Getting to Good Enough

"Don't let good enough get in the way of perfect."

This adage works for me most of the time as I'm designing eLearning courses.

Right now, I'm feeling like just getting to good would be an achievement.

Client demands, project schedules -- sometimes all you can do is churn it out.  Right now, I'm proofing a storyboard that's full of endless text bullets and boring software demos with no interactivity -- and there's really nothing I can do about it.

What would you do if you were me? 

A.  Cry.

B.  Just do it.  The client's paying the bill after all and this is what they've asked for.

C.  Hope next time will be better.

D. Other.

Guesstimating Seat Time

Many eLearning projects are priced out based on expected "seat time" -- that is, how long the learner has to sit on his or her butt to learn (watch!) what needs to be presented/taught.

I've never been that good at estimating seat time and often end up with projects that are longer than they're supposed to be. This is not good from either the learner's point of view or the development team's.

I have a lot of issues with the whole "seat time" model (and I'm thinking about sit and click style eLearning here of the self-paced variety):

• My seat time may be different than yours
• Is there supplemental material, like reading, that is optional -- or that might vary per user?
• How interactive is the course going to be?
• Is the user being forced to watch every single page or do they have freedom to jump around.
  
• ETC.
• ETC.
  

What would you add to this list?

There's some metrics floating around: such as 4 hours of classroom time = 1 hour of eLearning time. But that varies wildly if you're talking software training vs. something more complex and soft.

How do you estimate seat time?

Or, better yet, what's the alternative to seat time as the basis for a pricing model?

Photo credit: Shock and sorrow: chair mass grave by emdot

27 Inspiring Women Edubloggers

27 Inspiring Women Edubloggers

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: education women)

I'm humbled (in that "feeling like a fraud" sort of way) and also inspired to be included with some really great bloggers -- some known to me, and some brand new.

Thanks, Zaid!

Janet Clarey and Michele Martin helped start the conversation that led to Zaid's new list.

For more conversations on women in blogging check out these posts:

• Blogging the Personal
• An older post, Where Are All the Women Part II

All The World's A-Twitter

I've succumbed to Twitter.

After reading Jane Hart's article Understanding Today's Learner, I realized I'd better be walking the talk and trying out all the hot new "learning" tools.

So Wednesday, I signed up. Within minutes, I was greeted by a number of people. That sort of freaked me out and I momentarily panicked -- how do I reply back and just how did they find me so fast? (oh, yeah, I decided to "follow them" and they got an email from Twitter).

Sue Waters sent me off to a great post she'd written on getting started with Twitter.

Within 34 minutes, I was a pro. Sort of. Not a bad start-up time, if I do say so myself.

Like Tracy Hamilton, I'm enjoying the endless thought streams. I know that Karyn Romeis has a cold. That Janet Clarey and Clark Quinn were watching the vice-presidential debate last night.

I'm having fun hearing the stream of people's activities and thoughts ("ambient intimacy"), but is that all there is to it?

SoulSoup sent me a link to a post he'd worked up on Twitter for business.

It feels endless now -- all the places I need to go to keep in touch with my peeps: my phone, my email account (Outlook for work, gmail for life); Facebook; Google Reader; Twitter. I know people consolidate and slim down (Brent, for instance), but I'm not sure I'm ready for that challenge.

I'll let you know what I decide.

How 'bout you? Do you Twitter? Why? Why not?

I'm cammybean on Twitter.

Testing Twitter Feed

Just testing folks. Move along. There's nothing to see here.

Blogging the Personal

Janet Clarey's recent post On Growing Facial Hair is right up my alley of interest. But frankly, I have nothing interesting to add to the conversation.

In fact, I've had very little of interest to add to any conversation of late, mostly because I'm much more focused on my personal life and the many transitions I'm handling there. If I were to blog it all, we'd be WAY off the topic of instructional design.

If the women bloggers who make Zaid's next list are the ones who don't interject their personal lives into their blogs (ala Cathy Moore as reported to Michelle Martin), then I don't think I'll make that list. Which is fine. Really. Blogging's not a contest...

But personally, I like the personal. And yet, I also like my boundaries.

Of course, I do see some connections that bridge the gap between my personal and professional lives:

• My 3 and 5 year old kids are at the end of their first month of Montessori school. I'd love to apply Montessori principals to eLearning instructional design.
• My son is really into his Wii. We've had to find some more age-appropriate games than Super Smash Brothers and the like. Recently discovered Endless Ocean. You're a scuba diver exploring different dive spots in a fictional spot in the South Pacific. Awesome experiential game. Kind of like Second Life in how open the environment is, but there are challenges and a bit of a story woven into that keep it a game. Plus, swimming around with whales is really cool.

So. This is me trying to get my blogging energy back.

Connectivism: Week 1

With little time these days, I'll be auditing the auditor's version of the 12 week Connectivism course happening now. I haven't signed up anywhere, I haven't taken part in any of the sessions, but I'm like a moth drawn to the flame: as I peer in on all the conversation beginning to happen, I can't help but join in. In my own lazy way, at the very least.

• Am I creating a new pattern?
• Am I growing new knowledge? (As opposed to building it?) See Christy Tucker's musings on this topic: Does Learning Grow or is it Built?.

As I sift through this week's reading assignments, I'm trying to pick out how this learning theory effects my work as a creator (an instructional designer) of self-paced eLearning experiences for the corporate market. (Justifying why I might spend my time doing this...filtering this info through my own context in order to create patterns that make sense to me and can be applied to me...)

Little nuggets that stand out to me:

George Siemens writes, in Connectivism: Learning Theory or Pastime of the Self-Amused?:

Educators today face challenges relating to: (a) defining what learning is, (b) defining the process of learning in a digital age, (c) aligning curriculum and teaching with learning and higher level development needs of society (the quest to become better people), and (d) reframing the discussion to lay the foundation for transformative education—one where technology is the enabler of new means of learning, thinking, and being. (p. 9)

Stephen Downes (What Connectivism Is) talks about the role of the teacher = model and demo; the role of the learner = practice and reflection. The best self-paced eLearning does this well, providing scenario-based learning and demos with plenty of opportunity for reflection and practice.

More on this later?

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