10 QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT YOUR TEEN SERVICES http://yalsa.ala.org/blog/2015/07/30/10-questions-to-ask-about-your-teen-services/ Can teens find quiet spaces for reading and studying in your library and vibrant spaces for hanging out, socializing, and creative activities? Do you avoid charging fines and other penalties that can keep teens away from the library? Do teens help you decide what you stock in the library? Are you fighting against the stereotype of libraries as just book providers? Are you going to where the teens are (outside of the library) to market your services? Are you working to ensure that all library staff exhibit positive, welcoming attitudes toward teens? Are your policies framed in positive language? Are you matching your services to your teen community’s unique needs? Do you provide opportunities for teens to demonstrate their knowledge and accomplishments, such as avenues for displaying teen fiction, teen photography, teen computer game designs, teen music compositions and performances, etc.? Do you work hard to bring the teens in your community together at your library, either face-to-face or online? Stephen

Why 15% of Americans don’t use the Internet http://mashable.com/2015/08/03/us-adults-use-internet/ "Email, Facebook, cat videos — these are just a few of the things that 15% of American adults are missing out on every day because they don’t use the Internet. However, that 15% is a huge reduction from the percentage of Americans who did not use the Internet in 2000, according to a new analysis of survey data by the Pew Research Center, a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. In that year, almost half of all Americans (48%) said they didn’t go online. The number of people in the United States who use the Internet increased steadily from 2000 until 2012, when the percentage of offline adults fell to 15%. Since then, despite efforts by the government and social service organizations to encourage Americans to get online, that number hasn’t budged, according to Pew. Why are some Americans so reluctant to sign on? A third of those surveyed who aren’t online (34%) said they don’t think the Internet is relevant to their lives, or that they’re simply not interested in what the Web has to offer. Another 32% of people who don’t use the Internet said the technology required to access the Internet is just too tough to get the hang of, and 8% said they were "too old to learn." But some people said they don’t use the Internet because they cannot afford to do so, according to Pew. The survey data showed that 19% of those not online cited the expense of Internet service or owning a computer as their reason for staying offline. Certain groups are more likely than others to go without Internet, the Pew researchers found. Seniors are the most likely to say they don’t go online Seniors are the most likely to say they don’t go online — 39% of people age 65 and older don’t use the Internet. In comparison, just 3% of 18- to 29-year-olds don’t use the Internet. One-third of American adults who have less than a high school education are also offline, and as a person’s education level rises, so does the likelihood that he or she uses the Internet, according to Pew. Where people live and how much they earn are also indicators of how likely they are to stay offline, the researchers found. Those living in rural areas are nearly twice as likely as city dwellers and suburbanites to say that they never use the Internet. And Americans in households earning less than $30,000 a year are about eight times more likely than the most affluent adults to say they don’t go online. Differences in Internet usage are also apparent across racial and ethnic lines. 14% of white people surveyed by Pew said they don’t use the Internet, but 18 percent of Hispanics and 20% of black people in the U.S. don’t use the Internet, the researchers found. The group least likely to go without Internet is English-speaking Asian Americans — only 5% of people in this group said they don’t go online. However, the researchers also said older adults are more likely to use the Internet than in 2000: In that year, 86% of those 65 and older said they didn’t use the Internet, but today, that figure has been cut in half. Now that the Internet has been around for several decades, it’s possible that many of today’s seniors learned how to use this technology in their younger years and are simply continuing to use the Internet as they age. And although 33% of Americans with less than a high school education still don’t go online in 2015, there were far fewer Internet users among this group in 2000, when 81% of Americans without a high school diploma said they never went online." Stephen

LESS MONEY, MO’ MUSIC & LOTS OF PROBLEMS: A LOOK AT THE MUSIC BIZ http://redef.com/original/less-money-mo-music-lots-of-problems-the-past-present-and-future-of-the-music-biz "Music may have been the first media format to be upended by digital, but more than 15 years later, it’s the only one still fixated on what was, not what can be. If the industry hopes to restore growth, both labels and artists will need to confront the changes brought about by the likes of iTunes and Spotify. Only then can a path forward be charted." By Liam Boluk The Decline of Recorded Music Sales The End of the Age of Ownership: First Albums, then Tracks Follow the link for more: Concert Revenues: An Insufficient (but Well-Distributed) Savior Why Music is Better, but Less Valuable than Ever Before How Listening Hours Will Change and What That Means for the Industry" Stephen

Scary: Harris Poll: Number of Americans Who Support Book Banning Increases http://lisnews.org/harris_poll_number_of_americans_who_support_book_banning_increases "Harris Poll: Number of Americans Who Support Book Banning Increases From The Guardian: "Are Americans Falling in Love with Censorship? "[A] Harris poll of 2,244 US adults was released in July, revealing that, in the space of four years, the percentage of Americans believing that some books should be completely banned has increased by more than half. In 2011, 18% of those surveyed wanted some books banned; in 2015, 28% agreed with the assertion. Just under a half, 48%, said that no books should be banned, compared with 56% in 2011." More in-depth breakdowns at The Guardian and Harris." Stephen

Full Text Article: "Current State of Linked Data in Digital Libraries" Via Gary Price at LJ InfoDocket http://www.infodocket.com/2015/08/14/full-text-article-current-state-of-linked-data-in-digital-libraries/ "Note from infoDOCKET Founder/Editor, Gary Price: Thank you once again to SAGE for opening their paywall to infoDOCKET so we can share the full text article linked below at no charge. The link to the article will be available for the next month. Just click and go. Registration is not required. Title Current State of Linked Data in Digital Libraries Authors Mariá Hallo National Polytechnic School, Ecuador Sergio Luján-Mora University of Alicante, Spain Alejandro Maté University of Alicante, Spain Juan Trujillo University of Alicante, Spain Source Journal of Information Science Published Online Before Print July 21, 2015 Abstract The Semantic Web encourages institutions, including libraries, to collect, link and share their data across the Web in order to ease its processing by machines to get better queries and results. Linked Data technologies enable us to connect related data on the Web using the principles outlined by Tim Berners-Lee in 2006. Digital libraries have great potential to exchange and disseminate data linked to external resources using Linked Data. In this paper, a study about the current uses of Linked Data in digital libraries, including the most important implementations around the world, is presented. The study focuses on selected vocabularies and ontologies, benefits and problems encountered in implementing Linked Data in digital libraries. In addition, it also identifies and discusses specific challenges that digital libraries face, offering suggestions for ways in which libraries can contribute to the Semantic Web. The study uses an adapted methodology for literature review, to find data available to answer research questions. It is based on the information found in the library websites recommended by W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group in 2011, and scientific publications from Google Scholar, Scopus, ACM and Springer from the last 5 years. The selected libraries for the study are the National Library of France, the Europeana Library, the Library of Congress of the USA, the British Library and the National Library of Spain. In this paper, we outline the best practices found in each experience and identify gaps and future trends. Direct to Full Text Article ||| Direct to PDF Version (11 pages; PDF)" Stephen

What makes a corporate librarian valuable? 35 Habits That Make Employees Extremely Valuable http://www.inc.com/kevin-daum/35-habits-that-make-employees-extremely-valuable.html?cid=sf01002 "Every employer wants employees who contribute to the overall success of the company. Here’s how the best bring long-term ROI. If you are an employee, strive to make each of these a habit. If you are an employer, appreciate and reward the behavior. 1. They don’t wait to be asked. Many employers are accustomed to just telling people what to do. Employees create value when they anticipate what is needed and get it done without any prompting. 2. They attack the disease, not the symptoms. So much company time goes to firefighting on a reactive basis. Employees create value when they assess the root cause of the problems and make systemic change that eliminates the problems completely. 3. They are the pressure release, not the pressure builder. Stress is natural in the workplace, and uptight people can feed off each other. Employees create value when they help people decompress so they can improve productivity. 4. They plan the work and work the plan. Haphazard thinking and action usually delivers mediocre results. Employees create value when they add effective structure and drive the team forward with efficiency. 5. They do their homework. Idea generation is useful, but not every suggestion is beneficial or appropriate. The wrong proposal can cause distraction or even derail the team. Employees create value when they research ideas before implementation so that little effort is wasted on the unachievable. 6. They look to be smarter than the boss. People are never infallible, and even leaders need to learn. Employees create value when they bring knowledge to the table that fills the boss’s blind spots. 7. They view the path five steps ahead. Many workers can barely see the tasks right in front of their face. Employees create value when they are looking out beyond step one and two. Often they will solve issues before they even come close to occurring. 8. They act with the big picture in mind. People who only work in their own isolation often cause challenges for those in other parts of the company. Employees create value when they work to comprehend how their efforts impact the whole so they can adjust accordingly. 9. They build bridges, not bombs. There are plenty of people looking to sabotage others while trying to get ahead. Employees create value when they encourage camaraderie and an environment where a rising tide lifts all boats. 10. They cross-train themselves and others. A company with specified individualists is in constant danger of losing expertise or capability. Employees create value when they increase redundancy of process and talent. 11. They create a circle of influence. A growing company needs leaders. Employees create value when they can inspire others to make things happen both internally and externally. 12. They work ahead of the curve. The future is always moving closer, and signs of what’s to come are always present. Employees create value when they are future curious and consider what’s to come in their actions and thinking. 13. They proactively and effectively communicate. Being ambiguous or leaving people hanging contributes to a frustrating work environment. Employees create value when they instigate consistent and complete communication that keeps everyone informed. 14. They know when to lead and how to follow. A leader can’t lead all the time if others are going to grow. Employees create value when they encourage others to step up and support them as the enthusiastic second in command. 15. They fight for what’s right and commit to the achievable. People who push without basis can eat time and cause consternation. Employees create value when they stand up for their beliefs and take a pragmatic view before going all in. 16. They make the office a great place to work. People who are negative bring down morale and demotivate. Employees create value when they help create a positive environment that others can’t wait to join. 17. They integrate time for learning and working on the company. There is more to growth than just the daily grind. Employees create value when theygrow themselves in ways that can help advance the company toward lofty objectives. 18. They motivate their co-workers and superiors. People need encouragement, no matter their position. Employees create value when they make everyone feel good about what they do and why they do it. 19. They instigate admiration for the company. One bad representative of the company reflects on the whole crew. Employees create value when they provide a positive image that reflects well on everyone else. 20. They make others look amazing. A showoff can alienate the whole team, creating frustration and rancor. Employees create value when they share credit with others on the team, elevating everyone’s happiness and confidence. 21. They create pleasant surprises everyday. Any work environment can become dull and unimaginative. Employees create value when they stimulate energy and creativity in the workplace. 22. They are problem solvers, not whiners. Constant complaining runs rampant in the business world. Employees create value when they brush aside the complaints and help people focus on the resolution. 23. They clean up messes. Even the most productive people can sometimes move so fast the details are left undone. Employees create value when they make sure the company is safe, compliant, and protected from carelessness. 24. They maintain a happy home, at home. Home life can easily intrude on the workplace, making others uncomfortable and creating distraction. Employees create value when they establish boundaries and set an example of work-life balance so others can learn from their best practices. 25. They turn troublemakers into rainmakers. There will always be problem people in business. Employees create value when they can turn cynics into advocates and fear mongers into champions. 26. They resolve unhealthy conflict. The workplace is stressful, and often people channel that stress onto others. Employees create value when they can diffuse tense situations and help people return to civility. 27. They engage in healthy conflict. A company without strong debate is bound to head over a cliff or be passed by eventually. Employees create value when they bring important issues to the table, even when against the popular view. 28. They make most things seem easy, especially when they are not. Work today is more involved then ever before. Employees create value when they manage tasks seamlessly, inspiring others to raise their performance as well. 29. They don’t just do, they teach. Companies need people who can help others grow. Employees create value when they improve the work force and delegate, giving others the opportunity to gain proficiency and confidence. 30. They manage obstacles as if they were opportunities. Bumps in the road are bound to happen. Employees create value when they take on those issues with positivity and excitement. 31. They expand everyone’s network of influence. A company doesn’t grow by accident, and the CEO can’t be the only one to get the good word out. Employees create value when they promote the company as evangelists, generating opportunities at every turn. 32. They influence often, and manipulate when necessary. Sitting in a corner and grinding out tasks is the minimum work for pay. Employees create value when they encourage people to reach their potential and help them overcome their internal demons. 33. They leave a trail of manageable process behind. Often companies move so fast they are constantly reinventing the wheel. Employees create value when they document what works and encourage replication. 34. They attract other valuable employees. Valuable employees are hard to find, but they tend to know each other. Employees create value when they act as a beacon for others looking to be exemplary. 35. They embody the company’s core values. A company misaligned is a company adrift and unlikely to succeed long term. Employees create value when they demonstrate to others the behavior and attitudes that will lead everyone to success." Stephen

Social Media as Library Advocacy http://colleengraves.org/2015/08/15/social-media-as-library-advocacy/   Stephen

Research Article: "Don’t Make Me Type: A Study of Students’ Perceptions of Library Catalogues on Tablet Computers" Via Gary Price at LJ InfoDocket "The following full text article appears in Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research. Title Don’t Make Me Type: A Study of Students’ Perceptions of Library Catalogues on Tablet Computers Author Erik Gordon Christiansen University of Alberta Source Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research Vol. 10, No. 1 Abstract The objective of this mixed methods pilot study was to ascertain university students’ perceptions of online library catalogues using tablet computers, to determine how the participants used tablets and whether or not the NEOS consortium catalogue (NEOS) played an important role in the participants’ academic research. The researcher recruited four students from the University of Alberta who were each asked to use NEOS to complete a series of simple timed usability tasks on a tablet computer of their choosing. The participants also answered a variety of semi-structured interview questions regarding their tablet usage, internet browsing habits, device preferences, general impressions of NEOS, and whether they were receptive to the idea of a mobile NEOS application. Overall, the students found the functionality and design of NEOS to be adequate. Typing, authentication, and scrolling through lists presented consistent usability problems while on a tablet. Only one participant was receptive to the idea of a NEOS application, while the other three participants said tablets were not conducive to conducting academic research and that they preferred using a web interface on a laptop or desktop computer instead. Direct to Full Text Article (17 pages; PDF)" Stephen

Reach Out and Read has a Prescription for Success Prescription for Success toolkit graphic. Boy reading a book between a library shelf. Reach Out and Read is pleased to announce the launch of our Prescription for Success Toolkit, designed to support collaborations between libraries, museums, and Reach Out and Read program sites, natural partners that have a collective impact on the lives of young children. - See more at: http://blog.imls.gov/?p=5942#sthash.5kIi6u0l.dpuf Stephen

Jeff sits down with Jason Valade from Techsmith Education to discuss how easy it is for teachers to be Screencasting in the Classroom for their students. In this video, Jason shows several great reasons for creating screencasts for the classroom. Learn how educators across the country are using video to transform teaching with flipping, project-based learning, and to get more choices in how they teach. Join former educator Jason Valade as he provides inspirational ways to teach more effectively and enrich experiences in and out of the classroom, including an introduction to popular video creation tool Camtasia. About Techsmith Education Based in Okemos, Michigan, TechSmith provides over 180 countries around the world with screen capture and recording software for individual and professional use. We’ve made it our goal to give you tools that work just like you do, across multiple devices and locations. Our desktop products, such as Snagit, Camtasia, TechSmith Relay, and Morae, make it easy to create compelling, polished content you can share with anyone. Paired along with our mobile apps and integrations we’re helping people collaborate and share across different devices and make sure you can be productive wherever you are. By constantly listening to customers and innovating new ways to solve technology challenges, TechSmith has moved to the front of the visual communication field. Now more than 200 employees strong, TechSmith develops a variety of applications that narrow communication gaps through images, video, online hosting, and remote usability testing. TechSmith has always helped you make great images and videos to communicate your ideas. Now we’re making a new commitment: to help you collaborate and share across your different devices and make sure you can be productive wherever you are. Links of interest www.Techsmith.com @TechsmithEDU Jason Valade, Customer Success Manager, TechSmith In Jason’s six years as an educator, he continuously tried out new digital tools in his classroom. Now Jason brings his expertise to TechSmith, showing instructors how to use technology to transform the way they teach, and the way students learn.   Thank You For Your Podcast Reviews Are you enjoying Educational Podcasting Today or other shows on the TeacherCast Network, please share your thoughts with the world by commenting on iTunes today.  I enjoy reading and sharing your comments on the podcast each week. Ask Me Your Podcasting or WordPress Question Are you interested in starting your own podcast? Do you need help creating an awesome WordPress website?  I am available for 1:1 consulting.  Please visit my homepage and I will help you launch your personal brand today! Contact Me Host: Jeff Bradbury @TeacherCast Email: info@teachercast.net Voice Mail: http://www.TeacherCast.net/voicemail YouTube: http://www.TeacherCast.net/YouTube iTunes: http://www.TeacherCast.net/iTunes Check Out More TeacherCast Programming TeacherCast Podcast (http://www.teachercast.net/tcp) TeacherCast App Spotlight (http://www.teachercast.net/appspotlight) Educational Podcasting Today (http://www.educationalpodcasting.today) The TechEducator Podcast (http://www.techeducatorpodcast.com) View LIVE Professional Development from TeacherCast Watch LIVE: http://www.TeacherCast.tv | Broadcasting Schedule (http://www.teachercast.net/showcal) TeacherCast Broadcasting Community: http://www.TeacherCast.net/broadcastingcommunity Need a Presenter? Jeff Bradbury (@TeacherCast) is available as a Keynote Speaker, Presenter, or to Broadcast your conference LIVE!

In week three of the Tinkering Fundamentals online course we made Scribble Bots! They are machines with drawing tools for legs and they can create fascinating works of art! We also explored how learning is possible through tinkering and play. Check out what I created!We first watched a few videos on student interaction and how to design an activity for scribble bots. Here are a few of my takeaways:An activity like Scribble Bots can really allow students' creativity to shine. It also allows for variability  in design and your students can end up with a wide range of bots!A simple and effective way to limit students to a designated workspace is to use hula-hoops.As a facilitator of the learning, we should draw attention to the small changes being made. Small changes can often lead to bigger impacts on the design.This type of activity requires dexterity which can lead some students to become easily frustrated, but we must try to let those frustrations play out. Frustration can sometimes lead to bigger breakthroughs!"The process of becoming stuck and then unstuck is the heart of tinkering." (from "It Looks Like Fun, But Are They Learning?")Activity Sharing: Scribble BotsFor week three we created Scribble Machines! This activity is all about creativity & iteration. I was given the basic necessities: markers, a motor, a battery, and a glue stick (for use as a counter weight). The rest of the materials were up to me and the goal was to design and build a Scribble Machine out of a variety of materials and in different ways.I started with an empty soda can (cause I like to drink soda). After attaching the motor and battery to the top of the can and testing it, I noticed that it rattled a lot. The motor would skip off the top of the can as it was running, causing all the noise. To dampen the noise I came up with the brilliant idea of placing a piece of paper towel underneath.Paper towel to reduce vibration.This greatly reduced the shaking of the motor and the noise (I was working on this late at night and didn’t want to wake my baby!). I gave the machine three marker legs and put it to the test. It worked b-e-a-utifully and created a circular design on the paper! The markers would hop and skip as the machine moved, creating dotted lines along the way. I wonder if the circular design was because of the shape of the container?Because we were encouraged to try different containers and designs, I also tried out this activity with an empty baby formula container (I’ve got plenty of these laying around!). After attaching the motor and battery to the top, I noticed the same issue with the rattling, so I stuck the paper towel underneath the motor again. Because of the rectangular shape of the container, I also decided to give it four marker legs this time instead of three. This scribble machine stayed on a rather straight path so I had to nudge it around a few times on the paper to create the design below. What I found intriguing about this machine is that every time I tested it, the markers would do something different. You’ll notice in the picture that the markers would sometimes create more solid lines, and other times would create dotted lines.Reflection: which learning dimensions and indicators from the framework are easy to see, and which are harder to pinpoint or recognize?For this weeks reflection, we had to refer to The Tinkering Studio's Learning Dimensions Framework.Easiest to See: Offering explanation for a strategy, tool, or outcome I believe the easiest indicator on the framework to spot is the student’s ability to offer explanation. Explanations of a strategy, or a tool, or an outcome can be achieved through conversation, group discussion,reflection, and journaling.Most difficult to See: Displaying motivation or investment through affect or behavior I think the most difficult indicator to detect might be a student’s ability to display motivation or investment. This can be described as show a variety of emotions. But if you’ve worked with children, then you might understand how it can be difficult to read their emotions sometimes. Motivation might often be displayed through emotion, but not always. A student can be invested in their project, but they don’t necessarily have to display it through joy and excitement. A teacher must sometimes employ other methods for determining a student’s motivation, if this is the case.We also had to find two other answers on the forum and respond to them as well.Reflection by John FredericksI feel for our fixed mindset students that persisting towards their goal in the face of setbacks can be a problem.  Disagreeing with strategies of others in a constructive way can be difficult for my high school students.  Connecting to prior knowledge is somewhat difficult for my high school students.The positive aspects of this program totally outweigh the above paragraph.  My high school students love hands on projects and I feel even if they couldn't figure something out with this project they would try a different method.  When it comes to roadblocks in academic subjects they are not willing to take as many risks.My response: I'll be teaching a class of middle and high school students for the first time this school year (we start in about 2 weeks), and lucky enough, the course is called "Make It 101"! I'm excited, but also nervous, to be working with older students. And I fear the exact problems you mention: fixed mindset, constructive disagreement, connecting prior knowledge. But I hope my students have chosen this elective course because they have an interest in making and tinkering and come with an open mind and ideas of their own, willing to share.Reflection by Diana RendinaI think that engagement is probably the learning dimension that is easiest to see.  For me, it is obvious when a student is deeply engaged in what they're working on.  Development of understanding is probably the hardest one for me to recognize.  Sometimes I'll see students working in our makerspace and it will look like they're fooling around and not really trying to be creative.  But then I'll come back later and they'll be working on an amazing project - they just needed that goofing off time to figure out their ideas.My Response: As teachers, we often confuse the "organized chaos" and the playful attitudes as distractions and being off task. But, we need to realize that this is exactly what our students need. Some students thrive on the chaotic (but organized) nature of the environment: the noise, the bustling, and all the activity. Maybe this is why our students like to visit the coffee shop to study sometimes. They also need the opportunity to be playful and to play. They need time to connect with their classmates, to have a friendly conversation about the weekend. This "goofing off" allows them to build stronger connections and relationships with their peers so they can get to the real work!Share with me: What's your take on the Learning Dimensions Framework? Do you see this as a valuable tool in your MakerEd classroom?

Well folks, the summer sun is setting quickly and the school year is rapidly approaching. If you’re like me, you most likely did not accomplish everything you set out to do during the summer…I never seem to finish my list! If updating your classroom decorations with posters/printables customized for your students is on your list, […] The post Create Classroom Decorations with Canva appeared first on Teaching with Technology.

There were plenty of intriguing juxtapositions for teacher-trainer-learners to observe and absorb last week while attending the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC)  98th Annual Conference here in San Francisco—not the least of which was differing attitudes expressed toward serving audiences onsite and online. It’s a familiar and sometimes far-from-necessary either-or dilemma that exists in many of our contemporary venues—e.g., printed vs. online publication, onsite vs. online learning, onsite vs. online communities and collaboration—and often ignores the idea that looking for ways to blend those two proffered choices into something much more far-reaching and magnificent is sometimes (but not always) possible. The context for the first of the two stimulating panel discussions was the topic "Who Will Serve the Civic Communication Needs of Cities?: Legacy Media, New Media and Community Discourse in Urban Life," while the second, "The Experiment: Stopping All Print and Moving a College Newsroom Over to Medium and Twitter," offered the compelling story of how a journalism instructor and her students transformed an unread print publication into an online multi-platform publication reaching a global audience. Given the difference in focus—Civic Communication focused on the roles journalism plays in fostering community at a local level, particularly in urban metropolitan areas, while The Experiment was a success story drawing upon lessons learned by staff of the community college newspaper at Mt. San Antonio College in Southern California—there was plenty to be considered for those of us interested in contemporary journalism as well as for those of us committed to providing first-rate training-teaching-learning opportunities to those we serve. Civic Communication was a spirited conversation involving moderator Gary Gumpert (Urban Communication Foundation) and five other panelists (Chris Barr, Knight Foundation; H. Iris Chyi, University of Texas at Austin; Sharon Dunwoody, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Peter Gade, Gaylord College; and Jan Schaffer, American University), so there was far from complete agreement. There was, however, a strong foundation laid during the initial parts of the conversation suggesting that media outlets are making a huge mistake if they ignore the power print publications play in fostering community—particularly at that mid-level metropolitan newspaper level of operation. Among the concerns mentioned by panelists were the short duration of visits to newspaper websites (4.4 minutes); research showing that information read online doesn’t stick with us the same way information read in printed publications does; and an overall sense that online content is "inferior" to printed content—what Chyi referred to as the equivalent of Ramen Noodles as opposed to more nutritious products. Others on the panel suggested that the whole concept of "mass media" needs to be rethought as our online resources provide access to powerful niches well worth serving within markets/communities. Media today, one suggested, are networked, social, connective, and niche; the quality of the audience is every bit as important as the idea of reaching a mass audience—all of which suggests that journalists need a new "knowledge base" that allows them to engage with members of the communities they serve and to foster citizen participation within those communities. It’s a theme with parallels in our training-teaching-learning environments: we continue to seek ways to engage learners and foster learner-centric, learner-driven engagement that produces positive results within local, regional, national, and global communities through our blended onsite-online interactions. Moving to the conversation within the Mt. San Antonio College session, we heard instructor Toni Albertson and student journalists Albert Serna, Talin Hakopyan, and Jennifer Sandy describe how they responded to their target audience’s preference for online rather than printed publications by taking the campus paper online across a variety of platforms—and how that affected their approach to identifying and covering newsworthy events. Creating "sac.media: College news without the ink," the student journalists took on a newly-found enthusiasm for what they did, covering a variety of issues, including how journalism itself is taught and fostered. They also carried their publication across platforms including Medium, Twitter (through @SAConScene), and YouTube so they could give each story the attention and platform they felt it deserved. They also were—and remain—innovative in reaching out to their target audience: when promoting stories they believe are significant, each staff member identifies 12 potential readers who might be interested in that story, then uses Twitter to reach out to those readers—a nice echo of the Civic Communication panel discussion about the need for journalists to more directly engage with members of their communities. The result, according to Nieman Lab writer Dan Reimold, is "one of the most daring college media outlets in the United States." And if any of us manages to learn from and be inspired by what those Mt. San Antonio college colleagues are doing, perhaps our own writing-training-teaching-learning efforts will be the better for our having encountered them.

When someone talks about actually having several thousand people come to class, I’m all ears—as I was again last weekend while serving on a panel discussion on the closing day of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC)  98th Annual Conference here in San Francisco. The conversation, built around the question of how massive open online courses (MOOCs) are changing universities, gave moderator Amanda Sturgill (Elon University School of Communications) and the four of us serving as panelists a wonderful opportunity to explore, with session attendees, some of the pleasures and challenges of designing and facilitating these still-evolving learning opportunities. Each of the four of us—my colleagues on the panel included David Carlson (University of Florida College School of Journalism and Communications), Daniel Heimpel (University of California, Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy), and Bozena Mierzejewska (Fordham University Gabelli School of Business)—has had hands-on experience with designing and facilitating MOOCs. Each of us, with little discussion, agreed that we see MOOCs augmenting rather than posing a threat to higher education. We acknowledged that preparing for a MOOC is a time-consuming, intense experience requiring plenty of collaboration and coordination of efforts. And we seemed to be in agreement that a MOOC can be means to an end: a MOOC on journalism for social change, for example, engages learners as journalists whose work has the possibility of being published, and a MOOC on educational technology and media engages trainer-teacher-learners in the act of learning about ed-tech by exploring and using ed-tech while ultimately (and unexpectedly) leading to a sustainable community of learning that continues to evolve long after the formal coursework ends. But perhaps the most meaningful observations were those that took us to the heart of why we are engaged in designing, delivering, and promoting MOOCs: we became teacher-trainer-learners because we want to help people, and MOOCs are a great way to achieve that goal if learners have access to the content and if they are supported in learning how to learn in our online environments. Furthermore, MOOCs provide additional ways to meet the ever-growing lifelong-learning needs so many of us encounter. As each of us discussed projects in which we have been involved, we and our audience members gained a deeper appreciation for the variety of explorations currently underway. Heimpel, for example, brought a couple of his own somewhat overlapping worlds together to the benefit of learners in his solutions-based journalism course, Journalism for Social Change, earlier this year. Combining the platform he has through UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy with his role as publisher at The Chronicle of Social Change, he was able to nurture course participants in their explorations of a specific social issue (child abuse) while providing publication opportunities for those whose work reached professional levels. Mierzejewska, in her position at Fordham, had an entirely different opportunity: the chance to work with colleagues at four other academic institutions (Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Simon Fraser University, and Stanford University) in an Open Knowledge: Changing the Course of Global Learning MOOC while creating something that another of my colleagues (Jeff Merrell, at Northwestern University) has been exploring—a MOOC that has its expected online presence along with onsite interactions among some of the learners. Her preliminary report online is a fabulous case study of what this type of blended learning produces; it includes her up-front observation that being involved in the MOOC "was actually very inspiring and eye-opening to what students can learn online only and how you can enrich those experiences with classes that are flipped." Carlson was our resident rock star with his description of what went into the making and delivery of his Music’s Big Bang: The Genesis of Rock ‘n’ Roll MOOC that attracted 30,000 registrations and brought several thousand of those potential learners into his virtual classroom. He mentioned challenges that many of us face—producing engaging videos, having to coordinate his efforts with a variety of colleagues to bring a massive undertaking of that nature to fruition, and the attention to detail required while making videos (e.g., if videos shot on different days were later edited together, obvious discontinuities such as the fact that he was wearing different outfits or had hair that changed in length from shot to shot became obvious). But while all of us in that room last weekend might have laughed together over the small challenges of clothing changes and changing hair lengths, few of us could have walked away thinking MOOCs were any less than an important and still growing part of our learning landscape—one with tremendous potential to augment our short- and long-term learning opportunities for willing and able to explore them.

The first website I put up there for English learners was ugly. The colors didn’t work. The icons were generic. And the copy didn’t excite. But it worked. And over time, my website evolved into what it is now. I’ve made lots of small and big changes along the way. It will never be ... The post Creating Your First Website: The Tools to Use and What to Include appeared first on Teaching ESL Online.

Interested in teaching online? Creating an online training course and offering it for sale is a great way to bring your expertise to life and make money from it. The most challenging part of the course development phase can often be getting started. You may have dozens of course ideas dancing in your mind before you even begin writing, making you unsure about where to begin, what to share, and how. Follow this 3-step approach to convert your ideas and expertise into marketable courses. Step 1: Decide on a topic The first step of writing an online course is selecting the most appropriate topic. A precise course topic helps you determine a particular section of a subject to cover in your course. For example, a web development expert doesn’t have to write a course that covers every aspect of web development, which can range from web page design to communication with a backend database. Pick a focused, well-defined topic for a course. You can always create additional courses to expand your course offerings. Many people find it easier to create and manage short courses. Step 2: Answer these questions After you’ve finalized the course topic, it’s time to prepare a draft of your course. Before you start researching and gathering up the training material, answer these questions: What are you trying to achieve through this course? Determine the depth of knowledge you are planning to deliver to online learners. Is your course providing an overview or high-level understanding of the subject matter, or do you want to provide in-depth knowledge? What format? Simple PDF training or a full-fledged online course or perhaps a webinar? The breadth of your content and the teaching styles you use rely heavily on the course format. Who will be taking this course? Who’s your audience? Are they students, experienced professionals, skilled workers, or people trying to start a new career? What is your students’ knowledge level? Beginner, intermediate, advanced What will be the most difficult concept? How can you make it easier to understand? Can you add real-life experiences and scenarios to make the training relevant to the real world? How can you measure learners’ understanding? What sort of questions should you ask? What are learners expected to do at the end of the training? For example, identify the architecture of computing, discuss different types of cloud applications, etc. These questions may be daunting at first, but they provide a solid foundation on which to build an online course. You’ll be ready to craft a framework for your course, organize course topics and content in a logical order, identify the additional material needed, and select the best learning experience to meet the desired learning outcomes. Brainstorm different concepts as you seek answers for these questions and jot them all down. Then select the most relevant thoughts and organize them into levels of difficulty. This process will also help create a complete course outline. Step 3: Design the course. After the brainstorming session, it’s time to get started laying out the course. This phase is twofold. If you already have the course content written, you can start by writing a short course description, dividing your content into lessons and/or modules, and developing the learning objectives to go along with each section. During this phase, you need to decide which content would go in the course’s slides and the elements that can go well with the content. For example, images, audio, and video can help reinforce and potentially take the place of text. Interactive elements such as activity and game templates generate interest. Assessments give students feedback on how they are doing and can help correct misconceptions. Also consider what content should be presented as support material or job aids. If you are building a course from scratch, you need to: Decide the topics that will be included in your course. Gather the content and resources. Organize the course content in a logical order. Write short introductions and summaries for each module. Determine the learning objectives of your entire course. Learning objectives serve as a foundation for writing content and assessments. Write comprehensive assessments to evaluate learners’ knowledge. The lesson learning objectives lead to lesson quizzes, and a comprehensive final exam will evaluate the learning outcomes of the course. For modules and lessons, an activity, game, or short quiz can be sufficient. However, for most courses, we recommend that you have a proper final exam at the end to test the learners’ knowledge of the entire course (summative assessment). Parting Thoughts Teaching online is not merely about writing content and watching the money roll in. It is about sincerity and dedication to your profession. The right blend of knowledge and technology results in a better future for you and your students. Ready to teach online? Get started today!

Lord Byron said it well …  Filed under: Curious David Tagged: Dogs

In today’s poll we wanted to ask our blog readers if they use email marketing to promote their online courses. In a recent blog posts we published a case study that showed that for one particular client on our roster that their average revenue per newsletter subscriber was over 300% more valuable than a "regular" visitor on their site (i.e. a visitor referred through organic search, advertisements, social networks etc).   The case study showed that the revenue per visitor metric jumped from $1.20 (regular visitor) to $4.99 (newsletter subscriber). We see results like this for many of our clients. We have yet to see a case where email marketing has had a negative impact on sales or lowers conversion rates.   That being said, we also know that many people selling courses online are so overwhelmed with many other facets of their eCourse company that they either forget to implement an email marketing campaign, or they just haven’t had the time to do it yet.   So today we wanted to ask you a simple yes or no question. If you’re selling courses online are you currently using an email marketing campaign to help you sell your courses? Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Below you’ll find the beginnings of a directory where we’ll be adding peer reviewed "best of" lists of many of the most popular online courses being offered today. Best Online Music Production Courses

If you’re selling courses online your week may look something like this: You’re in the office Monday morning focusing on refining search terms for your Google AdWords campaign. Tuesday you’re publishing an interview that you conducted last week for your blog. Wednesday you’re recording and publishing a podcast for your website. Wednesday night you login to Facebook and let the world know about your new podcast. Wanting a little more exposure for all of your hard work you decide to pay Facebook to "boost your post". Thursday you do a guest post on related blog. Friday you do a radio interview on a local radio station about the success of your online course. What a week!   Over the weekend you get some time to relax and reflect. It was a busy week but you’re happy with your week’s performance because your current students are happy and your hard work has led to many new course enrollments last week.   So with a little time to reflect, you decide to login to your Google Analytics account to see what you can find. You look at the data. You see a boost in traffic on Wednesday. But you forget what you did that day that could have caused the jump in traffic. Did you do the interview or blog post that day? Did your online course newsletter go out that day? You can’t remember. Or maybe the boost was caused by something else all together?   USING ANNOTATIONS TO KEEP TRACK OF THE PERFORMANCE OF INDIVIDUAL TASKS   One way to avoid the confusion mentioned above, and find a clear link between cause and effect, is to use Google Analytics "annotations" tool. This tool allows you to create short notes to yourself to help you remember what your activities were for that day and keep track of what impact that particular activity had on your site’s traffic and conversions. For example let’s look at the following graph:     You’ll notice around February 11th there was a big jump in traffic. What caused that event? Was it something linked to your marketing efforts for that day, or a just a random increase in activity? Did you start ranking higher for some of your search terms? Did a print media publication mention your online course in a story they were working on about some of the best online courses they’ve discovered?   Using a few tools within your Google Analytics dashboard will help you find the correlation between traffic increases or increases in online course sales, with the activity or event that caused the increase.   HOW CAN I TRACK THE CAUSE AND EFFECT OF MY E-COURSE MARKETING EFFORTS?   To begin, you should be tracking your marketing behavior using "annotations". Start by clicking on the date you want to add an annotation to. Next click on the small gray arrow in the bottom-middle of the graph. At that point you can click on "create new annotation". Now you can type a short annotation (a fancy way of saying "note") about your activities for that day. In this case we finalized an interview that was to be published on a related blog.     After you’ve clicked on "save" you can see a list of all of your annotations and a small "annotations box" under the date you’ve added the annotation under. It will look something like this:     Now you can even take this a step further by looking at your "intelligence events" by clicking on the "daily events" sub-menu item. You’ll then be able to see if any of your spikes in traffic line up to any of your custom or default intelligence events for that period.   In this case we can see that this particular annotation lines up perfectly with an intelligence event. If we click on the orange bar below our chart we’ll see that we had a big jump of 182% increase in traffic from our "referral" source. If we were interested in digging deeper we could then click on "go to report" and figure out which specific referral source sent us the bulk of the new traffic.     In a way annotations allow you to sort of "humanize" your graph and analytics data. It’s easy to look at the above graph and just see a series of ups and downs. However, annotations give you deeper insight into which actions are leading to which outcomes. Which of your marketing "causes" are leading to the most valuable marketing "effects" (course enrollments, newsletter sign ups, brand awareness etc)? We’ll end with a question. If you’re selling online courses are you using the analytics "annotations" tool? If so, how useful have you found this tool as an eCourse seller?  

A Facebook visitor, a friend of a friend, and a Twitter follower walk into a bar…. Okay, that’s the beginnings of a joke with no good punchline. So I’ll stop there. But imagine those three people didn’t walk into a bar, but visited your online course website. Will they all interact with your website the same way? Will one person be more likely to buy your online course than the other? Is one person "just looking" maybe wanting to sample some of the educational content contained within your blog or newsletter?   Understanding how each of these potential students interact with your website is important because by understanding their behavior you can further refine your marketing efforts. For example, if the visitors referred to you by Facebook are "just looking" you can optimize their browsing experience and introduce soft sells to get them started in the eCourse buying cycle. Or, if the visitors sent to you by referral sites are quick to buy your eCourse, you can optimize the buying process for them and spend more of your time looking for traffic from those sources.   E-COURSE VENDORS: ALL TRAFFIC SOURCES ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL   By gathering this information you can also make informed decisions about where to spend more of your advertising budget and / or time. For example, you might find that you generate the most online course enrollment income from the members who sign up for your eCourse newsletter. But where do the people who sign up for your newsletter come from? Do they come from paid search? Organic search? Referral traffic? Social sites like Facebook or Twitter?   Without this information it’s impossible to evaluate your current marketing efforts and it’s impossible to know exactly how to best spend your precious time and advertising money.   AN ONLINE COURSE CASE STUDY   We deal with many types of clients in a broad range of categories. Most clients who sign up with us to sell their courses online are new course vendors. Most of these educational entrepreneurs don’t even have a website to sell their eCourse from yet. These are our "start-up" clients.   However, we also work with clients who have had online courses up and running for a while, but want to work with us because they want to take their online course company to the next level. These clients are our "turnaround" clients.   Start-up courses and turnaround courses require totally different approaches from our end. A start-up course offers the advantage of being able to build everything properly the first time around. However, it takes them time to get our clients off the ground and selling.   A turnound course on the other hand, offers the benefit of a fully developed course and a built-in traffic base for us to test on, but "turnaround" eCourse sites always come with many broken parts and missed opportunities for course sales and traffic optimization. So it requires a lot more work on our end to fix these broken parts. The particular case study we’re about to look at below is from one of our "turnaround" course clients.   Look below, but ONLY look under the "acquisition" column. You’ll notice that the majority of their online course website traffic came from organic search. When this client first signed up with us they told us that this was the metric they valued most. They valued it because they knew it was a source of a lot of traffic.   However, in the world of selling courses online, quality of traffic needs to be given equal weight as quantity of traffic. Looking at the chart below we can see that 26,314 visits were a results of organic search. Again, just look under the "acquisition" column.   QUALITY ONLINE COURSE LEADS   For the purpose of keeping this blog post focused, let’s skip the "behavior" column. It’s an interesting metric to analyze because it allows you to identify problems and then start down the path to fix those problems. However, this particular metric deserves a topic on it’s own, so for now let’s keep focused on the value of a visitor.   Let’s look to the far right column called "conversions". Notice the discrepancy between the conversion rate of different sources of traffic. In this case "other" (which includes sources of traffic from things like your site’s RSS feed) scored the lowest conversion rate of .86% and "referral" has the highest CR of 3.61%. Traffic from social sites also had a really high CR of 3.18%.   So should this client go out and spend all of their time and energy on these high CR traffic sources? Maybe… but maybe not. We need to dig deeper. Get your shovels out.   DEFINING GOALS FOR YOUR E-COURSE   The numbers above simply don’t tell us enough. They are too general. We need to know exactly what the conversion rate is measuring. In this case we’re measuring two important metrics. We’re analyzing eCourse sales and newsletter signups. So where it says "all goals" it’s currently measuring the combined CR for those two goals.   However, using the drop down link you can change "all goals" to measure a specific goal within your account. So let’s measure our client’s online course sales first. The results are below.     Organic Search: 23 course enrollments (71.88% of all eCourse sales) for a total of $9200 in enrollment income. Direct: 6 course enrollments (18.75% of all eCourse sales) for $2400 in enrollment income. Referral: 3 course enrollments (9.38% of all eCourse sales) for $1200 in enrollment income. Social: 0 course enrollments (0% of all eCourse sales) for $0 in enrollment income.   As you can see, these numbers say something totally different then what we might have observed after looking at the first chart. Before the numbers might have led us to believe we should spend all of our money on referral and social traffic because they convert the highest. Now our numbers are saying those are not as impressive as we might have thought because it was including "newsletter signups" in the conversion metric.   The "social" metric is a particularly interesting metric since only a few minutes ago it was the most exciting metric jumping off the page at us. However, now it’s showing it led to no online course enrollments. Not even one! So does that mean that social traffic is worthless? Should we delete our business Facebook account and stop wasting time on Twitter? No. You’ll be losing out big time if you do. But we need to dig deeper before you understand why.   But first, let’s look at our second goal, which is newsletter opt-ins.     Organic Search: 210 newsletter signups  (38.04% of all newsletter signups) Direct: 151 newsletter signups (27.36% of all newsletter signups) Referral: 108 newsletter signups (19.57% of all newsletter signup) Social: 81 newsletter signups (14.67% of all newsletter signups)   Now this is where things start to get really interesting. First of all, we need to ask ourselves: Can we assign a value to this goal? What is the value of a newsletter subscriber? Do they ever buy online courses? Or do they just visit to get free information? Well luckily for you we’ve tested this metric for this online course vendor and we’ve found that the value of a newsletter subscriber is roughly $4.99. You can see the case study where we measured the value of a newsletter subscriber here.   Based on this previous case study we know that a newsletter subscriber is roughly 300% more valuable than a regular site visitor. Signing up for the newsletter was just the first step in the buying cycle. They want to take the online course for a test drive before they commit to enrolling in the paid version of the course. So now all of the sudden social and referral traffic re-gain a bit of importance. If we give each of these signups the value of $4.99 it equals  $943.11 in value for a 30 day period. That’s not too bad. Luckily you didn’t cancel your Facebook account!   ATTRIBUTION MODELS FOR ONLINE COURSE VENDORS   This is where things start to get slightly more complex. To base a conversion on one traffic source alone is to oversimplify the process. For example, by default some analytics programs base a conversion off of the visitor’s last site interaction before the purchase. For instance, maybe a visitor has your site bookmarked. Let’s say they go to their bookmarks and they visit your site, and on this day they decide to enroll in your online course. Well in this case, this was the last interaction with your site so "direct" will be given the credit for the sale.   But this doesn’t take into account all of the "assists" that other sources may have had in the buying cycle. For example, how did they find out about your site in the first place? Let’s say a friend of theirs was following you on Facebook and they liked one of your posts. In this case, maybe your new student saw their friends "likes" and decided to like your Facebook page as well. Maybe a week later they visited your blog and read through a few posts. They loved your content, but they still were not 100% ready to sign up. So they bookmarked your site which allowed them to easily come back at a later time. When they did come back, they signed up for your newsletter because they wanted to sample some of your course content. They loved what they received in their inbox and they were almost ready to enroll, but first they wanted to look for third party reviews of your program. So they jumped online and searched online for reviews of your program. Your online course had great student feedback so they pulled up their bookmarks, visited your site and enrolled.   Analytics programs using a "last click attribution model" would give this last interaction (in this case the direct visit from a bookmark) 100% credit for the "goal". However, the goal would have never been possible if they didn’t see their friends posts on Facebook first. Essentially, using the last click attribution model undervalues the importance of first "touch points". In this case, social media gets 0% credit for the "goal". But surely the "assists" should could for something? Right?   Some marketers opt to give the first "touch point" rather than the last "touch point" 100% of the credit. So in the case above Facebook would get the "goal" for being the first source to let the buying customer know about your online course. However, this is problematic as well because it ignores the steps in between. Another blog put it perfectly when the author wrote "First click attribution is akin to giving my first girlfriend 100% of the credit for me marrying my wife."   We’ll write a post soon on different attribution models, but it’s important to know that there are options that exist (time decay, position based and custom attribution models) which take into consideration "assists" of other "touch points" in the buying cycle. For example, in your Google Analyitics account you can click on "Conversions" — "Multi-Channel Funnels" and then "Top Conversion Paths" to see a graph which shows the order that visitors found you before they made the purchase.     When you get this far, you need to analyze this data on a case by case basis. You really need to know what your Return on Investment (ROI) is for each eCourse marketing activity you’re engaging in.   The main takeaway for Course sellers is to use your shovels to dig deep into your data. The worst thing you could do is to glance over your analytics data and make decisions that would have you scrap activities that aren’t "scoring goals". On the surface that may seem like the right decision, but if you take the time to dig deeper you might see that those activities are great team players and lead to many assists.     We hope you found this case study valuable.      

If you’re selling courses online you’re likely familiar with the marketing process of getting potential students to:   1. Know you 2. Like you 3. Trust you   And then… and only then will they:   4. Buy an online course from you   You’ll likely engage and invest in activities like search engine optimization, ad buying and speaking engagements to help drive awareness to your eCourse. However, having a potential student’s attention isn’t enough. They need to like and trust you before they ever consider paying for one of your courses.   HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE A POTENTIAL STUDENT TO ENROLL IN AN ONLINE COURSE?   The answer to this question varies a great deal on a case to case basis. Course price, trust levels, how long you’ve been established and your current marketing and advertising activities can all have a big impact on how long it takes a potential student to enroll in your eCourse after they have been made aware that your program exists.   A CASE STUDY   In a recent blog post we analyzed how long it look one of our client’s email newsletter subscribers to sign up for their online training program. In this case study we found that it took students 1 - 39 days to enroll in their online course after signing up for their newsletter. The average time span being 19 days. The newsletter in this case was used to build trust with their potential students. Free information, sample classes and other great tools and resources were sent through email so the potential students could become familiar with the quality of content they could expect from this particular course vendor.   But we can take this data a step further.   USING THE TIME LAG TOOL IN GOOGLE ANALYTICS   The metric above was particular to newsletter subscribers. However, what we want to know is how long it takes a regular visitor (not just newsletter subscribers) to sign up for our client’s online course. After logging into Google Analytics and creating our client’s goals, we were then able to monitor, with more clarity, what the eCourse buying cycle looked like for this particular client. The results surprised them to say the least.   46% OF STUDENT’S PURCHASED WITHIN 24 HOURS!   Before running this test our client assumed that virtually all of their students were intimately familiar with their website, their blog posts and their social media activity before signing up. The client assumed that the trust building process took a long time. They didn’t know exactly how long but when we asked them to guess they said "probably around 30 days". However, after setting up their goals and analyzing their sales data for 30 days, we were able to login to Google Analytics and visited the "time lag" page (Home — > Conversions -> Multi-Channel Conversions -> Time Lag).   The time lag page showed us the following distribution of goals over time. This particular client made $12,800 this month with 46.88% of students paying for their online course within 24 hours of finding out about it! This is a dramatically different buying cycle than the "guess" that was presented by the client earlier. Take a look for yourself.     What about you? How long does it take students to enroll in your online course?

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST If you’re going to start an online coaching company you’re going to need a platform to offer your services on. You’re also going to need some type of framework to help you grade, assess, manage and administer the coaching process. A Learning Management System (LMS) or a Course Management System (CMS) helps you do just that. However, for the purpose of this podcast we’re going to call it a "Coaching Management System". In this podcast we’ll discus how coaches are successfully bringing their coaching companies online. No matter if you’re a life coach, professional coach, small business coach or executive coach, by offering your coaching services online you’re opening yourself up a massive online earning potential. In this podcast we’ll talk about how to setup two system. First, you’ll need the system to sell your eCoaching services on. Secondly, you’ll need a system to deliver your coaching services on. This will mean you’ll need a system that will allow you to integrate group chat, private 1 on 1 video chat, screen-sharing, collaborative documents and so on. Essentially, all of the tools you’ll need to interact with your client online. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT: How to bring your coaching company online allowing you to overcome the time / space problem of "in-person" coaching. How online coaching opens you up to a global marketplace and what this means for your company’s revenue potential. How to stop exchanging time for money for your coaching services and streamline the coaching process using the power of the internet. How to increase your earning potential as an "coaching entrepreneur" by offering your services online rather than in the real world. And lastly, you’re going to learn about the technology required to bring your coaching company online. SHOW NOTES: THINGS WE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE View Live Demo Best Learning Management System 2014 (or listen to the podcast) How An Email Newsletter Generated $3600 / Month More For Our Client Best Screencast Software (Coming Soon) Coaching Online Podcast Transcript  

I wrote my first non-fiction "how to" ebook about 10 years ago. After I wrote it, I quickly realized that I wanted more interactive elements. Essentially, I wanted to play more of an active role, holding my readers’ hands as they worked through the content. So I took the logical step of  transforming my ebook into an online course. I expanded my ebook content, offered podcasts, video tutorials, a private members only area, a grading and assessment area and much more. It was definitely a change for the better, but it wasn’t easy. Below you’ll find the 8 things that I learnt after I started my first online course company.   1. It was much more work than I thought   Writing an eBook was easy compared to creating an online course. The cost students pay to access online courses is usually much more expensive than an eBook and therefore students rightfully want to see additional value in the content. I was required to create video tutorials, buy new audio recording gear to create podcasts, learn coding to create a social community, hire coders to create grading tools and much more.   2. I wasn’t offering an online course… I was starting a company   I was doing more than just putting a course online. I was creating a complex system that would be able to handle the administrative tasks of running an online course and implementing marketing strategies to help me promote my course. It was so much more work than I originally thought. The business and administrative needs of my eCourse company ended up taking up a huge percentage of my time… which leads me to my next point.   3. Balancing student satisfaction and growth is hard   When I started my online course I wanted to make sure my students felt like their $200 course enrolment fee gave them access to a course that looked and felt like a $5000 course. I wanted there to be a moment when the student said to themselves "I can’t believe I only paid $200 for this course". I wanted them to be "wowed" by the content, the design, the layout and the interactive features. I knew it would take a pretty big investment in time on my part to get to that level. However, as the eCourse grew in popularity I found my time being pulled towards needing to deal with administrative duties (email, advertising, coding issues etc). When you’re first starting out it’s incredibly difficult to grow your course while at the same time keeping your current students happy. My advice to you is to create great value in your course before you offer it to your students. Make it as good as you can possibly make it before you open up the doors and let people enroll. Because once you open up the doors… you have a business to run.   4. There were many opportunities for growth that I didn’t know about   When I first started my online course, I just thought I was going to be offering my course online. What I didn’t realize is that my students were hungry for additional courses, more advanced courses and personalized one on one consulting. I transformed from a one product company to a multi product company. Not only did I offer additional educational courses, but I was able to offer a job board on my site where employers could pay to get access to my community as well as a social network where people could pay to promote their profiles. My newsletter even became so popular that I was able to sell advertising within it. As did my site’s blog. I didn’t plan or anticipate any of these revenue streams.   5. Focusing on learner objectives should become an obsession   Once I was able to stabilize the administrative side of my online course business I transferred my energies back to my students and I become obsessed with their educational achievements. I started asking myself questions like - What does implementing a different teaching technique have on student’s outcomes? What impact does course design have a student’s outcomes. I would test and test and test. I analyzed the data and measured the metrics while at the same time keeping my eye on the results that students were producing. If their projects didn’t meet my expectations I didn’t see that as their fault. I saw it as my fault. Why was my teaching not getting through to them? What wasn’t clear? Was my course content unfocused? What was I doing wrong?   I would go back to the drawing board and redesign the course and assignments until I got outcomes from the students that I was impressed with.   6. You don’t have to be a licensed teacher to be a great teacher   When I started my course I wasn’t a trained "teacher". I was a subject matter expert. I liked teaching and I found it came natural to me, but I didn’t know much about pedagogies. I think this worked in my favor because I became obsessed with finding new ways to teach. This lead me down so many interesting paths. I was learning about outcomes based learning, democratic teaching, designing e-learning environments focused on individual student goals and so much more. The wold of education is fascinating and I could use my own students as test subjects to find out what teaching methods work for them and which ones don’t.   7. Building a thriving student community is hard   On an individual level I become very happy with my students’ individual goals. But I wanted more. I wanted to build a thriving community of learners who share similar passions. I didn’t just want their relationship to be with me (their teacher). I wanted them to build relationships with each other. Achieving this was very difficult. It required that I spend a lot of time getting to know each student and then looking for connections within my community of students to try to link people together. I found myself needing to be the one to initiate discussion all the time. Especially when I was first staring out. However, this investment in time paid off in the end, because many of the students followed my lead and slowly but surely they started to participate in the community. They formed their own connections and didn’t rely on me as much any longer.   8. I didn’t know I could earn so much   Years have passed since I first started my first online course. I remember when I first started out my goal was to make $500 / week running my course part time (I had a full time job at the time that I didn’t want to leave). I also thought my target market was pretty small. I didn’t expect to become rich from the venture that’s for sure. I just loved the topic and the opportunity to share my views with others interested in the same areas as me.   However, my efforts led to growth.  Slowly but surely my hard work brought in additional income. My $500 / week goal was hit and then I pretty quickly jumped to $1000 / week. Now my eCourse makes upwards of $4000 / week. It wasn’t easy, but I did it, and it continues to grow to this day. I never would have expected in a millions years for my course to get that big. But it did! So if you’re just starting out… enjoy the ride and focus on your learners outcomes!