74 Shared According to Carnegie Mellon Professor Jeanne M. VanBriesen, self-directed learning is when individuals "take initiative and responsibility for learning" and "select, manage, and assess their own learning activities." She goes on to say that motivation and volition are critical, that students should experience independence in goal setting and determining what to learn, and that the role of teachers or trainers is to provide scaffolding and support. If your mouth just fell open in a giant Whaaaa? … don’t worry. It might sound like a lot of steps, but really all VanBriesen is saying is that students learn best (i.e. stick with material and retain it) when they’ve got a dog in the race. You can crib all these benefits for your own e-Learning materials by putting self-directed learning to work for you. The steps below will help you do it. Read more »

12 Shared Another intensive period of research has turned up a positive result: iSpring engineers confirm that SCORM 1.2 and 2004 courses published with iSpring authoring tools work beautifully with TOPYX LMS, "The Learning Management System That People Love." So now all you TOPYX fans out there can confidently create stimulating, media-rich courses and quizzes with iSpring and upload them to the LMS, knowing that all statistics will be properly reported. Read more »

7 Shared Carl Simmons is the Lead Partnership Quality Officer in the Faculty of Education. He used iSpring to deliver an "online mentor training package" for their instructors in the field. Here he shares his thoughts on why they chose iSpring to solve their accessibility issues: Q: Tell us a little about yourself and what motivated you to consider iSpring? A: My name’s Carl Simmons, I work in the Faculty of Education. My focus is initial teacher training; I’m a senior lecturer. But for this project, what I was focused on is we have an online mentor training package for our teachers out in school, which was currently hosted on Moodle, and then BlackBoard. That caused us some issues in terms of it was difficult to update, and also you needed passwords to access that system. Read more »

21 Shared Good teaching is a mysterious recipe: one part good content, one part excellent presentation, and one part fairy dust that brings the whole thing together. Especially with e-Learning, where students are on their own for much of the process and their education depends on engagement and entertainment, it’s very important to keep that magical element in mind. We submit that myth, legend, and tall tales have a lot to offer the world of e-Learning. Since learners love stories, why not follow the formula of fantasy to make your e-Learning courses a huge success? Below we offer 8 fairy tale takeaways that you can and should apply to your next e-course or PowerPoint presentation.Read more »

0 Shared It’s been a long time since the very first release of Adobe Flash Player that painted the Internet with blazing colors and gave motion to the pre-video web era. It has served us well so far and provided content and game developers with great tools. Then it started descending like the Roman empire. The turning point was incompatibility with mobile devices driven by iOS. It seems that now it’s time that the Flash project could be temporarily closed soon and wiped off the face of the Internet. Despite the fact that we don’t want Flash to be killed, there have been several occurrences that prompted us to see the writing on the wall. Read more » Flash gets blocked on Mozilla Firefox This week (July 14, 2015), Mozilla stopped supporting the Adobe Flash plugin in all versions of the Firefox browser. It blocks all .swf and .flv files by default due to a vulnerability in Flash Player that attackers exploited. Cyber-thieves can use these security holes to install malicious software and steal data. Updating Flash Player to the most recent version (18.0.0.209) fixes this issue in Firefox (39.0). The environment is constantly changing and this version may be blocked soon as well. Facebook claims for Flash termination The Chief Security Officer at Facebook, Alex Stamos, unambiguously called for closing the Flash project. Despite Adobe’s actions and bugfixes they plan to release in the future, Facebook users are recommended not to use this vulnerable technology at any time. YouTube uses HTML5 The biggest flash video (.flv) provider earlier this year (January 2015) stopped serving videos using the Flash plugin. The YouTube site now uses HTML5 video player for all modern browsers. Read more on YouTube Engineering and Developers blog. What does it mean to iSpring users and other content authors Fortunately, with iSpring 7’s various publishing options, you don’t have to worry about any block actions against Adobe Flash. You can always use HTML5 output, which gives you the same experience as Flash. Difference in playing back interactive rich-media content Flash is played by means of Adobe’s proprietary plugin: Flash Player. HTML5 web presentation is played by means of your web browser. When you publish to Desktop (Flash) it may cause this message to appear in Mozilla Firefox or Chrome: Solution Please use Mobile (HTML5) or at least the Combined (Flash + HTML5) output Publishing option. In this case, your Web presentation will work on all mobile devices and desktops with modern web browsers without a third-party plugin that may be blocked. The combo mode will also provide compatibility with older browsers like IE8. Read more about this drama with Flash in the world’s largest news feeds: Wired: Flash. Must. Die. BBC News: Mozilla blocks Flash by default on Firefox browser Daily Mail: Google and Mozilla pull the plug on Adobe Flash Inquisitr: Mozilla Firefox Bans Adobe Flash Player Macworld: You don't have to be a villain to say Flash must die The Guardian: Flash is dead, and YouTube dealt the killing blow The Verge: YouTube drops Flash for HTML5 video as default

In today's New York Times, columnist and economist Paul Krugman details new data that shows that Americans are literally losing stature. Here's a quote from the article.The data show that Americans, who in the words of a recent paper by the economic historian John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale in Social Science Quarterly, were "tallest in the world between colonial times and the middle of the 20th century," have now "become shorter (and fatter) than Western and Northern Europeans. In fact, the U.S. population is currently at the bottom end of the height distribution in advanced industrial countries." This is not a trivial matter. As the paper says, "height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment." The link to the article is here, but you have to be a subscriber to read it. How might this relate to those of us in the United State's learning-and-performance field? Well, mostly this is an interesting tidbit that we have little control over. On the other hand, it might give us pause. After all, if we create learning programs of equal effectiveness to our overseas competitors, but their learners are healthier than our learners, their learners will learn more and perform better in their work. Their companies will have a competitive advantage. We will all die penniless and alone. (Exaggeration). Krugman reflects on the argument that American's unhealthy ways might be related the fact that we work too much, and thus don't have time to exercise and eat right. Is that a hook into our responsibility as learning professionals? Is there anything that we can do to lower the average time our workers are swimming in the ocean of work responsibilities? Don't just think content here. Preaching and information are not likely to help that much. Well, I'm brainstorming here (as I have no idea), we can encourage e-learning to be done on work time, maybe by utilizing more synchronous, and more social interactions. We can realize that learners will forget a large chunk of what we teach, and either cut the forgettable crap out of our courses or demand from our organization and vendors that it be put into performance support. Maybe we can design m-learning interactions that are especially appropriate to be used during exercise. I don't know how to do this, and it may not be doable, but maybe you can be the one to figure it out. Maybe we can provide truly healthy and delicious food for our training participants. What else? I don't know. Do you? Or do you think it's outside our influence?

Elliott Masie asked a question last week in his blog/newsletter. It's a fun question and because it is accompanied by the promise of food and public spectacle at his upcoming conference, a clever marketing device as well. If nothing else, Elliott's got a strong stomach for this type of distraction, and he got me thinking. Here was his question: Cooking and Learning. Are They Similar? Here's what it made me think of: How are cooking and learning similar? Today, most of us don't have time to do either of them right. We don't have time to shop for the best ingredients or blend them properly. We take prepackaged crap and call it nutritious. We fall for false advertising, pretty packages, and recommendations from the well-coiffed and well-spoken. We're suckers for celebrity chefs, even if our neighbors cook a better meal. Most of the food on the store shelves is filled with harmful ingredients. We reach for the latest concoction, not the greatest value. We measure the immediate pleasure and forget the long-term impact. Because we hunger so much to get smiles and kind words at the end of the meal, we're willing to add butter and salt and whatever else it takes. We definitely wouldn't think of challenging our guests with brocolli rabe, ostrich patties, or sorbet. We're fat and happy, and when the meal is done, we think we've succeeded in grand fashion. Our guests leave satisfied into the darkness of the slow-moving night. They live under threshold. They die young. There are lots of celebrity chefs, hash slingers, and short-order cooks. There are very few who can blend nutrition, taste, and world-class quality into a meal. Come to think of it, learning and cooking have a lot in common. Postscript: My wife and I once went to celebrate Valentine's Day at Chef Ming's Blue Ginger restaurant. We don't have cable so we didn't resonate with his celebrity, but we'd heard good things about the restaurant from trusted friends and colleagues. The result. One Valentine's Day ruined with food poisoning. We now refer to Celebrity Chef Ming's restaurant as the Blue Vomit. Is this the way it has to happen? Are we in the learning-and-performance field immune?

Suppose you need to hire someone on a contract basis in the learning-and-performance field? Or maybe you're on the other end of the transaction—you have your own business and need to find work? Do you have to rely on your personal network alone? Can the big job boards help? Do our trade organizations' job board's have enough focus on contractors? Is there any way to know what people and organizations are good? Recently, I've come across two organizations that may help, Learning Gurus and Clarity Consultants. This is how they described themselves to me: Learning Gurus, Inc. Learning Gurus connects Workplace Learning Professionals with companies that need them. We provide short-term contractors and full-time employees who design and develop training and performance solutions for corporate, government and educational institutions. Our learning gurus are skilled in areas such as: * Instructional Design & Development* Facilitation & Instructor Led Training (ILT)* Performance Analysis & Needs Assessment* Project Management* eLearning, Web-Based Training, On-line Learning* Multimedia/CBT Development* Graphics Arts* Technical Writing & Documentation* Quality Assurance & Evaluation There is a trend among workplace learning professionals to move around quite a bit! Many in our field change jobs every 2-3 years, and many more are seeking the flexibility and variety that contract/consulting work offers. In the past, we've had to rely on our local professional networks, chance meetings with potential employers, and recruiters who, quite frankly, don't really "get" what we do. On the flip side, very few companies know where to find quality workplace learning professionals, and it's not uncommon for them to have an open requisition for 3-6 months. Enter Learning Gurus! Learning Gurus connects workplace learning professionals with the companies that are searching for them. Learning Gurus has a nationwide network of workplace learning professionals who are seeking additional contract and employment opportunities. There are no fees to join the network - your hourly rate or salary is marked up by a small percentage, which is paid by the client. Clients love it because they save valuable time by having Learning Gurus find their resource and they know they're getting a solid, pre-screened  professional. Workplace learning pros love it because they have their own personal sales and marketing department to find leads, negotiate rates, and handle contracts and payroll. Now that's a Win-Win! Karen J. BoylePresidentLearning Gurus, Inc. The Source for Workplace Learning Professionals www.learninggurus.comOffice: 619.236.0308karenb@learninggurus.com Clarity Consultants With Clarity Consultants, you can reap the expertise of Big 4 consulting -- without paying the Big 4 price.  Clarity Consultants represents hourly consultants with expertise in Instructional Design, Project Management, SAP software implementation, training facilitation and specialized consulting.  Our consultants have proven expertise in Software Implementation, New Hire Training, Sales, Customer Service, Leadership, Technical Training, Business Process and Compliance and other areas of organizational development.  If your company has new software to implement, new products to sell or a new process to roll out to employees, Clarity Consultants can help you.  For over 14 years, we've provided Fortune 1000 companies with contract training professionals.  For more info, please visit www.clarityconsultants.com James LeeMarketing Associatejlee@clarityconsultants.com(p) 408.369.6558 Are there other organizations that I'm missing? Let me know.

The Carbon Offset idea works like this. We all pollute, but when we do so we can help limit the damaging effects by either (1) offsetting our damage by doing good in other ways (for example if we have to drive a large car we can replace all our light bulbs with energy-saving flourescents), or (2) we can donate money to projects that help support renewable energy, energy efficiency, and reforestation. For example, check out the not-for-profit organizations CarbonFund.org and The Clean Air Conservancy. Here's some ideas for those of us in the training and development field: Encourage the use of e-learning, which limits the carbon footprint of travel. And, make sure you build e-learning that is effective and engaging, so more folks will want to use e-learning. When calculating the "cost" of training, calculate carbon footprint costs as well. See for example, The Carbon Fund's calculators or The Clean Air Conservancy's calculators. Make these costs evident. Encourage your company to buy carbon offsets when utilizing training. It's not just a good thing to do, but it may help your company attract business and recruit highly-educated employees. In your e-learning courses, provide an option for learners to calculate how many tons of carbon dioxide they would have utilized had they had to travel from their location to headquarters. What other ideas can you think of?

The most important question that instructional designers can ask is: "What do learners need to be able to do, and in what situations do they need to do those things?" While we might discount such a simple question as insignificant, the question brilliantly forces us to focus on our ultimate goals and helps us to align our learning interventions with the human learning system. Too many of us design with a focus on topics, content, knowledge. This tendency pushes us, almost unconsciously, to create learning that is too boring, filled with too much information, and bereft of practice in realistic situations. The Magic Question requires us to be relevant. For workplace learning, it focuses our thinking toward learners' future job situations. For education learning, it focuses our thinking toward real-world relevance of our academic topics. The Magic Question in Practice In practice, the Magic Question forces us to begin our instructional-design efforts by not only creating a list of instructional objectives, but also by creating a list of performance situations. For example, if we're creating leadership training, we not only need to compile objectives like, "For most decisions, it can be helpful to bring your direct reports into decision-making, so as to increase the likelihood that they will bring energy and passion in implementing decisions." We also need to compile a list of situations were this objective is relevant, for example in weekly staff meetings, project meetings, in one-on-one face-to-face conversations, in phone conversations, etc. Also, for general decision making, but not in situations where time is urgent, where safety is an issue, where legal ramifications are evident, etc. By framing our instructional-design projects in this way, we get to think about our learning designs in ways that are much more action-oriented, relevant, and practical. The framing makes it more likely that we will align our learning and performance contexts, making it more likely that our learners, in their future situations, will spontaneously remember what we've taught them. The framing makes it more likely that we will focus on practice instead of overloading our learners with information. The framing also makes it more likely that we will utilize relevant scenarios that more fully engage our learners. Finally, using the Magic Question forces our SME's (subject-matter experts) to reformulate their expertise into potent practical packages of relevant material. It's not always easy to bend SME's to this discipline, but after the pain, they'll thank you profusely as together you push their content to a much higher level. Obviously, there is more to be said about how the Magic Question can be integrated into learning-design efforts. On the other hand, as my clients have reported, the Magic Question has within it a simple power to (1) change the way we think about instructional design, and (2) transform the learning interventions we build.