100 Not Out

In life, if someone reaches their 100th birthday it’s significant achievement. In cricket, to score 100 runs and still be batting is also a significant achievement. So when David Anderson announced the E-Learning Heroes Challenge #100, another significant milestone had been reached.

The challenges started back in 2013 and from a modest beginning, with just a few people sharing their demos, the number of people participating has grown significantly over time (to date over 2,300 demos have been shared). When I first came across them, I must admit that I thought they were a bit silly. They weren’t whole courses and while the examples were good, there was no way that many of the designs shared would be appropriate in my workplace. Plus, I was busy and didn’t really have the time anyway.

So I dismissed them without even trying to complete one myself.

In 2014, David and Tom Kuhlmann presented at a workshop in Sydney and they kept talking about practicing in order to develop your skills and that these challenges were a good way to do that. So I thought I’d give it a try (Visual Storytelling with Photo Collages #27 was my first challenge) and I realised that I was missing the point and I soon discovered how the challenges can be beneficial to you and your career. After all, if you want to be great at something you need to make the time to practice no matter how busy you are.

To celebrate 100 challenges, here are 100 reasons to give them a go:

1. There’s a new one every week
2. Participation isn’t compulsory
3. Be inspired by other designers
4. You can always complete older challenges
5. Gives you a chance to practice
6. Connect with other community members
7. Demos only need to be a slide or two
8. Showcase your skills
9. Work free of the usual constraints
10. You can suggest ideas for future challenges
11. Develops your creativity
12. Builds community
13. Helps you run faster*
14. Helps make you more visible in the eLearning space
15. They’re fun!
16. You can use PowerPoint to create your demo
17. Helps to build your portfolio
18. Get ideas from others
19. Learn new skills
20. Experiment with new ideas
21. Cures baldness*
22. Spend as much time developing a demo as you want
23. Break old design habits
24. Develops resourcefulness
25. There’s no right or wrong way
26. Give something back to the community
27. You get to promote yourself
28. Makes world peace possible*
29. You can see how you’ve improved over time
30. Develop friendships
31. See how others interpret the same brief
32. Try out new techniques
33. You’re in control of the whole demo
34. Helps you to lose weight*
35. They can still be a work in progress
36. There’s heaps of topics to choose from
37. It’s free professional development
38. You can make others happy
39. Opens your mind to new possibilities
40. Improves your IQ*
41. There’s a recap each week of all entries submitted
42. They only focus on a small part of a course
43. You can test yourself against yourself
44. Develops a show your work habit
45. Proves that eLearning doesn’t have to be boring

*Individual results may vary.

Ok, I could only get to 45, so please help me get to 100 by adding to the list via the comments below.

A big thanks to David for starting the challenges, growing them into what they’ve become and for positively supporting everyone who submits a demo. Well done also to everyone who has been brave enough to share their work in public as many more have benefitted from you doing this and from seeing just how many talented folks work in this field.

To see a list of all the challenges, click here.

Image source: Shutterstock