Content from the nowcomms.com: the B2B marketing company for tech busineses in education, sports, security & ID. See the full story here How to support L&D output with marketing that doesn’t stink The L&D industry’s best eLearning courses and resources are supported by some of the lamest marketing strategies we’ve ever seen. OK, so we’re a B2B marketing agency and our work is focused on marketing deliverables that bring new sales opportunities into the pipeline. We don’t usually get involved in the marketing activities that help L&D departments "sell" courses into the workforce.  But when it comes to creating campaigns that communicate course materials to employees, you don’t need to be the world’s most insightful marketer to notice that some L&D professionals just don’t have their heart in it. When you ask L&D people to think like marketers they panic. They start acting like the cast of Mad Men and come up with ideas that haven’t really worked since the late 60s: "What about a nice poster in the staff room to promote the new sales course?" "How about a fun to enter competition?" or "Maybe we need a regular newsletter to remind staff that L&D is alive and kicking". Frankly, if we ever proposed any of these classics without real rigour and substance we’d be shown the door. Sure, we’re lucky enough to be allocated reasonably good budgets for the work we do because most companies think that good B2B marketing is a critical contributor to success. That’s not usually the case when L&D professionals are asked for a marketing plan to launch a new course or boost take-up in a course that’s floundering. In these circumstances, budgets are tight or even non-existent. Usually, this is because marketing requirements have been factored into the course roll-out programme too late. Quick fix marketing never works L&D people usually resort to inadequate, lacklustre marketing when high expectations for a course’s take up are not realised. With a hefty chunk of change already invested in a course that’s failing to gain traction, L&D parks the problem with marketing and crosses its fingers. This bolt-on approach never works.  It’s too little too late. It’s much easier (and ultimately more cost efficient) to weave agile marketing into the course development from the beginning. Toward’s Maturity’s 33 reasons why e-learning projects fail download suggests this when it stresses the role that pilot programmes can play in powering early stage marketing success. Turning early adopters into heroes and publicising departments that have benefited during a course’s pilot phase is agile marketing at work. Messages may not be clear and concise at this stage, but they’re evolving. The Eureka marketing moment that delivers the big idea may be some distance down the line, but the fact that it can be seen on the horizon provides early direction. A plan is no substitute for an idea L&D professionals who want to market their courses and resources better aren’t really short of good advice: Shift’s 9 Steps to Marketing and Promoting eLearning Projects details a rigorous enough process and Aurion’s Top Tips for Marketing Your eLearning offers up some great getting started help. But these guides, and others like them, explain the marketing process without stressing the importance of the idea. Just as great course designers have a clear learning point in mind for every course they create, great marketers know that all communications need to lead to one simple, straightforward idea. L&D professionals who don’t have marketing in their DNA simply gloss over this detail, usually because they feel the big idea is something they need to come up with all on their own. They don’t. Great ideas are never hatched by one person, the agile marketing process allows them to evolve, in the wild, over time. Big ideas don’t need big budgets The key point here is that the idea isn’t the pricey part of any marketing programme. In the B2B world communicating an idea saps budget because external channels are usually required to push the message out to the target market, but within the company, these channels exist already and are free to access. When L&D professionals are asked to "market" courses to the communities they serve, they usually have unfettered access to the channels they need to deliver high definition messages to incredibly well-segmented audiences. It’s a degree of granularity that most B2B marketers can only dream of. So how do you support L&D output with marketing that doesn’t stink? 1. Make marketing matter from the start We think that marketing needs to be in the DNA of any course roll-out programme right from day one.  Communicate the idea for a new course before even thinking about how it might be created or how it might look. Ask the workforce you serve what they think about the training need you’re trying to address and press for feedback: what are their pain points and how do they think the L&D department might help address them. Never assume that your learning priorities (as the L&D professional) are the same as the learning priorities across the workforce. 2. Learn from feedback Many marketing plans for course materials fail because they sell the benefits as the L&D department perceives them. They promote what you will learn rather than the advantages that the new learning will actually deliver to the worker. Pure-play L&D professionals think that base benefits like "finish work faster", get promoted quicker" or "cut corners to achieve the same result" diminish learning’s status but these are the simple, straightforward benefits that real workers usually want to hear about. Any feedback that comes in because you promote new course ideas early is invaluable market research that will speed a course’s development and help ensure it’s properly positioned for the target market. 3. Cultivate big creative ideas Great ideas are actually the evolution of lots of ideas inspired by lots of people. Since much of the marketing that supports course material in the workplace is bolted on late in the day, L&D people are essentially looking for the silver bullet in a vacuum: that’s quite a stressful environment to work in. Much better to create an eco-system where lots of ideas allow the best ideas to stand out on their own. In the workplace, this means getting marketing engagement at the start of the course development process and encouraging early input to go viral.  If agile marketing is in the mix from start to finish, "marketing that just works" is what comes out of the process. Cool stuff that just makes it easier: Hatch great ideas with a #hackday James Webb Young, in his book "A technique for producing ideas" advocates a particularly ordered 5 step approach. Jon Warning summarises the entire process in his 3Sixty Design blog. Paul Brown’s "The 6 best marketing ideas I have ever had" 5 lessons to learn from McDonald’s marketing See the full story How to support L&D output with marketing that doesn’t stink

Content from the nowcomms.com: the B2B marketing company for tech busineses in education, sports, security & ID. See the full story here Is Net Promoter Score any good? Anyone who knows us knows that we’re pretty analytical here at Now Comms. We think that B2B marketing needs to be evidential if it’s ever going to support really effective lead nurturing campaigns. This reputation for data based decision making means we’re often asked about the Net Promoter Score System. Usually the discussion goes along the lines of: "What is it?", "Is it any good?" and "As customer satisfaction surveys go, should we be using the Net Promoter System to build our business?" What is it? Business analyst Fred Reichheld helped create the Net Promoter Score (NPS) about 10 years ago and has been promoting its value ever since. Today it’s one of the most recognised methods for measuring customer loyalty. The score is based on answers to the question: "on a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to refer a friend or colleague". How it works Customers scoring zero to six are your detractors within the NPS system. These folks are unhappy; and they account for more than 80% of negative word-of-mouth. Sevens and eights are passive "comme si, comme ça" kind of customers; they think that what you do is barely adequate, but it’s better than nothing. Nines and tens are your promoters; these guys are loyal fans. NPS says that this group delivers more than 80% of the referrals your business receives. Is it any good? Well consistency is always good when you’re benchmarking, and since the Net Promoter Score System is pretty popular, respecting it can deliver valued results simply because there’s a good chance your competitors are using it too. But NPS has as many friends as it does foes. Here’s the science bit NPS is calculated by subtracting the percentage of customers who are (unhappy) "detractors" from the percentage of customers who are (happy) "promoters". Essentially it’s trying to create a score based on customer loyalty, using the customers’ likelihood to recommend a company.  Dr Robert East at Kingston Business School equates this to Positive Word of Mouth (PWOM) versus Negative Word of Mouth (NWOM) but argues that NPS measures only the volume of positive or negative Word of Mouth, not its impact. Others say that there’s no real scientific evidence to prove that the "likelihood to recommend" question is a more reliable predictor of business growth than any other customer loyalty based questions (for example: overall satisfaction, likelihood to purchase again, etc).  When data snobs say they hate the NPS metric it’s usually because (they say) no correlation between NPS and growth has ever been proven, so using the score to support actionable insights diminishes the role of the mild mannered data analyst to flaky snake oil salesman. What else is out there? The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) represents the popular alternative to NPS. ACSI is based on a model originally implemented in 1989 for the Swedish economy called the Swedish Customer Satisfaction Barometer. In the UK, ACSI is localised to become the NCSIUK and similar models have evolved in other countries. Unlike NPS, there is no ultimate question with ACSI. Several questions focusing on areas like merchandise, functionality, content and price are asked to ascertain customer satisfaction. This degree of sophisticated generally results in less criticism from die hard data junkies but more bamboozlement  from the board. Therein perhaps lies the problem. NPS is clever enough to keep things really simple. It’s success is based on it’s ability to market effectively beyond the hard core analyst geek. In his own blog Net Promoter’s founding father Fred Reichheld admits that "The reason that so many researchers hate NPS is that so many senior line executives love it." So are customer satisfaction surveys worth doing? Hell yes. The models might be flaky and the methods diverse but any customer satisfaction data is better than none at all we say. Fuse together the best aspects of all the best methodologies and you get an easy to implement contact programme that supports both sales and marketing.  Sales people can use the insights to increase engagement and up sell; marketing teams get the solid statistical base they need to support realistic positioning and messaging, and power effective campaigns. It’s fear that stops many companies starting regular surveys; not knowing how satisfied customers are is just easier than knowing how dissatisfied they are, But in the world of social marketing ignoring the elephant in the room is deadly, because if customers aren’t letting you how they feel about your products and services, you can be damn sure they’re telling someone else. More: Use our tried and tested customer satisfaction process to get started with customer surveys Discover the best and worst features of NPS by reading  Richard Evensens’s blog B2B marketing analytics is easy when no ones asking difficult questions Get the official sales pitch from NPS’s developers Bain & Company See the full story Is Net Promoter Score any good?

Content from the nowcomms.com: the B2B marketing company for tech busineses in education, sports, security & ID. See the full story here How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 1 Day 1: trending and amending Marketing internships are more searched in the UK than media, journalism and BBC internships according to Google trends. Therefore I realise I’m lucky in starting my first of a five-day placement - a marketing internship - with B2B marketing company, Now Communications. This is the first piece of work I’ve been tasked with; attempting to compose, tweak and publish a blog post before I go home tonight, charting the first day of my journey from clueless to competent as a B2B marketer. This begins with the attempt to write a successful blog post, including relevant and highly searched words for SEO, as part of their marketing campaign. After searching how long a good blog should be - and dismissing the results; those over 2,000 words are supposedly the most successful and I only have an hour - I turn to looking at the language to use to make this blog an internet sensation. This means including words that are relevant to the content and also popular search terms. Previously, I’ve been referring to this opportunity as ‘work experience'; however a search on Google translate meant I swiftly corrected myself, to completing an ‘internship’. While ‘work experience’ was searched the same amount as ‘internship’ until 2007, since then ‘internship’ has steadily overtaken, and so using this as a keyword in a blog on the subject should, hopefully, increase the chance of it being spotted. To put the finishing touches to my to-be talked about blog, the focus keyword, title and description all included the term ‘marketing internship’ to increase the SEO. Now if this doesn’t get me thousands of views I don’t know what will. What I’ve learned: It’s important that a post is high in a search engine’s results - otherwise what’s the point. Carefully selecting the words used based on popular searches will optimise your chance of being seen. Marketing campaigns are conducted in many ways, and a blog by a nonplussed intern is one. View the next instalment here: http://www.nowcomms.com/how-to-become-a-confident-b2b-marketer-in-five-days-or-less-day-2/ See the full story How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 1

Content from the nowcomms.com: the B2B marketing company for tech busineses in education, sports, security & ID. See the full story here How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 2 Day 2: stats and social media Who knew just how many functions Google has. Of course, I knew there was more to it than the standard search - I spent the majority of my French GCSE plugging my homework into Translate, and everyone’s had fun on I’m Feeling Lucky - but discovering Google Analytics has upped the ante. Analytics shows everything that anyone would want to know about their website - the number of viewers, those that ‘bounce’, which pages are most popular. For today’s education in B2B marketing, I was most interested in where the hits were coming from - how users found their way to the NowComms website. Twitter, Quora and Facebook all attract traffic, but here’s where I come in; attempting to increase and expand the social media presence of NowComms and in turn increase website views - which could lead to all important conversions (those who purchase, sign up and so on). The aim is to gain more follows, more retweets, more likes and more comments across the various social media channels - the other target suggested by a colleague was to double the hits to the website by tomorrow morning, I’m not rising to that one - but also to be more social, returning the favour to other users. I began this task by creating an Instagram account, linking the post to Twitter, and providing a link to yesterday’s blog. A couple of things became clear from this, mainly that hashtagging relevant words, such as marketing and internship, does indeed increase the presence of a post on Instagram; the photo had 27 likes in five minutes (I was slightly disheartened that never has a picture on my private Instagram account had anywhere near that response). However, it was also clear that these people were not following us and not necessarily linked to marketing. But maybe any response is better than no response. What I’ve learned: There is no point having content on a website if no one looks at it, but there is also not much point in having hits on a website if these aren’t made into conversions Twitter is most successful for bringing people to NowComms marketing website. The aim is to increase the success of NowComms on social media. Hashtagging does work, but maybe not so well on Instagram as Twitter; Instagram has far more strange people on it. View our Twitter and Instagram: https://twitter.com/nowworkplace https://instagram.com/now_comms/ Read the previous instalment here: http://www.nowcomms.com/how-to-become-a-confident-b2b-marketer-in-five-days-or-less/ And the next here: http://www.nowcomms.com/how-to-become-a-confident-b2b-marketer-in-five-days-or-less-day-3-2/ See the full story How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 2

Content from the nowcomms.com: the B2B marketing company for tech busineses in education, sports, security & ID. See the full story here How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 3 Day 3: the long and short of successful B2B marketing Yesterday our Instagram (Now_Comms) went live, Twitter was inundated with links to the first blog, and another widely anticipated post went up. But did it make a difference? Today is the day to evaluate the success of this blog and increased social media in the B2B marketing world of NowComms. Apparently, it did. The hits to this blog significantly increased, nearly half of which were Entrances - people who went directly to the blog page rather than through other areas of the site. There was also increased activity on social media - more followers on Twitter, and activity linked to the tweets put out there. I have to admit, this is mostly from a colleague sharing a blog link, which was  immediately favourited multiple times, while mine all sat untouched. Clearly I have a bit to learn still. To manage these increasingly hectic sites, I was introduced to Hootsuite, from which I will be carefully letting it do all the work for me in managing where posts are sent, to who, and when. In even more exciting news, this blog is the first that appears when entering the (perhaps rather specific) title of it into Google. Although this was very exciting for me, it is a slight niche, and so I set about trying to increase its search return with slightly broader search terms. In doing this I’m working on the basis of The Long Tail principle, proposed by Chris Anderson probably as a way to make small time bloggers etc feel better about themselves. Although there are a couple of web pages that get a large number of hits (here it’s The 100 best eLearning websites chart), the large number of small hit pages are just as important; a few hits on many pages brings just as much traffic as many hits on few pages. The top hit page for NowComms brings in just over 57% of the traffic, while the smaller pages bring in about 0.1-2.0% of all traffic each, amounting to just under half of all traffic. From Chris Andersons book The Long Tail, http://www.longtail.com/about.html This is valuable - if people are looking for something specific, they are likely to find it because there’s less competition. And Google likes new material, making it likely to appear higher in searches. It’s also more likely that these may convert to sales compared to a more general search. And although I would love this blog to be the top hit website, this reassures me that I am indeed contributing in - nearly - just as significant a way to the hits to this website. So on only my third day on the job in B2B marketing I can confidently say I’ve learned a few things. Watch this space for a full review of why a B2B marketing internship is undoubtedly worth doing…let’s just say my CV has suddenly filled up. What I’ve learned: The Long Tail is approach in marketing allows most content to be valuable in some way Social media is an invaluable tool for B2B marketing for spreading the word An internship in B2B marketing is worthwhile - and I am safely on my way from clueless to competent as a B2B marketing expert. Read my previous instalments here: http://www.nowcomms.com/how-to-become-a-confident-b2b-marketer-in-five-days-or-less/ http://www.nowcomms.com/how-to-become-a-confident-b2b-marketer-in-five-days-or-less-day-2/ And my next here: http://www.nowcomms.com/how-to-become-a-confident-b2b-marketer-in-five-days-or-less-day-3-3/   See the full story How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 3

Content from the nowcomms.com: the B2B marketing company for tech busineses in education, sports, security & ID. See the full story here How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 4 Day 4: B2B goes big screen As the trendy marketing company NowComms is - and following the idea of a client’s Video Selfie project - we decided it was time to jump on and get the Camcorder out. For the purpose of this project, substitute Camcorder for my iPhone placed on a carefully constructed pile of stationary and books, and held in place with Blu tac. The challenge: to film a short video explaining the NowComms’ B2B marketing #hackday, in under an hour… and to edit, touch up and make look brilliant in under a day. The filming was relatively straightforward - I moaned about having to be filmed, the camera fell over - but we got a large amount of footage quite easily. Too much, in fact, for a short clip, and deciding what was unnecessary was a tricky task. In fact it was this that forced me to think more like a marketing expert than I’ve had to so far. What’s the most important message here? To explain #hackdays, but why not show how great we are too… One clip has a good message, but is delivered badly… Is this actually interesting to watch? It was a perfect exercise in marketing, and I like to think it also employed some kind of psychology (as a Psychology student I’m always looking to claim this). There were also more unlikely sources from which most difficulties came; loading videos to Google Drive, and then searching for a USB lead when I couldn’t make it work, trying to find the ‘change font colour’ button on Windows Media player for an absurdly long time, being completely stumped for music ideas. But it came together in the end - and here is the finished product, with an all-star cast from Now Communications HQ. Want to explore more? Contact us on the phone or fill out this quick form First Name Last Name Email Company Phone And another thing Read my previous blog here: http://www.nowcomms.com/how-to-become-a-confident-b2b-marketer-in-five-days-or-less-day-3-2/   See the full story How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 4

Content from the nowcomms.com: the B2B marketing company for tech busineses in education, sports, security & ID. See the full story here How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 5 Day 5: the finale Today I pack up my desk, take my tea mug back to the kitchen and return my visitor pass to reception. So here are my Big Three recommendations if you’re looking to fill my space in a marketing internship: 1. Go somewhere with a Kanban board Monday morning, just as I was settling down, a colleague announced it was time for a Scrum meeting by the Kanban board.  Nodding as if I knew what this involved ("cabman? crab nan?"), I became witness to a fundamental idea here. The Kanban board is a whiteboard charting the progress of all tasks, projects and ideas from ‘current sprint’ to ‘in progress’ to ‘test’ and then ‘released’. The point is to make sure projects move through each stage by members of the team focussing on different tasks, but being adaptive so ideas can change as it becomes clear what works. The Kanban board charts this process, which is good because you can see the progress you’re making, but you also have everything you could do up in front of you, and can choose what you want to focus on, and how. I’ve had free reign in my little section of the office all week - create a survey or upload to Instagram?! The power’s going to my head. 2. Use every bit of software available Not only is my Skills section on LinkedIn probably over the maximum allowance, it makes your week far more interesting. Most of the software I used - Hootsuite, Limesurvey, WordPress - I had never used before but reassuringly saying, ‘oh yes that’s fine I can do that’ meant that I wasn’t sat there sending out boring emails and making tea all week (in fact I never once made a cup). Creating and editing the video for yesterday’s blog was one of my most enjoyable tasks, and although I have used MovieMaker before - there was a period when I was about 12 when making pointless videos was how you spent your time - I was having to think professionally about it rather than deciding on the most garish background possible. 3. Write blogs (surprise surprise) It not only gave me lots to do - no one wants to be bored on work experience - but also meant I’ve had to think of interesting content to put up, maximise its SEO, use social media to broadcast it… Most of the skills I’ve used this week are related to this blog. It’s also made me dredge up my AS level writing skills, and revision is always good. And it’s been thoroughly enjoyable watching the number of views steadily rise - especially knowing that they can’t all have been from my dad. My final words of wisdom on a marketing internship: Men in offices still get bored Marketing companies are too modern to have biros - everything I wrote was in green Sharpie Always say yes when there’s an offer of tea   See the full story How to become a confident B2B marketer in five days or less: Day 5

Estoy convencido de la irrelevancia de los estilos de aprendizaje a la hora de diseñar elearning. En las revisiones de un diseño que está ya tomando forma, no hay nada que me haga temer más por la integridad del proyecto que un compañero apuntando con preocupación al hecho de que "no estamos poniendo nada kinestético", o alguna apreciación similar relativa a los estilos. El efecto Forer Se presenta a cada participante una lista personalizada de preferencias personales. Se les pide que indiquen, en una escala de 1 a 5, en qué grado coincide esa preferencia con su personalidad. Los resultados indican una clara concordancia con una buena parte de la lista personalizada. Pero ocurre que la lista no es personalizada: todos recibieron la misma. El principio de afinidad, bien descrito por Cialdini, tiene el potencial de cambiar nuestra "forma de vida". Existe una tendencia bien documentada a identificarse con parámetros y pautas. El horóscopo es un ejemplo perfecto. Del mismo modo, es muy sencillo "encasillarse" en un estilo de aprendizaje simplemente por el hecho de haberlos conocido, y muy posiblemente, haber hecho algún tipo de "test" que no hace sino reafirmar el convencimiento personal de que la preferencia descrita se exhibe habitualmente como parte de nuestra personalidad. ¿Somos los profesionales de formación y desarrollo los primeros en caer en esta "encasillamiento", y por extensión someter a nuestra audiencia al mismo proceso? Me temo que todos somos susceptibles de caer en esta falacia. La teoría es discutible No voy a rebatir aquí la validez de los estudios realizados hasta el momento sobre estilos de aprendizaje porque ya hay quien lo hace con mucho acierto, también en el campo de la formación corporativa. Prefiero, como hace Cathy Moore, preguntar qué utilidad práctica nos brindan estos estilos: de acuerdo, puede que existan ciertos estilos… ¿y qué? ¿Existen ejemplos de soluciones elearning en los que un diseño especialmente adaptado a un estilo de aprendizaje haya dado resultados superiores a los que se obtendrían sin realizar esas concesiones? Me gustaría verlos y añadirlos a este blog. "Pero yo soy muy visual" Los niños no tienen "estilos": aprenden indiscriminadamente. (Foto: Outdoor Classrooms blog) ¿Muy visual? De acuerdo. Pero nuestro cerebro no cierra puertas. Durante nuestra infancia aprendemos de muchas formas. Somos una especie incapaz de sobrevivir sin aprender, y lo hacemos de forma innata, versátil, improvisada o planificada, consciente e inconsciente, y recurriendo a todos los medios que tenemos a nuestro alcance: mirando, saboreando, oyendo, tocando, haciendo, vicariamente, equivocándose y más adelante escuchando y después leyendo. Aprendemos a través de todos estos canales continuamente, y nuestro cerebro no dispone de "grifos" que cierren una u otra forma de suministro: aprendemos de todas estas formas. Por tanto, afirmar que una persona acostumbrada a la lectura "no va a aprender nada" con un vídeo o ejercicio práctico (o que va a aprender menos) es, en mi opinión, un insulto a esa persona. Es como afirmar que un vegetariano no puede digerir un filete (vaya esta frase con todo el respeto del cuasi-vegetariano que suscribe). Colegio y universidad: los anti-estilos Las pruebas de que todos podemos aprender incluso en las condiciones más adversas son, tristemente, el colegio y la universidad. Son estos lugares especialistas en suprimir muchas de nuestras vías de expresión, comunicación y potencial inquisitivo, al mismo tiempo que nos someten a una restringida dieta sensorial basada en el monólogo y el texto. Aquí está mi monólogo, delante de esta pizarra. Que nadie contraste opiniones mientras yo hablo. Que nadie baraje hipótesis. Usaremos este libro, que he escrito yo. Ahora, aprended. (Foto: Malate269). Es aquí donde adquirimos la vergüenza al dibujar, hasta perder el interés por el dibujo y el boceto. Es aquí donde dejamos de actuar, de experimentar, de formular hipótesis. Es aquí donde aprendemos a callar y levantar la mano antes de preguntar. Es aquí donde aprendemos que hay preguntas tontas, y que el experimento fallido no es válido ni sirve para aprender. Es aquí donde se va por el libro. Es un clima increíblemente restrictivo para el aprendizaje. Pero a pesar de todo, prácticamente todos salimos airosos de la prueba; prueba que es, para cualquiera que crea en los estilos, una de las privaciones estilísticas más prolongadas y estrictas de nuestras vidas. Las estadísticas de fracaso escolar y abandono apuntan a factores familiares y socioeconómicos, por supuesto. Una vez más, sugerir la más mínima incapacidad escolar del individuo basándose en unos supuestos estilos sería un insulto personal y directo contra los alumnos. ¿Estoy defendiendo los modelos escolares y universitarios actuales? No, estoy diciendo que aprendemos sin problemas en ellos a pesar de su escaso cromatismo estilístico. El elearning como solución, no como terapia Rechazo la noción de los estilos y su aplicación en el diseño como medida para "optimizar" el aprendizaje; dichas medidas son una acusación implícita de incapacidad o capacidad limitada. (Foto: ‘lil pick-me-up blog) Cuando me planteo el diseño de una solución elearning, no hay cabida para estilos de aprendizaje. Hacer este tipo de concesión sería similar a que una empresa ofreciera dos horarios de trabajo, uno para los que son madrugadores, y otro para los que no lo son. El elearning es una solución a un problema específico, que nunca es la capacidad de aprendizaje de su audiencia. El diseño de la solución debe: Resolver el problema. Probablemente en conjunción con otras intervenciones de naturaleza no formativa (tema para otro post) Resolverlo de forma efectiva. Además de las intervenciones mencionadas, aquí entran en juego variables como la motivación y lograr que la experiencia usando la solución de elearning sea amena. (La formación como experiencia es también tema para otro post en español) Entre los factores que influyen en el diseño de la solución, incluiría: Contexto y cultura de la empresa La estrategia de talento ya presente en la empresa (¡o su ausencia!) Tecnología y medios disponibles Calendario de actuación y esperanza de vida de la solución Con la notable ausencia, por supuesto, de los estilos de aprendizaje. The post La irrelevancia de los estilos de aprendizaje appeared first on A Learning Blog.

Agile, iterative, successive approximation… There are many terms that broadly encapsulate the same concept: agile L&D development, or the delivery of small incremental value-add to your business through an iterative approach. Here’s why you should be agile too. Life is agile It’s never this straightforward (photo: William Warby) We have all heard someone complain about a specific goal being "a moving target". Usually, this type of complain implies that it is not worth pursuing such goal. But the reality is that almost everything today is a moving target. In fact, the targets that are not moving are most likely the ones not worth pursuing. In an organization that strives for continuous improvement, everything, including learning, is a moving target. And with that comes the realization (deep down you knew all along) that your learning design will never be "finished", and that you may have to work towards the goal in small but usable increments. Courses, workshops, elearning, blended learning solutions that are launched frequently, incorporating minor additions and changes as you learn from them. Welcome to agile L&D development. Once restricted to the realm of software development, agile has found supporters in many activities involving design. There are many good introductions to the concepts relating to agile development, such as Leandog’s discussion guide. Agile, in short But a frequent, usually off-putting feature of agile literature (at least for us in L&D) is the fact that it focuses on software design. So if you are not inclined to read that 112-page ebook, or a similar one, here’s the essence as it relates to learning: Work with your team and your learners, not with documentation and processes Aim to design and create the smallest learning solution that solves the problem Launch it and ruthlessly collect and analyze feedback Refine the solution, informed by the feedback you get Launch revised solutions as soon as you feel they address enough previous feedback to add new value Constantly seek ways to remove non-value steps so you can cycle through the above as fast as you can In practice How this looks in practice depends on many factors. For example, classroom solutions lean themselves to quite frequent iteration. In fact, you could revise the material and delivery script after reading the survey from each class. In teams, it gets only slightly slower. The way I have done rapid iteration of classroom solutions within a team involves: a common storage location in the cloud a standard way of documenting changes a regular video conference to coordinate changes In practice, your personal delivery kit will be somewhat off sync from the central repository, since you need time to fully assimilate changes made by others before being able to incorporate them in your own sessions. Blended and elearning solutions are somewhat less agile in that there is a production and deployment process involved that may cause too much overhead if done frequently. Still, adopting an agile methodology will help the L&D team be more nimble, launch solutions faster and keep them fresh and topical over time. It’s easier than it looks When thinking about implementing agile practices, the L&D field has some important advantages over the software field. Paper prototypes are quick, cheap and effective in testing new concepts (photo: theuxreview.co.uk) Perhaps the most important one is prototyping. It is generally much easier to prototype a learning solution than it is to prototype software. This applies both to classroom and elearning. There are many approaches and techniques to quickly create useful prototypes for the purpose of testing an idea, visualizing the solution or requesting feedback from customers (learners). When it comes to elearning, we also enjoy the same benefits of the software world. Particularly, practices like A/B testing, where a small portion of the learners are shown a different version of the elearning so we can study their reactions and feedback. Many software companies are constantly in A/B testing mode. There are also great low-tech approaches to gathering feedback and understanding the business, the learners and their needs, and quickly incorporating these insights into the agile development cycle. It’s easier than it looks because the key, as in any agile practice, is not so much the technical ability or tools used by the L&D team, but their grasp of how agile can help in their specific environment and their ability to work together to deliver that promise. Actually, if you are leading an L&D team, a good conversation starter is reading the Manifesto for Agile Software Development but placing the word "Learning" whenever you see "Software". When to do agile Of course not every learning solution is an ideal candidate for agile. For example, solutions with short shelf life or those where participants are getting externally certified and consistency across groups, industries and countries is expected. Onboarding new hires. A great scenario for agile L&D development (photo: Arthur Grigoryan) But there are many other areas where I have seen or practiced agile development of some sort, including: Employee onboarding. I consider this the perfect scenario in large companies or those with high turnover. As this post suggests, it’s hard to get it right; iteration becomes your friend Role-specific training. This is a great example of a "moving target", as the learning solutions must quickly adapt and support the company’s talent strategy Compliance and other courses that must be repeated over time and for every new hire Time to park ADDIE? Probably not. Although it’s time to look at ADDIE not as a flowchart or fixed set of rules, but as a set of principles. The principles that guide ADDIE are solid. But it is easy to be slowed down by the waterfall approach that is traditionally applied in ADDIE. If you’ve only worked on ADDIE models, experiencing agile L&D development will change the way you think about learning solution design. The post Why you should be doing agile L&D development appeared first on A Learning Blog.

Tēnā koutou katoa Welcome to you all related posts - >> ( 2 ) (1) I'm still new to blogging. Recently I’ve had a thing about comment guidelines. In my last post, I was lucky and grateful to receive some useful opinion from Britt Watwood and Sue Waters. So I’ve reviewed my set of guidelines again and given it a new look.I’d be delighted if you’d check it out. My aim is to make the guidelines as inviting to commenters as possible. So your opinion is very valuable to me. Please let me know what you think. If there is anything that you feel I should change - pitch, use of words, issues listed etc - just put a comment beneath this post and let me know.I really appreciate your opinion.Ka kite anōCatch ya later