e-Learning Templates

If you’re developing eLearning on your own with minimal help from a graphics team, you might want to check out e-Learning Templates.com.

Put together by two guys who call themselves “The eLearning Brothers”, the site offers PPT templates you can use in your Articulate courses, along with complete course style kits to Flash based eLearning games and quizzes.

“Each template is fully customizable in Flash (we give you the .fla Flash source file). Made to work within most rapid elearning software (Articulate Presenter, Adobe Captivate, Rapid Intake, Adobe Presenter, PowerPoint and more).”

Sounds like a good resource for freelancers and eLearning designers working in small departments or as a one-person show.

If you try it out, leave a comment here and let us know what you think.

Yawn-proof Your e-Learning without Busting the Bank #dl09

Last week at DevLearn in San Jose, Stephen Walsh and I presented to a packed room: "Yawn-proof Your e-Learning without Busting the Bank"

It was Friday morning and everyone was quite exhausted. Before we got started, I joked that we'd know we'd been successful if no one yawned.

I think people were quite engaged and I didn't catch any yawns, so I'd say we hit the mark. 

Here are slides from our presentation. I'm sorry I can't share links to all of the demos we showed, but you can find some live examples on the case studies section of the Kineo website.  Enjoy!

Yawn Proof Your e-Learning without Busting the Bank

View more presentations from cammybean.

The Value of Instructional Designers

I've been having on ongoing conversation with other instructional designers as to whether or not we need to have the technical skill sets to actually build the courses we design.

Many instructional designers (Christy Tucker, Wendy Wickham) build their own courses using tools like Captivate. (See Christy's post, Technology Skills for Instructional Designers for more on this conversation.)

I come from an old-school approach: I sort of understand the technology, but I leave the graphics and programming expertise to others. I primarily focus on the content, the writing, and the schmoozing with the client. (My experience is mainly in development of self-paced eLearning for the corporate market.)

In the December 10, 2007 edition of The eLearning Guild's Learning Solutions magazine, Reuben Tozman (President and founder of edCetra Training) gets into this topic in The Next Generation of Instructional Designers.

He says it's important that instructional designers understand the tools and technology that are out there (as an architect understands building materials), but an instructional designer should be tool-independent and "technology-agnostic". The programming skills should be left to the programmers.

Reuben on the downside of rapid e-Learning tools:

The emergence of "easy-to-use" authoring tools, however,
has tempted us to believe that the instructional designer
can do it all! But, paradoxically, it is worth noting
that as instructional designers become adept at
using a specific tool, their value as designers will
drop. This is because an instructional designer is supposed
to avoid having to stuff material into a predefined
box.

We imagine providing the same tools to subject matter experts that we expect instructional designers to use, and asking them to be a one person show. In reducing the value of an instructional designer by handing them tools to be lone gunmen, we have created the problem of believing we can replace or eliminate the instructional designer, since our in-house resident experts can do the very same job.

Reuben on the value of the instructional designer:

The skill that an instructional designer possesses, that writers, teachers, programmers, technical writers, and so on don’t, is the ability to systematically break down content so that it is applicable to learners and their learning styles.

Photo: Instructions for Monkeys by Sister72

While the instructional designer's value may be needed for more complicated content, what Clive Shepherd calls the higher tier of eLearning, is this true for the lower tier end work?

Overall, I thought this article was a good read, although I found the title a little misleading. I was expecting more of a vision of the future; more on what instructional designers need to do to stay relevant in today's changing world. This article focused more on what instructional designers should not be (lone gunmen).

What's your view?

• Do you think instructional designers should be able to use the tools?
• Do you work in or favor a design shop where each person has his or her own role (ID, graphics, programming, QA)?
• Do you think instructional designers should go away and leave the rapid tools to the SMEs?
• Do you think you actually add any value these days?

[I continue to wonder out loud on this topic...be sure to read all of the great conversation happening on this post in the comments section. And check out a subsequent post I've written: Instructional Design & Market Sector Differences.]

Kineo's August Rapid e-Learning Newsletter

If you've been following my blog for awhile, then you already know how I feel about the folks at Kineo. They provide some fabulous (free) resources to the e-Learning community and have just been nominated the "Best New Kids on the Block" by the Brighton and Hove Business Awards.

This month's newsletter is no exception. Here are a few highlights:

Sustaining Performance in Rapid e-Learning includes some great tips and ideas for how to create effective follow-up activities to ensure knowledge transfer on the job. Although it's geared towards "rapid e-Learning" efforts, these guidelines can be applied to any type of training.

They've also got an audio interview with Dr. Itiel Dror who discusses the brain and e-Learning. Dr. Dror is a cognitive scientist, who urges instructional designers to keep the focus on the learner rather than the learning materials and to design the learning experience to the human brain.

Dror states that learning designers shouldn't worry so much about learning theories, which are too abstract and don't guide us in how to design learning. Instead, we should learn about the actual mechanisms in the brain.

Some highlights from the interview:

• Understand cognitive load so you can optimize the presentation of materials to the learner and increase the capacity of learners to acquire new information.
• Get into the learner's shoes.
• Learn ways to help people learn more in less time: use exaggeration to burn concepts and ideas into memory.

Dr. Dror's bottom line: to optimize the learning experience, learning designers must understand the cognitive systems in the brain.

You can read old Kineo newsletters (check out the June newsletter and listen to an interview with me!) and subscribe at the Kineo Newsletter page.

Welcome to Tom Kuhlman

Welcome to Tom Kuhlmann from Articulate, who adds The Rapid e-Learning Blog into the mix.

Tom is the author of 5 Myths About Rapid e-Learning which made the rounds a while back. Up until recently, Tom was guest blogging for the Articulate Customer Support Blog (Gabe Anderson), but now he's gone solo.

Tom provides "practical real-world tips for rapid e-Learning success" with enticing blog entry titles such as How Can Baking Cookies Improve Your E-learning Course?

Sounds good enough to eat.

e-Learning Content & Version Control

Earlier this week, Janet Clarey wrote about the "Preservation of e-Learning Content." In response to a lawsuit, Janet had to scrounge to find old training materials and binders. She raised the question about e-Learning content and how well companies keep track of content updates. Can you prove when and how your e-Learning content has changed?

Certainly with the rise of rapid e-Learning tools and the increase in SME-published content we'll start to see an increase in the frequency of updates to e-Learning material.

As an e-Learning vendor, I think it's our responsibility to make sure that our clients have thought this through. But I've never once had a conversation with a client about this subject. This is definitely a gap and I intend to start having this conversation going forward.

After reading Janet's post, I talked with our CTO about some ways that we could build a little bit of "version control" into our Flash Course Development Templates. We've decided to add some simple text descriptors in our admin section that will allow a course creator to identify the content authors, the date originally created, update date, summary text about the course, and notes about the types of changes that were made.

As Janet mentioned, "most companies have digital document control procedures that include e-Learning content." We need to find out what tools our clients use and what systems they have in place.

If they don't do anything, find out why. Maybe it doesn't matter. More likely, if they don't have version control tools, it's because they haven't even thought about it. We'll need to advise those clients on what tools they should be using. At my company, we use SVN for version control (at a basic level I know that it's a tool that allows you to check files in and out and keeps track of versions, etc.).

We'll need to provide our clients with some guidelines for updating content and version control.

I suppose most LMS/LCMS keep track of versions on some levels. (Is that true?) In the Learning Portals that we create for our clients, we need to think about how we can ensure that updates are effectively tracked and recorded and that old versions of courses are properly archived. Again, some of this may be process on the client's end (where and how to archive).

This issue may not matter to some organizations, but imagine an airline company maintenance department that has to report to the FAA. I'm sure it matters to them.

Thanks to Janet for bringing this issue up!

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?

The Rise of Rapid e-Learning

Mike Alcock, MD of Atlantic Link Ltd has written an article over at Trainingzone.co.uk: The Rise of Rapid e-Learning.

Some insightful industry analysis, surrounded by a lot of marketing speak.

I'm going to quote heavily from the article here, inserting my own thoughts along the way.

Subject matter experts are embracing the more sophisticated rapid e-learning tools which allow server side development with international collaboration and “instant” course deployment. They have become adept at incorporating flash animations, pdfs, PowerPoint presentations, audio-visual material and any number of other techniques for getting training messages across to users in effective and imaginative ways.

This sounds like a bit of an overstatement to me. How adept are these SMEs really getting? Are they producing high-quality e-Learning? Is it really the SMEs using the tools? Are they working with in-house instructional designers? Does anyone actually have any real statistics on this? I'd be interested to see those.

This continuing technological development means that e-learning developers can no longer rely on being more technologically sophisticated than rapid e-learning and need to utilise their other natural competitive advantages to sell their services. These lie in their creativity, knowledge, understanding of instructional design techniques and their experience.

I completely agree with this. E-Learning development houses need to be able to demonstrate a clear value in their services. Why should companies go with e-Learning vendors when rapid e-Learning tools are available? Why pay someone else $25,000 when you can buy Articulate or Captive for under $500 and do it yourself? Either these companies won't have the time or the resources to do it internally, or they will be looking for that extra-edge that a focused e-Learning company can provide: instructional design expertise, graphic design, interaction design.

Next, the author provides a short case-study. I think this is definitely the wave of the future. I've seen this trend with my company as well:

Laurence Wilson, who runs an independent e-learning consultancy, recently employed this approach on a project for recruitment giant Vedior. By building the courses for Vedior on-line using a collaborative authoring tool, he was able to share the development process with the end customer, ensuring that the client was happy with every stage of the development. At the end of the development cycle, Vedior purchased the tools so that they could update and maintain the courses that Laurence had developed. The client can now commission Laurence to create additional courses for them, confident in the knowledge that they will receive top quality materials that they can then maintain themselves.

Have the e-Learning vendor create the first few custom programs. Then take the development in-house, using rapid e-Learning tools. Vendors create solid relationships with their customers this way -- creating an environment of collaboration and respect for mutual expertise. A partnership grows.

...further change in the industry which I believe, within five years, will see rapid e-learning tools being used almost universally in the production of e-learning, both in-house and by consultants. Many companies will continue to buy e-learning from consultants in order to draw on their non-technological expertise, but they will insist on these courses being written using rapid e-learning tools which enable the company to collaborate on, amend, and extend the learning as it suits them.

Let's see what happens.

Instructional Designers' Tools

There's been a good conversation going on over at Christy Tucker's Experiencing E-Learning blog about instructional design.

Christy has been writing about how to get started in instructional design and what technology tools you might need.

I think I'm somewhat of an anomaly in the field. I don't do any programming. I don't build courses. I don't do any graphic design. I use Word, PowerPoint, Visio. I can now also say that I use blogger and wikis.

If you want to know what I do on a daily basis, read my job description. Maybe I'm not an instructional designer at all.

I think my dinosaur status as an instructional designer stems from the fact that I've always worked for e-Learning vendors where the programming, graphics, and ID are distinct, separate job roles. I have my expertise, you have your's.

If you're an instructional designer within a corporate training group, it seems -- most likely -- that you'll be asked to both design and build courses. Christy uses HTML, Dreamweaver, and sess Flash in her future.

Rapid e-Learning tools, like Articulate, change the amount of actual technical skill an ID would need within such a group. My company creates customized course development templates for organizations. Course developers (who may or may not be instructional designers) use Flash to create courses, but they don't need to know how to use Flash at all.

Rapid e-Learning tools make building courses almost as easy as writing documents in Word. Easy breezy. So instructional designers won't need to be technical at all. That's what I like.

Kineo Rapid e-Learning Podcast with Gabe Anderson

Another good podcast from the folks at Kineo: an interview with Stephen Walsh (Kineo) and Gabe Anderson (Articulate).

Part 1 is a nice definition and description of rapid e-Learning. Good for beginners.

If you don't have tons o' time, just listen to part 2. I thought it had more useful nuggets:

• Who should be developing rapid e-Learning? Always a good discussion topic -- SMEs, IDs, some combination?
  
• Next generation of Articulate tools -- and where rapid e-learning tools are going (less linear, more interactivity, more branching, integrated quizzes, more 'human element' with characters, more flexibility in general to help folks think "outside of the PowerPoint box").
• Some discussion on moving to more collaborative, online tools. At this point, Gabe sees no plans to move away from a desktop authoring tool -- in his view, there are too many limitations.

Big challenges ahead:

• It's all about design
• Integrating content with Learning Management Systems. Even though Articulate products are SCORM/AICC compliant, LMS are not created the same way so there always has to be tweaking. This is why they brought Articulate Online onto the market.

But why don't you just go ahead and listen yourself?

5 Myths About Rapid E-Learning

An excellent post on the Articulate blog by Tom Kuhlmann: 5 Myths About Rapid E-Learning.

Nice synthesis of many of the conversations that have been floating around about the role of SMEs and all these great content creation tools that empower non-programmers to create e-Learning, including this one here which had a good comment thread.

Clive's 30-Minute Masters Wiki got a nice plug -- "Create a way to help your SME learn more about building effective e-learning courses. " Clive's wiki is really evolving nicely. It's great to see all of the input and collaboration from folks like Cathy Moore, Clark Quinn and Dan Roddy.

Rapid e-Learning, Templates, & SMEs

There's been a lot of good talk lately about rapid e-learning tools and templates and the roles of SMEs vs. instructional designers. I think about this topic a lot. One of our main products is creating customized templates for our clients; "empowering non-programmers to build e-learning." Our tools still require the user to work in the Flash environment, but you really don't need to know Flash.

Up until recently , I've been thinking it's instructional designers who will be using our tools. Perhaps. But as I look around at who is actually doing instructional design out there (and look at me) I realize more and more that 'instructional designer' is an over-used title and does not necessarily mean that one knows a thing about it; perhaps it's just a role that someone evolved into. It certainly doesn't mean that the individual has a background in 'experience design' (to borrow from Patrick Dunn) or even in e-Learning. Instructional designers are often SMEs who have evolved into trainers. And then e-Learning fell onto their plate.

The folks at Kineo wrote a piece on the future of rapid e-learning tools, summarizing "our view is to give potential authors [SMEs] some easy to use but well structured templates which will give instructional integrity to how they develop their learning."

Barry Sampson responds,

[This approach] presupposes that the templates are instructionally sound in the first place: In reality I doubt that any templated approach is likely to be instructionally sound. For me this is is one of the key failings of traditional elearning content: fitting your learning need to pre-existing templates, whether that's SME built rapid content or something produced by an elearning provider. Templates are about keeping costs down, not standards up.

My response to Barry, hmmm....well I suppose I agree that a template, in and of itself, can not be instructionally sound. But what is a template? It's really a mental model. We all work from templates. Even when you've got a blank page in front of you and you start writing: paragraphs, commas, periods. We have some pre-existing notion in our heads of the structure we might want to follow.

From a rapid e-Learning perspective -- or just e-Learning in general -- templates and tools provide a starting point. They provide a mental model. They can save time; create a more efficient process. And hopefully, they are flexible enough that they can be altered as needed in order to create an effective learning experience.

Silke Fleischer of Adobe Captivate fame, in her post Update on eLearning Guild Conference , talks about the rapid e-learning panel of which she was a part, and the subject of SMEs and IDs:

Some instructional designers want SMEs to use rapid tools to create rapid eLearning, some would not want them near an authoring tool. For me it seems less a discussion between rapid eLearning that SMEs develop content or not, it's rather rapid eLearning developed by IDs (Instructional Designer) with the SMEs (SMEs start by capturing the knowledge, IDs add the ID) versus the informal learning SMEs like most of my coworkers produce using rapid eLearning tools - they don't call what they do "rapid development" nor "rapid eLearning".

I think this is a good vision. In fact, one of the sessions I attended at the Guild Event gave me a taste for this approach. In Rapid Project Management Techniques for e-Learning presented by Coates & Hill of Deloitte, they outlined their approach to creating a big enterprise-wide training program in an extremely aggressive timeframe. The project management stuff from the session was really basic, but the main point I took away was embedded into the program about 40 minutes in.

They described their War Room. The got the key SMEs together in a room with the instructional designers. The SMEs had to create the storyboards. Once the storyboard was created, the lead instructional designer reviewed it, fine-tuning things to create an "instructionally sound" experience. This approach saved them a ton of time, and resulted in an effective training program.

But before they even set the SMEs loose on the storyboarding process, they gave them a training in the basics of e-Learning and instructional design! Nothing long, nothing too deep, just the basics. And this was the seed that led to a conversation with Clive Shepherd that led to the 30-minute masters.

So we give SMEs access to these tools: because this is the wave of the future/the now, this IS what is required. We create templates and tools that provide some instructional approach. Perhaps we build wizards and guidance right into the tools themselves. We provide flexibility in the tools so that they are seen as a starting point.

More importantly, we educate the SMEs upfront. We provide mentoring and partnering between SMEs and instructional designers. If we set the SMEs -- AND the instructional designers -- loose with these tools, let's set them up for success.

New Rapid e-Learning Tool from Epic

Another new rapid e-Learning tool, this from Epic (UK).

Epic launches new tool for accessible rapid e-learning

Product features to include:

• A wizard that guides users through course creation
• An in-built art direction library, allowing users to choose from a range of predefined 'look-and-feel' templates
• The ability to insert media of the user's choice (graphics, video and audio)
• Automatic 'one-click' SCORM packaging

It's not clear to me from the press release what type of authoring environment is used (is it Microsoft Word?) or what format the output is in.

From the press release:

'It's important to remember, however, that as with any tool, you only get out what you put in. To makes sure that clients get the most out of Rapid Create, or from any other authoring tool they may select, Epic also provides training and capability building to ensure internal teams are skilled-up in creating effective e-learning.'

Memoirs of an "Instructional Designer"

I don't have a master's degree in instructional design or education. In fact, I don't have any kind of master's degree at all. I have never taken a class in pedagogy. I have never taken a course in adult learning theory. And yet here I am. My current business card says I'm a "Manager of Instructional Design". How did that happen?

I have learned everything I "know" about instructional design and teaching by doing.

A brief history:

Education: English and German Major.

Had thought I would go into teaching. Got accepted to a Master's program for secondary ed, but deferred. Got a job at an awesome company. Loved the people; loved getting paid. Bought a bike and took scuba lessons. Thought I'd try the working thing for awhile -- so long as I never had to wear panty hose.

I started my professional life in operations -- behind the scenes helping people do their jobs better. After a few years, I got involved in an IT initiative (then it was called MIS) -- designing a new software application to support our call center business. I talked to the users, translated their needs into requirements, translated that to the techies, worked up flow charts, designed screens, etc. That led into training. I did stand-up classroom sessions on the software. I wrote a monthly user-newsletter -- tips and tricks for maximizing the application. I had expertise. I had a knack for communication. I was an SME.

In the mid-90's, I made the leap to a multimedia training company. They liked my software training experience. I thought multimedia sounded pretty glamorous. I was a SME turned instructional designer. We produced loads of CBTs -- delivered on CD ROM. Lots of video. Lots of simulations.

My boss had an educational technology degree from Harvard. She taught me the basics of instructional design, although looking back it wasn't much: Instruct, Demo, Practice, Assess. I was never told about Gagne's 9 Events or the Kilpatrick Levels or ADDIE or the ARCS model or even much about adult learning styles, except that people all learned differently.

We had a novelist, turned video pro, who was our most creative instructional designer. Through observing him, I learned how to make good video -- the essentials of good lighting, dialogue, directing, storytelling.

I was there for 5 years, and then the company went under. Didn't make the transition to the web and got lost in the bubble.

Since then, I've done a bunch of freelance instructional design and script writing. I was a classroom assistant and lead teacher at a trade school for adult learners -- very hands-on (quite literally -- it's massage therapy). And now I'm here -- "Manager of Instructional Design."

I've created a lot of bad e-Learning over the years -- page turner after page turner. And I've created some really good stuff.

I've got a lot to learn about instructional/learning/experience design.

But at this point, I'm here to stay. This is my career. This is how I support my family. This is my expertise, even without the fancy letters after my name.

If you'd like to learn more about what I'm doing these days, check out my current job description.

My point is this: I don't think I'm that unusual. Or am I? What's your story? How did you get to be an "instructional designer"?

So let's get the tools and information out there to support folks like me. People who get "promoted" from SME to instructional designer and just start running with it. I believe that with the rise of rapid e-Learning tools, we'll see more and more non-instructional designers doing instructional design.

The 30-minute masters is a great start. What else have we got?

Kineo & The Future of Rapid e-Learning Tools

If you don't already subscribe to Kineo's occasional newsletter, please do. Not only are they really smart guys, but they're also funny -- AND they like to share what they know with the rest us -- for the greater good of the e-Learning community.

The latest edition is chock full o' good stuff, including some thoughtful summaries of the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering and the future of rapid e-Learning tools.

The Kineo dinner sounds like a fabulous discussion, actually what I had been looking for in some of the sessions at the eLearning Guild event -- talking about where things are going, what companies are looking for, what companies are actually doing. I wish I could have joined you!

I was fortunate to have met Steve Rayson and Matthew Fox at the event -- you guys rock.

Informal Learning -- Getting Learners to Ask the Right Questions

In a post on informal learning by Ray Sims (thanks to Tony ), he lists out a whole bunch o' good things "to do on behalf of increasing informal learning aligned with company strategy and goals."

This got me musing on some of the issues that have been bumping around in my head as I read all the blog talk on the topic of informal learning as well as Jay's book (which I have admittedly only gotten partly through). The biggest question I have is how do organizations ensure that the right content is in all the right places? You've got your wikis and your blogs and your rapid e-Learning pieces and your social networking tools, but should someone be making sure that the right stuff is out there?

As an occasional classroom teacher, I have always been extremely aware of those students who don't even know what questions to ask. The role of the teacher in the classroom is often to guide these students to asking the right questions.

In the world of informal learning, who can be the teacher/the mentor? How can organizations ensure that the right questions are being asked by the informal learner?

Rapid Authoring Tools Speed Dating

Check out the Engage presentation done by the folks over at Kineo: Rapid Authoring Tools Speed Dating. 5-minute interviews with Articulate, Atlantic Link, Composica, Experience Builders, Mohive, Outstart, Raptivity, ReadyGo.

I hadn't even heard of some of these companies, so was eager to check out their solutions. Some of them look better than others. I thought the Experience Builders simulation tool somewhat intriguing. ReadyGo is very minty green and not that great to look at.

See what you think.