? If you say visual design doesn’t matter, what if I give you dark gray text on a dark,

on a black background? That’s a design choice. And now you’re, the visual design is so bad it interferes with people’s learning. And I think people don’t realize that,

you know, even from a theoretical basis, you know, cognitive load theory, which is talked about a lot, you know, sometimes this poor interface stuff and poor visual design can can get to a point where it does cause cognitive overload.

So I think, you know, even if you don’t value design, because a lot of people reduce it to making things pretty, which is not my definition of design at all,

you should be cognizant and aware of how bad design affects the user experience, let alone, right, what about learner satisfaction? Were they satisfied with the experience?

Yeah, you may have drilled the information into their head and you know, but maybe they resented the process. Right. You know, I really like to think when you are especially because, you know, new employees do a lot of onboarding training and consume a lot of learning content,

especially at larger companies where they have a formalized onboarding process usually involves video and the learning courses and all these different things. What impression are you giving that new employee about the organization that they just joined?

If the learning content looks like it’s from 1995, and isn’t doesn’t have a slick visual design, is it navigable, isn’t engaging,

what message are you sending these people now who you are trying to get engaged in the company brand? You know, and that really rings true. I mean, I’m my,

as everybody knows who’s listened to this, I mean, I’ve got a 13 year old and to hear his critique of even some of the things that either my wife or I bring home or, you know, that we’re, that we see from our companies,

he’s like, wow, just and then if you know, you just put, let’s put 10 years on him, those individuals who are coming out of university and you’re, you’re trying to bring into your company culture, what do you know,

at the end of the day, I think you’re preaching the gospel right there, for sure. At 13, he could be in, he could be engaging in learning content for his new job in three years. Well,

but it’s not even exactly, and I, it’s funny. But people act like those audiences, those, those Gen Z audiences are so far from the work. They’re not, though. They’re not. They’re not. They’re not. I’d actually talk to them. And this is obviously,

you know, whoever it is, child protective services cannot be, but I’m just like, look, you know, you could probably actually go on Upwork and, you know, get a graphic design job, ’cause he’s actually pretty good at this, right? And I’m like, why don’t you kind of try your hand?

Go make 10 bucks, go make 20 bucks, you know, get yourself a small gig and actually make it better for some adult somewhere, right? Because he has intuitively the skills, right? He’s got the intuitive like,

hey, what is hot and hip? – Right? – I’ve often wondered if the people that I’ve hired off of Upwork were 13. (laughing) – Which, you know, it could totally be the thing,

right? That could totally be a good thing. But anyway, let’s, we digress, I guess. – Well, so I just, you were speaking in a language that I really understand,

I spent a long time in the software industry myself. And one of the things that I kept preaching is the salesperson was, we don’t wanna have the person who’s developing it actually design the interface or actually design the experience.

They’re great at understanding how the functionality comes to fruition, but we need to have, we need to listen to the customer. This is, you know, this is sort of design 101. Like what, how do you actually want the experience to play out for the,

does that play out in terms of the instructor as well in your mind? Is that what you were basically just saying? – Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, when the web front, I’m old enough to have been working.

– Yeah, I got a lot of great work. – Yeah, I’m turning 48 in a few weeks. So, I mean, I was there for the beginning of this. And do you remember webmaster, like this term webmaster, the webmaster used to like,

you know, update the site and create, and the webmaster, which to me always brought weird images of like some guy like chained to a wall. – Dungeons and Dragons. – Right,

he’s the webmaster, but the webmaster used to do everything, right? And the webmaster usually came from a programming background, ’cause in 1995, you had to write HTML. And more or less that was it,

maybe Pearl or something on the backend in order to run the website. So a lot of those people who were the first generation webmasters were programmers, but then very quickly people realized this is a media and commerce engine and we can’t trust these guys who can’t match their clothes,

these men and women who can’t match their clothes, as traditional programmers, to be doing the visual design. It is a specialization and if you look at big companies,

they have product designers, product managers, user experience experts. We don’t have any of that and we’re in just as visual a medium because for some reason as an industry become a little bit deluded into the idea that one person,

one instructional designer can do it all and I think we’ve got a huge mismatch between how we’re training instructional designers, where their talents lie and what they’re doing day to day.

Which by the way, I think is one of these reasons that we’re seeing the rise of these kind of boot camps now where people are doing these short courses that are very targeted towards what instructional designers are actually doing.

Reserving judgment on whether or not they’re valuable, I think the reason that we’re seeing them is obvious, there’s a huge gap between what people are doing and how they’re being trained in formal environments.

That’s not everybody, there’s certainly schools that get it and are doing it right and there are certainly environments where there is a separation of roles in developing content where you may have,

the ID as a project manager and leader and your content developer and even a coder or programmer who may be doing the activity and you have people doing what they do best. – So before I usually ask my final question here about the future,

where do you stand on virtual reality and augmented reality and where it’s, for those who can’t see, Mark right now, he just gave me the nice hand swipe with the eye roll.

I love it. As my grandmother would say, let’s separate augmented reality and VR.

Augmented reality, I think is cool. I think there’s an obvious place for it right now in learning. I think we’re seeing it executed in ways that are really interesting.

And I think for the right type of content, I think AR works. VR, to me, I mean, I’m sorry,

meta, it all looks like second life. We did this 10 years ago. Every time I’m saying, okay, why don’t you sit in a virtual classroom and then watch a traditional video in the virtual classroom with avatars of all of our co -workers and friends.

I think it adds a lot of, first of all, adds a lot of unnecessary cognitive load that comes between the actual content you want someone to learn and the learner.

I think it adds weights. It’s kind of like when we have assessments that are overly time consuming, that just frustrate learners, like where we have a video game that’s not much fun and just takes a lot of time.

And if you don’t put things in the exact right place, it doesn’t work and it just frustrates people. That’s where I think we’re at with VR. I think the other thing is just a lot of people don’t like wearing the goggles. I mean,

I think a lot of people don’t work like wearing the goggles. I unfortunately do not think that VR and where we are now really, I don’t think we’re there yet.

There may be a time. The other thing is people don’t realize, I mean, for an industry that’s constantly complaining about budgets and resources, now you got to design everything in 3D.

That’s five, six times the work to 2D development. Now, are there extremely specialized cases where I think virtual reality works? Yes, but it’s been around for years.

It’s called simulation. If you look at training airline pilots and virtual cockpits and things like that, training heavy machine operators where it’s too expensive or too dangerous,

I think that’s the limited use case for VR right now. But just as an aspect of social learning, I actually think it works against what people are trying to do for the social aspects and removes them yet again from the real environment where you’re with other people.

COVID’s going to end. I kind of think we might be on this downward swing now. And when it does, people are going to want to be together again. Not everyone wants to hide in their home office.

Some people like to be among co -workers. They like the energy that brings, maybe not every day. But I think learning too is one of those things that can be done well socially. And I think when you do VR,

it’s just one more reminder that this is not a real environment. So I am not excited about VR, the implementations that I’ve seen. Again, it looks like we’re just retreading the same space.

I haven’t seen anything that really enhances our ability, except in those select circumstances to teach people new skills, change behavior, et cetera, the things that we do in instruction.

So before I ask my last question, recap for me. If I’m an instructor, a trainer, whatever you want to say, what’s the one takeaway from this conversation that you want to say?

Is it make sure that you’re telling stories with video, use video whenever possible? Or what would you put as your core piece of advice? Raise the bar. Understand that you’re in a competitive media landscape and that the content with 1990s style clip art is not going to engage the people who are coming into the workforce currently,

except if you do it by force. So raise the bar and create media that actually engages people, that makes people wanna watch. God forbid, makes learning fun and we’re gonna be more successful.

Whether that comes from using more video to engage people on that personal level with the instructor and the learner or through demonstrations that are engaging or through visual engagement,

the flip effect in PowerPoint isn’t gonna do it for people anymore. There’s too much media competition out there. There’s other things that are too engaging. Go talk to your 13 year olds who’s gonna play four hours of Call of Duty tonight and see what’s engaging them there and learn from it.

It’s all about engaging our learners. If we can engage them and stop blaming them for being unengaged, I think we’re gonna move further. The other thing I would say is this industry,

and one of the reasons I am so hard on the industry and really kind of not trying to be negative for negativity’s sake is I think this is the part of learning where there is so much potential.

We could be the ones who are pushing the envelope when it comes to learning, who are exploring new technologies, new things and really making it work and doing new and exciting things that later can kind of go downstream into areas like schools.

I think it can start with us and I think we have the brain power, we’ve got the people, we’ve got the technology, we’ve got the ingenuity, but we’re just kind of stuck and with huge potential,

but a lack of a kind of an excited forward momentum, I’m just disappointed. – Well then let’s find out what you’re excited about.

Like the last question I ask everybody in this podcast is look forward six months, 12 months, you know, what’s coming down the pipe that you’re psyched about or is there any, you know, it could be a shiny object to process anything like that that you’d love to get a shout out to.

I’m excited about cohort based learning, um, where people are put into kind of, you know, into an online course, but are doing with a cohort,

which adds a lot of the social aspects into a learning experience for people. Um, I’m excited about the increase in processing power that’s going to enable us to do new things with live video,

um, easily from our phones, from our desktop computers, from our Mac laptop that’ll let us immediately have a video studio. And a laptop that’s got every bit of as much power and ability with a little creativity as,

as the video studio at your local TV station. And I’m excited about most of all being together again with people in the industry, in person,

in conferences, in professional environments. And just being able to see my colleagues have these discussions in person and being able to do so with the hopes of continuing to move the industry forward.

Um, you know, it’s been for me, who’s a social animal a really long two years. And, you know, I’ve gone to the few events that have been there. Um, you know, and I’ve been vaccinated and,

you know, get careful and all that. But, you know, I think we’re approaching, it’s, it’s, it’s time. And I hope people who will feel like they’re healthy enough and are in a place where we’ll start populating the in person events again,

because I think we really need them. Even though we’re, we’re an online industry, I think we very much need to be together, um, to, to, to grow and move forward. If there’s anything that we’ve learned over the last 24 months,

it’s how important the human aspect of e -learning is. Yeah. Oh, couldn’t agree more. Mark Lassoff, you’re the CEO of Framework Tech Media. Um, you have been around forever.

Many, many people know you. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to speak with us. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for the invitation. This was a lot of fun. Thanks again for tuning in to today’s episode of the e -learning podcast.

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