I went out walking in the snowy forest yesterday. I love getting out when it’s like this, just a wide expanse of heathland with a fresh carpet of snow. Usually you have to pick your way across this carefully, finding a path, avoiding the boggy patches and crunching your way over twigs, leaves, dried heather and the occasional rabbit hole. But in the snow, it’s all level; it’s frozen, fresh, clean. You can forge your own track on the clean sheet in front of you. It got me thinking about clarity: about how we get caught up in deep reflection, trying new techniques, new technologies, how we clutter up our environment and mindset with analysis and thoughts. It made me want to start Monday morning going back to the roots of good design, taking a simple view of how to create an engaging piece of e-learning. I think it’s worth thinking about three things: story, navigation and saying goodbye. These aren’t the only three things to consider, but they’re three important elements in generating engagement, and they’ll do me for today. We communicate in stories: We share ideas, share histories, establish commonality and build bonds over them. We curate and tell our own personal narratives as well as participate in ongoing organisational ones. Some stories are public, others private, but often all are engaging and compelling. Because stories carry us along, once on board, it’s hard to jump off: We don’t like incomplete tales. But not all stories are powerful, so we need to choose our story carefully. I see it as the process of divining the central narrative within the subject. What’s the path we want to take, the route through the snow? The problem with the wide expanse is that it’s easy to get lost. When no route is given, we can plough our own furrow, but it may just take us round in circles or leave us in the middle of the forest. If you’re going to spend time anywhere, spend it at the start when you define and refine your core narrative. Having defined a route, you now need to write the directions to get there, and this is often an area of weakness in e-learning. Navigation should be simple. It needs to fulfil certain key criteria: At any time I should be able to find my way forwards, I should be able to find my way back and I should be able to see where I am in relation to where I started and where I’m going. Everything else is detail, and potentially confounding detail at that. It’s important that navigation does what it says consistently and clearly. It’s no use if navigational elements change function half way through. That’s like your compass pointing north most of the time. This problem usually manifests itself when you land on a page and there is some kind of exercise or activity that has its own controls: we end up with ‘main’ controls for navigation, then sub controls for videos, for exercises or activities. If these controls aren’t unified, aren’t aligned, it’s confusing. You want people to spend time learning the story, not learning how to navigate. Broadly speaking, at any time there should be one way to move forward and one way to move back. Nested navigation, multiple layers of controls are rarely a good thing. Yesterday, I finished my walk as the sun went down. Fortunately I’d packed a flask, so was able to break out the teabags and some biscuits that I’d pinched from a hotel room last week, enabling me to sit back in the car and reflect on my adventures. Closing down any learning experience, working out how to say goodbye, is important. What do you want the last memory to be? Do you really want it to be a screen that says "7/10 you passed"? Do you want it to be something that tells you who wrote the story and the copyright? Worst of all, do you just leave it hanging? Far better to reflect upon the journey, to remind me of the challenges we overcame, to agree what we’ve learnt and to plan for next time. Better to look back over the route and decide which views we liked and which bits got swampy. It’s called learning. These are just three things to think about when we’re designing learning. They’re not magic bullets, just parts of a map that will make the journey better. Originally published on Julian Stodd’s Learning Blog.

The Promise of Big Data for L&D reminds me sometimes of being in a messy kitchen; lots and lots of information chaos, all scattered, out of context, waiting to be selected/extracted, cooked to perfection by experts, and arranged and presented in a manner that drives high customer satisfaction. But most L&D organizations are not looking to unlock the meaning of life; they want information that is actionable to improve business results that are impacted by learning and knowledge transfer. Our kitchens are typically not that cluttered, so let’s not make it more complicated than it needs to be. Click the play button below to listen to the full podcast (based off the original blog post Learning Analytics: What’s in the kitchen?).

We are excited to announce the release of the new eBook Seven Prompts: Actions for Leading and Learning. Seven Prompts: Actions for Leading and Learning is a collection of Mike Koper’s "Seven" articles focused on tips and prompts that will help you recognize opportunities to improve your performance and the performance of your workforce. Focus areas discussed in the eBook include: Seven Self-Identifying Prompts for Tomorrow’s Global Leader Seven Critical Prompts to Avoid Management Missteps Seven Timely Prompts for Global Leaders to Manage Functional Teams Seven Prompts to Elevate Intellectual Horsepower Seven Critical Prompts for Problem-Solving Reports Seven Listening Prompts for Tomorrow’s Growth Leaders Seven Clarification Prompts for Transformation into Leadership Success Click here to view a free copy of the eBook: http://bit.ly/Wq5R0X.

As the cloud computing concept emerged and was beginning to take hold, many notable benefits were presented and touted by cloud proponents to, what was, a skeptical audience at the time. But as these cloud services have developed and matured, a number of other "hidden" benefits have also emerged, which are just as significant in their own right. Some of these fall on the "soft side" of the cost/benefits scale, but are still contributing advantages with using cloud computing. Press the play button below to listen to the full podcast:

Most organizations have come to realize that they need to show tangible value for their learning function. Many start off by evaluating the effectiveness and efficiency of their most strategic, costly, and highly visible programs. Once these organizations are able to recognize the benefits of measuring, analyzing, and driving strategic decisions for these L&D programs, as well as receive buy-in from senior leadership, they can expand their measurement practice or even establish groups specifically designated for Evaluation and Analytics (E&A) within their organization. Many gradually expanded their measurement approach beyond the critical few learning programs to evaluate most of their training offerings. Some companies may use a simple tool like Survey Monkey to gather effectiveness information, whereas others decide to make a strategic investment in larger scale costlier SaaS solutions, such as Metrics that Matter by KnowledgeAdvisors or Perception by Questionmark. Start small and allow your E&A function to develop as it is begins to bring business value to your organization and, in turn, receives additional buy-in from leadership. This should happen as your E&A processes yield actionable insights that lead to improvement in the quality and effectiveness of training initiatives. However, this progression will lead to some questions: What happens when you have a process and system in place that gathers this massive amount of data, but your E&A team can only focus most of its efforts on the high-stakes programs? What do you do with the exponentially growing data in your Learning Management System (LMS) and Evaluation System? To address these questions, you may need to implement a strategic-level dashboard to aggregate L&D data from across your organization to provide your learning and business leaders with a holistic picture of your L&D function by connecting activity (LMS), effectiveness (Evaluation System), and cost (Financial System) data across your enterprise. Purpose: The purpose of this type of dashboard should be to allow your leaders to quickly gage the health of your L&D organization and take away actionable insights to drive business decisions. Approach: Through interview with key stakeholders in the learning function as well as the business, alignment to company goals and objectives, industry best practices, and research, begin to build out your metrics library. In addition to using standard Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are benchmarkable across different organizations, focus on determining what would be the KPIs in the areas of efficiency (how much?), effectiveness (how well?), and business outcome (impact on business performance?) that would be most interesting to senior leadership within your organization. Ensure that the measures you are reporting on provide insight into questions that need to be answered to reach the goals of your learning group and ultimately entire company. The dashboard should allow to add goals for each metric to track your progress against objectives set within the organization, as well as add industry benchmarks to see how your learning KPIs compare to industry standards. Research: There has been a surge of research and frameworks published in this area to assist organizations with tackling their data and analytics questions. Bersin by Deloitte has developed a four-level Talent Analytics Maturity Model that is a great benchmark to help guide the development of your E&A approach for the entire Talent Management function. However, if you are just starting to dive into learning analytics and need a simple attainable plan, I found SuccessFactors’ representation of the L&D Measurement and Analytics Maturity Model very helpful. Source: SuccessFactors Measurement Maturity Model Remember, the ultimate goal of any dashboard should be to transform data into meaningful information to enable the organization’s leaders to make smart, substantiated business decisions that positively impact your business performance.  

Last month, the tech world was shocked by Yahoo!’s CEO move to end remote working. The initial response was shock. After all, how could a company, in an industry that for the last 20 years has been championing the idea of remote working and telecommuting, do a total about-face? Even I, initially, was a bit shocked by the move. But after reading the press releases and reports, I discovered that the reason behind the move was to inspire innovation. And after reading the belief system that is being employed, I too began to rethink my position. When I think back to the times that I have worked with colleagues and came up with something new and innovative; I have to admit that it has tended to be with colleagues whom I interacted with in the office or have face-to-face contact with. I have experienced innovation with remote workers as well. But not the same unscheduled spur of the moment idea generation has occurred. Admittedly, I am ashamed to say, that when it comes to working with remote colleagues, my main communications with them are around projects we are working on. There really is not a thought to just socialize with them. While I may ask them how the weather is where they are or joke with them about working in their pajamas, it has been primarily superficial dealings, with the main aim of the conversation revolving around determining the status of their piece of a project. However, the genesis for the conversation could be focused on innovating or brainstorming on an idea. But then we are not talking about the spur-of-the-moment type of innovation. These interactions have been preplanned. On the other hand, when I see people in the office, we do tend to talk about things outside of the office. And it is through that socialization that I become more familiar with them. And inevitably the conversation does tend to swing around to something related to work, which at times turns into an idea. I have worked with remote colleagues and have been impressed with their ability to get things done and for having unique solutions to issues. For certain projects I work on, I have happily endured the mishmash of time zones and the inherent issues around having a dispersed workforce, only because I know that the people are the best performers for the project. And for those types of assignments, this works great. I would even venture to say that within the workforce, many people perform best when they are able to work remotely. As most organizations have found, it is possible to leverage technology in order to bring remotely positioned employees into innovative conversations. After all, we have telephone, Instant Messaging, video teleconferencing, social networks and SharePoint to name a few, which enable us to share and collaborate on ideas just as effectively as in-person interactions. I am not saying that it is not possible to have innovation with remote workers. But it does require more effort and support from team members and the organization in order to build the relationship and to inspire innovation. After all, it is quite easy to get into a conversation with someone you see at the coffee machine or who drops by the office just to say "Hi," versus having to pick up the phone or send an IM just to say "Hi, how are you doing?" or "What did you think of the new movie that came out last week?" So, has Yahoo! caught on to something that the rest of us may have missed? I think it is too early to say. I don’t know how Yahoo!’s move will turn out, but I do know that they have raised the conversation for me to another level. I guess you could say that by going against the stream, they have actually, in a way, become more innovative already. What do you think?  

Personalization is the modern standard. Previous experiences and preferences shape our world, embedding personalization everywhere, including online shopping, smart phone apps, social media sites, and more. Improved technology has provided the means for us to receive what we want, when we want it, avoiding what doesn’t interest us. With this level of personalization widely available, why do we still encounter employee training and development that seems to use a one-size-fits-all approach? Why should we and how do we create opportunities to give learners the keys to drive their own personalized training experience? Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan, known simply as Thiagi, is recognized in training circles for his simple philosophy, "Let the inmates run the asylum." As an instructional designer and facilitator, Thiagi knows how to make the training process personalized around his learners. He believes effective learning is a matter of asking learners to lead training where it will serve their needs most productively. His training sessions are popular and they seem to work well because he applies the most basic tenets of the learner-centered approach—adapt the training to the learners and let them take over. Why let them drive? Thiagi is not alone in this personalized approach. Currently, many in training and development and in higher education are now starting to embrace this method as well. Why? Learner-centered training integrates the way adults are already inclined to learn. It encourages learners to acquire and apply knowledge more effectively than force-feeding information and helps them build on their own experiences so they better understand and retain knowledge. In short, it seems to be working. Learner-centered training moves beyond common assumptions that if training is well-designed, the learners automatically grasp what they need to know and apply that knowledge. It’s an inclusive practice that can be tailored to the needs of the learners based on their own experiences, rather than rigid instructional design expectations, by using realistic examples and situations that are relatable and applicable to the learners. It motivates because it offers a clear advantage to the learners with its relevance to the workplace. Most significantly, it invites learners to actively participate and share their experiences and knowledge with the other learners. How to hand over the keys Learner-centered training design borrows from some of Malcolm Knowles’ principles on adult learning. These are concepts Knowles identified as crucial to effective adult learning, including identifying why the learning is necessary, establishing whether the learners are ready and able to receive and use the information, and relating how can they immediately apply what they learned to their jobs. To make the training experience more worthwhile, as instructional designers and facilitators, it’s necessary for us to factor in these learner-centered principles. So, what can we do to hand over the keys to the learners and let them drive the experience? Here are some tips: Know the audience: Who are the learners? What kind of experiences do they bring to the table? What are their expectations? Engage and motivate: Encourage active participation to help learners become engaged and motivated toward the learning. Allow for time and activities to let them reflect and interpret meaning and then share with other learners. Make it active: Add problem solving, role play, games, discussion, or case study learning opportunities to training. This makes learners more likely to retain what they learned and apply the new knowledge in the workplace. A personalized, learner-centered approach is a reasonable expectation from today’s learners. As instructional designers, it means we should think about ways to include the learners in the process and build in opportunities to self-teach. As facilitators, we should consider putting aside old paradigms of teaching and become guides and moderators to the learning process.

When a coach is truly attentive to a client, they listen intently. They do so not just with their ears, but with their eyes and their intuition. Of course, being in that state of high attentiveness continuously isn’t easy - Learn more by listening to the whole podcast "The Five Levels of Listening":

Originally published on Julian Stodd’s Learning Blog A conversation on Twitter this morning has made me think about play. Playing is all about learning: it can be a solitary activity or done with friends, it can be done in dedicated ‘formally‘ defined play spaces, or it can be done on the bus or in a shop. It can be done within a structure, within set rules, or totally without form or purpose. Play can be defined as ‘action without consequences‘, it’s a ‘free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’‘. Normal rules do not apply: it’s a safe space. Six stage methodology for learning: exploration is all about playing I typically use a six step methodology to explore learning: setting the context, demonstrating key elements, allowing learners to explore it, reflection (both internal and external), formal assessment and footsteps back into our everyday reality. Within this methodology, ‘exploration‘ includes space for ‘playing‘. It’s the place to make mistakes and to learn, without consequence. It’s odd how organisations can be averse to the word ‘play‘, making the false assumption that unstructured play is somehow less valid than formal approaches, despite the fact that we must surely learn far more in life by playing with things than we do by being taught them. You have to make your own mistakes, and it’s better to make as many of them as possible in the safest way. If you’ve read any of my recent pieces that bring social and mobile learning alongside this methodology, it won’t come as any surprise that i see ‘exploration‘ (as well as reflection) as key parts of the methodology that can be well supported by social learning, by the provision of semi structured, semi formal spaces where communities can form and play with the learning. Again, it will be no surprise to say that the very safety and lack of consequence that we associate with playing is a part (but only one part) of what’s available through social learning approaches. They are similar, play a subset of exploration, but not identical: exploration in social learning spaces involves challenge and support and there can be consequences, especially for those with low social capital, those unable to survive or thrive in online communities. Using the wrong tone of voice or approach in social learning spaces can lead to ostracising by the group (although I guess that’s true of play groupings too…?). I’m a great believer in using the dynamics of play in learning design: learning is about understanding consequence, about understanding reaction to action, about understanding how change occurs and how we can influence it. This may be in the physical world, understanding how things fit together, but equally in our own minds, understanding how people feel, how we form communities and gangs. If we have a broad viewpoint, if we are willing to learn from anything around us, then we can better master these things. Take graffiti: I’m currently mapping and collecting patterns of distribution here in Amsterdam of certain groups, using the graffiti to map where different informal communities come together. In itself, the activity has no purpose, but it’s challenging me to think about community, to think about communication, to think about formal and informal spaces. And it’s fun: totally without formal purpose. The fact that I’m playing is what makes it fun, but i’m learning nevertheless. A balance of formal and informal learning is healthy: creating a core of formal structure, but playing around the edges of it, surrounding it with semi formal or totally informal spaces is valuable. That’s why social learning is such an effective approach, such a dynamic methodology, because it ties in with how we naturally form groups around common interests and how we create meaning within those groups by playing with the knowledge. So, within your formal day, take some time out to play. Think about what communities you are part of (both the physical ones you cohabit with in the office and the virtual ones you interact with online) and think about where you are working and where you are playing. If you can’t spot the play space, maybe it’s time to grab your bucket and spade and head to the beach. A little exploration, a little reflection, a bit of playing in our environment, without consequence, goes a long way to helping us learn.  

Let’s reframe the conversation on telecommuting to engagement in the virtual workplace. Mary Ann Masarech discusses telecommuting, its effect on employee engagement, and how organizations and managers can provide the right tools to keep employees engaged.