I’m big fan of the Visitors and Residents (V&R) mapping methodology. As well as being part of the HEA Challenges of Web Residency programme, I’ve been using it with staff in various ways from an ice breaker to a teaching activity.  It’s a really great way to get discussions started around how/where/when we use technology in our professional and personal lives. It allows us to explore and begin to articulate our comfort and not so comfortable technology zones. I’ve always thought of it as a personal reflective tool which can then lead to discussions about how one might think about using technology for learning and teaching.  James Clay has written a great blog post on his recent experience of a mapping workshop and how he has started to think about developing he process to map learning, teaching and explore learning/curriculum design.  . . . I then started to think about how we could use a similar concept to map teaching practice and curriculum design. This lead onto thinking about mapping the "learning" of our learners. Where are they learning, is that learning scheduled and formalised? Is that learning ad-hoc? Is it individual, group, collaborative? So the next stage was to map this in a similar manner to the Visitor and Residents, but what axes could we use when mapping learning? On the horizontal axis we have a spectrum from broadcast to engagement. Broadcast could be considered one way, and could be one to one, or one to many. So a formal lecture would be considered broadcast, one way to many students. If lectures have opportunities for discussion and questions, then you can see how that would move down the continuum into engagement.  . . . The mapping provides an insight into how the curriculum is designed and how learners interact and engage with the different spaces, tools and delivery mechanisms. What needs to happen to inflate and expand the VLE on the map? How do you push (or expand) the use of the VLE into the engagement side of the continuum?  As I was reading the post this immediately got me thinking about situations where you don’t use a VLE.  The recent #BYOD4L is a great example of this open, non VLE delivered learning experience.  Using James’ template, I did a quick mapping of it. You can see that twitter moves into the centre of the formal, engagement quadrant. In terms of broadcast, instead of lectures it’s the main BYOD4L blog (wordpress site) which provides the static, broadcast content/structure/methodology/resources.  The daily update blog posts are shared via twitter and in the Google+ community.  I’ve put the interweb at the centre as it is the heart of delivery/interaction/sharing - in fact the 5C’s (connecting, communication, collaborating, curating and creating) that underpin BYOD4L. Engagement is driven through Twitter, with the nightly tweet chats comprising the bulk of communication between participants.  The tweet chats are unfailing a really lively, highly engaged activity which is curated then shared (broadcast?) via Storify.   Personal reflection is encouraged (though not mandatory) and takes place in a number of spaces (again mostly "informal"web based such as blogs),  and generally shared via Twitter and Google +. The Google + community acts as a hybrid discussion/reflection space. It’s a place for more considered commentary out with the very fast paces tweet chats. This year a number of people, myself included experimented with Periscope to broadcast ourselves over the week. I’ve written before about the potential and challenges of this personal broadcasting. In the context of this mapping exercise it is another hybrid space where you can broadcast and interact/engage simultaneously. BYOD4L is an informal learning event, so there is no formal requirement for engagement. However, even a cursory analysis of twitter shows that there are a number of very active contributors. With appropriate evidence participation in the event can be acknowledge through a series of digital badges.  These can be link to more formal CPD such as PGCerts. etc. I know from my own experience that outside the informal, web space(s) #BYOD4l exists in there are lots of other types of "real world" engagement activities. For example at my own institution we run a number of f2f sessions over the week where we engage with colleagues in a variety of ways.  The engagement in personal and professional learning and teaching practice as a result of these is hard to measure. Anecdotally I know that a number of colleagues have experimented with using twitter more formally and informally in their modules as a direct result of their experience of engagement with #BYOD4L. The map James created has made me think about what happens here in terms of more "traditional’ learning and teaching. As we move more to fully online delivery I think that this type of mapping exercise would be really valuable in terms of getting staff (and in my context as I work in staff development they are my first port of call) to think about their online presence in a different way. It might even get them to see the potential of integrating 3rd party services such as twitter, google+, Facebook, Periscope, BoB into their overall learning designs as well as integrating more of the institutionally provided services such library services too. Going back to James’s questions  "What needs to happen to inflate and expand the VLE on the map?"  I would like to see the VLE more at the centre, it’s the container where we can bring things  (people and services) together. It’s also the place where we manage the boring but unfortunately essential administration and quality assurance part of formal learning.  So maybe I would further adapt James’ map and change the Informal/formal axis labels to personal/institutional like below.  NB this is a quick sketch and misses out loads of things! In terms of fully online delivery I think the broadcast/engagement axis could be really useful to help work through some issues around online tutor presence. To get staff to questions when,why and how they would use a particular tool/service. For example,  some announcements are fine to be broadcast mode, but at times you might want a bit more interaction/engagement/feedback. Similarly when thinking about lectures, just using the terms broadcast and engagement could be a really easy way to get staff to reflect on their current practice. To think through how a broadcast resource could become the basis for more engaging activity and vice versa.  How could the outcomes/knowledge of any activity be curated, shared and re-used effectively with future cohorts. How do different delivery modes (f2f, blended, fully online) impact on the balance/structure of broadcast and more engaged activities? Not rocket science but finding ways to facilitate and enable these types of conversations is really important.  I’m now thinking sliding scales and and fridge poetry magnet sized cards for people to play with. I need to think this through a bit more, and try it out with some colleagues, but I can certainly see the potential of this approach to extending the use and relevance of the original V&R mapping.

When I was working through my undergraduate degree, majoring in Linguistics, I was always fascinated my the broad concept of literacy, particularly I lived in an industrialized country that still had high instances of illiteracy. As technology becomes more prevalent in our society, the issue of digital literacy is of equal interest to me. Digital Literacy Digital literacy involves having the general knowledge/skills/behaviours to use digital technology such as computers, smartphones, and tablets that are (in most circumstances) connected to the Internet. For even the most novice of digital literates, one should be able to troubleshoot digital technology issues, even if that troubleshooting involves a simple google or youtube consultation. In the Learning and Development (L&D) community, digital literacy should be a priority. With an aging workforce, our training really does need to cater to the younger demographic. However, we need to ensure equal access for those in the workforce who are not considered ‘digital natives’. The younger generation is accustomed to using and troubleshooting technology; some of these individuals may not even remember dial-up internet or corded telephones, but they are most often than not extremely literate when it comes to using digital technologies. This is why, in developing e-learning, content should be geared toward the digital literate, but should also consider elements that are important to those not so literate, such as navigation help, interface explanation, etc. When I think of digital literacy (which I often take for granted), I think of my parents. My mom who is fairly literate in the technology world, but keeps a bag of computer cables ‘just in case’ (most of which have become obsolete and will never be needed), and my dad who has maybe done an internet search 10 times in his entire life. In taking for granted my own digital literacy, I’ve noticed that my mom can now outperform me when it comes to getting around on her Android tablet, and my dad is keeping me updated on all of the latest media streaming services and how to use them. In considering this, I realized just how important it is to be continually learning, as even though I work in a technology-driven industry, my skills and knowledge can become just as outdated just as quickly as technology. I suppose my point is this: digital literacy might be taken for granted, especially in the world of L&D professionals, who are entrenched in creating cutting edge training programs. As professionals, we need to ensure we’re being just as inclusive to those non-digital natives as we would be for programs requiring 508 compliance. Just because it seems logical to us, it might not be as straight-forward to our learners.

Are you developing training products or learning processes? This is not one of those blog posts looking to divide the L&D community. It's a genuine question that I think we should all be asking ourselves. I would think that as with most things the best answer is, "a little bit of both". But what does that look like? Technology changes quickly these days. And so do most businesses. Nothing is ever sitting around very long without it changing. Nothing, that is, except for most training products. But that's actually changing too. Here's another question to ask yourself. How often does your team update course content? Once a year? If you have courses that have been taken but not updated in the last 12 months you may be doing more harm than good. It's hard to visualize a modern business that doesn't change more frequently than that. But, then again, not all training content requires frequent updates. A good example is training content on the history of the business. That content might start looking a little old over time but that's based on production quality, not the content. But just about everything else that we create training for changes rapidly. And the future of the training department will be defined by how fast it can keep up. Shifting Your Mindset from Product to Process Or maybe more precisely, adding an additional mindset. In this case I define product as a training event that is designed, developed, and delivered and then left untouched until a complete re-design, re-development, re-delivery becomes necessary. And yes, when a learner takes a self-paced online course, that counts as an event too. Currently most instructional design models follow this one-off production model. I see the future of training development being a much more dynamic process with more flexibility to quickly modify itself as the business dictates. Maybe not all of the training development, but a sizable portion depending on your specific industry. The idea of defining an ongoing development process is not new. It's borrowed from the popular ideas in Lean Manufacturing later adapted to businesses in the book The Lean Startup. The basic idea is constant iterative improvements based on data. Is it possible to create a training development process focused on topics or job roles with the content iteratively changing based on data? This is where a flexible Learning Management Platform shines. Training products are the events that are created as all-inclusive learning experiences that require a set amount of time to complete. The Training event could be an ILT or self-paced online course. Or maybe it's a blended learning experience with a little bit of both. And both parts of that experience require some management, organization, and logistical planning. If your thinking about creating this experience as a one-and-done product then any old LMS will do. But if you work in a face-paced industry with changing needs, then you need to define a development process that involves delivery while continually developing. The first iteration may simply be an ILT course with a SME instructing the course. Then after receiving some feedback you decide that the fundamental content could be quickly developed into a pre-ILT module. This is a great example of an iterative development process in Litmos. It's not the complete process. But it's a common beginning to course development in an iterative model. Obviously not all content fits into this model. Not all industries are flexible enough to apply this model. Not all corporate cultures will be accepting of this model. But once you find the right content at the right time, you will begin to see how much more value you can add to the business. In some cases where in the past you needed to say no to a training request you can now get the training started. You can confidently start because you know it's not one-and-done. You know it's only the beginning of your new iterative development process. The post From Product to Process: Implementing an Iterative Training Development Model appeared first on Litmos.

Are you looking for new ways to improve and streamline your elearning processes? In this article, we look at some best practices for approaching each of the five phases in the elearning production process: Analysis, design, specification, production, and evaluation. Let’s break down the five phases in the elearning production process: analysis, design, specification, production, and evaluation. 1. Analysis: Success starts with a plan and scope The analysis phase is all about setting up the project for success. Here you need to get the right people involved from the start: Lead author, project owner, and other stakeholders (management, graphic designers and Subject Matter Experts). Next, you define a scope. Understand the design challenge that you’re about to address. For example, is it going to be a tool, survey, game, resource, course, micro-experience, simulation, diagnostic, reflection, or an app? It’s important to remember that several factors can affect the scope: Budget, time, resources, and requirements. If you gather your requirements thoroughly and arrive at an agreed goal before starting, you should find that you don’t get the dreaded scope creep during the production phase. Once your scope is complete, you can search for any source content or materials that are available and can be reused. Schedule time with your stakeholders and Subject Matter Experts to analyze the content. Use that time to align the content against the goals and objectives to decide what to include or exclude. Related: How to approach the analysis phase in the elearning production process 2. Design: Test ideas before they are built The design phase involves benchmarking, prototyping, and testing. During this phase, you want to test your ideas before you build them. The goal is to prove that your ideas and concepts will work so you don’t waste time and money. Benchmarking defines where the project is headed and helps you to set the success criteria against which you will later evaluate. It’s key to make sure the project targets the learner, and is in line with your business values. It can also provide you with guidelines to determine how you deliver future elearning courses. Prototyping involves testing concepts quickly so you can discard what is not viable in your context. The point is to get a visualization of potential solutions without actually making something that you’ll find difficult to throw out later. User testing during the design phase is specifically about testing your design against the end user. Think who your course is aimed at and how they will use it to solve a problem or fill a gap in their skills or knowledge. Related: How to approach the design phase of the elearning production process 3. Specification: Define what the end product looks like The specification phase is an important step that helps you focus on creating learning experiences that are tailored to your specific learner. The specification phase defines what the solution will look like and lists the quality assurance acceptance criteria against which the elearning will later be tested. This can help when you come to evaluate a project. Consistency starts with creating a set of principles by which your team is going to abide. You don’t want to lock it down so much that you eliminate creativity, but you do need to provide support structures that enable team members to understand what it is you’re trying to achieve. Most learning professionals will create a guide as to what tools, style, and branding to use. Functionality helps you lock down exactly how your course will function. There are seven key areas to consider: platform and browser, reporting, media, navigation, accessibility, user interface/creative direction, and acceptance criteria. Identifying the right team involves deciding who will analyze the source content, build, proofread, manage the project, do the art direction, sign off deliverables, test, and integrate with the LMS. If you are working on a large project, allocate roles within your team. Related: How to approach the specification phase in the eLearning production process 4. Production: Bring everything together and build The production phase is the point at which your planning and design come together. In this phase, you will need to map out content, create screens and templates, and involve graphic designers. Map out the overall experience using a mind map or flowchart (Coggle is the mind map I like to use). For example, let’s say you have 10 core interactions. Map out what will go into each of those interactions. Think about the discussion point, objective, and the experience that’s going to fall into each component. Storyboarding is the method of orchestrating all the elements that will make up the elearning to create a score. This is much like in musical composition, where all team members can follow along using the same «notes». A storyboard explains how all the elements fit together. Here are 10 storyboarding elements you should include: text, graphics, animation, video, audio, resources, links, references, interactions, and activities. Create screens and templates from the list of the interaction and screen types you have jotted down. Tools like Elucidat come with a range of interaction and screen types already fully built and tested. Involve graphic designers right from the early stages of the project. They should be contributing throughout the elearning process; helping to create graphics that support what the text is communicating. Now it’s time to bring all the elements together - a little like an assembly line. The production phase becomes really simple if you’ve completed the work in the previous three stages (analysis, design, and specification). If you haven’t done the upfront work, you can easily waste a lot of time tinkering around and feeling lost. Related: How to approach the production phase in the elearning production process 5. Evaluation: Test the product meets the original specification The evaluation phase involves testing the project against the original specification. Use quality assurance (QA) testing, acceptance testing, and analysis to see how the product is performing in a range of the technical environments. Quality assurance (QA) testing can involve any of the following: Multi device testing: Use Browser Stack to test in different environments, but if the project needs to run on a touch screen device, you should test it on the actual device. Multi browser testing: Browser Stack can help you to quickly test your course on different operating systems and browsers (learn more in this article by Elucidat). Stress testing: Try to break your elearning. This lets you see how your course performs beyond the specified number of concurrent users. Localization: Test different languages to ensure they have been translated correctly. Acceptance testing is done to determine if the course meets the requirements originally set out in the specification. Here you need to go back to your specification and test against all the aspects listed. This is really about making sure the course has the integrity to support a valid learning experience, and that it works in the real world. Engagement analytics can provide valuable information about how people are using your course and how you can improve it. Tools, like Google Analytics, give very detailed stats about how your course is performing. Use Google Analytics to analyze the following metrics: How long is someone spending on a page? Are some pages more popular than others? How long does your course really take to complete? Related: How to approach the evaluation phase in the elearning production process Conclusion Looking for new ideas to streamline elearning processes in 2016? Use the best practice advice in this article to implement a better process inside your organization. By setting up a process your team can follow, you can increase efficiency and productivity. This will assist you in delivering more elearning in less time. Related: Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter.   The post How to set up a successful elearning production process (5-step guide) appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

I am so excited to announce a podcast series that I’m recording with my dear friend Vicki Davis, a world renowned educator, also known as CoolcatTeacher, who publishes one of the most-listened to education podcast, […] The post Listen and You Shall Hear: Ways to Let People Know They Matter appeared first on Angela Maiers.

What if the secret to life existed but it was locked in a box that no one could open? Well, you’d pretty much just have a box, wouldn’t you? And that is also what you have when you design an eLearning course without taking usability into consideration. It matters little how relevant information in a course might be if your audience can’t access that information. While engaging students and making sure content is entirely covered are critical parts of course success, it is just as important to go through and make sure your user interface (UI) ducks are in a row. Taking the time to go through and check for user-friendliness will help ensure that your students don’t lose out just because the course is difficult to navigate. Keep in mind that an eLearning course often isn’t a choice for most people. They are taking this because they have to and will have little patience for guesswork. Make it clear what the user needs to do in order to advance in the course. Learning is difficult enough without the added annoyance of having to hunt for what to click on.

Allison Miller is a member of eWorks’ team of accredited consultants, and a regular contributor to eWorks’ blog. Allison is passionate about providing learners with the knowledge and skills that they need in order to succeed in the world of work. Today she discusses the importance of foundation skills in general, as well as how they are […]

It’s an election year here in the United States, and the campaign trail is heating up. In the spirit of democracy, I’ve created an eLearning ballot for this month’s Best of eLearning. There are two categories—Best Blog Series and Best News. Take a look at the candidates for each and leave a comment sharing which candidates get your vote!   Best Blog Series 1. Have you read the Downright Sneaky Lectora® Tricks blog series by John Mortenson yet? These step-by-step, screenshot-packed tutorials are fantastic! Join us on the blog this week and next week for Parts 3-5. Part 1: How to Build a Backdoor in Your Course Part 2: Create a "Hidden Entrance" to devMode Does your job require you to build 508-compliant or accessible learning content? Then you need to read this blog series. Keep an eye out for the third and final installment! Creating Accessible eLearning: What You Need to Know How to Use Lectora to Create Accessible Courses Best News Lectora by Trivantis® was named to the 2016 Top Authoring Tools Companies List by Training Industry, Inc. This is the fourth year that Lectora has been named to Training Industry’s annual list. Check it out here: 2016 Top Authoring Tools Companies List. There’s another Responsive Course Design™ (RCD) webinar coming up! If you haven’t tried out RCD in Lectora Online or Lectora 16, this webinar will give you a great overview of the new feature. Register here: Responsive Course Design in Action: What You Need to Know. Did you know that GoAnimate just released new customizable characters? They have more realistic eyes, new hairstyles, new poses and industries like fitness, plus more variety in attire choices. Now you can make your eLearning videos even more customized to your learners! See all the new additions here: New Year, New Look: Customizable GoAnimate Characters Get an Update. Every new year brings new trends, new "colors of the year," and other predictions hitting the news. The eLearning Brothers shared a great overview of upcoming design trends that you can incorporate into your learning content.       Read it now: 2016 Graphic Design Trends for eLearning Aficionados. Remember to leave a comment with your vote for each category. Happy eLearning voting! The post The Best of eLearning in January 2016 appeared first on .

At the start of the semester, learning names can be a big task..especially, if you have a big class. The Moodle Roster report can help you! Not only will it show you a photo roster of your students, but it let’s you hide and show student names; a great way to practice! The Roster report is a little hidden. But, if you follow our Roster Report instructions, you can soon start calling students by their names.   Want even more name help? Check out this web page Carnegie Mellon’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Education, Tips for Learning Students’ Names.

I must apologize if you received the notification of this blog post via a Tweet or email, since according to researchers at University of California Irvine, it will take you an average of nearly 24 minutes to get back to your tasks at hand. Now that I have your attention for the better part of the next 30 minutes (or at least until some invites you to play Candy Crush on Facebook), I’d like to invite you attend my session at NCCE in Seattle next month, "You’re So Distracted You Probably Think This Session is About You!"  (Not registered yet?  Easy?  Go here!) I have been concerned about this topic since the first time I experimented with allowing cell phones in my own high school and college classrooms.  There is no doubt that our smart phones (and tablets and laptops) are incredible tools for learning and connecting, but, what unwanted guests are hiding beneath those beautiful, glowing screens? Distraction?  Probably. Lack of sleep?  Could be. Anxiety?  Perhaps. Of course, there is a heated debate on this topic.  We as adults may struggle with this, but, our digital natives have this covered, right?  (Let’s ignore the fact that I don’t believe in the digital native/digital immigrant dichotomy.)  Growing voices suggest that this is a problem for all of us! I will tackle this issue in Seattle.  What does the research suggest?  How is it impacting adults?  What should we be telling kids?  Let’s start working on this problem together!  Your modeling and zen-like expertise can help all learners in our care think more honestly about these wondrous technologies. In the meantime… One of my "must listen" podcasts, Note to Self by WNYC Studios, announced a new project called "Infomagical" where they will tackle an important aspect of this discussion, the so-called "FOMO" or fear of missing out that some feel when they aren’t constantly engaged with their devices. Infomagical will start next week with a series of challenges aimed at reinventing your relationship with your device. I’m totally in.  I’ll report on my results in Seattle and would love to talk with you about it too!   The post NCCE Session Preview: Tech-Savvy Teacher Jason on Digital Distraction appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.