This week I’m showing you how you can use the Audio Editor in Articulate Storyline to trim audio tracks and add silence. Hopefully these quick tips will make your audio editing a little less stressful!

I’m ramping up to attend ATD ICE 2016 next week, so I’m busy planning my conference map, deciding which sessions get to make the cut for my attention. One such session is being presented by Shannon Tipton on the 21st-Century Toolbox. Today, she tweeted about the session with a link to a brief article she wrote last month. It’s here that I came across a term I hadn’t heard in several years; a term that took me back to my graduate studies, and one which I here said every now and again: Integrative Learning. Integrative Learning The idea behind integrative learning is that it is learning designed to allow learners to connect information and enhance understanding of topics across disciplines. When I do hear this term tossed around, it’s usually in the context of K-12 education - why? Because K-12 education, at least around these parts, is largely based on curriculums that have been carefully crafted to created integrated learning experiences. However, integrative learning is happening in many other places. For example, any higher education course that’s been offered has usually undergone a behind the scenes development to ensure that learning objectives and learning outcomes are closely linked with appropriate assessment measures. We also see integrative learning in procedural training, where learners are taking theoretical concepts, such as their knowledge of lug nuts, and applying that knowledge to a task at hand, such as connecting the lug nut to the 1/4 inch screw (full disclosure - this was a horrible example - I know nothing about lug nuts or screws, I’m sorry). Or, their prior knowledge of how their cat will behave when they try to clip the cat’s nails - in this context, the individual is integrating their prior knowledge of how their cat will react with the steps they take to proceed, such as first wrapping the cat tightly in a towel in a burrito-esque manner (that was a better example, yeah?). What I’m trying to say here is that integrative learning is happening all around us, albeit, we may not be thinking too much about it. If you’ve experienced a traditional K-12 education, you may especially be oblivious to it because it’s just ‘the way it is’, but now that you know a little bit more, you’ll likely begin to notice integrative learning happening around you a bit more often!

The lovely Kristin Anthony interviewed me last week for her podcast, Dear Instructional Designer (which is bananas - thank you, so much!). After our recorded session, we had a little informal chat about my path, and she asked something to the effect of ‘have you ever blogged about that journey?’. I had to think about it for a moment, because I’ve blogged about it a lot but in several different posts, so it’s a bit disjointed. In any event, I figured I would take the time to let my readers know about the path I took to get from novice Instructional Designer to my present day self…maybe it will become my origin story and I’ll get paid as much as Hugh Jackman in Wolverine…maybe I’m delusional? Like many, my road to Instructional Design was accidental. I had just graduated with a BA in Linguistics and Psychology, my friend (a former K-12 teacher) told me her company was hiring and that they needed warm bodies and she thought I was smart enough, so I interviewed and got the job (which I’m pretty sure was because the VP at the time was super impressed with my background in Linguistics, thinking I spoke multiple languages…a moment in my life where staying silent was a good thing). I slogged around there for about 5/6 years, in a training company with very little training, worked on a lot of really cool projects, met a lot of great people (many of whom I still play softball with each year), and completed my Masters of Education (Post-Secondary Studies). At the time, I had freelanced a bit, but it was bumpy. Initially, my goal was to pay off my student debt, so I took on really random projects (proofreading PhD thesis, transcribing audio interviews, etc.) that I really felt kind of gross about - some were alright, but many were a huge rip off. When I paid off my student debt, I vowed off freelancing, because that was a horrible experience. After about a year or so, I went back to the freelance game, but with a target in mind of providing Instructional Design and e-learning development services. After cultivating a small regular client base, I jumped corporate ship and haven’t really looked back since. One of my early contracts was with the university I now work at full-time. Yes - I’m not a full-time business woman in the grand scheme of things, but my passion was higher education, so I couldn’t really turn down an offer of full-time employment at a university. Since accepting that offer, I’ve scaled back my business in terms of which contracts I choose to work on, but believe me, I’m still as busy as ever, essentially working two full-time jobs, but I love what I do! Working in an academic environment is a very interesting experience, much different than working with military personnel, but that’s for another post… Working two full-time gigs is rewarding because I get my fill of analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation at the university, where my role is predominantly project management, but independently, I get to work develop e-learning for clients that I really love working for! It’s the best of both worlds. In the last year, I’ve been able to take my business in a more strategic direction. Instead of working full-time and having 20+ contracts a year, I’m working full-time at the university and full-time for my business, but I’m working with much fewer clients with more repeat business. It’s been great! That takes me to present day - I’m getting ready to hit up some professional development opportunities at ATD ICE (for my independent professional development), and CAUCE-CNIE (for my institutional-self), so if you’re at either of those conferences and run into me, please say hello and ask me anything you want to ask! I won’t promise to have all the answers, but I’ll try to be as helpful as possible.

This is my first year attending ATD ICE, and it has been equally overwhelming and exciting! But at first, mostly overwhelming because I’m just one little person in a sea of Learning and Development professionals. Session 1 The first session I chose to attend was e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, with Ruth Clark, because my Instructional Design journey began with Canadian Military, and Training Development Officers (TDOs) in the Canadian Military LOVE them some Ruth Clark. I figured that after hearing so many rave reviews and reading e-Learning and the Science of Instruction, I had to meet the person behind the book. First impressions? She’s the littlest lady I’ve ever met! But she seems incredibly friendly, chatting with random audience members. Session overview: There are three main additions to the 4th edition of the book, including: Evidence on Learning Games How to Leverage Online Collaboration Boundary Conditions Everything in e-Learning and the Science of Instruction is evidence based, which is awesome! Games can be effective, but the data needs to be analyzed as academic evidence. For example, Ruth explained that first-person shooter games have been shown to increase perceptual attention, but there have been no studies as of yet to indicate that games have been shown to increase reasoning, motor, and memory skills. The speaker looked at whether online collaboration was effective for learning, and found that collaboration is more effective when working together on a difficult problem (vs a simple problem - the transactional effort has a better ROI when working on a difficult problem). She also found that completion rate declines with asynchronous assignments, whereas there tends to be a higher completion/response rate when participating synchronously. In discussing boundary conditions, Ruth identified situations where certain instructional strategies work better than others. Novice individuals may benefit from words + text, whereas Experienced individuals may do better with just words. Adding visuals increase the retention between both groups of individuals. There is no correlation between what learners like and what is best for their learning - just try not to make learning disruptive (coherence principle). Overall impression? Ruth Clark is a pretty informative lady. I can definitely see why DND was so interested in her, and I would definitely recommend picking up the latest edition of e-Learning and the Science of Instruction (I originally read the 2nd edition). Session 2 Next up, I wanted to check out Connie Malamed’s Crash Course in Visual Design - 1, because I enjoy reading her blog and following her on Twitter, and 2, because I think she has some pretty good information about visual design that I should really be absorbing. First impressions? She seems well-organized and has some jokes on hand - "Whats the difference between a pizza and a musician?" - "A pizza can feed a family." - THAT STING, THOUGH! Session overview: First up - she’s threatening to send a note home to our parents if we fail the visual design pop quiz. She’s tough! Connie identifies a shocking, but common, issue: employers often don’t understand the importance of investing in graphics/visuals for learning materials, but "50% of the brain’s cortex is devoted to processing visual information," so visuals really are important, and we have to make the case for visuals - the ROI is there! The picture superiority effect dictates that we have a better memory for pictures than words, especially when it comes to retaining concrete knowledge. When you see something beautiful and well-designed, you have an aesthetic experience. That’s how I felt about the mountains when we were in Breckenridge yesterday - it illicit a positive emotion, which is beneficial to learning. Anyone can improve at visual design, because it’s not art - well thank goodness, because I will never consider myself an artist. But the design needs to be effective. It needs to work, or what’s the point? Visual design = the arrangement of visuals and text in graphic space. There are 8 key points of visual design: Align visual design (with your audience/content/organization) Organize your graphic space Consider all of your image options Simplify fonts Consider colours Create a visual hierarchy Direct the eyes Transform bullets to visuals (and she promises we’ll kiss her after she explains this) Overall impression? Connie knows a lot about visual design, but there was a lot of ground covered, and I think folks are either going to be rushing to buy her book in the bookstore, or will be scouring the internet doing their homework on visual design. Her 8th point of visual design seems to have been kiss-worthy for the majority of session attendees…the military taught me to hate bullets (because they often cram them down your throat), and the phrase "bullets are too verbose", so I learned this lesson quite awhile ago, but it’s a good one!    

Keynote The keynote this morning was incredibly inspiring. Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action and Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t, spoke with us about leadership and why some organizations thrive, and others fail. Session 1 First off - I got to meet Patti! So that was awesome - we led the charge on searching for session 1, eating lunch, and attending session 1.5. I had intended to attend Your Brain on Creativity: The Secrets to Making Creativity Work for Your Business, but couldn’t for the life of me find the exhibitor’s session! And I wasn’t the only one. Ah well. It gave me time to wander around the expo and pick up some materials. The next session I wanted to attend, 10 Practical Principles for Creating Impactful E-Learning, was full…so we stumbled across the hall to sit in on What Caused it? Techniques to Isolate the Effects of Your Programs, with Patti Phillips. Results are important, but my mind does not work well when confronted with Return on Investment (ROI) speak. Initially, my pants were confused off. She explained the ROI process, identifying some guiding principles and results-based solutions. Techniques were provided to isolate the effects of programs, which seem very comparable to techniques used in most academic research (using control groups, trends, input, etc.). Full disclosure: I had to leave the session - there was too much math, and there were other sessions that were more closely aligned to my business. Session 1.5 I ducked into How to Boost Your Career Well-Being with Beth Cabrera, and came in just in time for a 2-minute meditation…MUCH more therapeutic than doing math. Phew! The first portion was about mindfulness, and how to incorporate it within your career. The next part was about gratitude - intentionally looking for what is good and taking note of it. She had us write down three good things: Hiking the mountains in Breckenridge, and getting to share that experience with people I care about Meeting new people within the e-learning industry Finding a session that’s more closely aligned to my career and personal interests. She explained that an organization had individuals do this (writing down good things), for 3 weeks, and noticed increases in levels of gratitude and happiness. She discusses how doing this activity can help reprogram your brain to intentionally scan the environment for good things. You can easily change the tone of a meeting by starting a meeting going around the table to talk about one thing they’re excited about. It sets the tone for gratitude. If we create a culture of gratitude, individuals will become more successful, because they will be surrounded by positivity. Looking at a situation like grocery shopping, you can look at the negative of having to go to the grocery store (the act of shopping), but you can reframe the situation by appreciating that you have the ability to go to the grocery store, and have the money to purchase healthy food. She talked about strengths - focusing on our strengths allows us to become happier, feel more successful, and have a sense of meaning and authenticity - you’re doing what you naturally do best. You will be more efficient, and it’s good for overall performance. Strength spotting: Enjoyment - We love doing things we enjoy doing Ease - Something is natural to do and comes to you with ease Energy - What we do energizes us Advocate - Push yourself to use your strengths more Once you figure out what your strengths are, and save them for when you don’t have as much energy (e.g. after lunch, when you’re usually more tired). Locate complementary partners. Find people who have strengths that complement your strengths, and partner with them to create extraordinary organizations. Recognize the impact you make. If you didn’t wake up each day, people would be missing out on what you offer! Understand your importance, even if you feel small in a very large world. To recognize impact,  complete the following: Task: Who Does This Help? Who does This Help? Essentially, you will be able to see the larger landscape of who you’re helping by doing task x/y/z Modify tasks or change interactions to use your strengths to best help others to make their lives better/easier. Session 2 The final session I attended today was Women in Learning Leadership: Lessons From the Field. I like listening to others talk about their experiences, and this session had an all-star panel: Cammy Bean, Jane Bozarth, Trina Rimmer, Koreen Pagano, and Pooja Jaisingh. This session began with each panelist identify themselves and their learning backgrounds. All panelists are all heavily weighted in technology. Cammy asked the audience "how many of you feel imposter syndrome?," which was a great question, because I know I certainly feel that way sometimes - it kind of ties back to the last session, and the concept recognizing your impact. There are many days when I feel unsuccessful, and unqualified, but on many stages I’m overqualified and even considered an expert. It makes me truly realize that I am a successful woman, and I really need to recognize the impact I have on my clients and readers. Many panelists spoke about exhaustion, sacrifice, and being taken seriously. I can definitely empathize with these feelings. My first year of business was incredibly exhausting, and I sacrificed a lot of my social life when I was doing my graduate studies, writing books, and starting my own business. Being taken seriously is something I still struggle with - when I first started out in Instructional Design at a corporate gig, I found it hard to get clients to take me seriously, but I think this was less because of me and more because of them and the hierarchy. Now that I run my own business, my clients take me seriously, because if they don’t, then what’s the point of working with me? Pooja identified a huge challenge: staying on top of the latest technologies. As learning leaders, there’s added pressure to stay on top of the latest technologies, and because technology is constantly evolving, it can be exhausting to stay on top of technology! When looking for a mentor/boss/ally, most panelists don’t want to be told what to do, they need more of a guidance-based motivation to do the task at hand. Not directions. They look for managers that aren’t looking to take the easy way out, are straight forward, and who want to make progress. Great managers are those who enable you to become your best self (professionally or independently). When interviewing, women tend to hide portions of their personal lives (e.g. having children or being afraid to ask for the compensation they deserve), but it’s important to be upfront, and if the organization doesn’t support you or want to pay what you’re worth, is it an organization you really want to work for? You want to work with people who look up to you, not people you need to prove yourself to. - Koreen Pagano Overall impression: This was a great panel session, and I certainly think that many of the experiences discussed can also be applied to men, so the panel wasn’t only of interest for women - it’s a shame that more men weren’t in attendance (but shout out to all those who were!).

Keynote I have been so excited for this keynote! It may have even swayed me to attend ATD 2016 (shhh). I’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong, and have watched all of Brene Brown’s Ted Talks (and have seen them used countless times in academic contexts at the university - my therapist has even recommended them)! Needless to say, getting to hear Brene Brown speak can only be considered an honour and inspiration! Brene began her keynote by sharing her first professional love - her first real job: training; she was a trainer for AT&T. She also share her secret passion of becoming an MTV VJ on Headbangers Ball. Her research lies in courage and vulnerability, and first began her vulnerability research by researching shame, before she realized that shame was really vulnerability. She shared her publisher’s failed attempts at choosing an appropriate book cover for Daring Greatly - an elephant ass would never appear over her name. What story are you telling yourself right now? Most people I know, at some point, have been committed to a shame narrative of "I’m not good enough" or "I’m not successful." Whenever you feel as though you’re over your head, you go to that shame narrative. But you need to see the struggle through the trees. See it for what it is. Emotion gets the first crack of making sense of a difficult situation. - Brene Brown Be honest before you let your emotions create a narrative. If someone does something you perceive as being negative/passive aggressive/etc., speak with the individual first because the story your emotions are making up, may just be that - a story. You need to empathize with that individual and understand where they’re coming from. Courage is teachable, but it is not easy. If it was easy to teach courage, everyone would be brave all the time. The most terrifying emotion we experience is joy, because we feel as though it’s time-limited. That the joy will end. We’re inviting disaster. These feelings aren’t true - they’re how we self-protect. We need to show up at the arena, and not sit in the cheap seats. We need to show up and dare greatly. Try new things, be vulnerable, take off the armour, show up, and just be you! Shame, scarcity, and comparison are season ticket holders in the arena, and they will always be there. The only thing you need to have when you enter the arena is full clarity and values. Empathy and self-compassion are the most important seats in the arena, because we’re always entering looking for critics. Braving: Boundaries Reliability Accountability Vault Integrity Non-Judgement Generosity We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art. - Henry James. This keynote was just what I needed! It was incredibly inspirational, and I really need to try and be more empathetic with myself to breakdown my internal narrative. Brene has motivated me to get moving on somethings I’ve been holding off on - and I’ll try not to get myself too far underwater, but if I do, I’ll ask for help. Session 1 For the first session, I attended Virtual Presence: Inspire and Engage in the Virtual Classroom and Beyond. Where hopefully I will glean some good information for an upcoming project I’m working on, for my own professional development when it comes to public speaking, and when it comes to making effective recommendations to faculty members at the university for conducting their synchronous sessions. The session kicks off with several questions: How many of you have forgotten about a virtual colleague in a mixed in person/virtual meeting? How many of you have video conferenced with someone who was not camera ready? How many of you have facilitated a meeting, remotely, and wanted more organized participation? How many of you have left a webinar or presentation early because of the presenter’s unique vocal quality? How many of you felt uneasy because you don’t know how your content is landing? Virtual presenter, Kate Nugent, begins with a story about how she always crushed it as a classroom trainer, but how in her first virtual training session, she fell flat. How do we make impact with virtual presence? Virtual presence allows you to connect authentically with virtual audiences, so they feel included, engaged, and inspired. We need to work harder to include people in a virtual session. vPRES Model: Virtually… Present Reaching Out Expressive Self-Knowing Sometimes we need to push people a bit, and make it easy for people to put in the extra effort to participate. Try different platforms and devices, and make requests of others to put in extra effort to join you on the preferred platform. Your IQ would be better in a virtual meeting if you were stoned versus multi-tasking. Be present - Focus on the now, being flexible/adaptable, and be aware of what’s happening in the virtual ‘room’. Presenting tips - Take a deep belly breath before picking up the phone and when you find your nerves taking over, and strategically eliminate distraction - close all applications and hide devices. Reaching out is about building relationships of trust, virtually. You can do this by asking questions that solicits opinions. Ensure you’re exercising your listening skills, and show empathy. Express yourself with voice, body, and face, and ensure your message is aligned with these expressions. Self-knowing - Ask a colleague for feedback to build self-awareness, and set your self up for success by preparing - send an agenda in advance. Sometimes you have to channel your inner middle school teacher to guide users through the steps. Session 2 For my second session of the day, I chose to attend Using the Science of Attention, Willpower, and Decision-Making, with Julie Dirksen…because it’s Julie Friggin’ Dirksen, and a pretty interesting topic - although, I might get reamed for blogging while listening haha. Julie begins her session with a bit of a rant on micro-learning. She wants to spend a bit of time talking to the concept of ‘if we make it smaller, we can squeak in under the ever-reducing attention spans of our users." She hypothesizes that instructional design has a primary responsibility of ruthlessly managing cognitive load. She follows that with a brief tutorial of cognitive load - which I developed a Storyline interaction for way back in the day - check it out here! We’re flooded with data at any given time, and the act of attention is deciding which data is important to you at any given moment in time. The information processing model is essentially a data filter for our minds. Is the data important? Is it not? That’s sensory memory. Working memory allows us to hang on to data for a little while. Long-term memory involves information that sticks around for the long haul…maybe not forever, but for awhile. Segue: I recently watched Patton Oswalt’s most recent comedy special on Netflix, and he had a great bit where he talks about how he can remember radio jingles he heard as a kid, but regardless of how many times he’s taken infant CPR training, he can never remember whether he’s supposed to press on his daughter’s chest first or blow in her mouth first. Julie’s discussion on sensory versus working versus long-term memory. How long is the average attention span? It’s debatable. There are types of attention: voluntary, involuntary, or habitual. There are tons of cues out there to emphasize where we should pay attention. For example, environmental cues or social cues, and these cues depend on the audience. She talks about hyperbolic discounting - when do you get a reward and how does it effect behaviour? We don’t want people to have to pull out the two-minute video on evacuating the building. - Julie Dirksen Doodling to reduce attention drift - This is productive when it comes processing information. Your brain is staying engaged, without having to drift. I do this often when sitting through intense meetings, and I find it quite helpful; however, I also feel guilty when others can see me doodling. When it comes to decision-making, we’re looking for some sort of emotional pull that tells us whether something is important or not, and these pulls are also what tells us if something is worth paying attention to. The power of defaults impacts how we make decisions. For example, countries who have the ability to opt out of organ donation, but it’s the default. These individuals seldom opt out of organ donation because of the power of defaults… When you’re provided with fewer choices, you’re more likely to make a decision versus when you’re presented with many choices. Your cognitive load has been reduced by the presentation of fewer choices. To reduce cognitive load, try to: improve readability, do user testing (where are people getting stuck, expending extra effort?), make choices easier or harder depending on the behaviour you want to see, let people choose where they would like to start (e.g. choosing from a menu versus locking down navigation), make it as short as possible (but not shorter), create a sense of immediacy, don’t strip out the emotion (emotion tells us that things are important), tie the information to the learner’s experience, and keep decisions short and relevant.

Today I’m only attending two sessions, so it shouldn’t be too overwhelming a post to read. Albeit, it should be informative. Session 1 For session 1, I’m attending Discover 7 Techniques to Enhance Learner Motivation (and 5 ways to avoid squelching motivation), and it started with a giveaway worth $20,000 of services, so not a terrible way to begin the morning. There are also clickers, so I think they’re overestimating everyone’s alertness at 8am…but we’ll see. There’s a lot going on in this session - Becky is a fantastic presenter; she’s loud and engaging, and no-nonsense (it seems). Curiosity is motivation to acquire new knowledge; we want the brain to be prepared for long-term memory. People are better at learning things they’re interested in (or are curious about). Curiosity and extrinsic reward motivation create more effective learning experiences. Curiosity has a significant influence on academic performance. - Becky Pike Pluth Next up, Becky had us play a very loud quizzing game about curiosity, which was great, but I really hope no one was attending with a hangover haha. At the end of the game, we received a 60-day trial of  the same game developed by the Bob Pike Group. How do you engineer curiosity? Becky provided a very handy workbook that has a ton of creative training techniques to enhance learner motivation. I wasn’t lucky enough to win any of the giveaways, but I’m alright with that! Session 2 The second session I chose to attend was The Neuroscience of Change, with Britt Andreatta - Director of Learning and Development at Lynda.com - this one was a full house! Change at work - Change is fast-paced, constant, and coming from all different places, all of the time. Your role/team/job/personnel/technology/processes may change - change is always happening! Not all change is created equal, but the distinction is: How long does it take to acclimate? How much disruption is there? Change is hard to measure because it’s personal for each of us. If we chose the change, it’s a lot different than having someone else dictate the change. There is a change curve, where there’s the current state, and current level of productivity of moral. When a change is announced, the change curve begins, and the change curve indicates how easily we can adapt to the change. What happens on the road to accepting, embracing, and supporting the change. Change can be overwhelming, because change is happening all of the time, and individuals may have just accepted a 1 change, when they become presented with another change. When we learn something new, an MRI can pick this up. The Basal Ganglia is responsible for habit formation. It takes 20 repetitions for a neural pathway to become created, and 40 repetitions is when the basal ganglia lets us take less energy to do the task. So if we’re doing something daily, the change will occur faster than if it’s something we only do occasionally. We have a portion of our brain that focuses on failure: the habenula - this portion of our brain helps us make better decisions. It guides decision-making and action by restricting serotonin and dopamine. With this restriction, we feel bad for a period of time, which will prompt us to make a better decision at a later time, and when that happens, we will receive an increase in serotonin and dopamine/happy feelings. When it comes to change, we should: Help our leaders implement change easier, and help them understand that the emotional response to the change is not personal. Be transparent about the change, and give people a heads up that the change is coming. Problem solve instead of set goals - If we embrace change as a series of phases of problem solving, it turns on the rewards section of the brain. Measure change fatigue - make it someone’s job to look at data points (e.g. marketing has had 3 changes so far this year, maybe we should roll out the next change to that department last instead of first). Enhance adaptability - start with why, share the roadmap, create safety, have patience, celebrate milestones, encourage self-care, maximize mindful, and leverage learning. Mindfulness allows your brain to reduce stress and change the structure of your brain. People who meditate for 10 minutes a day are less reactive to stress, and compassion also increases. There is nothing that is happening in change that learning is not going to support. We can learn mindfulness, we can learn how to problem-solve, we can learn how to improve our emotional intelligence. This is a great way to end my experience at ATD 2016 - keep learning!

This week, I was asked by a prospective client to complete a work sample - on looking at the sample files, I promptly had flashbacks to my military contract days where I spent years (YEARS) creating task analysis for flow diagrams (Aircraft AC/DC, I do not miss you). However, the design aesthetic this particular client looks for is one of Material Design. So, what is Material Design? Google came up with the language, concept, and initial delivery of material design; it’s a design language that focuses on responsiveness, grid-based design, and the use of light and shadows for depth. Material design is very clean, and you may recognize it when using any Google application - such as Maps (below). Notice the clean lines and flat design elements. Material design was based on the concept of paper and ink, and Google is currently in the process of rolling this design language out across all of its applications. Want some more examples? Check these sites out: Material Design Lite design.google.com MaterializeCSS Material Design Icons

Sprout E-Learning First off, I want to apologize for the unanticipated hiatus that Screencast Monday and Terminology Tuesday has taken. I was travelling for what felt like three weeks straight, attending ATD 2016 and CAUCE-CNIE 2016, and then I got sick when I got back home. Oof! But, today’s post is a little different. It’s about a new adventure I’m taking: Sprout E-Learning. What is Sprout?  Throughout my instructional design and e-learning journey, many colleagues and aspiring instructional designers/e-learning developers have lamented the lack of professional development opportunities. Yes - they do exist, but often times they’re quite costly (e.g. conference attendance can run $1,500 plus meals and accommodations, industry certificates can be of comparable pricing, and formal educational opportunities are expensive and often aren’t as targeted as learners need). Through Sprout, my hope is to offer affordable and sustainable training solutions that are inform its learners and help them on their journey to become successful e-learning professionals. I love instructional design and have always been passionate about spreading the word (a lot of people don’t even know it’s a career option!). In the past I’ve thought about teaching instructional design, but was intimidated by the prospect of having to find teaching contracts and the limited number of opportunities available in the traditional higher education system. Instead of letting that red-tape get me down, I’ve decided to use Sprout as a platform to share my knowledge with my audience! Initially, Sprout will focus on teaching instructional design and Articulate Storyline courses. Both are topics I love and have a vast knowledge of, so it’s a great jumping off point. In the future, I hope to expand to additional courses. I’m really excited about this new adventure, so please check out Sprout E-Learning and sign up to stay up to date on when it will launch!  

Learning Technologies 2016, or #LT16uk, is the largest L&D conference in the UK. The expo was similar to many U.S. conference expos only much bigger and always filled with attendees. The conference also had a similar feel to it. And with dedicated "tweeters" in each session the event backchannel was quite active. It's an event you attend no matter where you are based in the world. The Day 1 keynote was from Marshall Goldsmith who has been called the number one executive coach in the world. He doesn't get paid unless his clients improve. Now that's confidence. His message was engaging and thought provoking. If you scroll down through the LITMOS Twitter stream you should find a Periscope of the session but I think the event coordinators are also making the video available on their website. The Day 2 Keynote was Ben Hammersley a noted futurist and journalist. Hammersley has authored or coauthored several books on the same topics. In his keynote he brilliantly told stories of how the future is being created. And he urged us as a community of L&D professionals to remember that we all need to learn how to learn...again. I noted in a tweet that we should also point out that it's about learning how to learn with new tech not learning how to teach with new tech. It's a paradigm shift the L&D industry as a whole struggles to embrace. The concurrent sessions were well attended. They covered the spectrum of L&D topics including Mobile learning, learning leadership, marketing the training department, video for learning, performance support, and all the other usual hot topics in our industry. The L&D community is certainly growing in the UK. Over the years I've met many new colleagues online via Twitter and other channels. So getting to meet them all face to face was an added bonus. My attendance at Learning Technologies was part of supporting a new ELearning charity called Learn Appeal. Litmos is the first U.S. Based company to support their mission. Lesley Price is leading the effort and describes herself as Chief Cook and Bottle Washer. Currently she is hard at work looking gathering ELearning content to load onto the Capsules that are sent to schools and rural communities that have no connectivity. And you may ask yourself how are they doing ELearning without internet connectivity. And that is the brilliant solution they've created with the Learn Appeal Capsule. I will have a short video posted soon, and you can check out their website at learnappeal.com to learn more. Currently you can help by becoming a sponsor. Or if instead you'd like to donate your time, they need content created. And it's really not that big of a commitment. You could simply volunteer to convert content currently in pdf format to something more engaging. Or if you have more time or resources I would encourage you to engage with them in creating some custom content. Lesley has designed the Learn Appeal organization to be a charity for the L&D community since it's a community she's been a member of for many years. Give her your support in any way you can.   The post Learning Technologies 2016 - Litmos and Learn Appeal appeared first on Litmos.