Teaching to the whole person is more important than ever.  But how can we do this in an online learning environment?  I work at a Jesuit and Catholic college where I’ve been learning about Jesuit education and Ignatian pedagogy. The principles of Ignatian pedagogy include context, experience, reflection, action, and evaluation (Korth, 1993).  To address […]

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How many of you out there have studied the poetry of behaviour change? Today’s interesting blog comes from David Cameron, Logicearth’s soon-to-be poet in residence. It was borne out of a lengthy office discussion on Julie Dirksen’s excellent ‘Science of Behaviour Change’ which we really liked (it’s not that often we have such in-depth and varietous discussion on a presentation - a testament in itself to the slideshare content). It was a great focus for our designers on the ‘how to’ when it comes to really effecting changes in our learners’ behaviour. However, was there a possible alternative analogy to the one offered? Q. What lies at the heart of most training? A. Behaviour change. This is true even when we think it isn’t - ‘No, no, I just want the team to know this stuff.’ But what seems like simple knowledge transfer is ultimately linked to actions or possible actions. Knowledge is transferred in the hope that it can, even in an unlikely eventuality, be acted on. A bank wants its new employees to know what led up to the crash. Why? To have a greater understanding of the financial sector’s recent past. Again, why? Ultimately, so that past mistakes won’t be repeated and a similar disaster can be avoided. In this case, where the new recruits have no past behaviour patterns to undo, it’s institutional behaviour that requires change. There is a science to this stuff. There is also an industry devoted to behaviour change, as is clear from the phenomenon of the ever-expanding self-help section in bookshops. For every accept-yourself-as-you-are book that’s out there, there are a hundred change-every-aspect-of-your-life books. Which isn’t a real statistic, but you get my point. Or, at least, I hope you do. Because just asserting something, as I’ve done there, doesn’t mean that the message has been relayed. How it is relayed will determine whether the message is received. Even science has to find the right words and images to get itself into our heads - an act of transmission that is essentially an art form. So, if there is a Science of Behaviour Change (and there is), there is also a Poetry of Behaviour Change (which there isn’t, except for the purposes of this blog - but bear with me). On slideshare, the Instructional Designer Julie Dirksen gives a useful intro to the science part. (See http://www.slideshare.net/usablelearning/the-science-of-behavior-change.) For those working in L&D who like to cut to the chase, the key slide is 48 (of 50), ‘Ways to help’. These helpful ways are: ‘Make it more tangible/visceral/experiential’, ‘Create more immediate/visible feedback’, ‘Make it easier’, ‘Create a script’, ‘Create belief (using experience or emotion)’, ‘Make it social’, and ‘Make success stories visible’. All good advice for those who are conscientious about making the learning experience work for the learner. But to get there, Dirksen hops onto an elephant. Her elephant metaphor is borrowed from Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis, in which he writes: ‘The mind is divided in many ways, but the division that really matters is between conscious/reasoned processes and automatic/implicit processes. These two parts are like a rider on the back of an elephant. The rider’s inability to control the elephant by force explains many puzzles about our mental life, particularly why we have such trouble with weakness of will. Learning how to train the elephant is the secret of self-improvement.’ Never mind that elephant-training suggests the kind of circus act long gone out of fashion. From Descartes to Freud - neither of whom was a great circus performer - thinkers have been telling us that we are ‘split’, whether mind from body, conscious from unconscious, or (more religiously) flesh from spirit. The version of the split described by Dirksen goes like this: The rider thinks logically and can plan for the future, while the elephant is all about what’s happening now; the rider thinks, the elephant feels; the elephant is impulsive, the rider keeps impulses under control. What motivates the elephant? Rewards. Especially if those rewards are immediate, tangible and - big. From the very first, this metaphor of the elephant and its rider bothered me. Big ears aside, the elephant is associated with its long memory, not chimp-like distractedness. And, for me, the metaphor suggests the split between conscious and unconscious, to the disparagement of the latter. This isn’t how the unconscious has been portrayed in poetry, or in such a quasi-scientific realm as psychoanalysis. Also, the notion of the reward is rather undignified, whether for the unconscious or the elephant. Behaviourism is one of the chief theories of learning. Reward represents the kind of positive reinforcement in the particular behaviourist theory developed by B.F. Skinner and given the chilly name ‘operant conditioning’. A real advance of the behaviourist approach is that it looks closely at what people actually do. Its drawback is that it often stops there. Here I have to declare an interest. I once worked in a school for children with sometimes severe behaviour difficulties related to their medical condition. I found myself feeling frustrated with the rather behaviourist approach that prevailed there at the time. A psychologist suggested that every instance of one child’s ‘good’ behaviour should be rewarded with a Smartie. When it was pointed out that this was doing the child’s teeth no good at all, the recommended ‘dose’ was changed to half a Smartie. And if you ever tried cutting a Smartie in half, then you’d dislike behaviourism too. Every parent knows that rewards ‘work’. Often the next stop after Granny’s is the sweet shop. But the effect of a reward tends to be short-lasting, and actually counter-productive when it comes to such complex notions as values. After all, we want children to learn more than just the efficacy of bribery. Likewise in eLearning. Small ‘rewards’ along the way - and a reward could be as simple as a vivid story after much abstraction - can lighten the learner’s load. But I’d suggest that, for a member of staff required to undertake - and pass - some eLearning course, the biggest barrier of all is the groan that the very notion of eLearning induces. One element of this is simple inertia, which can dissipate once the learner gets going. But might not another reason be the resistance to learning which too often fails to address the whole person; which leads the learner too harshly by the nose? The Romantic poet John Keats wrote in one of his deservedly famous letters, ‘We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us.’ For ‘poetry’, we might substitute the word ‘anything’. This sounds like bad news for the graphic or instructional designer. How do you design something that avoids giving the impression of having ‘a palpable design upon us’? Again, by regarding the learner as a whole person and not as someone to be used, in the poet W.H. Auden’s words, ‘like water or electricity for so many hours a day’ - which is a challenge in any workplace. Graphic design that seems clean and clear in the best Modernist tradition to a designer might seem to the learner a bright hygienic hell. ‘Those churches are best for prayer that have least light,’ wrote the third poet I’ll quote in this paragraph, John Donne. We find ourselves working in a well-lit cube by day, and sometimes relaxing afterwards in a dimly lit pub contrived to look as old as the hills. Good design, whether textual or visual, integrates the relaxation into the exertion. It’s easy to carp. But what better metaphor might there be for the challenge we all face as learners, of staying focused, of feeling motivated and even energised by what we are learning? Sticking with the duality theme, I propose the following metaphor for the learner’s conscious-unconscious ‘divide’: the swimmer and the water. In this, the swimmer is the conscious self with a place to get to. Haidt spoke of training the elephant, but try training the ocean! The swimmer who regards the water merely as an obstacle, as something to be overcome, will not have a relaxed propulsion through the water: better to be at one, as one, with the ocean. Likewise, anxiety - the sudden fear of going under, the clutching at whatever’s near to hand - impedes the swimmer. The very depth that threatens the fearful swimmer is added buoyancy for the confident swimmer. And the swimmer isn’t a machine; on a long swim may need to rest, holding onto some bulky flotsam or even stopping off at a small island. Advertisers know well the importance of unconscious motivations, and appeal directly to them. Those devising and designing eLearning courses ought to be as aware, but with this difference: the advertiser doesn’t do it for the customer’s but the product’s (and so the client’s) sake. Learning must be directed at, designed for, and benefical to, the learner. And, in being so, it must be mindful not so much of the elephant as the ocean in the room. The post Corporate Learning: The Poetry of Behaviour Change appeared first on Logicearth.

What is unlearning? Unlearning is the process of discarding something from your memory. When you unlearn something you forget it, put it aside, and you lose knowledge of it. For a quick graphical summary of unlearning insights, click here. But - why exactly would you want to unlearn something? In many cases when you unlearn something you can get rid of a bad habit, preconceptions or something that is false. Alvin Toffler, futurist and philosopher said: "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." We all have skills and knowledge to unlearn I’ve got lots of examples of unlearning. I was born at a time when society, education, workplaces were very rigid, structured and formal. In my early working years, management structures were very hierarchical and demarcation not collaboration was common. As I gained experience in those environments, I developed both learning and management skills to match. In the last 5 to 10 years though, workplaces have changed so much. I’ve had to unlearn habits of formal learning and communication to adapt a more agile learning and collaborative working approach. Unlearning is vital in today’s workplace. Why? Employees need to unlearn in order to move forward alongside their company so they can move ahead, work more effectively and further the company’s mission. In this blog post, we’re going to discuss seven tips for unlearning in the workplace. 1. Foster a sense of willingness Long-term employees often have a hard time unlearning especially if they’ve been doing something the same way for a long time. It’s not impossible to promote unlearning as long as there is an openness towards it. Instead of demanding compliance, a manager should foster a sense of willingness to unlearn and learn something new. Ease into the idea during a transitional period. Gradually assist employees by letting them unlearn and relearn slowly and over a specified time period. People are more cooperative in the unlearning process if they are willing participants. To make it easier, you can role model the new behaviour. Think of something like energy saving behaviours - you may need to first raise awareness of the bad habits to be unlearned e.g. switching off your PC if you leave your office for say more than an hour. But you could make this easier to do by buying new PCs or laptops with energy savings settings. Furthermore, you can involve people by asking them for ideas on how they save on energy bills at home. 2. Pursue the unfamiliar Consider the employee who shows resistance in using a new agile way of doing presentations. They’re severely limited in their ability to work offsite and make presentations on-the-go. When confronted with new technology or a new idea, many people look backwards for something familiar. They want to view the new with an eye for the old. The problem is that this is self-limiting. In order to grasp new ideas and let them take hold, you need to pursue the things that are unfamiliar and get to know them. Consider the new release of Windows 10. How many people jumped on this right away? How many decided to wait until it felt comfortable? Unfortunately, they may never feel comfortable switching. When unlearning, you have to let go of the familiar so you open your mind to the unfamiliar. This article on leadership - yes to the mess, talks about handling complexity and the importance of being agile. 3. Change the location One of the easiest ways to unlearn something is to move away from the location where you learned it. New surroundings can help you notice new things. This is a bit of psychological manipulation. You’re basically tricking your brain into unlearning by engaging in a new surrounding so you can unlearn one idea and learn another. It is another subtle way of helping you break a habit. 4. Learn from your opposite This isn’t exactly an "opposites attract" scenario, but it’s similar. When employees are surrounded by like-mind people, their ability to unlearn is hampered. When teamed with a business professional from a different background, employees are better able to look at things from a fresh viewpoint. Diversity in teams and organisations in general is good for everyone. By exposing themselves to something new, employees begin the unlearning process and open themselves up to learning something new. 5. Foster curiosity Consider a child’s capacity for learning. Help your employees see the unlearning from a child’s view. A child is usually open to discover new approaches and new techniques without much hesitation at all. They don’t have the same ‘adult baggage’ of fear or looking stupid. Ask yourself: What would you do today if you weren’t afraid? A child learns by engaging the five senses and investigating new situations through trial and error. The same methodology translates to the process of unlearning and then learning something new. What this really means is encouraging employees to find their inner child - their sense of curiosity that leads to increased creativity. To encourage employees to be open to new ideas and unlearn past knowledge, they can imagine learning as a child would from a place of curiosity. 6. Set goals and make success clear Employees respond better to the unlearning process if they not only buy into it, but if they have specific goals. Socially and emotionally, people work better this way - as long as it is no more than two to three key goals. The most effective unlearning process provides clear and challenging goals without infringing on the learner’s sense of ownership of the goals. Goals have the ability to provide motivation and self-reliance. First, be sure the goals set during the unlearning process are actually attainable. Make the steps clear so employees can check them off their list. For example, if you are introducing energy saving measures, you might kick off the unlearning with a campaign. You could set some initial easy targets e.g. 1% savings in first month, with a leader board for each area to see where people are against target. You first goal, could be: Everyone turns their PC off at least once per day when leaving their office for the first week of the campaign. By setting small goals like this, your transition will be easier. You might have some ‘energy champions’ spend a few minutes each day, giving out gentle reminders for that 1st week. This encourages the unlearning and learning process while making it easier for employees to do. 7. Continuous support and checking in Unlearning may be as difficult for the company as it is for individual employee. To ensure a smooth transition, encourage colleagues to help each other out. Consider creating a support team to handle the unlearning process. This team can handle any glitches that arise. The take away Today’s workforce needs to embrace continuous learning in order to move forward. Employees must continue to unlearn, learn and relearn in order to stay relevant in today’s modern, digital workforce. Change is continual, and in order to stay current and not dive into the world of the obsolete, unlearning is a vital component to 21st century employees. The most overlooked aspect of learning is the process of unlearning. Everyone has acquired knowledge that built their mountain of ideas, some still viable and others outdated. In order to unlearn and move forward, employees have to be willing to work through the process. Our world is in constant flux, and the most successful companies will be the ones who unlearn, learn, relearn and evolve with it. The concept of unlearning is to challenge yourself and your employees to think and learn about things from different perspectives and different angles. You’ll find that it’s the unlearning skills that give us our competitive edge in the 21st century. So, what are you going to unlearn today? Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe. Graphical summary - unlearning habits The post Unlearning is the new learning appeared first on Logicearth.

We need SMART eLearning - now! So picture the scene. A training manager sitting at his laptop on a Monday morning. He gets a request from one of his department heads, "I need a course for XYZ". "No problem",  he thinks.  "We’ve got that new LMS, with all those off-the-shelf titles." So he logs on, and searches, and searches, and…finds 500 titles to match the search for XYZ. Today’s blog comes from our co-founder, Peter Carlin. Peter aims to address the above scenario and more! (and there is more than one way to solve this challenge, AND more than one problem here!) Over to Peter… I love my job as a learning consultant.  I am blessed to be able to visit such a sizable and diverse array of clients, each with their own problems and levels of modern learning maturity.  Each and every L&D professional is at a different point on their journey to modernise services for their business needs and for their learners.  Over time and as I travel around to meet these clients, a set of common (and industry spanning) problems is becoming more and more apparent. Just navigating the maze of tools, technologies, processes and methodologies is overwhelming which to me is the most apparent common problem and a topic for another day. But one of the most common problems I see is how best to procure, manage and utilise libraries of off-the-shelf content.  Too often we have encountered L&D Professionals scratching their heads after a two year mega licence deal for vast libraries with little to show for their financial spend or efforts. Utilisation or realisation of any goals were just not attained, resulting in - well let’s take a moment to think about this as I feel the net results are quite profound. It is still about value-add The pressure on L&D professionals to deliver more with less, to add value to the business and to facilitate great learning experiences is greater than ever.  We need to be at the top of our game, with great commercial acumen, constantly evolving, measuring and evaluating and of course promoting our successes.  Scrutiny from the board on every penny spent is immense.  Off-the-shelf eLearning libraries are an important part of our modern learning toolkit just as other elements such as classroom training, blended programmes, virtual classrooms, video, mobile content, game elements and many more.  BUT as always with eLearning, there is a very fine line between great success and abject failure.  So let’s stay positive and figure out how to get this right. Here are five strategies you might consider to tame your vast eLearning libraries into a smart eLearning solution: Value eLearning as a vital business tool No matter what some pundits say, eLearning libraries can really support efforts for specific projects or for generic skills in many ways.  If used correctly and you take advice on which good quality content to buy, they provide the opportunity to build learning services for large and geographically dispersed audiences at a fraction of the alternative cost. If our approach to the overall solution at hand is forward thinking, then incorporating off-the-shelf eLearning content to a solution is a good thing. More often, it is the overall user experience and how we communicate with and motivate the learners to become involved in the process is the most important element yet so easily overlooked. Banish option paralysis The hoarders versus the minimalists: In my house, if something sits around for a few weeks or months then it is recycled, sold or moved on.  I take a practical approach to decluttering; it makes me feel good and I know where the important things are around me. Buying vast arrays of eLearning libraries is a bit like hoarding - we have all seen the TV shows.  Hoarding results in having lots of things ‘just in case’ you need them. But mostly they are not and will never be required. Also, it makes it much harder to find what you need in order to get benefit from it.  L&D people love hoarding content - there is almost a fear of not having something and an attitude of ‘it’s better looking at it than for it’ can persist.   Maybe this is too much of a sweeping statement and an alternative view is that we are forced to hoard content because it is pushed upon us.  Either way, you know who you are! Presenting vast catalogues of content to managers or staff for their self-service is fraught with danger and is a waste of very precious time.  In very simple terms, it produces cognitive overload. And for those who even dare try to navigate the library structures, option paralysis sets in.  When offering solutions, we must do our best to present the most pertinent information with the least amount of effort required by the user to navigate its use. It’s a shame that in the eLearning world, we haven’t quite got a proper ‘google’ search yet for our vast content libraries. The user experience is paramount and learners must feel comfortable in the environment as well as the content of the courses they choose.   We must shift away from pushing content to service facilitation. To facilitate a great service, it must be a great experience for the user and we must benchmark how best to do this.  Smaller more pertinent libraries, with granular intelligent search is the absolute starting point. Pre-match learning to business needs Content alignment to business needs is important.  "Content Alignment", I hear you say has a whiff of buzzword about it, so how can we make it practical?  I always start with the obvious, what is it we all have in common? Well, we all have a performance development cycle, usually starting with goal setting at the start of the year followed by formal 1-1’s, informal mentoring and coaching, probably a 360 & a rating thrown in and ending in final review.  There are a number of touch points between managers and individuals along that process so maybe one of our "Smart Libraries" is dedicated wholly to it -  a self-service catalogue for managers with content to help them prepare for the end-to-end process and another as a first line learner resource for discussion outcomes.   If these libraries are accessible, well thought out, marketed and communicated throughout the company then we have succeeded to provide a valuable resource with little maintenance or input required by L&D. And - more importantly, no more needles in haystacks! I can think of many such smart libraries and it occurs to me that the content should and probably could come from multiple sources.  There is of course a time intensive research element to this type of thinking and there will also be a trade-off between and increased cost per head with lower volumes.  I do believe, however, that good utilisation of the services you provide can fully outweigh a perceived increase in cost per person. Build demand and the obsession with utilisation Buying vast libraries and expecting our managers to adopt it and our learners to use it just does not work. Examples of good practice demonstrates that great communication can drive demand for the content thus transforming how we can go about procuring and negotiating a great deal for the business.  Imagine going into a vendor negotiation armed to the teeth with statistics, numbers and knowledge.  This is so important and there are a number of tactics to think about. So - build your ideal libraries and go on a road show.  If you truly believe that the service you are building is valuable, then go and sell it.  You will need to become a sales person, PR expert and marketing buff, but hey this stuff is fun!  It demonstrates to your organisation that you are putting science behind your process and that success is measured by collaboration and buy-in.  This is where true and organic utilisation will come from. I would suggest further that normal utilisation calculations are fundamentally flawed and we hide behind spurious figures without any sense of value.  Who cares how many people passed the assessment, or complete XYZ by a certain date? What we really want to know are things like: Did it help anyone get better at their job? Did it help solve an organisational challenge? Anyhow, during your road show, build support from managers and individuals and ask them to sign up to your service before your even build it.  These are the foundations for success. Find out the content vendors secrets As ever, practical application of these ideas is important and receiving good advice can really help. You can choose to work directly with vendors or indirectly through their resellers - each should have learning consultants that can help.  You should expect the same pricing from both sources. Do not be afraid to negotiate and to push hard for what you want.  Some will be more open than others, however there is a limited source of supply with too few large players in the market. Working with a reseller should provide additional benefits with extra layers of services, a knowledge of the wider supply base, a willingness to meet your preferred model and potentially a source of options. In the past we have seen too rigid a licencing model from the supply side and with the right approach, we should be able to challenge this to match the business need to the solution.  Ensure you understand the technical integration process. Summary It’s a new world out there with new ways, new generations, new methodologies and ever-evolving technologies. Our learners are learning in ways we haven’t thought of yet using technology we don’t use or don’t understand. Our L&D service solution set has to evolve and one element of that is external off-the-shelf content. We can all challenge this aspect of our toolkit by library planning, pre-aligning to business needs, internal demand gathering, marketing, building a great user experience and negotiating well with the suppliers. Your learning service provider should be able to help and many will offer some of this advice for free. The time for smart eLearning is now! So don’t be the hoarder next door, just pick up the phone and ask. You can learn more about our off-the-shelf learning services here. Would love to hear your comments. You can use the comment form below or jump on the chat tool for a quick conversation with one of our learning consultants at any time. Peter Carlin, Joint owner, Logicearth Learning Services. The post Transforming vast off-the-shelf content into SMART eLearning appeared first on Logicearth.

Why have explainer videos become so popular? First of all, let’s explain what an explainer video is! It is a short animation (usually between 30 seconds and 2 minutes), which explains a key concept or is focussed on a product or service demonstration/overview. They’ve been popular on startup company websites for the past couple of years. Research shows that an explainer video on a website can increase conversion from between 15 to 20%. You can see an example of an explainer video, providing an overview of one of our eLearning programmes, here. http://logicearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ScreenVideo2.mp4   So today’s blog is about explainer videos. But it is about their application for learning. Just as a highly visual, short and focussed video can help your potential buyers to understand your products and services, so too can it help your learners. Logicearth’s multi-device eLearning content is characterised by judicious and pertinent use of explainer videos. Our lead Instructional Designer, Helen Cassidy presents today’s blog to give you an insight into what good explainer videos can do to support learning and what makes a good explainer video. Over to Helen… I worked on a project once where I had no idea about what I was doing. I asked my manager for an explanation of the project background but left his cubicle with diagrams that looked like a comic strip. I asked my colleagues for help on where my bit fitted into the process but my notes from their patchy ramblings - delivered with aplomb - were equally comical. What was I missing? All I wanted was the basics. Tip 1 - The BASICS What I was missing were some short building blocks of information that set a context, were easily understood, followed a logical process and paced me nicely through the information. The reason I like explainer animations so much - both as an ID and a learner - is that they present on a stage those basic nuggets of information, complete with pictures and sound. It’s easy to think that all an animation does is add a little bit of Hollywood sparkle to the dullest of content (they can certainly do this) but a good explainer video is much more than that. As an ID, an explainer animation isn’t a learning element that I can just throw into a course to jazz it up. A good one is a gem. A poor one leads to confusion and can make a learner distrust everything else you’re trying to say. Tips 2 to 5 are what I think about when designing good explainer videos for learning. Tip 2: The WORDS A good script is the backbone of an explainer video: Break up the explanation into short bite-sized chunks Ensure that the points follow a logical path Visualise the solution to make sure there are no gaps or ambiguities Take care to avoid introducing terminology that a learner might not yet understand Keep an eye on the pace of the explanation - don’t overload one section and trivialise another Every point should be meaningful and relevant Read through your script and have your peers review it - does it sound like a text book or can you imagine someone actually explaining the topic to you? Don’t forget to ask your subject matter expert (SME) to review your script. It might have taken you a week to get to grips with it but it needs to match your learners’ requirements. And graphic designers don’t usually take kindly to having to rework a complex animation because the script wasn’t signed off beforehand.  Tip 3: The IMAGES Having a team of graphic designers to accurately visualise every part of your subject is quite a luxury. An ID will have immersed him/herself in the subject and talked to the SMEs so should have a good conceptual picture of what the subject is all about. Therefore most IDs will want to give their graphic designers a steer as to the imagery that should accompany their script. Think of some overall imagery that correctly represents the base subject - e.g. is it a mechanical process or about people’s emotions? For each point or sentence in your script, think of a visual metaphor to represent it. Imagine each section of your animation running from one into the next - does it work? Is there too much happening in one particular section - should it be further broken down? Is there a large chunk of script where little information is actually being conveyed - can this be condensed? The animation should focus clearly on the key messages so try to avoid distractions or red herrings. Use highlights, colours and actions to flag up important points.   Tip 4: The AUDIO/SOUND An explainer video could have voiceover or music, or a bit of both. (Be careful with the music - see previous blog) Know the audio capabilities of your audience. A lovely flowing narrative may not suit learners who have audio restrictions It’s important to avoid cognitive overload by having all the text appearing on the screen when you need your learners to concentrate on the animation details, so decide early what text will be voiced over and what will be displayed You may need to include a transcript button containing the key points Ensure the client has signed off on the voiceover sample - accents and dialects can be sensitive things Give your voice over (VO) artist a clear brief - straight, quirky, slow, fast, deliberate, fun - the style of the voiceover will play a huge part in whether or not your learners will easily accept the information with which they are being presented Be careful with pronunciation - some words might need a specific intonation or emphasis - check this with your client   Tip 5 - The BUDGET Good explainer animations are effective, immersive and impactful. They can also use up a large amount of your designers’ time and efforts, so make sure you, and your clients, budget for this. Voiceover also carries a cost so build this in to the overall cost also. You can reduce costs by: Asking someone internal to do the VO - most organisations have people who have decent voices/accents - you may even have some part-time actors in your organisation! Consider just having music, words and images, instead of VO - that is the approach we used for the video at the top of this blog Re-using graphic design elements - build up a library of symbols, animation techniques and images for use in all of your animations and keep adding to it to share it among your design team You don’t always have to create animations from scratch - you can find stock video and music to pull ideas together (see mouse video below) When you get it right, explainer animations are key elements in a learning module. They are stand out, stand-alone and memorable components that can be easily referenced or shared. They have personality, flair and style - be it Hollywood, European art or Film Noir - and are usually always warmly received by learners just looking for that decent explanation. Here are a couple more examples of our good explainer videos: For an Energy and Sustainability eLearning programme http://logicearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/p7s1_VO.mp4   Short demo video for causes of repetitive strain injury http://logicearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/MouseClickIdea.mp4   So thanks to Helen for a great post. If you have any questions on explainer videos, please do get in touch. Our designers would love to hear from you. You can also read more about our eLearning content here. Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe. The post 5 tips to create good explainer videos appeared first on Logicearth.

How do we address unlearning in eLearning content design? At Logicearth, we’re really fascinated by the topic of unlearning. We first wrote about it here - unlearning is the new learning. Our view is that we are missing a trick in workplace learning by not considering what we need to help our staff unlearn. In our experience, once the baggage of unlearning is dropped, learning and performance improvement can be turbo-charged. Steve Wheeler, associate professor of Learning Technologies at Plymouth University, has an interesting perspective on this too. In a blog - Learning, unlearning and re-learning, he quotes: "Times are changing. Kathy Sierra features a timeline on her blog which suggests that the 1970s and 80s were about how well we could learn, the 1990s and 2000s focused on how fast and how much we could learn, whilst today’s education should be based on how much we can unlearn." Today, we revisit the topic from the point of view of addressing unlearning as part of the learning analysis phase of the eLearning design process. David Cameron, one of our experienced instructional designers explains how we do that. Over to David… ‘Don’t wanna learn from nobody what I gotta unlearn.’ So sang Bob Dylan, in a song from an album called Slow Train Coming (not, as you might expect from Dylan, Slow Train a-Comin’). This was another album which forced his many fans to unlearn some of their own learning about him. I should know, I got it for my 13th birthday. This nasally delivered born-again evangelism wasn’t what I thought I’d signed up for when, a year earlier, I fell under Dylan’s spell. So, I stopped buying - i.e. asking others to buy me - any new Dylan albums for a while, and listened only to the old ones. Given that much of the 1980s was a creative nadir for Dylan, this wasn’t such a bad idea. But it’s only in recent years that I’ve come to share Leonard Cohen’s assessment that this was great gospel music. I missed out at the time because I wasn’t willing to unlearn. Thankfully, I’m younger than that now. Unlearning and association The mind works by association - at least, mine does. So I often find this line of Dylan’s flitting through my head these days. Resistance to learning interests me: it’s the thing I have to devise ways of overcoming as I sit at my Logicearth desk, instructionally designing eLearning courses. As well as meetings with subject matter experts (SMEs), I will try to schedule a call with some of the learners I’m writing for. Usually they will be handpicked by the client, and so - in their eagerness to learn - not wholly representative of the wider learnership (a word I only wish I had made up). Still, these calls are vital. We all have an ideal learner in our head, and this easily-pleased and eager-to-please little head-occupant needs to be evicted. You are going to have to work harder than you think. As I’m finding out for myself … Right now, I’m in the middle of doing some unlearning, having agreed to go with a friend to guitar lessons for beginners. It’s teaching me about learning as well as guitar-playing (hence this blog). My guitar-wielding days actually began at age nine, and I’ve barely progressed since. Why? Mainly because my first learning experience was a bad one, and also because my desired learning outcome (to be - not just to be like - Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin) was a little unrealistic. And then, once the reality-penny dropped and I saw how slow my progress was going to be, I found a way of playing that was enough to get by on. Enough that, if someone asked ‘Do you play the guitar?’, I could answer ‘Yes’ - as long as there was no guitar around for me to (dis)prove this. If I can stand it, I’ll revisit that first learning experience. My teacher was a family friend (I’ll call him Mr D), a headmaster who was a reluctant teacher that day. He taught me, with some difficulty (the difficulty was mine), the chords E and A, and brought out The Beatles Songbook. With those two chords you can do a passable version of Get Back. A good start: I liked The Beatles and knew the song. When it comes to learning, the new is built on the familiar old - not everything has to be unlearned. But my interest in language, even at that age, was at least the equal of my love of music. And so I quizzed Mr D on the lyrics. Why did Loretta Martin think she was a woman when she was a man? Why did he have a woman’s name, then? In the line ‘But she gets it while she can’, what is ‘it’? Mr D shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and asked his son to take over. I was then treated to a display of Mr D’s son’s virtuosity with the instrument. Suddenly, air guitar seemed a better option. But worst of all was what followed next. When my mum picked me up and asked Mr D ‘So, is he going to be a great guitarist, then?’, there were some mumbled words of affirmation, but they were accompanied by a shaking of Mr D’s head, just caught out of the side of my eye. And so the pronouncement had been made: I would never be Jimmy Page. I wouldn’t even be Ritchie Blackmore. Unlearning in the eLearning content design process Here at Logicearth, we always enquire into the difficulties that learners might face by asking our SMEs: ‘What are the pain points?’ Well, my pain points when my mum picked me up were painful indeed. Looking back on the experience, what does it tell me about learning? It teaches me that learning requires: • Some initial willingness from the learner (even the horse that was reluctant to drink agreed to be led to the water) • A lot of effort to engage the learner (this effort can’t be deputised, e.g. to templates or technology) • Realism, but not discouragement (nod don’t shake your head) • No preconceived notions about ‘ability’ (skills can be learned, by anyone) • Demonstration of the required skill (but not ‘showing off’) • Acceptance that some Beatles lyrics are indecipherable (OK, strike this one) And now, since Monday, my unlearning (and new learning) process has begun. It was different this time. For a start, I was part of a group, and so the incompetence wasn’t uniquely mine. Even though eLearning can take someone out of the classroom and place them alone in front of a computer/tablet/mobile, there is a skill involved in making the learning seem both individually targeted and a shared experience. You can do this, for instance, by using scenarios involving the kind of characters the learner will recognise among his/her colleagues, while also addressing the learner directly as ‘you’ and leaving enough scope for personality (e.g. by asking questions that involve thoughtful, individual responses rather than right/wrong, true/false answers). The song we were learning was Neil Young’s Desert Highway. A good start: I like Neil Young and know the song. But just as I was getting comfortable, I was told to use my pinkie when playing G (the third chord I learned aged nine). It felt weird, awkward. And just right! I knew from the discomfort - a good discomfort - that I was both unlearning and learning. So, my advice is, don’t alienate the learner, but don’t make your courses too cosy either. Unlearnin’ through e-learnin’ is a-comin’. Soon. Thanks to David for a very interesting blog. Next in the series will be specific examples about how we design eLearning content to help with unlearning. Maybe you have already addressed unlearning in your workplace - if so, we’d love to hear from you. Please reply in the comments below. Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe.   The post The role of unlearning in eLearning content design appeared first on Logicearth.

Do we truly embrace modern learning? I love learning new things. I love the buzz that it gives me to finally master a complex topic and make progress. Over the last six months, I have been immersed in a personal learning journey. I’ve taken on a new role in Logicearth; alongside my learning innovation role, I am also responsible for driving our content marketing efforts. This has involved unlearning a few things and also learning some new things. My biggest learning challenge? It has been a change in identity. For the past 10 years, I have been focussing on all things learning design. I have managed teams of IDs and designer/developers, I have managed eLearning projects and I have trained and coached new designers. From learning design to marketing The content marketing role was a natural transition. It still involves some core learning design and communication skills, but other new skills were needed. These skills were a combination of business and technical. Instead of working with internal design teams, I would be working with the sales team and would take over the re-development of our Website. Do you understand SEO? Me either - well I do a bit more now! By new identity, I mean I now had to consider my job from a completely different angle. With learning design, it is easy for me to get to know the target audience - it was generally very narrow and well defined. When learners were working through my content, I had their attention - and mostly they had to complete the content. Marketing is a very different proposition. We live in what is called an attention economy. In a global market there are millions of customers and millions of companies competing for that business. Type "eLearning content" into google (UK) and it yields around 24 million results. How do buyers find us? How do we know what buyers want and need? Supporting the learning journey Marketing in Logicearth is about trying to understand the needs of our potential customers in the sector we operate in, and how we can meet those needs better than some other companies. It is about articulating what is called a value proposition and identifying our unique selling point(s). Lots of buzzwords in this learning journey! What does Logicearth do that is different or better than the competition? How do we package that value in a way that makes sense to a huge potential target audience? And most importantly for us - how do we ensure our customers have the best experience possible with us? So how did I learn? "It is not so much a learning curve - more a learning maze; often you don’t know what is around the next corner until you bang your head getting out of a dead-end." Well I truly embraced modern learning philosophy and used a combination of the 70:20:10 model and performance support. Today’s post is about 5 things that inspired and supported me to learn on this journey of transition. Sometimes in the workplace, I think we take for granted the scaffolding that needs to be in place to support people when they learn, change, grow and develop. We forget sometimes that learning is an on-going journey, with plenty of bumps and challenges along the way. As I said, learning is more maze-like, than curve-like! Learning culture We have a very open learning culture here at Logicearth. We are encouraged to try things, to experiment. If you fail, that is ok - as long as you learn from your mistakes. Failure isn’t a disaster and there is little naming and shaming. That is not to say that we inflict our failures on our customers - it is more about the approach to learning something new, before it gets prepared for the customer. It is one of the few companies that I’ve worked where you can really see the company values being lived every day. Coaching/mentoring I was assigned an external mentor on SEO as part taking over co-ordinating the new Website build. This was one of the key skills I had identified where I’d need the most support as it was the furthest from the current skillset. What was important from my point of view is that I was able to request this support, make a case for why it was needed and had a company leadership who listened and responded. An external coach/mentor also brings a much needed reality check when sometimes internal initiatives can get caught up in too many assumptions and narrow view points. Fast-tracking learning by having regular contact with someone who has been there, done it and got the t-shirt, is in-valuable? Leadership support Following on from #2, your senior leaders must be aware and be supportive of how people learn and develop. They at least need to share the vision of what changes will happen as a result of that learning. You need your leaders to be supportive and encouraging. When you come across barriers and challenges, good leadership can help you think through your options and pick a better route through the maze. I’ve lost count the number of times I have been able to say to one of our co-founders - I’ve hit a brick wall here and not sure where to go, or I know I am missing something, but I’m not sure what. Once again, I’ve worked in very few companies that have provided this leadership support. Mix of learning opportunities and tools The 70:20:10 models proposes that 70% of workplace learning likely happens on the job, 20% from peers/managers and 10% from formal learning. In this journey, I would say that is about right. I found the need for formal learning in two areas: When I was completely new to a subject When I needed to meet others So it is important to really think through the skills you need to learn. Novice learners need to need more formal structures, but once you get a bit of momentum going there are lots of different learning techniques and tools that you can use. For example - I spent a bit of time using tools like Twitter and LinkedIn. I followed expert Content Marketers, talked with them, asked them questions and subscribed to their blogs. I was able to immerse myself in the new identity. I also attended free webinars on content marketing and marketing in general. There are lots of free learning resources out there if you spend time looking for them. Specific projects - short-term, medium term, long term As the core scaffold to all this learning I was doing, I obviously had a day job to do. I had to start delivering on new marketing efforts. This gave me the necessary structure to drive meaning in my learning and keep me motivated when I encountered any obstacles With the company leadership, I agreed a few short-term, medium-term and long term projects and goals. Short-term Start a company blog and blog regularly Be more pro-active on social media Research SEO and improve our SEO efforts Medium-term Set targets for blog and content marketing - numbers, engagements etc Set targets for SEO Set targets for social media engagement Long-term Re-design our website based on new marketing insights Why structure workplace learning in this way? It is important to keep recognising the learning journey. Breaking goals down like this helps with immediate focus and means you are less likely to be overwhelmed. It also allows you to pace your learning, meeting key business targets when priorities arise or if they change. So that’s the learning journey. There is certainly more to it than ‘going on a course’. Have you had any similar learning journeys? How do you support staff in their development within your workplace learning framework? What has supported you in the workplace? We’d love to hear from you. The post 5 ways to turbo-boost workplace learning appeared first on Logicearth.

How important are eLearning requirements? The most important, but often least rigorous phase of an eLearning/training project is scoping and eLearning requirements gathering. We’ve all been there - and this post is as much for my fellow eLearning vendors as it is for clients. Picture the scene… Client: We have this $£XYZ budget we need to spend before end of March. We need something on health and safety - can you help? Vendor: Of course. We have a great eLearning team…. Growing into the learning architect role Of course, said no client or vendor ever! But, hypothetically, let’s think through this worst case scenario. No matter what project you are involved with, it can be tempting just to get ‘stuck in’ and start designing/building. After all, no-one wants endless questions, especially a client who has a tight deadline. Clients want to see ‘product’ as soon as possible - and who can blame them? It is analogous to an architect building a house. If designing and building a house was like designing an eLearning course, then the poor buyers would lose interest before the house was built! But if you think of the role of the architect in house building, they are very good at communicating and agreeing the scope of the build before money is committed. They can do calculations from detailed plans, offer clients choices and present a clear vision. So how do we as an eLearning community get closer to this more structured and scientific approach? Today’s post comes from one of our experienced Instructional Design team, Niamh Williams. I asked Niamh to come up with at least 10 questions we should ask clients before any design work undertaken. I was inspired by this brochure from the Royal Institute of British Architects. "The first thing a good architect will do is ask questions, listen and understand what you are trying to achieve." Over to Niamh… WHY do you need it? A client may commission a piece of training content for a number of reasons; there may be an on-going or new regulatory requirement; they may want to replace existing face-to-face training, there may have been an incident in the workplace that highlighted a need for training, for example, a serious accident might lead a company to want new or improved Health and Safety training. Whatever the reasons, it’s important that you understand them and ensure that the outcomes of the training meet the business needs. Return on Investment (ROI) is often another important factor for clients. If this is the case, you could work with the client to design a test or survey to establish the current level of knowledge and/or satisfaction on the subject to be taught, then compare that to the scores and/or satisfaction ratings after learners have completed the course. For example, the baseline survey may show that prior to taking the course, "53% of respondents were confident or very confident that they would know what to do in case of fire at work" but, after taking the training, that number rose to 87% of respondents. WHAT problems will it solve? The challenge for the learning designer is to prise out why this training is needed. Ask SMEs ‘What are the pain points?’ and ‘What do learners find confusing or difficult to understand currently? Sometimes you need to dig down to find the route of the problem. For instance, you may be told that departments within the company don’t communicate well with each other. There could be various reasons for this but it could be something as simple as terminology differences. Confusion can arise if different departments refer to things in different ways. Sometimes half the battle is getting the SMEs to agree on key terms, concepts and priorities. WHO is it for, specifically? This may seem like an obvious question but it’s very important to ask it. It often sparks a discussion within the client’s team about different groups who might potentially use the training. For example, the course might primarily be used by new starters but might also have a secondary use as refresher or top-up training for more experienced workers. If so, you may want to provide a pre-test to allow that audience to be able to ‘test out’ of content they already know and focus on what they don’t. Parent companies sometimes have subsidiaries or offices in other regions. If this is the case, you should discuss with the client if they need the content to be localised, or customisable (logos, local policy differences etc) or split into separate sections allowing the L&D manager to assign sections of the course to certain audiences as appropriate. Get as much information as possible on the learners’ job role(s) so you can make the learning scenarios as realistic and relevant as possible. Have you done this BEFORE? Some companies repeat training programmes often - especially if it is compliance training. New recruits will need trained and the mandatory once a year training on key compliance topics is common in regulated industries. It is worth asking the questions: How have you delivered this before? What results did you get? What worked well, what didn’t? WHAT will happen if you DON’T do it? Here again there could be implications both for the business and for the learner. Where there is a legal obligation on the company to be able to prove that compliance training has happened, the company could suffer legal and/or financial sanctions if learners do not complete the training. For the learner, failure to complete compulsory training may result in a reprimand or even dismissal. Even for non-compliance subjects, it’s important that you, and the learner, understand how the learner is worse off for not-knowing this subject. For example, if the learner knows that, by taking the training on the new ordering system they will be able to raise an order in half the time, they will see the benefit to them and will most likely want to take the training. With compliance training, for instance, it’s often thought of as a box-ticking exercise to satisfy the regulators, with little or no benefit for the learner - but it doesn’t have to be like that. Well-designed eLearning programmes can help with learner motivation. And the benefits of asking these 10 questions is that you’ll gather better learning requirements to match the needs of the learner. With Health and Safety training for instance, the learner needs to be reminded that this knowledge could help them avoid serious injury to themselves or others. What do staff need to KNOW after they’ve taken the course? What are the knowledge outcomes? Work out with the client what the key focus of the training needs to be. For example, the client may want to rollout training to explain the new company values, so a key outcome might be to ‘Understand the company values’. If it’s process training, they may need to be able to ‘List the steps in process x.’   For Sales training, an objective might be to be able to ‘Identify the differences between product x and product y.’ What do staff need DO differently? Similar to the last question but this one is more task-focussed. Learners will respond better to training that is practical and useful to them in their everyday working life. So, as well as understanding the company values, how can learners use those values to improve the workplace? This could be explaining how to support company initiatives, for example, how to vote in the company’s, ‘Values Employee of the Month ‘ competition. Or, for Managers, the focus might be to provide practical tools and advice on how to train and support employees to better demonstrate the values. How often are the different types of knowledge and skills used? Sometimes training programmes focus too much on teaching seldom used skills, while not spending time on the more common skills. How do the best performers do this? It is good practice to seek out high performers in this area. Ask them how they learned, how they overcame challenges and who/what helped them. You could even record their ‘learning story’ and make it available as part of the eLearning programme. In fact, any information that you obtain from a high performer could be used in your eLearning programme - for examples, scenarios and test questions. 10. How will you know you’ve been successful? This is often the most important question that isn’t asked - what will success look like for you. Worst case scenario are things like - we want XX% of our users to have completed the course by….or everyone should have passed the assessment. Try to tie success to specific business metrics or key performance indicators. Knowing these from the beginning of the design process will help you choose better content and interactive ideas. So that’s a list of 10 from us - what about you? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below. Thanks to Niamh for parking some great initial thoughts! The post 10 questions we all should ask - eLearning requirements appeared first on Logicearth.

What is an epic explainer animation? We think this is… http://logicearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/p7s1_VO.mp4 This blog is a follow-on from our previous blog on creating explainer videos. That blog focussed on the instructional design techniques for creating epic explainer animations. This post focusses on the design and technical considerations. Darren Rooney, our design lead runs through his top 5 tips. Over to Darren… Animations are a useful device for eLearning. Using video as an introduction can be a bright way to kick start your courses. Video can also be used to break up complex content into a more visual, engaging format. Here are 5 tips which we have found useful when creating animated content. 1. Prepare, prepare, prepare! You should fully prepare your script and visuals before you start to produce your animation. This will help dictate the pace and ensure a consistent look and feel throughout your video. We use Adobe After Effects to create our animations and using this approach makes your workflow more efficient - you can import your finished visuals directly from Adobe Illustrator into After Effects. For every scene we create the illustrations first and then assign each animation element to a named layer before we import into After Effects: 2. Make sure your audio is excellent Poor audio will ruin your animation - so make sure you do it right! Where possible you should use a professional voiceover artist and only use music that compliments the messages in your video. If you cannot get a professional voiceover you should record your voice using the best microphone possible and in a quiet room. We get good results from this microphone. A room with carpet and many items of furniture will reduce unwanted echoes and give you a better result. Check out our infographic below to learn a quick way to remove unwanted background noise from your voiceover using Adobe Audition. 3. Keep it short! People are used to being bombarded with information online through websites and social media. As a result they have short attention spans. Studies suggest that the ideal length for explainer animations is 60 seconds or less. Any longer than this and viewers tend to get bored and click away. 4. Get to the point You need to get to your key message quickly. Don’t waste time with introductions, show your audience something interesting straight away to capture their attention! Make your key messages as clear as possible and get to them quickly. Your key or most important message should be presented in the first 30 seconds. 5. Make it fun and personal Nobody wants to see a boring powerpoint presentation with voiceover added. Make your videos entertaining and customise the look and feel for your target audience. Characters can be a good way to make a personal connection with viewers and we often try to incorporate some humour into videos (where appropriate) to engage people. Tell stories, offer people insights, help them to think about the topic differently. The holy grail of any explainer video is to guide your viewers to say: "I thought it was only me who felt like that" 6. Understand the principles of multimedia learning (an extra one for reading this far - here comes the science!) Be sure to familiarise yourself with the principles of multimedia learning. These principles will help you better understand how we take in information, try to make sense of it and remember it, without feeling too overwhelmed. For example - it is difficult to listen to audio, read from a screen and watch animation all at once. This leads to information (cognitive) overload, which means your viewer will likely stop watching - the opposite of what you want. The well-researched principles of multimedia learning will help you to plan better explainer animations and avoid common novice mistakes. This is a useful introduction to the principles. The complete list of multimedia learning principles is here: 1. Multimedia, 2. Redundancy, 3. Coherence, 4. Signalling/cuing, 5. Spatial continuity 6. Temporal contiguity, 7. Modality, 8. Segmenting, 9. Pre-training, 10. Personalization, 11. Voice, 12. Embodiment, 13. Image If you want a deeper look at these principles (from the author) take a look at Richard E. Mayer’s Harvard lecture here. Supporting resources Finally, if you are new to creating explainer videos and would like to learn more, here are a few online resources you might want to explore: The 10 best startup explainer videos ever How to write a killer explainer video script How to make your own explainer video The best stock music for multimedia projects We’ll be writing a more in-depth blog post on the principles of multimedia learning soon - in the meantime, we’d love to hear from you if you have any great examples of explainer videos to share. Logicearth Learning Services specialise in designing, delivering and supporting modern workplace learning solutions, which brings results for individuals and organisations. We are learning technology experts and along with specialist interactive multi-device content development skills, we can provide a complete service for all your organisation’s modern learning needs. Logicearth has offices in Belfast and Dublin but deliver services worldwide, including Ireland, UK, USA and throughout Europe. The post The science of epic explainer animations - 5 tips appeared first on Logicearth.