eLearning Authoring Tools Mindmap

Trying to figure out what eLearning authoring tools to use? Not sure where to get started? Check out this collaborative eLearning Authoring tools Mindmap. I started it a year ago and my has it grown!

The Two Faces of ePortfolios

These are my live blogged notes from this week’s Instructional Design Live show on EdTech Taclk with Helen Barrett, Ph.D.

An article by Helen Barrett:  Balancing the Two Faces of ePortfolios

The conceptual model of an online portfolio - multiple purposes:

1) learning & reflection – main activity around learning and collaboration

2) showcase achievement/accountability

http://electronicportfolios.org/balance/index.html

These two activities need to work together.

Portfolio as workspace vs. showcase.

Collect evidence of learning in a variety of ways – a “collection of artifacts”.  But a portfolio is more than this collection – it needs to include the artifacts, but also some reflection on those artifacts.

Can hyperlink artifacts (assume all electronic) to a reflective journal (e.g., a blog) – many students are using their social networks as a way to document their life experiences (e.g., facebook and twitter). Some research showing that schools are starting to pay to attention to social networks in terms of learning.

The role of teachers and peers in this process?  Providing feedback.  Social networks provide a great place for this feedback – provide a conversation on and for learning.

The role of the teacher and the student is evaluation and assessment (self-assessment).

Most teach education programs are focused more on the showcase and not the workspace or the process.

ePortfolio as a process – rather than a product.

TEDTalk with Helen Barret on YouTube in Mumbai in February – the focus was on intrinsic motivation. 

How do you turn ePortfolios into intrinsically motivating process for the student?  The student needs to own the portfolio – it’s a lifelong process and not an assignment.  Don’t kill portfolios by making them a graded assignment!  (She references Daniel Pink’s Drive).

Ownership and intrinsic motivation:

• Autonomy (how much control does student have over their own portfolio.  If it’s totally prescribed than it’s not theirs).
• Mastery
• Purpose (use portfolio to find purpose and explore passions)

If the portfolio is owned by the institution, then students won’t see it as a place to document their journey.

One school in Maine gives students a website with their own domain name as a graduation present!  This is the direction in which we should be going.

Need to focus (in teacher education programs) more on reflection – and helping students become reflective practitioners. 

Reflection should be personal and not prescriptive.

Regarding tools: what do you want to achieve and then pick the right tools (e.g., Google Apps for Education)

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The recording of this session will be available at Instructional Design Commons.

About Instructional Design Live:

A weekly online talk show, Instructional Design Live is based around Instructional Design related topics and is opportunity for Instructional Designers and professionals engaged in similar work to discuss effective online teaching and learning practices.

The Unofficial eLearning Salary Calculator

Check out this cool little widget !

As a nice little follow up to the ranting we’ve been doing about the eLearning Salary Gender Gap, Travis Smith took the bull by the horns and created a little salary calculator based on all of the variables reported on by the eLearning Guild in their latest salary report.

If you're not sure about the variables Travis used in the calculator, be sure to review the report which looks at survey results from eLearning Guild members. If you don't agree with those variables, then make sure you've taken the survey yourself and added your data to the mix!

Now you can just plug in your own bits of data (I work in Massachusetts, 15+ years experience, female), click Calculate– and voila! you can see how much you’re being over- or under-paid.

Go plug in your data and let us know how you fared.

(Based on early Twitter feedback, people are feeling underpaid...)

Thanks, Travis!

Book Review: Ruth Clark’s Evidence-Based Training Methods

I’ve been trying to read a lot lately – books, not just blogs. 

And I do find that the age-old book report is a great way to synthesize and encode all those juicy learning nuggets.

My latest review: Ruth Clark’s Evidence-Based Training Methods: A Guide for Training Professionals. 

Recommendation:  Thumbs Up. 

I presented a webinar today and found myself quoting liberally from this book.  So if that’s not a good indicator of its usefulness, I don’t know what is!

Clark effectively summarizes current learning research, covering important topics like use of audio and graphics.  And bashes the learning styles myth.  A lot of the material was familiar to me from having read E-Learning and the Science of Instruction and from participating in her session of the same name last fall at DevLearn (my notes are here).

Click here to read my review of Evidence-Based Training Methods on the Kineo site.

The eLearning Salary Gender Gap

This post is part of a blog carnival hosted by Janet Clary – a response to my original post eLearning Guild’s 2010 Salary Report in which I declared I was ticked off by this:

There continues to be a consistent gender gap in pay between men and women. On average, men are paid 14.5% more than women. This gap is most notable in part-time employee pay, where women receive an average hourly rate that is 49.4% lower than the rate men receive, while working a comparable number of hours.

The National Average Salary — Full-time Employee $79,300:

So, in pictures, the average Full-Time elearning salary for men is $85.8K and for women $74.4K. 

Women make –5% of the average; men make +9.5%.

Now, of course there are many variables.  And the eLearning Guild report does a good job helping you use the data to construct your salary. 

 

 

 

 

Take this worked example from page 22:

Scenario #2 — Full-time employee negotiating a salary increase
An Instructional Designer in Oregon, who is an individual contributor, is preparing for her annual review and evaluating a potential request for a salary increase. She works for a computer hardware manufacturing company that employs 50,000+ employees. She has four years of e-Learning experience and a Bachelor’s degree.

 
Now I think what’s missing here is an adjustment for gender, right? 

So we should actually adjust her salary down by an additional-5% (the penalty of being a woman), putting her adjustment at –3.5% (or -$2775.50).

So that would put her total salary at at $77,714,50 instead of $80,490.

If she’d have been a man, she could have asked for $89,213!

So – how off are you?  Here’s my challenge.  Go off and calculate for yourself.  See where you’re at.  And then pause, reflect, take action?  (see the other blog carnival offerings for more on the subject of action…) 

Fill out the worked example making adjustments based on your own situation.  You can find the variables in the Guild Report (pages listed below):

• Industry (p. 15)
• Company Size (p. 16)
• State (p. 17)
• Years Experience (p. 18)
• People Managed (p. 19)
• Education (p. 21)
• Job Focus (p. 21)
• Gender (p. 5 = -5% for women, +9.5% for men)

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This post is part of a blog carnival on the subject of the gender salary gap. Read more from Julie Dirksen: Ranting on the Gender Pay Gap in E-Learning, Janet Clarey: The Salary Gap In US E-Learning Industry, and Cammy Bean: eLearning Guild’s 2010 Salary Report.

Have something to say on the subject?  Join the ride and contribute.  Then share a link to your post in the comments on one of our blogs.

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!

Recommended: "In Defense of the LMS"

Are you an LMS naysayer? Do you have any idea what an LMS is actually capable of these days?

Either way -- or whatever your LMS experience -- I heartily recommend this post from Dave Wilkins: "A Defense of the LMS (and a case for the future of Social Learning). It's a long read, but he makes it more enjoyable with swears.

Dave is currently a bigwig at Learn.com. So, yes, he's got a bit of a bias, but he certainly knows his way around an LMS.