All Work And No Learning...

Lately, work has just felt way too busy. No conscious time to stop and smell the roses; to reflect on what's been going on and why; to incorporate any lessons learned. There's barely any time to even think if I've learned any lessons.

Sometimes I just want to punch in the proverbial time card and go home and do the rest of my life. Or sometimes the next project or task slams right into me and there's no time to breath.

But how lame is that?

When this kind of grueling, work cycle hits, aren't you in danger? Not just of burnout, but of being stuck in the mode of repeating the same mistakes again and again? Of continuing to do the same crappy job, because you know how to crank out that kind of crap in the necessary time frame?

How does one build learning into work -- how do you build learning into work -- when you just don't feel like you have the time?

Here's some of what I've been trying lately, in an effort not to let some important lessons slip by -- in an effort to keep the passion and NOT enter burnout land:

Take notes. Instead of just relying on my faulty memory ("Oh, there's no way I'll forget that..."), I've been taking notes: In my paper notebook, in Google Notebooks, an occasional Jott to myself. Things I could've/should've/would've done differently, if only...Ideally, I'd blog about my experiences more, but frankly, I just haven't had the time.

Verbalize. Speak the mistakes out loud to other teammates, if I can. This helps internalize it.

Be open. Always try to learn from the mistakes; don't just brush them under the rug and pretend they didn't happen. They did. [I've been working on a knitting project for the past few months and have learned more undoing stitches and fixing mistakes, than anything else. Some mistakes I've left in the piece -- humble reminders of my own imperfection. That, and some things just aren't worth going back to fix -- but at least I can understand what I did wrong all those rows ago].

Take time off. Create a light at the end of your tunnel. I've got a maternity leave to look forward to pretty soon. A different kind of focus, a lot of opportunity to make different kinds of mistakes, but it will be a change in pace. If I didn't have that on the books, I'd certainly need some time off...

What else?

• Read blogs (yes, but I haven't had the time to focus -- instead I skim -- not nearly as satisfying...)
• Lessons learned meetings (do people still do this? We talk about it, but there's rarely the time. Suggestions?)

So how do you keep your passionate learning mind open when you're working your butt off?

This post was written rather hastily as a humble contribution to the April 2008 Working/Learning Blog Carnival. Be sure to check out all the other great contributions!

Instructional Designers Poll: Market Sector and Advanced Degrees

My original survey on Instructional Designers and Advanced Degrees had some holes in it. For awhile now I've been wondering about Market Sector differences in ID. I want to know if there's a difference in the ratio of working instructional designers with advanced degrees in the corporate and academic sectors.

Please take the latest poll!

Instructional Designers with Formal Training: Survey Update

As of today, over 119 responses to the ongoing survey Instructional Designers: Do You Have An Advanced Degree?

37% of IDs say "Yes, I do have a formal/advanced ID degree."
63% of working IDS say "Nope. I'm flying on intuition and experience and informal learning."

Only 13% of those without a degree say they have ever been denied work as a result.

38% of respondents have been in the field for just 3-5 years. Is that a spike in the amount of ID work going on? Or is this a high burnout field that people don't stick around in for too long?

I'm still curious about the breakdown in degrees between the corporate and academic sectors. What's the ratio of IDs working in corporate with advanced degrees vs. academic?

The survey remains open indefinitely. Chime in, if you haven't.

Hiring Women in 1943. You Go, Girl!

This has very little to do with eLearning - although I'm sure those of you with a creative mindset could think of something! It's certainly good for a laugh on a busy morning.

A client sent this scanned page to me this morning. A reprint from the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine (as reproduced in the September/October 2007 issue of Savvy & Sage Magazine: Getting the Most of Midlife and Beyond).

Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It's always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight systems.

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.

6. Given the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.

7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowance for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.

10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.

11. Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too much in keeping women happy.

Today's challenge: apply one of the eleven helpful tips mentioned in this article to eLearning/instructional design.

I'll start:

#8 Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowance for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

Another argument in favor of chunking your eLearning into 10-20 experiences. If I don't have the time to apply fresh lipstick during an eLearning course, then I just won't finish it!

Jott This Blog

I haven't had so much time lately to blog, as this project I'm working on has been quite grueling.

I find my best time for thinking up excellent blog entries is late at night when I'm lying in bed. That is, of course, if I'm even awake after the kids have finally fallen asleep.

Now I'm trying to maximize my time on the drive to work. Today, especially, my ideas are fresh from a restless night last night.

So thanks to Michelle Martin for turning me on to Jott.

I am calling this blog entry in on my cellphone as I drive. When I arrive at work, it will be in my inbox. I'll simply have to cut and paste it into my blog tool, reformat it, and do some heavy editing. And then, presto magic, I have a new blog post.

It's taken a little getting used to.

Things I'm learning:

• I have to talk much more slowly. Otherwise Jott doesn't get what I'm saying.
• Jargon can be hard for Jott to translate. But it does a pretty good job and inserts [...] when it's not sure just what you mumbled.
• You can only jott in 30 second chunks. I have way more to say than that. The answer is to immediately jott yourself again (and you don't have to redial the number, the lovely Jott Attendant asks you who you want to Jott when a previous jott is finished).

I arrived at work this morning to find 9 Jotts in my inbox -- fodder for a few blog posts at least.

(There's much more that you can do with Jott -- send Jotts to friends, send yourself reminders or txt msgs, create to do lists. I'm just scratching the surface here.)

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

Instructional Strategies?

What instructional strategies do you use to make your content more memorable and engaging? I'm not just thinking about the gadgets and the gizmos that you use or the instructional design "method" behind the process (e.g., ADDIE), but rather the teaching tools themselves. Strategies that help learners connect with and remember the content.

Mnemonics

"King Phillip Came Over From Geneva Spain"

Remember that one from high school biology? I remember the mnemonic itself, but not all the terms. Something like: Kingdom, Phyllo, C?, O?, Family, Genus, Species.

Luckily, these days I can quickly search online for a refresher.

I missed Class and Order. And it's Phylum, not Phyllo. But not bad for knowledge I haven't used in 25 years.

Wikiquote has a lengthy catalog of mnemonics for a wide variety of subjects, from bartending to home repair.

Do you ever develop a mnemonic for a custom course? Or chunk out your content and create an easily remembered acronym to remind the learner of the steps they need to follow?

I don't know if I've ever done that. But I've got a mind to try it out one of these courses.

Getting Snappy

I had an interview with an instructional designer the other day, who's developed and led a lot of instructor-led courses. She described getting her learners to "snap things out."

She works with the content, chunks it out, and creates snappy rhymes to help learners remember the material. In class, she has the learners walk around the classroom, chanting the rhyme and snapping it out.

Things might get a bit silly with all that snapping, but I bet it's effective.

How could you do that in an e-learning experience? How do you get your learners to get snap happy?

I'm excellent at creating ridiculous rhymes and ditties for my kids; I think I could come up with something interesting for a course.

Reflective Learning
I learned this one from Clive Shepherd's 60 Minute Masters: insert moments of reflection into the course.

Create pauses in the activity to get the learner to stop and think; apply the content to their own world; make their own connections.

In a recent course, I designed "Think About It!" pages. The course asks the learner an open question. The learner can type their thoughts onto a yellow sticky pad on the screen. These aren't saved for managerial review, they're just a moment in time for that learner.

Time Well Spent

It takes more than rapid regurgitation of content to develop a mnemonic or create a snappy tune. My bet is many eLearning designers don't often have the time to develop creative instructional strategies. But, given the right course, it may be time well spent.

Other Ideas?

Here's a few more ideas off the top of my head:

• Storytelling
• Case studies
• Role plays

What other strategies or approaches could you suggest?

Photo credits:

• Eraser finished with cleaning chalkboard by frozenchipmunk
• Mirror Egg Reflections by LollyKnit