I was surprised by the fear and loathing expressed around SharePoint yesterday at LearnTrends 2009.  I don’t think it’s the best tool out there, but it likely is the best tool being adopted by your IT department and is part of the Enterprise 2.0 plan in your organization.  My belief is that it’s going to be a big part of eLearning 2.0 for many workplace learning professionals.  SharePoint 2010 looks to be a much better product. As such, I’m always looking for people who want to discuss how they are using it.  Certainly we’ll be doing more sessions like SharePoint in Corporate Learning - Free Micro Virtual Conference (see SharePoint Session Descriptions).  And I’ll continue to collect examples of how organizations are Using SharePoint. In fact, towards that end, I would appreciate you connecting with me (email, LinkedIn) if: You work in an organization that is using SharePoint and might be interested in sharing how you are using it. You are a consultant who works on SharePoint workplace learning implementations. You are interested in how SharePoint can better be used in your organization. Look forward to connecting with you. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

View and download the webinar handout. View the webinar recording.     Looking for professional development resources? Sign-up for a free trial below! We provide our clients with thousands of video and eLearning courses. Whether you’re targeting leadership development, new manager and supervisor training, project management, communication, computer skills, compliance or safety, we pretty much have something for everyone. So, try out some courses…have your employees try out some courses. Just fill out the short form to the right and start a free 30-day, no risk, no obligation trial! Check out the BizLibrary Collection! --> -->

After LearnTrends 2009, I received a note from a person I know and highly respect that said, "I dropped in on several sessions over the last three days and wanted to thank you for your good facilitation skills …" It’s great to get that positive feedback, but this was actually a bit of a surprise.  I often felt during the conference that I was not doing a good job of taking advantage of the expertise that was often in the room. This was amplified when George Siemens did a highly participatory session where he had the audience list out design considerations for several things like formal vs. informal, etc.  Some tweets during the session: "opens the whiteboard up to let participants create the agenda…whoa! crazy fun! " @chambo_online "Very intrigued to have 130 people writing on a whiteboard all at once at #learntrends … and amazingly, it didn’t suck" @cynan_sez "130+ people writing on same Elluminate whiteboard and GWave also being completed. Online learning has arrived" @GillianP That session flew by and was a great use of the power in the room.  A masterful job by George.  Great stuff.  And something that I believe he and I will be doing together in the future in some way. Other than George’s session, most of the rest of the conference had active chat, but it was limited in many ways.  The time we had for open discussion didn’t seem to achieve that much discussion.  It rambled.  My gut tells me that if I had designed things in a particular way, we could have had some truly amazing sessions. So, please help me so that in a month when I’m designing future online sessions, I can come back here and design something great. What are some ways that I can facilitate meaningful learning from others in the room during online sessions? Have you seen examples of something that was powerful? What conversation would you have wanted to have or see? Please comment or post with ideas.  And if you don’t have an ideas, please just retweet to ask someone else for ideas?  And maybe come back in a day and see if some of the ideas help spark other ideas for you. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Bizlibrary has released a new, 5 part series on Dealing with Difficult People. When it comes to dealing with difficult people, the reality is that unless you are prepared in advance for these challenges, you will react the way you always have and achieve the results you always achieved. These videos explore difficult people and personalities and give scenarios on the proper ways to handle these situations. Check them out and let us know what you think!   Dealing with Difficult People - Introduction Dealing with Difficult People - Part 1: Pinpointing Your Triggers Dealing with Difficult People - Part 2: Culture, Upbringing and Personality: Your Responses to Difficult Circumstances Dealing with Difficult People - Part 3: Techniques for Defusing Difficult People and Challenging Situations Dealing with Difficult People - Part 4: What to Do and Say to De-escalate Volatile People and Situations   Want to try out this series and more? Sign-up for a free trial below! We provide our clients with thousands of video and eLearning courses. Whether you’re targeting leadership development, new manager and supervisor training, project management, communication, computer skills, compliance or safety, we pretty much have something for everyone. So, try out some courses…have your employees try out some courses. Just fill out the short form to the right and start a free 30-day, no risk, no obligation trial! Check out the BizLibrary Collection! --> -->

Jack Merklein from Xerox Global Services did a really great presentation at LearnTrends 2009 entitled - Common tools for Diverse Communities at Xerox Global Services.  You can find the LearnTrends 2009 Recording including Jack’s presentation.  A few follow-up thoughts. Jack is responsible for the development, care and tools for learning communities and knowledge sharing initiatives.  In practice this means a lot of different things and across many different learning communities.  A few of the different communities he discussed: New Hire Sustainability CxO While the title centered on tools for communities and knowledge sharing and he provided a list of tools … Existing Tools: Outlook email distribution lists Live Meeting with Brain Shark DocuShare Calendars Wiki Instant messaging Links to training catalog Emerging Tools: Podcasts YouTube LinkedIn (Intra-community) Training videos on YouTube A Second Life Island available Most of the discussion didn’t focus on tools.  Instead, it focused on Jack’s no nonsense ability to make communities an effect part of learning.  And particularly, I got to spend time with Jack on how he sells learning communities in the organization. Jack does an amazing job of finding out what people in the community really care about and need.  For one community, they meet every two weeks and a lot of times the topic comes a week before and he pulls in subject matter experts to present.  He ensures that the facilitation then focuses on the key issue that the people in the room cares about.  I’ve seen exactly this kind of thing work really well before.  But I’ve not seen it done as systematically as how Jack has designed it. Jack was a quote machine during the session, here are some of the phrases he used: "Publication warden" "Billable always wins" "CoP Warden" "not everyone will or wants a group hug" "young and stupid" "Training is a resignation" "Capture it damn it - put on community site" (responsibility of all members of a community to make knowledge explicit) "Amenable to bribing everyone" Part of the beauty of Jack and his style is that the language he uses is plain, business oriented.  Everything sounds obvious when he says it.  In a way, he didn’t feel like he was ever "selling learning communities".  That was my language.  Instead, he asked people if they wanted help with a particular problem.  If he could bring together experts and expertise and facilitate a conversation on X and then help capture that - is that something you’d want.  Absolutely!  In fact, we all want that all the time!  In a later session, we discussed the fact that one of the big barriers in many organizations is that they don’t "have a Jack."  Selling learning communities or social learning or anything other than formal learning / training is hard because we find ourselves using the language of learning or learning community.  As an example of needing a Jack, the question - How do you avoid the issue … "I’m too busy" … Jack’s answer is basically, if the value is high enough, you are focused on problems they are faced with right now, they will come.  His example is a community that meets on Friday afternoons.  Yikes.  I’d never plan something then.  But he gets amazing participation because the topics focus on hard hitting topics where people need help right now.  Senior leaders participate because they see the value.  And participation is rewarded through recognition … and sometimes bribed. Now let’s all be a Jack! eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Well - I survived the heat, the dry air and three days on my feet. The 2015 SHRM Conference in Las Vegas was amazing! The announced attendance of 15,600 attendees set a conference record, and I can tell you that from a vendor’s perspective, we saw a lot of you! I thought you might be interested in how a vendor views the conference. It’s certainly not the most important perspective, that’s for sure. The conference is about you - the HR Professional. We are there to meet you and learn from you and hopefully find new ways to help you meet the needs of your employees. And, if we all have some fun in the process, well, so much the better. It’s a FUN Conference That’s right. It’s fun. I have to confess. I really enjoy meeting people, so this is an environment that is ready made for that part of me, and this year’s conference was just wonderful. One of the things I tell friends and colleagues is that the HR community is a gregarious and engaging one. From a pure business perspective, the conference was a stunning success, but we had a lot of fun meeting people. HR is as Challenging as Ever BizLibrary is in the employee training and development space, and we like to learn about the challenges facing organizations as they struggle to teach employees the skills they need in this rapidly changing marketplace. Well, no surprises, the challenges we heard about are getting more and more complex. Newly promoted managers, leaders and compliance issues dominated our conversations. What we didn’t have to explain much was the value of learning technology. That’s a big shift, and that’s massively welcome! The professionals we talked to need help - now - getting great content in the hands of employees in more efficient and direct ways than outdated tools allow. Luckily for us, we believe we can help. Confusion Reigns - Sadly - About Certifications HRCI is still a valid and important part of the profession. But the certifications we’ve all known for years have been shunned by SHRM, and that’s really a shame. We all need to understand just how confusing this "dual" certification world is to the practitioners and end this silliness. There may be a place for multiple certifications. There may not. But let’s find ways to effectively communicate to the practitioners what is going on with their hard-earned certifications and how they can maintain them. SWAG is AWESOME Fun! The SWAG at this year’s show was, well, swagalicious! I certainly hope attendees enjoyed the EXPO, because the vendors seemed to go all out to make the EXPO hall a fun, interactive and enjoyable experience. I saw lots of smiles, heard lots of laughter and enjoyed numerous conversations about the attractions and cool things happening on the EXPO floor. From feather boas to flashing light sun glasses to funny t-shirts and entertaining mascots, it seemed like vendors went all in to entertain and engage. I have to admit, even from a vendor’s perspective, it was fun! It’s About the People Last, and not least, it turns out that in the end SHRM 2015 was really all about connecting with other professionals. I wish I had a nickel for every networking conversation I witnessed. The HR role is a difficult one, and without the support of our peers, it’s really isolated. That’s one of the reasons I think this specific conference stands out so much as being so open, friendly and social. People talk to each other, openly, freely and with enthusiasm. It’s wonderful to witness, and I was lucky enough to participate in a few conversations like that. The Future My sincere hope, and maybe a challenge for all of us, is that we don’t let this wonderful energy from this conference slide away. Let us all endeavor to connect and stay connected. We need to make better use of social tools like Twitter (yes, Twitter) and LinkedIn, and the certification programs of HRCI and SHRM to connect about best practices and help each other meet the challenges facing our organizations. We will see you in Washington in 2016, and bring your enthusiasm and energy with you again!

It’s interesting at the end of the year to go back through blog posts to see what my Best of 2009 is.  I’ll also do a post similar to my post last year 2008 2009 that will look at my 12 eLearning Predictions for 2009.  But for now, let me just focus on my Best of 2009. To create this list, I’m using eLearning Learning as described in Using Special Parameters to Create Year End Post for details on how I’ve come up with this list.  I’m including posts from December 2008. Top 20 eLearning Technology Posts for 2009 12 eLearning Predictions for 2009 Top 100 eLearning Items LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers Collaboration Tools Twitter as Personal Learning and Work Tool Top 99 Workplace eLearning Blogs Twitter Conference Ideas Using SharePoint How to Download YouTube Videos eLearning Conferences 2010 Tool Set 2009 LMS and Social Learning Business of Learning Web Conferencing Services eLearning Costs Twitter and Webinars Remote Collaboration Share Best Practices - Patterns 100 Conversation Topics Better Memory Other Notable Posts Rapid Learning Management Systems eLearning Strategy How long does it take to select an LMS? Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank eLearning Portal Integration Data Driven Notable Topics for 2009 Work Skills and Knowledge Work Work Skills Keeping Up? Twitter as Personal Learning and Work Tool Tool Set 2009 Knowledge Work Types LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers SharePoint Using SharePoint SharePoint Examples SharePoint Fear and Loathing by Learning Professionals 12 eLearning Predictions for 2009 Long Tail Long Tail Blogging is Dying? Business of Learning Trends in Learning Side Note - Read Counts I also looked at the top posts according to read counts.  What I found is that read counts are actually dominated by mostly older posts.  Here are the top 25 according to read counts: http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/02/what-is-elearning-20.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/09/rapid-elearning-tools.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-download-youtube-videos.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/11/flash-quiz-tools.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/09/lms-satisfaction-features-and-barriers.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/04/elearning-software.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/03/software-simulation-elearning-w-links.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/03/elearning-trends.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/sharepoint-examples.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/02/course-authoring-and-rapid-elearning.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/10/video-format-comparison-flash-wmv.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/01/12-elearning-predictions-for-2009.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/04/100-elearning-articles-and-white-papers.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/01/elearning-conferences.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/09/learntrends-2009-free-online-conference.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/using-sharepoint.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/01/test-scorm-courses-with-lms.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/09/training-method-trends.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/collaboration-tools.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/10/roi-and-metrics-in-elearning.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/01/request-for-proposal-rfp-samples.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/06/free-flash-quiz-tools.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/04/top-100-elearning-items.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2006/08/first-time-visitor-guide.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/04/authoring-tools.html The ones from the time frame shown above are already listed in the top list. http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-to-download-youtube-videos.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/sharepoint-examples.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/01/12-elearning-predictions-for-2009.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/01/elearning-conferences.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/09/learntrends-2009-free-online-conference.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/using-sharepoint.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/12/collaboration-tools.html http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2009/04/top-100-elearning-items.html For some reason, December last year was a really good month for posts and page views. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

In this new 5 part series, we will cover three primary learning objectives; Learning how to better read others using scanning techniques, eliminating your own negatives, and learning to better control your own body language. Check them out and let us know what you think. Body Language: Introduction Body Language: Position Body Language: Movement Body Language: At Work Body Language: Reading   Want to try out this series and more? Sign-up for a free trial below! We provide our clients with thousands of video and eLearning courses. Whether you’re targeting leadership development, new manager and supervisor training, project management, communication, computer skills, compliance or safety, we pretty much have something for everyone. So, try out some courses…have your employees try out some courses. Just fill out the short form to the right and start a free 30-day, no risk, no obligation trial! Check out the BizLibrary Collection! --> -->

On the surface of it, this seems like a simple question to evaluate. There ought to be cost and value considerations that weigh heavily in favor of one answer or the other. However, the reality isn’t that simple or clear cut. In fact, best-in-class training organizations should really be doing both - building some content and buying a lot of content. Here’s why. What to Build & Why Every organizations possesses unique subject matter expertise on some topic areas that range from products or services sold to organizational culture to processes and systems. Organizations cannot typically find this "native subject matter expertise" effectively from outside resources. Therefore, this is precisely the type of content that answers the "what" inquiry to the build part of the equation. Organizations should look to build their own content when the subject matter expertise is unique to the organization, e.g. product training, internal processes or systems, aspects of new employee orientation, etc. The reasons organizations should build this type of content, or any content for that matter, is to ensure that employee learning is directly linked to the specific needs and cultural anchors of the organization. What to Buy Every organization faces similar foundational employee learning challenges. For instance, every organization needs basic communications skills, mastery of problem solving and decision making skills, and leadership development. Every manager and supervisor, no matter what the organization or industry, faces the core challenges associated with managing others and needs development in the following areas: delegation, motivating others, effective listening, performance management, and a host of other foundational supervisory skills. Organizations all sell products or services and have clients and customers that must be retained, even not-for-profit organizations. Sales and service just looks a bit different in those organizations. Nearly every organization has some basic technology skills that need refinement or development as desktop applications change and IT departments take on greater importance. And let’s not forget the ever present compliance training required in just about every corner of our economy. Now, think about how complex, expensive and frankly, impossible the task of building customized content for every employee learning need in every one of these topic areas. When you look at standard estimated costs for custom content development (see the table below), you can see just how expensive and time consuming trying to "build" all of the online training content an organization needs can become. That’s why it makes complete sense to use comprehensive off-the-shelf content collections to meet these foundational employee training needs. With a comprehensive collection, you can cover all of your employees’ foundational training and development needs effectively and at far lower costs per employee than any "build" effort can come close to matching.   Activity Unit Costs Need Total Interactive eLearning (level 2 interactivity) $20,000 per hour of seat time 20 hours $400,000 Video (Live Action) $2,500 per minute 40 minutes $100,000 Video (Instructor Style) $1,000 per minute 40 minutes $40,000   The amount of time and estimated costs on this table only yields ten (10) 8-minute video courses and twenty (20) 1-hour eLearning courses. That is hardly sufficient content to adequately train any modern workforce in all of the topic areas we outlined above. And these cost estimates are based upon a few assumptions: Access to hard assets - studios, editing capability and personnel Skills - instruction design expertise, script writers, directors, producers, videographers, lighting technicians, developers, etc. Time - the time to develop, produce and then edit this content. The total costs - above $540,000 - are beyond the reach of most organizations and STILL do not get all of the content developed that employees need. And these costs do not get the company a learning platform - and LMS , either. So don’t get seduced by the fact that your organization might have a training department or in-house instructional design expertise. Use off-the-shelf content collections to augment the custom content your in-house resources SHOULD build. It’s a much wiser allocation of scarce resources - both time and money. Build & Buy Combined As we said, comprehensive off-the-shelf content collections are perfect for developing foundational skills and knowledge. Organizations can then ADD customized content on top of this content to teach employees how to apply broad or foundational skills to each organizations’ unique needs or environment.  Here’s how it might work for customer service skills. Broadly speaking, customer service professionals in your organization might need mastery of some core competencies such as communications (verbal, phone, e-mail, listening skills), problem solving, emotional intelligence and business acumen. The off-the-shelf content will work beautifully to build a basic level of mastery. Then your training team can add simple video content to the off-the-shelf curriculum to illustrate how those foundational skills must be applied in serving your organization’s customers. This type of "build" is an extension of the in-house expertise concept discussed above. LMS? The final query is whether you need an LMS or not. Do you want to track and report on employee learning? If the answer is, "Yes," you need an LMS. So make sure to account for this factor as you think about building or buying content. When you are looking at that build or buy decision, make sure your planning accounts for ALL of the costs to build: The actual AND hidden costs to generate custom content Access to assets, skills and resources required to develop a comprehensive library of content Keeping content updated and current Skills to develop custom content - development - technical and content, subject matter expertise, video - lighting sound, editing, etc. Publishing your custom content - AICC or SCORM? (Do you understand the standards?...if not, no worries. Check out our blog post on AICC vs SCORM) LMS - do you need one? Buying content is almost always a much more cost-effective solution, especially when you can find an all-inclusive vendor who can offer the best of both - content plus technology. Unfortunately, with the consolidation in the market over the last several years, the choices have gotten slimmer, but BizLibrary remains. We have a great solution with thousands of courses that cover the core training topics common to just about every organization. Additionally, our technology solution is flexible enough to allow you to publish custom content.   Interested in trying out BizLibrary’s solution for free?  Sign up for our 30-day, no obligation, trial.

While strife with technical challenges, Nancy White and John Smith’s presentation at LearnTrends 2009 (LearnTrends 2009 Recordings) provided some really interesting food for thought. In some ways this relates closely to the post on Selling Learning Communities. By way of background, Nancy White and John Smith are gurus around all things Communities and Networks. I’ve worked with Nancy to create the Communities and Networks Connection which helps me continuously learn. And I keep a copy of their book Digital Habitats; Stewarding Technology for Communities next to my computer. The central idea of the presentation was something that Nancy called triangulation. Now, I’m not 100% certain what Nancy meant by this, but I interpret the idea to organize learning community events where you bring together three groups: People inside the host / sponsoring organization who have a particular need Outside experts Outside peers You (or an outside facilitator) facilitates a conversation around a particular need. Let’s say the need is - Where and how should we apply social learning in our organization? The facilitator would get the people inside the company to define the problem. Then would facilitate sharing with peers and with experts around the issue. I’ve seen similar kinds of peer sharing at roundtable events. And it’s really powerful. Adding in the experts would make it even more powerful. I could imagine where this could be an ongoing sharing dialog that would cross several organizations. For example, you could pull together L&D staff from 10 companies together into a community and then have people like myself and George Siemens who could help facilitate critical issues and conversations and draw in additional outside expertise as needed. To me, that sounds like a really powerful model. Great stuff Nancy and John. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.