Though I’d thought it was time to retire aLearning: A Trail Guide for Association eLearning, I continue to see sales and interest in the book — a great sign that online learning is alive and well and growing in the world of nonprofit and trade associations! Much has changed in the technology of elearning since the trail guide was originally published in 2009, but the step-by-step instructions for gathering what you need to develop, and then create, your association’s elearning strategy are still valid. When the book came out, it was the only place to get such detailed information in a practical, useful format. Whether your online learning strategy needs an overhaul or you’re just getting started, the aLearning trail guide can help. And that help is easier to get than ever. While I still believe the book is best used in print format, those who’d prefer a copy on their Kindle or other device can now purchase and download it. And the e-book can be given as a gift: with a few clicks, you can purchase it and have it sent to someone else via their e-mail address. How cool is that? Order now, for just $9.99. Oh, and tell your friends!  

It’s been a long time coming, but aLearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning is now available for reading on your Kindle, Nook, or Kobo device. Prices range from $9.99 to about $13. I’ve always believed this book is best used in print format, but so many people rely on their tablets and phones for content now that I decided to release this book in these formats. The continued popularity of the aLearning book shouldn’t surprise any of us, but despite planning to retire the book, it sells consistently enough that I know its practical, step-by-step instructions and procedures for developing an online strategy haven’t lost their value, despite some changes in technology since the book was first published. As always, if you purchase the book, have questions about various aspects of the strategic planning process or other topics, feel free to contact me directly by e-mail. If you’re interested, or know someone who might benefit from this book, here are the links: Kindle Nook Kobo Still prefer the print version? Good for you! Just click the image of the book cover on the left to purchase a copy from Lulu. (If you’re asked to register, it’s free and worth it!)

In my first two posts for Learning Circuits, I explored how I use Twitter as a professional development tool, and last week we looked at Filtering: A Challenge and Responsibility for Learning Professionals.  This week we're going to explore filtering further, and explain how learning professionals will provide filtering services on an increasing basis. There are two primary ways that filtering will impact learning professionals. The first impact is in helping workers understand the need and techniques for filtering.  For many, this need to filter is something they may not have considered before.  However, in an age of ever-increasing data, being able to focus on what's important and what isn't is a required skill.   It’s also something that needs to be learned.  Filtering doesn't just apply to Twitter, it applies everywhere. In a world of 300 television channels, countless websites, and Reply-To-All emails, being able to narrow your focus on what is valuable is critical.  So the first impact of learning and performance professionals is to assist workers with understanding and applying filtering skills; the second impact is of greater importance, and will become a core competency in the near future.  That competency is curation. What is curation? Consider the most common example of curation: the museum curator. This person does not create content in the traditional sense. He or she listens to what is going on, and finds topics that resonate with museum guests.  He or she scours the globe for artifacts related to that topic, and organizes the artifacts in such a way that guests are taken on a learning journey as they experience the exhibit.  Of course, museum curators are highly trained and educated in doing this. It is their specialty.  How does curation fit into the existing world of organizational learning and performance? A large percentage of learning and skill building is done informally.  Estimates show that upwards of 90% of workplace learning takes place outside of formal programs. Most actual learning takes place informally on-the-job, through coaching, mentoring, experience, and other sharing. This learning doesn't go through the training department, and it isn’t tracked by the organization’s learning management system. Capturing this type of learning has been a logistical impossibility (or at least very difficult) in the past, as it was taking place serendipitously, and without any sort of documentation.  Interactions like water-cooler conversations, over-the-cubicle requests for assistance, and on-the-job coaching provide the majority of performance support, but usually happens in a vacuum, shared only between the participants that are present. In recent years, this social learning has expanded and exploded via online social networks. Networks like Twitter, facebook, or internal solutions like Yammer enable this social workplace learning to break through the constraints of face-to-face meetings. We can now share with counterparts across the globe almost as easily as we do across the room.  Better still, learning that once was limited to those present in a face-to-face interaction can now be shared with the world. Learning and performance professionals need to discover where the information is being shared in their organizations, and tap into it.  That networking resource is a gold mine for learning curation. The sharing taking place could be identifying new performance support needs, or it could be sharing new solutions. This all might sound overwhelming, making you think that you don't have the time to monitor every single learning experience that happens within your organization. That's not the expectation. What you're trying to do is identify the most common and valuable things that people share. Curation is less about the quantity of resources, and more about the quality of resources. There are multiple layers to curation, each of which has benefits when applied to learning and performance:·         Aggregation: Gathering and sharing relevant content. It releases the individual worker from needing to seek out the content.·         Filtering: Instead of simply aggregating content, filtering shares only those resources that are most relevant and valuable.·         Elevation: Recognizing a larger trend in the sea of seemingly less important content.·         Mashups: Merging two or more unrelated pieces of content to form a new message.·         Timelines: Organizing random pieces of content in chronological order to show the evolution of an idea. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools that can help us with these tasks.  However, there is still a human need in curation; a role that is built on a foundation of trust.  When I follow a curator I do so because I feel that work the curator is doing is filtering on my behalf.  I may not feel the need to seek out content as much if there is someone that is already providing pre-filtered content relevant to my needs. In the book Curation Nation, Steven Rosenbaum describes it this way: "Curation replaces noise with clarity. And it’s the clarity of your choosing; it’s the things that people you trust help you find." That’s the role learning and performance professionals are going to be playing more and more in the future.  With content growing at an exponential rate, our need to create will slowly diminish.  In its place will be the growing need to filter on behalf of workers; to curate the sea of content that is available and being shared and bring the most relevant and valuable to the forefront of worker attention. In my final post of this series I will drill down deeper into the process, exploring what technology can (and can’t) do to aid curation, and paint a picture of how I see curation fitting into the future of learning and performance.Thanks for reading - see you next week.David Kelly is the director of training at Carver Federal Savings Bank and Member of the ASTD National Advisors for Chapters. He is also the author of the blog Misadventures in Learning, where he discusses the future of the learning field and curates the backchannel of learning conferences.

They say that the best fruit of the olive, which has the best properties, is not the one that is protected by the leaves, or the one that is easy to collect at the bottom… but the one that is on the … Continue reading →

A friend showed me her resume today on Visual CV.  Nice product - your should check it out.  Link articles, presentations, video etc. that directly highly your skills and abilities.  Here's Kathleen's resume - http://www.visualcv.com/kathleenkelley.  Notice how items that relate specifically to her position show side-by-side.  There's a reference to her work for the City of Houston directly next to her position information.  The CV can be downloaded as a  nicely formatted PDF file.  Oh and the service is free!  You can get a premium account with your own URL for $60/yr.Check it out:  http://www.visualcv.com/www/indexc.html

The results of an investigation into the connection between mobile learning (mLearning) and interactive design processes through the adaption of transformative learning and self-motivational learning were presented in the chapter of "Interactive Learning Strategies for Mobile Learning"(by Anthony Ralston) in the open licensed ebook "Increasing Access through Mobile Learning"(published by Commonwealth of Learning and Athabasca University, 2014). The author argues that the integration... Read More ›

The belief that working in teams makes us more creative and productive is so widespread that when faced with a challenging new task, leaders are quick to assume that teams are the best way to get the job done . . .. . . Contrary to conventional wisdom, teams may be your worst option for tackling a challenging task. Problems with coordination, motivation, and competition can badly damage team performance. Even the best leaders can’t make a team deliver great results. But you can increase the likelihood of success—by setting the right conditions. - Harvard Business Review May 2009.I stumbled across the article Why Teams Don't Work by Daine Courtu. Having been a coach, team-teacher, team-leader and also team member in many successful (and some unsuccessful) teams,I immediately pounced on the pages and scanned the content.Courtu interviews J. Richard Hackman, Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at Harvard University, and author of the book, Leading Teams.Hackman, a notable expert on teams with a lifetime of experience in studying and working with teams, has an authoritative opinion that makes a lot of sense to me. He comes over as a straight thinker who cuts to the chase when it comes to matters about the worth of teams.Hackman’s stance is that teams can generate magic (didn’t we always believe that?) though we shouldn’t always count on every spell working the way we’d like. In his book Leading Teams, Hackman rationalises five critical conditions governing the balance between success and failure:"Teams must be real. People have to know who is on the team and who is not. It’s the leader’s job to make that clear.Teams need a compelling direction. Members need to know, and agree on, what they’re supposed to be doing together. Unless a leader articulates a clear direction, there is a real risk that different members will pursue different agendas.Teams need enabling structures. Teams that have poorly designed tasks, the wrong number or mix of members, or fuzzy or unenforced norms of conduct invariably get into trouble.Teams need a supportive organisation. The organisational context - including the reward system, the human resource system, and the information system - must facilitate teamwork.Teams need expert coaching. Most executive coaches focus on individual performance, which does not significantly improve teamwork. Teams need coaching as a group in team processes - especially at the beginning, midpoint and end of a team project."

In my first post for Learning Circuits, I explored how I use Twitter as a professional development tool. Over the past two weeks, we've looked at Filtering: A Challenge and Responsibility for Learning Professionals, and Curation: A Core Competency for Learning Professionals. In this closing post in my Learning Circuits series, I want to dig into curation in greater detail, describing what role technology plays in the curation workflow, and what  it looks like for learning.Who Qualifies as a Curator?Part of the reason curation is such a popular term right now is that the definition of curation has been changed by technology.  Years ago 'curation' was a specialized field that was found only in places like museums, performed by individuals who have studied their field and the techniques of curation for years. The definition of curator has expanded in recent years, largely in line with the expansion of social media technologies. The fact is, if you're reading this post on the Learning Circuits Blog, chances are you already are a curator, whether your realize it or not.This fact was proven to me in the most unlikely of places: my mother's dining room table. My family was visiting, and my mother was telling me that I don't post enough pictures of my kids on facebook. It was a little confusing; after all, my mother lives only a few miles away and sees my kids often. When I explained that, she replied "But my friends don't".  What I didn't realize was that my mother often saw pictures of her grandchildren on facebook and clicked the SHARE button to share it on her wall.  She was curating a story that was essentially titled "My Grandkids", and sharing it with all her friends.In the age of facebook shares/likes, Twitter retweets, and other social media sharing tools... anyone can be a curator.Let's back up a second though; perhaps saying the definition of curator has expanded isn't accurate, as it implies expanding a single definition to include a broader group. I do believe what a curator does for a museum is different than what a my mother does for her facebook wall.  Perhaps it's two levels of curation, professional and amatuer, similar to the differences between a professional and amatuer photographer. Digital camera technology has advanced so much that even an amatuer can take high quality photos... but that doesn't make someone a professional photographer.Social media technologies have had a similar impact on curation, allowing anyone with an internet connection to become an amatuer curator. In fact, some would argue that technology has advanced far enough that the technology itself can curate.Automated Curation: Can a Computer be a Curator?Technology definitely aids in the curation process. Search engine optimization and filtering tools make it much easier for a curator to find resources he or she wants to share. But can a computer do the job so well that a human curator is no longer needed?To answer this, I think we need to revisit the different examples of curation we discussed in my last post:Aggregation: Gathering and sharing relevant content. It releases the individual worker from needing to seek out the content.Filtering: Instead of simply aggregating content, filtering shares only those resources that are most relevant and valuable.Elevation: Recognizing a larger trend in the sea of seemingly less important content.Mashups: Merging two or more unrelated pieces of content to form a new message.Timelines: Organizing random pieces of content in chronological order to show the evolution of an idea.I think technology does a very good job of automating aggregation. In fact, I don't think a human is required at all for aggregation, unless the human is adding content from a source outside the data source being aggregated. Once you go beyond aggregation though, I believe the human is still required.Some would argue that computers can filter, and from a technical standpoint they can; I just don't think computers can do enough to filter in the context of curation.I often curate the resources from conference backchannels on my blog. What I do there is - by design - a very light-level of curation. My goal in curating backchannel resources is not to to provide a personally recommended list of resources. I could do that, but it would be a different post, with a different focus.After all, what I find valuable may be different than what you do. My goal in curating the backchannel is to collect the resources that most people likely missed, and to have them as an ongoing point of reference.  I share all of the resources that could have value to someone that is interested.In that sense, a large percentage of what I do with conferences is aggregation, and a computer can do that. However, I also provide filtering and elevation in my curated resource lists that most automated curation tools would miss. For example:I group resources into categories, such as official conference resources, session specific resources, conference recaps, keynotes, etc.I seek out resources from outside the backchannel stream that have not yet been shared that I believe will add value.If a shared link is mostly self-promotional marketing - with little pass-along value - I filter it out. I do this with SPAM messages as well.I recognize themes in seemingly unrelated posts within the backchannel stream and link them.These are simple examples of things that a human curator adds that computers currently can not replace, at least not in most cases.  For more advanced forms of curation like mashups and timelines, the need for human interpretation is even more critical. In short, I think the human is still a required part of the curation equation.  That may change at some point though; the gap between what a human does and what a computer can automate continues to shrink.A Glimpse into the FutureSo what does this all mean to a learning and performance professional? How will what we do look differently when we add curation to our skill sets?  Consider these examples:Social media usage continues to rise as a means for supporting social learning. Learning and performance professionals will need to be a part of the communities that emerge, possibly even serving as community managers. Technology could be used to analyze the sharing going on and spot potential trends (as a simplified example, consider a word cloud). As a curator, learning and performance professionals would seek out these themes and trends and elevate them to higher visibility across the entire organization.In a world where anyone can create content, our need to create content to address a learning and performance need is  dramatically reduced.  Learning and performance professionals would function as curators of content, connecting workers with existing resources both internally and externally that support performance. The definition of 'course' will likely change in the future.  Currently course content is constrained and controlled, usually behind an LMS portal login.  Courses are becoming increasingly open, allowing learners and workers to find and reference their own resources. Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC) are a step in this direction. In this open format, learning professionals can help curate the shared resources, highlighting those that resonate best with the objectives of the program.Curation is already here, and it's already impacting the learning and performance profession. The technology is already readily available to bring curation into organizations, and many forward-thinking organizations are already using it to their advantage.  If you aren't already enhancing your learning and performance strategies via curation, you should be enhancing your awareness and skill sets in this area.  It isn't so much a matter of 'If' your learning and performance programs will be impacted by curation; it's a matter of 'When'.  The only question is: Will you be ready to support it?

This free webinar provides practical information and strategies  to be considered by small and medium sized organizations to get the best Return on Investment (ROI) when choosing a LMS.  Items included will be LMS selection, LMS administration, eLearning creation and eLearning deployment. This webinar will include valuable information on how to introduce eLearning to you organization and produce success.  If you are looking at adding in eLearning and a LMS, or are considering changing to a new LMS you will definitely want to join this webinar.   If there are others in your organization that are interested in eLearning and LMS's please forward this to them. Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM ESTCheck it out:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/701940610

Whether you are simply taking a selfie, traveling around the world, watching your child’s first steps or living a moment that you want to remember forever, cameras have become an important and vital part of our lives not only to … Continue reading →