Phew! Reflecting on #ASTD10

I generally leave conferences both exhilarated and exhausted, and sitting on the flight home from three days in Chicago at the ASTD International Conference and Expo, I realize this one was no exception.

(What I would give right now for a foot rub. Anyone?)

Three days of booth babe duty at our lovely Kineo stand with my colleagues Steve Lowenthal, Steve Rayson, Mark Harrison and Gabe Rosenberg.

There was a lot of energy this year, overall felt like a lot more bustle and excitement than at last year’s ICE. As Ron Burns of Proton Media said, “what recession?”

I had no time to attend any sessions, but did imbibe much learning and connections nonetheless:

Moodle

On the stand, we had lots of interest in our corporate Moodle LMS offering. I’ve asked before whether the corporate Moodle is at a tipping point, and the strong indicators are, yes. Yes, indeed.

Companies want the flexibility and freedom of an open source model. People are frustrated with ongoing licensing fees, lack of good customer support and responsiveness from traditional LMS vendors, and slow time to implement.

I heard a lot of, “I’ve been looking into Moodle and we’re really interested...tell me more.” (If you want to know more, be sure to read some of the case studies on the work we’ve been doing in the corporate Moodle space).

Hanging out with Mr. SCORM himself

If you’re in eLearning, you’ve heard of SCORM. But did you know there is actually a Mr. SCORM and that he is the fabulous Aaron Silvers of ADL? (@mrch0mp3rs)

What I like most about Aaron is that he can talk about these really technically confusing things like metadata and metaparadata and the semantic web and I sort of get it.

Aaron and I talked about his vision for the new SCORM. Expect to see some exciting changes to SCORM in the next bit.

Getting social

I didn’t have a lot of time to cruise the expo hall (man, there were a lot of vendors!), but I did make a point of checking out Bloomfire and their Collaborative Social Learning Community. Josh has a great vision of helping groups put out user generated content in an easily accessible way. Bloomfire (@Bloomfire) even has a built in screencasting and video recording tool, making it super easy for people to share informal bits with each other.

Talking leadership

I love connecting face to face with people I’ve known online and I really enjoyed meeting Terrence Wing. (@TerrenceWing) Terrence does leadership training and is very involved with ASTD (he was on the conference committee!) I like his approach to training, “We create leadership packages – tools and resources for managers based on situational needs.” (He made an analogy to Jack Bauer’s hostage packages on the show 24.)

Talking content

As always, it was great to connect with Thomas Stone (@ThomasStone) of ElementK and hear what they’re up to with off-the-shelf content and LMSs. He’s possibly the most sincere person in the eLearning biz. And I mean that most sincerely.

Meeting the legends

I’ve known Professor Karl Kapp for years, but it was a bit of a shock to meet him face to face after all this time. (I told him my head would explode if this were to happen and it did.)

Great to catch up on his book (Learning in 3D continues to be a top seller!) and he even brought around Ron Burns of Proton Media to share a what’s happening in the immersive learning space.

Be sure to check out Karl and Ron's video tour of ASTD!

Top tips

Our own Steve Rayson was on the prowl with his flip cam, recording eLearning top tips from the likes of Mark Harrison of Kineo, Tom Kuhlmann of Articulate, Karl Kapp, Allen Partridge of Adobe, Ethan Edwards of Allen Interactive, and yours truly. Check out all the new additions to the Kineo TV channel.

Here’s a few to get you started:

All in all, a great show! Thanks to all of you who stopped by our booth and look forward to seeing you next year!

Kineo e-Learning Development Survey

We have already gotten over 100 responses to our survey. Take a few minutes to answer a few questions about e-learning development at your organization and you'll get a free Articulate skin!

We'll be analyzing your responses over the coming weeks and let you know what trends and patterns we find.

Will the Real eLearning Industry Please Stand Up?

When we talk about the “industry”, we (and by “we”,  I of course mean those of us in the industry) often refer to it as if it’s this monolithic thing that you can touch. 

The Industry.

Ummm.  Yeah.

So.  What is the eLearning Industry?

Is it the vendors? --  The LMS companies, the custom content developers, the off-the-shelf content creators.

Is it the tools we use to create eLearning?

Is it the companies and people who create those tools? – Adobe, Articulate, Microsoft, etc.

Is it the pundits and bloggers? – the names we know and associate with eLearning – Jay Cross, Ellen Wagner, Tony Karrer, Brent Schlenker, [insert your  name here].

Is it the associations?  -- the eLearning Guild and ASTD.

Is it the research organizations that produce the industry reports?

Is it the companies that give out the awards?

Is it the companies who use eLearning to train their employees?

Is it the Learning & Development/Training departments within all of those companies?

Is it the little companies who don’t even have training departments but still have a lot of training needs?

Is it the schools who use eLearning to teach their students?

Is it the teachers at those schools?

Is it the non-profits who create eLearning for their members?

Is it the institutions that issue the certificates and degrees in ID and whatnot?

Is it the professors who teach at those institutions?  The students who come out of them?

[What did I miss?] 

The point is – and I don’t really know what the point is – the point is, that’s a whole heck of a lot of perspectives. 

The eLearning Industry.

***********

This post  and a few others have been itching to be written for a couple of weeks now.  Since I had the opportunity for a nice schmooze fest after the eLearning Guild ID Symposium in Boston. 

I didn’t attend the sessions, but I DID get to eat a nice Arctic Char at Jasper White’s Summer Shack with the likes of Ellen Wagner, Brent Schlenker, Steve Martin and Kay Wood. 

And then Dave Ferguson incited me further.  He was going to talk about Canada in reference to this rant.  C’mon, Dave.  I dare you.

Photo credit:  Liverpool Street station crowd blur by victoriapeckham

Learning About eLearning: Browse My Stuff

Tony Karrer has just rebranded and launched eLearning Learning. It's kind of like Technorati, but community focused around the singular topic of eLearning.

I've added a widget to my blog's sidebar that lets you browse my stuff (it does the tagging for me, so I don't have to). If you click on a topic you'll go to the hub, where you can access posts by others on the same topic.

Let me (and Tony) know what you think!

Making Six Sigma Training Fun

OK. Maybe it's not possible to make Six Sigma eLearning fun. But I've tried.

And to be honest, it wasn't quite Six Sigma, but close.

This manufacturing process training course was originally delivered as a four hour plus death-by-PowerPoint classroom session (if you could see the original PPT source content, you'd begin glazing over within a few slides).

I went out on a few limbs here and tried to design something different. Within certain parameters as defined by the client (of course).

Here's some of what I tried to incorporate in order to (we hope) create an engaging experience:

Less is More. Cut, cut, cut.

Of course, SMES pushed back on this approach during story board review.

But when I hear someone telling me that this is the spot in the classroom session when the users start drooling and staring out the window, don't you think that's a good place to simplify?

Storyline. I created characters that the learner follows throughout the course. "Meet Pete and his team." Learn from this manufacturing group and how they applied these principles to their work place.

And we made it fun. Rubber Ducks! Everyone loves rubber ducks, right? Applying concepts to a fun, but real-world scenario to ensure better knowledge transfer and retention.

Got some pushback on this one, again from the SMEs. "Is it too juvenile?"

When reviewing the alpha version of the course, I made sure to have their team have actual end-users take the course and see what their responses were.

End-users thought it was fun. SMEs felt a bit threatened by this fun take on their sacred content. The juries still out.

Games! We created three or four mini-games scattered throughout the course to test concepts. Of course, we used rubber ducks whenever possible to create some fun graphics and exercises. For design inspiration, I took a few pages out of Karl Kapp's book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.

Using Audio. I tried to make more effective use of audio. Avoided reading text heavy pages word-for-word. But I got pushback. "Unless there's audio on every page, our user's will think it's broken..."

Better Assessment Questions. I wrote scenario based questions that were about context and concepts -- not rote memorization skills.

Navigation. I tried, but couldn't convince my client to go with open navigation. We had to go with lockouts, meaning the learner must go through the topics in order and can't advance to the next topic until the previous topic has been completed. Alas.

Overall Feedback. So far, the client likes it, but there's some uncertainty. "This is unlike anything we've done before." Which can be a good thing and a bad thing, right?

Do you think I went too far with the rubber duck motif? Did I threaten a sacred cow?

Photo Credits:

• So many ducks...Ducking hell. by Gaetan Lee
• Cut my breath by batega
• Devil Duck by wonderferret

E-Learning Project Reality: Guerrilla Instructional Design

I'll define it in one word: grueling.

Since November, I have been working on a big project for a brand-name institution: 29 self-paced eLearning courses.

Mostly software training, with bits of process and product information thrown in for good measure.

Courses range from 15-30 minutes each and are geared towards my client's external clients. No assessments or formal testing. Lots of software interactivity.

Most of these courses already exist as online, instructor-led experiences. I've got the PowerPoints and Word docs to prove it.

Relentless schedule. The lifecycle of an ideal course, on paper, is about 40 days. That's from initial content kickoff to final live courses.

It goes a little something like this:

Content Gathering

The first step is the contact kick off meeting. This includes myself, the instructional designers at the client company who manage things on their end, and any subject matter experts that they can assemble for the meeting.

We go through any existing classroom notes. We talk about the performance objectives. We review the content at a high level.

Generally, within a couple of days of the kickoff, I have a second meeting with the SME or course trainer. If possible, I sit in on a live training session. Schedules don't always work out, so more often this is a one-on-one tour of the software and the content notes with the trainer. Here we attempt to get into all the detail

Thankfully, I type really fast, so I've got a lot of good material to work with when I get to the next stage.

Story Boarding

If the stars are aligned, I immediately begin story boarding. Depending on the length and complexity of the course, this takes anywhere from 1 day to 5 days. Of course, this varies greatly depending upon how accessible the subject matter expert are to me.

Client Review

This is the single longest phase of this project.

Each course goes through an extensive review process on the client side, starting with the client's ID team and their SME team. The document is sent out to everyone, then the whole team gathers in a conference call and walks through the story board together.

Ideally, the team has reviewed the document beforehand and has all of their comments, but more often than not, this is their first look at it. I capture all of their comments, make revisions, and send out an updated version.

The client ID team wrangles the SMEs and gets more comments until we have a SME approved script.

Next, the story board goes to the client's editing department for copy editing. Have we dotted the right letters? Have we adhered to corporate guidelines?

From there, onward for a legal review to make sure all the trademarks are in the correct places and no false promises are being made.

This is where things get delayed and backed up: the SMEs and the legal department.

Development

Once we have a final, legally approved document we can begin building the course.

The client takes all the screen captures because we can't have access to the software.

I prep the script and send it off for audio production (we've been working with an excellent independent guy with his own studio who can churn this stuff out!)

My development team builds the sucker. We've got this down to a lean and mean 5-7 days, which includes internal QA. We use a fairly templated approach, so at this point there aren't many bugs to discover.

Course Review

We post the course for the client team to review. Usually, this is another online walkthrough. Sometimes the SMEs have looked at it beforehand and have their comments all lined up, sometimes this is their first look at the thing. You never know.

We revise and fix. Sometimes have to record new audio. Occasionally have had to rewrite big chunks and send a story board back to editing and eReview because the right SMEs weren't initially included in the review cycle...or someone just didn't get that they really needed to review the story board...or....or. But that hasn't happened too many times.

Course Goes Live

We post the final course. The client IT team downloads all the files and puts it on their servers and the thing is live.

Phew.

Instructional Design: When the Schedule Dictates What You Can Actually Do

So how much time do you think we have here for real creative instructional design? Not much.

This is the harsh reality of eLearning in the trenches. When great just can't get in the way of good enough.

This is what I've started calling guerilla instructional design. Get in and out as fast as you can with the fewest casualties.

But the client is delighted with what we've been producing. Initial feedback from actual end-users has been really positive. Something's working here.

Is That A Light At The End of The Tunnel?

• This morning I sent off a first draft of story board #22.
• About six courses have actually gone live.
• Another four courses have been built and are in revision purgatory.
• Another ten plus story boards have been written and are somewhere in the vast client review process.

The great irony is that the projected due date for the final course is May 21st, which also happens to be the due date of the real baby that is currently kicking around inside of me.

My client hopes I go late.

Photo credits:

• Exhausted by waffler
• Lasso by willac
• Guerrilla by bartleby78
• Newborn baby by platinumblondelife5

Messy Learning OK. Messy Training Not OK.

I've been thinking about messes a lot the past few days. I've got small kids and my house is pretty messy. It turns out that life in general is pretty messy. And now it turns out that learning is messy, too.

Janet Clarey was reporting back from the Brandon Hall Innovations in Learning Conference, including experiments with un-workshops when things don't go as you planned.

She live-blogged Stephen Downes' keynote and remarked, "This is messy learning in progress and it’s good."

Slide 22 of Stephen Downes' presentation includes a diagram: Messy vs. Neat.

So I've been thinking about messes and why messy learning makes people so uncomfortable. Especially the corporate types.

Learning is messy because we get easily distracted by shiny objects -- or rather, inspired to shoot off in different directions. Because self-directed learning doesn't always have a clear or specific performance objective.

Maybe your goal is to learn how to make a bowl on a pottery wheel, but then you end up making a real cool sculpture. Or maybe you want to learn about the life of the author of that great novel, and then end up reading about Puccini. By accident. It happens. Or maybe you actually want to learn how to do your job better.

I start a book, but I don't finish it. I start researching one topic online, but start diving down a completely different path within a matter of a few clicks. Conversations can wander.

Let's say, to go out on a limb here, that people are more-or-less comfortable with the notion that LEARNING is messy. But I don't think folks are comfortable with the notion that TEACHING or TRAINING can or should be messy.

That goes against about 800 grains.

And messy e-Learning? Forget about it. e-Learning should be all neat and tied up in a nice wrapper with a Next button that moves you through a content checklist and a great assessment at the end.

A PLE can be messy. It's personal, after all. And people are messy. Should training be messy?

This may be why the concept of informal learning is such a hard sell. Formal training, is by definition, not messy. It's formal. It's neat. It's got structure and objectives. You can measure it. It's really hard to measure a mess.

As Janet wrote in the comments to her own post, attendees were saying of the un-conference format that "structure" and "objectives" were needed.

Is a messy training program just one in which the presenter is clearly not organized? The agenda not fully thought out?

What makes for messy training/teaching?

• The training doesn't teach what the participants want or need (failure to consult with actual learners while designing the program).
• The instructor doesn't really know the topic and is just completely winging it.
• Things go wrong (software fails, power goes out).
• (A whole bunch of other things, right?)
  

As Michael Allen says in Michael Allen's Guide to e-Learning, "you can teach someone, but you can't learn someone" (to echo something Mark Oehlert recently ranted about).

I admit that this post is a bit messy. But I'm learning.

Photo Credit: Audrey Johnson from stock.xchng.

There is an eLearningPulse!

The e-Learning industry is alive and well.

I jumped the gun a few weeks ago and unveiled the new one-stop shop for all things e-Learning (with or without the hyphen or the capital L -- you decide).

But now it's official: there is an eLearning Pulse.

eLearningPulse is "Your daily source for all things eLearning". This site provides free resources to the eLearning development community, including news, discussion forums, job postings, and more.

Thanks to Ben Edwards of Redbird Software and B.J. Schone of eLearning Weekly for putting this together.

Keeping Your Fingers on the eLearningPulse

Thanks to Google Alerts, I stumbled across another everything-eLearning feed aggregator: eLearningPulse.

eLearningPulse is "Your daily source for all things eLearning". This site provides free resources to the eLearning development community, including news, discussion forums, job postings, and more.

The site was created by Ben Edwards of Redbird Software and B.J. Schone of eLearning Weekly fame.

While the blog listing is not yet as extensive as the listing over at trainingblogs, I think the jobs section looks great.

Check it out.

Kineo Interview with Yours Truly

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of talking with Stephen Walsh of Kineo. I met the Kineo guys back at the April e-Learning Guild Event here in Boston and we've stayed in touch since.

Stephen and I talked about everything from rapid e-Learning, SecondLife and FaceBook, to the current exploding universe of e-Learning (what Gary Woodill referred to in yesterday's Emerging e-Learning Technologies presentation as the "hype cycle"). I feel honored to be included among such e-Learning notables as Jay Cross and Clive Shepherd who have also been interviewed by Kineo. Fancy company!

Because it was a Skype call, Stephen recorded it and you all can listen here.

Enjoy!

Update: I realized an embarrassing typo in my headline. I had written "Your's Truly" when it should be "Yours Truly".

Emerging Technologies in e-Learning

I sat in on a lunchtime WebEx presentation with Gary Woodill -- Director, Research and Analysis, Brandon Hall Research. The topic: Emerging Technologies in e-Learning. (You can buy each of the three reports in this series for a mere $495.)

About Gary: Classroom teacher in the early 70's. 1984 doctorate in applied psychology. Developed over 60 e-learning programs. Lives in Ontario, Canada. Started with Brandon Hall in November.

"Emerging" = kinds of e-learning that are just starting to show up -- in labs, new company offerings. A big explosion in the last 2 years.

In the 90's there were one or two ways to do e-Learning: CDRoms and then the web. Pages and pictures and some sound and we turned the pages and took a test. This was "e-Learning 1.0".

Gary has worked on three "Emerging e-Learning" reports

• Emerging E-Learning Technologies: Have looked at 52 emerging technologies. Can look at the TOC. (This was the focus of today's talk).
  
• Emerging e-Learning Content: 45 different content formats
• Emerging e-Learning Services: 24 different services

e-Learning Timeline:

• 1920s teaching machines, radio, filmstrips. It's been around for a long time. Anytime a new thing comes out it's described as "revolutionary" - it's going to change the way we do things.
• Even the pencil sharpener was considered revolutionary -- fear that we'd lose the ability to sharpen a pencil.
• 1980s CD ROMS. Then the world wide web.

We've gone through one generation of online learning. Now we're into web 2.0 -- new technologies that weren't there 10 years ago.

e-Learning = teaching and learning through electronic methods. (Jay Cross in 1998) Not just self-directed learning, not just page turners.

Understanding e-Learning: The Restaurant Analogy

Restaurant
Dining Room + ordering service + food prep + delivery service = Dining Experience

Learning and environment technologies + requirements gathering + preparation of learning activities + delivery of learning activities = Learning Experience

Can go to a big restaurant and have lousy food -- similar gap with online learning. Instructional designers can take the tools and create a good learning experience or not.

Self Serve
Can also pick up packaged food -- self-service from a vending machine, etc.

Self-direct learning experience == a standard course prepared and available on a web site. Just like a vending machine, you do it by yourself.

Fast Food
Food prepared in small components -- small chunks cooked and rapid delivery.
Learning objects: standard small chunks put together and done in a rapid e-learning experience.

What if a whole new way of delivering high quality meals is developed? Hilcona out of Lichtenstein -- new frozen food tech.

Disruptive technology:

• Restaurants vs. Frozen Foods
• Movie Theaters vs. Blockbuster
• Wired Phones vs. Cell phones
• F2F Training vs. Online Training

A lot of current online training is not disruptive, still incremental.

Incremental vs. Disruptive Innovation.

Incremental:

Some forms of online training support current ways of doing things

• Virtual classrooms, presentation software, authoring tools, assessment tools, LMS.
• Doesn't change the basic model of an expert/teacher delivering to a group of learners. Requires some changes, but not highly disruptive.

Disruptive:
What can we do with this new tech that we couldn't do before? Disruptive technologies radically change how we do things.

• Global Networking (finding any info at any time from all over the world)
• Artificial Intelligence (affective computing, computer can personalize based on who you are)
• Peer to Peer Technologies (instead of teacher being in charge -- people are learning from each other. This is how a lot of young people work today. They often don't take courses unless required/certification. I have a problem, where is the answer? Web? Book? Person in next cubical?)
  
• Collaboration Software
  
• Learner generated content (instead of teacher preparing things, learners put things online and edit together. Sometimes it's not even consciously done -- they might put up photos and tag them -- don't mean to generate content for others, but they do)
  
• Wearable computing (being a cyborg and having implants is the stuff of sci fi -- but it's not that far away)

"We look at the future through rear-view mirrors." (Marshall McLuhan) -- I'm not trying to be a smarty-pants here, but I looked this up and Gary was close: "We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future."


Wireless vs. Horseless
Wireless will go the same route as the horseless carriage. We won't be talking about wires in a few years.

How you teach will depend on who you are teaching.

Technology Innovation Cycles:

Some books about technology innovation if you want more on this --

• James Utterback, Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation
• Clayton Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma (If you're doing well now, be careful because a new tech is being developed to disrupt your business.)
• Geoffrey Moore, Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution

Innovation Cycles look like this:

• Pioneering efforts to solve a problem
• Breakthrough developments
• Skepticism/new efforts by established companies
• New designs -- explosion of forms -- this is where we're now with e-learning
• Dominant design emerges
• Consolidation, mergers, companies disappear (talked about the e-Learning Hype Cycle -- with the bust in 2000/2000 -- now we've got the same hype with web 2.0 -- we'll see a similar boom & bust cycle).
• Incremental changes

There are always reactions to change and resistance: Western Union -- "the phone has too many shortcomings..."; AT&T gave back computer networking after a 6 month trial....

Established Product vs. Disruptive Change
Companies get worried and make "strategic changes" in their product -- add a new feature -- this is what's happened with established e-learning companies. But they're not looking at the disruptive changes.

The bell curve is made up of these areas:

1. Developing Technologies
2. Ascending Technologies
3. Peaking Technologies
4. Maturing Technologies
5. Declining Technologies

(don't buy maturing and declining tech; problems with developing technologies -- important to understand where particular technologies are on this curve.)

List of 52 Emerging eLearning technologies: I just typed down some of these, you'll have to view the slide deck for a full list....

• Animation Tools
• Avatars
• Blogs
• Clickers
• Gaming Tools
• E-Portfolios
• Mobil Learning
• Personal Learning Environments
• Personalization
• Rapid e-Learning
• Semantic Web
• Simulation Tools
• Social Bookmarking
• Social Networking Tools
• VoIP and Telephony
• Wikis
• Wearable
• Peer to Peer
• Authoring Tools
• Haptics (the ability to touch things and get a sense of force feedback. Can put a glove on and you think you're feeling something...)
• Learning Objects and Repositories
• Location-based Technologies
• Mashups (came from hiphop -- artists would take samples and pieces and put them together into one creative work. On the web = hybrid -- take content from multiple sites and put them into one. example: Google Earth + local pizza parlors + your personal photographs on top of that. Instead of building website on a server, can build a website that pulls from multiple. Uses SOAP -- simple object a protocol...)
• Simulation Tools

General Trends:

• Move from client-server to service oriented architectures (mashups) -- changes power relations and info control and where things can come from. Don't need to do it yourself -- can pull free info and put it into your site and add things to it.
• Move from page metaphor. "Browserless web" -- ala Google Earth -- full networked application -- like CD ROMs days -- direct application.
• Learner in more control -- push vs. pull
• Complex multi-channel learning -- different "personalized" mix for reach learner (Trails study done at University of London -- move around the web you leave a trail as to where you went....)
• From passive receiving interactive activities and collaboration

Mashups, SOA, and Services: Welcome to Web Hybrid Applications (from the e-Learning Guild)

Physical Technologies vs. Social Technologies:

• Products change first, followed by processes
• Classrooms as technologies
• Now we have physical technologies and social tech is trying to keep up.
• People don't like to change, so skepticism is that resistance.

INCREMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES
Examples

Agents: codebaby -- incremental -- doesn't change the model of someone telling you something. It's a talking head, a virtual agent. If your skeptical -- it's no different than standing in front of a classroom. This has been useful with literacy. Tire company -- used virtual agent to deliver online without a lot of reading.

Audio/Video Pulseplanet 2 minutes sound portraits of the planet earth.

Digital Ink: www.cs.swan.ac.uk/calculators -- can write on a whiteboard with your finger. As he writes the equations, the whiteboard solves them.

Tours & Virtual Field Trips -- construct a tour online with John Udell using Google maps of Keene, NH. This was an example of a mashup.

Visualizations

DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGIES
Examples

Collaboration Tools: wikipedia, flickr, digg

Mashups: http://www.panoramio.com

Motion Capture: http://ligwww.epfl.ch/~molet/mag_mocap.html

Immersive Environments/Virtual Reality: secondlife (check out Brandon Hall's island on Education Island)

Wearable Computing:
Smart Underwear

Get a hug from thousands of miles away from a cell phone:
Gizmodo Hug Shirt

Summary:
These disruptive tech will change radically how we do things.

New generation of e-Learning is more disruptive. Mix of tech, applications and services.

Change is constant.

Look at where you are at on the innovation curve.


Questions:

Learning Objects: I was always skeptical of learning objects. People don't learn in chunks. It came from software objects -- works for programming code, but doesn't work for people. They may be a starting point, but they are generally not reusable because people want to change them. It's a descending technology.

If you're at the beginning of e-Learning -- Brandon Hall has an e-Learning 101 publication.

What you've heard today is based on the reports we've done. In those three reports, over 5,000 links to these technologies.

The new disruptive technologies are about collaboration. How you get people together. These are the ascending technologies. In the new few years, we'll see more of these and they will work better.

What tech are in a decline?

• LMS have matured -- there's a generation of them that in decline. Proprietary LMS are in a decline. Any LMS needs to have open-standards (not just open source) so you can take your content to another source. LCMS is in decline -- because the learning object model doesn't really work.
• Service-oriented architecture will replace that learning object.

My thoughts:

Gary's a good speaker. Over 300 people were on the call. Some issues with WebEx. There were no huge lightening bolts for me, but it was interesting.

Hug shirt? Hmmmm....

The browserless web -- that's new to me.

No surprise to see that rapid e-Learning is in the list of ascending technologies.

I can't imagine life without a pencil sharpener and would probably hurt myself severely if I tried to sharpen a pencil by hand. Think about all the old skills we've lost that we don't even think about. What skills will the next generation not even miss?

What dominant designs will emerge as we get through this next phase in the industry? I think rapid e-Learning will be a big one.

I was a victim of the e-Learning Hype Cycle of 2000/2001. The CD ROM based training company I worked at did not successfully make the leap to the Internet. Who will be the victims this time around?

Adobe/Bersin Overview of the eLearning Industry

I listened in this afternoon to the Adobe seminar: Overview of the eLearning Industry. Nothing shocking, but some interesting tidbits. My notes here....

------------------------
Overview of the eLearning Industry

The evolving state of the industry

Host: Ellen Wagner, Adobe
Guest Speaker: Chris Howard, Principal Analyst at Bersin Associates (research and advisory firm in corporate training and performance management)

Research done by Bersin in the last several months. Collaborated with Adobe to identify trends in elearning industry re: content creation and trends in development.

This session will provide big picture of trends in the industry.

1. Study Methodology: Studied Adobe customer base -- how using the product and how they might like to be using it.
2. E-learning Market Overview
3. Key findings
4. Industry Data

Corporate Training Market is BIG -- almost $56 billion in the U.S.
Technology = $1 billion of this total

Corporate training trends:

• blended learning (can't do it all online)
• on-demand (smaller chunks)
• rapid tools (get training out quickly)
• shared services (orgs setting up centrally managed training tech groups)
• talent management (hiring, development, performance management, succession planning)
• technology adoption (LMS is maturing in large companies -- 80% of large companies have at least 1 LMS)
• shifting of spending (more $ on outsourcing and technology)

E-Learning Segment Definitions

• Off-the-shelf content
• Custom content
• Services
• Technology

Key Finding #1: Informal content is growing.

• Provide support for SME online, resources, rapid e-learning chunks. Can take a lot of resources, but even small companies can do this with right expertise.
• 72% of training content is used informally. This is expected to increase.
• Podcasting, rapid e-learning, short videos, mobile delivery

Content Maturity Model

• Started with Traditional Content -- modeled after instructor led. Content is hand-crafted (Dreamweaver, Flash)
  
• Rapid
• Collaborative (development efficiency)
• Enterprise (share info across depts)
• On-demand -- focus is on target audience -- better access to content.

Most orgs have a blend of these models.

Example: On-Demand architecture
create content in smaller chunks
leverage it across delivery formats
chats, PDF, etc.
This doesn't have to be a big investment

Key Finding #2: The Rise in ASP Models ("externally hosted" or "software as a service" -- SAAS)

• taking desktop metaphor and putting into a browser
• trend towards companies giving other people the headaches of dealing with the backend solutions
• great for small organizations
• Saba, Learn.com, Adobe Connect, Articulate, etc.
• Virtual Classroom is the most popular application of ASP solutions
• Adobe looking at/is partnering with Verizon and Qualcomm
  

Key Finding #3: Mobile Content starting to take off (still a niche)

• Ipods, blackberry, cell phone.
• Huge market
• Experimentation going on in this area
• People starting to use it and it's going to get bigger (although it won't replace other media)
• Good for specific applications: folks in the field, product training, reference material to support a course, sales
  
• Assessment uses in mobile technology (drill and practice)
• In the participant poll, 1 person said "we are now using mobile devices"; 39% said "we are researching mobile"; 24% "no interest in mobile"; the rest not sure...

Key Finding #4: Gaming has potential, but growth likely slow

• Expense prevents people from using them
• "Games" has negative connotation in corporate environment
• Serious gaming -- still not quite the best game
• Chris Howard calls them "advanced simulations"
• Trend towards collaborative gaming platforms (SecondLife) -- simulate a real life environment
• Emergence of gaming engines that make building games easier -- this is starting to emerge
• Leadership & Management Training
• Rapid response applications (agencies that provide emergency help to give people a feel for emergency situatiosn)
• Military
• IBM
• Will become easier to build -- and collaborative aspect will make them attractive
• Forterra Systems, Linden Labs, Visual Purple, Proton Media)

Key Finding #5: Open Source Tools

• 33% of responders said they are currently using Open Source tools (software available for free and you can get the underlying code and reprogram yourself)
  
• Typically used in conjunction with other tools
• People looking for extensibility and flexibility
• Typically used for advanced users -- because the tools may need to be debugged
• Most popular ones were audio (Audicity) and video tools. Investment in use of tools is low, so if it doesn't work, you're ok. Whereas if higher risk (development of entire course), people more likely to use non-open source tools.
  

Industry Data

• Adobe and Microsoft most widely used for course development tools
  
• Online Meetings (20% don't use, 28% WebEx; 19% LiveMeeting, Adobe Connect (6.5%)
• Trend of these companies partnering with LMS systems (e.g., Saba and Centra)
• WebEx is partnering with an LMS provider as will Adobe
• http://www.adobe.com/resources/elearning/lms_integration.html
  

Rapid Development Trend

• How do you expect the % of informal usage to change over 2 years?" 52% of respondants said there will be an increase.
• Informal content development where info is developed and accessed quickly -- not in context of formal training
• Compliance -- get user to read something and take a basic assessment -- capture info and show that they "learned" it
• About half of this content is being configured to fit in with an LMS (if your company has an LMS, then generally yes). Adobe, Articulate building little back-end server technologies that enable you to build straightforward courses, install in LMS and track results.
• People have an expectation to produce content more quickly -- this drives productivity.
• Rapid content may get put out there quickly, then later it gets folded back into a more traditionally designed program.
• This may be a way of getting SMEs more involved in initial content creation -- then professional content developers (IDs) can take it to the next step.
• A lot of these rapid tools ARE being used by folks without training backgrounds. They may consider it more "information transfer" than formal training.
• Content Development/Training dept builds templates -- then gives to SMEs -- so that SME can think about key points, objectives, assessment questions -- then template given back to ISDs to organize it better, rephrase it.

Games/Blogs/Wikis

• Lots of folks saying they have no plans to use these (about 50%)
• The forward-thinking folks are going to use these tools
• Get users in touch with SMEs and each other -- share info with each other.
• Have someone to monitor this type of content to make sure it's appropriate.
• Chris Howard: wants people to rethink this and see the real potential in wikis and blogs -- training managers -- if you don't do this as the training manager, it will happen on its own and bypass you. This may be good or bad. Better off if we can incorporate training material into the wikis and blogs.
  
• Ellen: Training community needs to get on the bus or out of the way regarding blogs and wikis.

LMS vs. LCMS

• LMS -- manage training transactions and student date
• LCMS more with content creating (moving more to on-demand)
  
• Training Platform/Suite -- brings these together. typically ASP.

To create good e-learning:
1) Know your audience. How are they learning now? How will the applications be used?
2) Understand the business problem that you're trying to solve. Does it need to be solved quickly?
3) Don't let the technology get in the way of what you're trying to do.

This program will be available through the Adobe archive at Adobe.com

Can we throw away e-Learning?

Check out this guest post by Ryan Healy just in at the Brazen Careerist's blog: "Twentysomething: Throw away e-Learning".

Here's one end-user's take on e-Learning as a boring waste of time; a choice made by companies who really don't value their employees. Says Healy, "Without discussion or one-on-one teaching e-learning is cheap, ineffective and gives the impression that a company does not care enough to invest time or money into training."

Here's what Healy says would work better:

If an e-learning tool can somehow be coupled with actual face-to-face learning
or mentoring then I am all for it. Just don’t use it as a replacement for real
teaching. I crave the personal connections that come with one-on-one or
classroom teaching, even if the rest of my life is spent online.

So. The reality of poor design. A challenge to do better. A call for more blended solutions. Will including more games do the trick? Should we just return to the classroom? Can we throw away e-Learning? I think we're in way too deep for that to happen....the benefits are there, the potential for good design and good solutions is there....

What do you think?

UPDATE: Be sure to read the comments. Some very interesting perspectives from actual e-Learning users.

UPDATE #2: Fixed the link! (Note to self - QA my own work before publishing....) Thanks, Dan.

Rubric for Online Instruction Chico State

This morning, I stumbled across this Rubric for Online Instruction from Chico State University.

For those of us not from academic backgrounds, rubric might be a new term. I first heard of them when my husband was applying for k-12 teaching positions. At the time, it just seemed like a way to take all of the joy out of teaching. I was personally introduced to rubrics last semester in a faculty meeting at the school where I have been teaching.

A rubric is a statement describing the quality of the learning outcome, or rather a way to evaluate the effectives of the teaching experience and the student's comprehension or mastery. For example, if you are teaching an anatomy lesson, the assessment rubric for the student at the end of the lesson might be 1) Excellent: the student can palpate the named structures without assistance; 2) Good: the student can palpate the named structures while referring to the textbook; 3) Basic: the student can palpate the structure with guidance from the instructor.

Hadn't thought about applying rubrics to e-Learning programs (mostly because my entire body bristles at the thought of such structure!) -- but I do see the value. The Chico State rubric provides a way to assess the quality of the program; essentially a checklist to evaluate your program.

Does anyone have any experience with rubrics?

eLearning Guild Event Take Home Point #1

Last Thursday night after the eLearning Guild event, I was fortunate to have dinner with a small group of eLearning professionals -- a diverse group coming at the industry from lots of different angles. The group included Andy Snider (Snider Associates), Bjorn Billhardt (Enspire Learning), Pete LeDoux (GeoLearning), Doug Foster (D Foster Associates), Adam Girard (Bank of America) and myself.

Andy asked, "So, what's the next big thing in e-Learning?" Some ideas were tossed about: integration, personal learning, 3D, web 2.0, social networks. But the fact is, there wasn't One Big Thing that stood out to all of us. I guess, because there just isn't One Big Thing.

As I wandered around the conference, this is what stood out to me: there is room for everything in this big e-Learning world in which we live.

• I had lunch one day next to a director of training at a big oil refining company. I asked him if he was making use of web 2.0 tools. "My guys just want the information. They want to take the course and that's it." This is his bottom up.
• In the "Appropriate Use of New Technologies" session with Keith Resseau, a large percentage of the audience had never used blogs or wikis. I sat next to a training director for a regional drugstore chain. As the session ended she said, "Wow -- this could really work for some of my folks." Lightbulb.
• Ray Simms and I had a conversation about sales training. A current sales person just asks the tech guy when she needs to gear up for a new product offering. Did she see a problem with that? No. That's what works for her. She doesn't have a training problem. So is e-Learning the solution?
• I spoke with trainers at a large discount retail store. They struggle with huge turnover and one lousy computer in the back office. Top down dictates they move to e-Learning. How does that work? And certainly blogs and wikis and PLEs are not the tools for this sector of the audience. Please.
• Rapid e-Learning tools are being adopted by companies, but they still want someone else to produce content for them. Even when you make these time-saving tools, people still want custom content; they still don't want to bother.

Tools. Custom Courses. Templates. Wikis, Blogs and all things Web 2.0. PLEs. Comics. Slick graphics. Video. Branching Scenarios. 3D. Games/Immersive Learning Simulations. Rapid e-Learning. Slow cooked e-Learning. Instructor-led. Informal. Formal. Bottom up. Top down.

It's all converging. There are still silos.

There is room for all of us.

Clive Shepherd said this all much more eloquently and intelligently than I have in his post And End to Polarised Argument.

More on PowerPoint and Instructional Design

Continuing the PowerPoint conversation begun yesterday here and picked up by Clive on Learning: Don't blame PowerPoint...and Quintus Joubert PowerPoint vs. Interactive Learning...
-------------

Here's another article on PowerPoint, found via Donald Clark at Big Dog, Little Dog: Bite the Bullet: Improving Your Presentation Strategies.

Some design tidbits:

Another colleague, Cliff Atkinson, who wrote Beyond Bullet Points, suggests taking most of your bullets off the slides entirely. Instead, put them into your Notes. You can use the notes for your own preparation, but by leaving just images on the slides you can deliver a polished talk that has a lot more impact; you won't be reading the
bullets (guaranteed Death by PowerPoint) and neither will the audience (who can
become distracted).

And this:

Few stage plays begin with all the actors on stage. For the same reason, you shouldn't project a complicated slide or diagram as one complete unit. Besides
the actors' egos and their need for an entrance, the fact is that no one can absorb a complex idea all at once. Introducing your important ideas sequentially lets them be absorbed more naturally. You can use the animation features of your presentation program to build your ideas a step at a time. Also, when you show a complex slide, the audience is distracted by trying to figure it out as you discuss it, so give it to them in stages as you talk about each concept.

Ho hum. This is all basic ID stuff, I suppose.

I also stumbled on this interview by Karl Kapp with Jane Bozarth over at e-Learning guru.com that had some good nuggets on basic instructional design and using low cost tools (like PowerPoint) to build effective e-Learning.

I've always pooh-poohed PowerPoint as an e-Learning tool...but it's all in how you look at, I suppose. And the truth is that so many of these so-called great e-Learning authoring tools out there these days just provide a developer with basic PowerPoint functionality plus a SCORM wrapper. Whoopeee.

But, as Clive says, we shouldn't blame PowerPoint -- nor should we blame all the authoring tools. It's the instructional design you lay on top of these tools that matters...

BTW -- If you haven't already, be sure to check out the demo lite version that's available for Clive Shepherd's course "Ten Ways to Avoid Death by PowerPoint". Excellent use of storytelling to make a point!

Off-the-Shelf Content: Help!

I have some questions that I am hoping someone can answer for me...or at least point me in the right direction. I've been trolling and coming up empty....It's kind of an e-Learning 101 question, but not in my realm. I've always been about custom content.

So -- how does off-the-shelf content work? Say, if you're purchasing a course library from SkillSoft or some other vendor:

• If a client has their own LMS, do they purchase the courses outright and host them on their own servers? If so, is the vendor able to track usage or do they just sell the content for a flat fee based on LMS seat size?
• Or do clients purchase courses that can be launched through their LMS, but that are hosted by the off-the-shelf vendor? So the vendor can closely track actual usage and charge based on that actual usage?
• How are off-the-shelf vendor pricing models generally structured? By actual usage? By projected use (based on some factor like LMS license)?

I'm trying to advise a client but I have little to no experience in this area.

Thanks!

NewsFlash: PowerPoint Bad For Learning

Found via SlashDot, an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald "Research points the finger at PowerPoint."

The article cites new research from the University of New South Wales (home of John Sweller, "founding father" of Cognitive Load Theory).

Some key nuggets from the Sydney Herald article:

It is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you in the
written and spoken form at the same time.

"The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster," Professor Sweller
said. "It should be ditched."

"It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented."

And how many e-Learning courses have you created with on-screen text bullets timed to narrative audio? Raise your hand. Me too. You know -- appeal to multiple learning styles; address the needs of both auditory and visual learners....

If the on-screen text is just a blurb that relates to the audio is that any different? I'm thinking about Karl Kapp's recent post Design: Bullets Be Gone. Or should we just end this practice completely?

Enciclomedia: Mexican Classrooms go hi-tech

Found via Slashdot, this BBC News article on the use of Enciclomedia in Mexican classrooms.

In a world where video game consoles, computers and television are already integral parts of young peoples lives, it was only a matter of time before someone harnessed them all in the classroom. This, is the world's first digitally-educated generation.

Obviously, this completely changes the role of the teacher in the classroom.

Blogging & Boundaries in the Professional Sphere

Karyn Romeis' recent post echoed stuff that's been rolling around in my mind about blogging, professionalism, sharing, confidentiality, roles, boundaries, etc. etc.

So first -- why have I started blogging about e-Learning with, not a vengence, but at least with some passion? Why am I blogging about e-Learning, and not about my kids or gardening?

• To share thoughts, to learn, to grow: professional development (for free!)
• To belong to a community -- to network -- to connect.
• To create credibility and market value for myself -- on a professional level as an active member of the e-Learning industry. I want to stay relevant.
• Because other people who's thoughts and ideas I admire are doing it. And I want to be just like all of you.
• To work out my thoughts and ideas (hey, I'm an extrovert -- I need to talk about what's going on in my head in order to process it and take it to the next level).
• Some amount of distraction, I'll admit. (I'm a new blogger -- not fully evolved). See Tom Haskins for a whole slew of posts on blog categorizations.

I am blogging as an individual. Out here, I represent me. But I also represent the company for which I work. By default. Can we really separate these spheres when blogging on a professional level? This brings up issues of confidentiality: not wanting to give away our secrets; not wanting to lose competitive advantage. By association, I should create more credibility for my company. At least, I would hope that's what I'm doing.

From the perspective of my company, I need to be honest about why I am blogging:

• Create credibility for my company by association
• To learn about industry trends as I help my organization determine our future direction and approach to the products and services we deliver
• To stay current so I can innovate for my clients
• All of the above so I can ensure that my company survives and thrives (and that I get to keep my job and do well)

Karyn wrote about her conference experience,

So I stopped being just me and started being a representative of my employer.

Ideally, we'd all be in the position to believe in the companies for which we work so that there won't be a huge disconnect. The reality is, this ain't always so. Plenty of people just do their jobs and tow the party line so they can get their paycheck.

In a comment to Karyn, Harold Jarche writes,

[C]onsider your employer as your primary client[...]Then ask yourself how you could best serve your client, while maintaining your own professionalism and market value. I would see no difficulty in sharing ideas with your contact, while maintaining client confidentiality.

This is great advice. I'll try to keep it in mind.

I will be attending the upcoming eLearning Guild Annual Event in a couple of weeks. I'm trembling with excitement (perhaps naively so), having never had the opportunity to attend an industry-related trade show. I'm excited to meet people whose blogs I have been reading. I'm excited to learn from all these thought leaders. I'm excited to ask questions in order to Be an Insanely Great Conference Attendee per Tony Karrer. I'm excited to be a part of this community, to become a better designer, to learn more about the new technologies.

But I'm also going to be working my booth. I want feedback on our product offerings. I want to learn what we should be doing differently in order to be the solution that companies want to buy. And I want people to want what we offer. I want us to get some new clients. I want us to look good.

Does that mean I have to stop being me?

It's a fuzzy line.