Image from: http://d.lib.ncsu.edu/collections/catalog/0008398 Towards the close of a recent E-learning Network (ELN) event the discussion got around to whether organisations need learning in the shape and form in which it is currently supplied by the L&D department. The point is that learning feels like an activity that is disconnected from the business. Very few organisations would place L&D in the mission critical category. Often it’s seen as a cost which should be minimised wherever possible. The question was asked - ‘Would the organisation survive if L&D was axed?’ And the answer is probably a resounding yes! Learning would still go on of course but it would be self directed, informal (even social). This disconnect from the business is a big problem for L&D and it always has been. Would the organisation survive if L&D were axed? The name learning and development is in itself an issue because when we use the term development we are referring to the individual. We put people through learning interventions to develop them but we struggle to check whether this ‘development’ provides value to the business as well as to the learner’s themselves. If I send an employee on a management development course they may learn a lot but does what they learn make a difference to the business or are we just using L&D opportunities simply as an employee benefit. During the discussion we suggested that a name change might be appropriate. What about going back to ‘training’ which somehow seems closer to the coal face. More popular was the idea to use the word ‘performance’ to make the link between learning and performance. Most organisations will happily allocate resources to activities that improve performance - especially if those improvements can be measured in some way. There is increasing pressure on people these days to do more and to perform better but L&D seems increasingly disconnected from this competitive imperative. New approaches are being explored with the emphasis on the learning that really goes on in an organisation - the 70:20:10 framework and the focus on informal learning and social learning. It’s not really possible to manage social/informal learning - only support or encourage it and provide tools that improve it’s effectiveness. Maybe this is where L&D needs to go? Trainers should become ‘Performance Support Consultants’ and instead of delivering programmes to those who happen to turn up they should be facilitating performance improvements in specific areas of the business. This would place learning at the heart of the business and turn L&D from a cost centre into a profit centre - a potentially powerful one if we could get the metrics right. But it also needs L&D to be closer to the operational coal face and to really engage with the DNA of the business. In an increasingly competitive global knowledge economy learning (in all its guises) is way too important for it to fall between the organisational silos. A case in point…I have been involved in a number of sales training e-learning programmes over the last couple of years. In all cases the learning need came from the recognition by management that sales people were ‘resting on their laurels’ and that now the marketplace was much tougher they would need to ‘up their game’. The solution - some extra training. Now I wasn’t involved in any of the post learning evaluation (if it happened) but I’m sure that although the training would have been ‘useful’ it wouldn’t have solved the underlying problem (not enough sales). The reason is that training is a top down solution that is very rarely targeted effectively. Think  ’Bomber Harris’ not ‘Stealth Bomber’. What would have worked better would have been localised performance support initiatives. What might these have looked like? Well that’s a question for another post! Coming SoonLearning Metrics - Kirkpatrick in 2012The ROI of LearningWhat we can learn from KM?Performance Support and the Five Moments of Need

You can change the way learners and designers think about eLearning.Post from: The eLearning Coach10 Ways to Occupy eLearning

How to create an organized shot list and schedule.Post from: The eLearning CoachPlanning A Photo Shoot For eLearning? Make it smooth.

If you are involved in e-learning then you will know that customers already have high expectations that any ‘courses’ or ‘courseware’ you develop will also be accessible on mobile devices. Now this sounds simple from the viewpoint of the customer  - a mobile device is simply another screen (even if it is sometimes short on pixel real estate). However as someone who has lived for a while with the web and the myriad of devices, operating systems, middleware and applications software it fills me with trepidation. Accessing learning content on mobile devices is ‘non-trivial’. In practice we can’t simply re-purpose existing learning content to run on a mobile device (see my previous post ‘M-learning or E-learning?‘). What we need to do is to consider the mobile device as a delivery channel in its own right. What is a mobile device? The vast majority of mobile devices are smartphones (some are smarter than others) but tablets such as the iPad are also classified as mobile devices. Paradoxically laptops or netbooks, no matter how ultra light and slim they are, are NOT classified as mobile devices. Why is this? Probably because they run a desktop OS and software that is designed primarily to be used in a static location either physically connected to a network or via a secure WiFi. In the context of e-learning the key difference is probably that mobile devices are always on and are used for shorter periods of activity. Recognising that we can’t simply re-package existing e-learning content for mobile devices we need to consider what content will be appropriate on a mobile device and then develop this as part of our ‘courseware’. What courseware will work well in m-learning? Quick and convenient access is key but the ability to handle audio and video seamlessly is also a big advantage of mobile devices. Here are some learning activities that work well on a mobile device: Quick reference guides Job aids Quick overviews/introductions Diagnostics (e.g. survey or questionnaire) Short videos Audio files Short quizzes Infographics I am focussing on courseware/content here. Mobile devices are also very good at collaborative/communication based learning activities (see ‘It’s Not Learning on a Phone‘ by Connie Malamed ) but this is trickier to implement and involves the idea of a ‘cohort’ of learners to be successful. I’ll look at this in more details in a future post. Developing Content for Mobile Devices Producing the stuff on the list above should be relatively straightforward but there are surprisingly few tools that do the job. Conventional e-learning authoring tools are aimed squarely at the big screen and use technologies that don’t work well on mobile devices (e.g. Flash). Existing tool vendors are rushing to fill the gap but in many cases the environment is so different that it’s a struggle to develop content for mobile devices that will also work on existing PCs. The idea of ‘single source’ publishing is a tough one to crack in view of the vast numbers of devices. Introducing GoMo The most successful approach so far is that taken by tools like GoMo which are designed specifically to develop content for mobile devices. GoMo is so far the ONLY authoring environment that really has been built from the ground-up to develop e-learning type content for mobile devices. GoMo is designed to deliver content on both smartphones and tablets. It adopts a cleverly simple solution for dealing with the extra pixel real estate of a tablet compared to a smartphone - it uses the left hand side of the screen on a tablet to display the content menu (see illustration below). Using a demo version of GoMo (thank you @craigtaylor74) I was able to build my first demo app in less than an hour. Of course like any e-learning development project all the real work is done in the storyboard - yes you do need to storyboard for m-learning. The GoMo user interface is reasonably user friendly with ‘smartphone’ sized screens helping you to think about the layout challenges of a small screen device. You can create main menus, with sub-topics and you can also create simple topic branching. GoMo’s most useful feature is its question and feedback capability. It includes either a ‘one answer is correct’ option or ‘many answers are correct’ and provides appropriate feedback depending upon whether the correct or incorrect answer is selected. You can also branch to topics based on the feedback so simple scenarios are possible. There is also an assessment mode enabling to you set a scored quiz and to capture the results via SCORM. GoMo also supports video and audio enabling you to easily incorporate video and audio podcasts into your learning content. GoMo can publish either as a native app or as a web app. If you publish to a native app then you will need to go through the publishing process to get your app onto an app store (Epic can do this for you at a charge of £595 per publish). In practice most e-learning users are likely to publish as a web app and provide access through an LMS. This option also provides SCORM tracking functionality. GoMo comes with three standard ‘skins’ but you can develop your own or get Epic to craft one for you. The skin is important because it gives your content some personality. I can see most customers wanting their own ‘branded’ skin which would then be re-used across a range of m-learning courses. I like GoMo. Hopefully other m-learning authoring tools will follow but for now GoMo does a good job of creating m-learning content. Related Links Learn more about GoMo

Check out these eLearning Books: social media and training, eLearning ideas and thoughts on eLearning.Post from: The eLearning Coach3 Books by eLearning Experts

I’m a serial note taker. Put me in a training event or a conference session and I’ll be scribbling away on my freeform unlined paper making notes - all sorts of notes. I write down key points, web links, book references, even make small diagrams. Sometimes I even mind map. I also run two ‘notebooks’ (well sheets if I’m honest) one that relates to the material being delivered and one to capture wider thoughts that may have been sparked off by that material. These notes are usually down to connections that pop-up in my big picture brain - so for example I might have a business development idea, a blog post idea or simply a useful concept that I will follow-up at some future time. You may have realised by now that I still prefer pen and paper for note taking. Others are happier tapping away on their laptops or more recently on their tablets (sometimes to the annoyance of others). What role does note taking play in learning? Now I’m not the only one who takes notes at ‘learning’ events so clearly note taking has a role to play in our processing and understanding of the material being presented. Even when the presenter/trainer tells us that the ‘slides’ will be available ‘at the end’ I still take notes - though I notice some people breathe a deep sigh of relief , put down their pen and relax a little in their seats. Sometimes a presenter will even handout slides at the start ready for us to make notes in the little lined area next to each slide. I hate this - that little lined area is way too constraining for my free range approach. For me taking notes is a key part of the learning process - the material is presented, some things seem particularly relevant or interesting so I write them down, other things cause some synapses in my brain to fire and a few new connections are made and these new insights are noted down too. At the end my notes are not always completely coherent but there is usually enough for me to take my learning further later even if it’s only looking up the web links and buying yet another book on Amazon. Of course sometimes I never look at my notes again but the act of making those notes in the first place signifies a deeper connection with the material than if I just sit there watching and listening. I guess that, in some small way, the act of note taking turns me from a passive learner into an active learner. So, if we find notes useful in a face-to-face environment why not also use them in e-learning? Most people don’t seem to. Maybe the fact that they have control over the speed of the delivery and because they can repeat bits notes are less relevant. Links and book references are even handled automatically - generally they are just one click away. A few years ago I worked on an e-learning programme for an NHS Trust and we discovered that nurses were much more likely to make notes compared to doctors. When I was working on e-learning projects back in 2001 one of the popular innovations was a live notepad which was built into the e-learning programme. The idea was that it would be pretty useful if the learner could make notes in the e-learning as they went along. In practice of course pretty much no one used the built-in notepad and it gradually became extinct - though you do occasionally still see it around. I note (sic) for example that iTunesU supports notes (it even has a special notes tab - see below). So is note taking in e-learning relevant or useful? Are we missing a trick by not considering how this relatively simple activity contributes to the overall learning experience? Is there any research on the benefits of note taking? A quick search on the web reveals lots of research on note taking and also on note taking systems (such as the Cornell System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes). Research, of university level students in particular identifies two key purposes of note taking. Encoding and external storage. With regards to learning, note-taking benefits have been placed in two categories: Encoding and External Storage (Carter & Van Matre, 1975). Encoding benefits are accrued through the act of note-taking. The act of recording an idea in notes facilitates learning, regardless of whether the notes are later reviewed. External Storage benefits are derived from students reviewing their notes. In this case, notes are useful as documents that can be reviewed prior to tests. For me the concept of encoding is the one that drives my note taking. The writing down and/or visualisation of ideas and concepts helps me to ‘see’ the material from my own experiential viewpoint. For me it’s about being able to connect the new material satisfactorily with the stuff I already know. So should note taking be encouraged in e-learning? So two questions to finish and hopefully to encourage some debate. Firstly, should we bother about whether our e-learners make notes or not? Secondly, if we do see the value in encouraging note taking what devices can we employ from a learning design perspective? This post originally appeared on the E-Learning Network’s Advent Blog series for Christmas 2011. See previous comments and notes.

How to make numerical facts and data more compelling.Post from: The eLearning CoachHow To Make Numbers Interesting

Via: OnlineEducation.net and @EdRels

Check out the Articulate Storyline demos and examples to see what you can do with this new authoring tool.Post from: The eLearning CoachA Tour Of Articulate Storyline Demos

If you are reading something are you learning? I guess most university students would respond with a resounding ‘yes’ but in the closeted world of L&D we don’t really classify reading as a proper learning intervention. True we can all learn something by reading - we probably do this every day when we research stuff on the internet. In this respect reading is probably one of the most common ways that we access informal learning. But it doesn’t deliver when it comes to formal learning and development. Why is this? One reason I guess is that we are all wired differently and not everyone can be relied upon to learn simply by reading. I don’t want to get into learning styles here but it’s pretty clear that some people will learn better by doing rather than reading about doing. I learn pretty well from reading, or at least my reading sows the seeds of learning. To really learn something properly I also need to apply it in the context of my own experience. Two people can read a book on time management but each will learn something different and apply that learning to their own situation in quite different ways. The new information or knowledge that is presented to us via the text can create those ‘aha’ moments that lead to real learning. Donald Clark wrote an interesting post back in 2009 reviewing a book by Professor Pierre Bayard called ‘How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read’. Here’s a quote from Bayard: Books have a special status as ‘almost objects of worship’ and non-readers are stigmatised. Yet reading is often non-reading, as we forget most of what we read almost as quickly as it is read. As we forge forward, content is forgotten in the wake of memory that disappears behind. Most reading is forgetting. I sort of know what Bayard is getting at here. Sometimes I can read a book, get enormous enjoyment from it, but then forget a lot of the detail very quickly. I read lots of stuff on Stalin last year (I am insanely curious about the whole communist experiment) but I can remember almost none of it now. I also read lots of business books - some I want to quickly forget but others do fire off an ‘aha’ moment or two - and sometimes just one really valuable ‘aha’ moment can make the £9.99 a really good investment. If I really want to learn from a book I make notes and draw a mind map. You should see the stuff I have on ‘The E-Myth Revisited‘. Reading is also very efficient. The human brain has adapted over the last few thousand years to be very effective at translating the visual symbols of writing into meaning. For a really interesting read on the science behind the ‘reading brain’ I recommend ‘Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain‘ by Maryanne Wolf. OK I admit I have forgotten most of it already but it did create some ‘aha’ moments. At the Like Minds Conference in Exeter last year Molly Flat talked about ‘the innovation that  is the book’. Her point was that the book is still the best value knowledge sharing device (even if it is delivered via a Kindle) and I think I agree. As a learning designer who is trying to write a book there are many parallels between the creative process for a book and for an e-learning course. Maybe in the end I will end up with a hybrid of both. But the road is certainly a challenging one.