Over the last few weeks I've been experimenting with daily online conversations. Sort of like daily office hours, but it's morphed into something more. Morning L&D Talk is the current working title. The new online app blab.im is the tool I use. The last few weeks have been an interesting test case in how this type of collaborative technology can be useful as a learning tool. There are the obvious collaboration methods that this tool can facilitate, but there are also some unintended collaborations that can take a conversation in a completely new direction. But overall it's proven valuable, and so I'll continue. The Growth of Video Has Only Just Begun Back in the early 2000's I watched the early wave of blogging begin to swell. I didn't actually jump in until mid 2005 with my blog elearndev.blogspot.com. It's been over 10 years now and there is another publishing trend beginning to swell: Vlogging. Daily vlogging channels via YouTube have already made a few producers internet rockstars in much the same way that early bloggers became publishing sensations. But vlogging is only part of the video story. The growth of YouTube, and popularity of "YouTubers", has made low cost, low quality video an acceptable medium. And with improvements in bandwidth over the years live streaming is possible at a surprising high level of quality. And at the same time the growth of mobile devices has given us LIVE mobile streaming capabilities. It's all happening so fast that keeping up can be a challenge. But if you're still watching broadcast television on a big screen TV then you most likely have not noticed this trend. It's a big shift. And it's not only disrupting the TV markets, but any market associated with the production of video content. And that includes Training, Learning & Development. It's Time to Jump in The Morning L&D Talk Show is my way of jumping in and testing how this might work out. I started by committing to doing something with video every day. That morphed into doing something with live collaborative video every day at a specific time. And that time became 8am Mountain Time. I don't claim to start right at 8am. I've committed to streaming live within the 8 o'clock hour. I may go live at 8am, but some days I don't get on until 8:30 or later for a variety of reason. But the nice thing about getting in on a tech wave early is that there are no rules. I get to make them up as I go. It's how blogging started, and it's how vlogging started. And now it's how live collaborative mobile streaming is getting started. If you are in corporate training, or L&D, join me in blab.im 8am MST to discuss the current trends and topics of the day. Some days I have a lot to talk about, while other days it's a disaster of technical issues or hackers "blabjacking" my show. But hey, nobody ever said the wild west was going to be easy. If you'd like to hear more about my adventures in tech, join me, and my Litmos colleagues, at our upcoming C3 event in Las Vegas! The post Mobile Streaming Video: The New Wild West of L&D appeared first on Litmos.

If you've been in the eLearning industry for any significant period of time you know the industry thorn that is SCORM. It was a wonderful idea at the time. It was created by smart people with the best of intentions. However, it's safe to say that the SCORM format has not stood the test of time. The internet, on the other hand, has managed to stay flexible, malleable, and powerful. Other systems locking users into a proprietary content "packaging" system have long since disappeared. Systems like the RealPlayer format are dead and gone. Flash is dead but lingers on as a zombie in certain parts of the internet. Only a few media standards have managed to win the hearts and minds of internet creators around the world. The winners seem to be the ones that play nicely with the HTML5 standard. But SCORM is not one of them. Text, Audio, or Video - It's That Simple Text, audio, and video are the media that rule digital world. There is no reason why the training industry needs a content delivery standard when the internet has perfectly acceptable standards. As long as you use text, audio, and video in formats accepted by the mainstream internet your content will work...on any device that can access the internet. There was a time, when the internet was just a baby, new formats were being created regularly by every new internet startup. Lack of interoperability forced our industry (actually the US military) to demand that a standard for eLearning be created. The expectation was that all eLearning course packages would be playable on every different LMS, and computer system in use at the time. But that was before the cloud and HTML5. The Cloud Makes Everything Digital Better Cloud computing changed everything making systems like Salesforce.com, and learning management systems like Litmos, possible. I'm not an expert in cloud computing, but I do know that standard internet media formats work perfectly across all the cloud-based systems I use. Text is supported as .txt as well as html and others. Audio files play perfectly as .mp3 or .wav. And video formats like .mov and .mp4 just work. And yes, I know there are many many more formats. And that fact alone might have you questioning my purpose for this post. The real defining element comes from browser compatibility.  Understanding what formats are supported by the most browsers will give you the best options for reaching the largest audience. Corporate training used to rely on their IT departments to maintain computing standards across all machines, but the bring-your-own-device trend is changing all of that.   Back when training content was only packaged as courses it made sense that all self-paced online content would be based on the course package as well. So, early LMSs were designed around courses being uploaded as one package. This meant creating that course package in an authoring tool outside of the LMS. Cloud-based LMSs have changed all that. Litmos gives you the best of both worlds. You can upload pre-packaged courses or create courses without SCORM from inside the LMS. If you absolutely must, there is a SCORM module that will manage your SCORM course upload. But there is also a collection of other modules supporting other media types, and even built-in interactive assessment types and survey modules. Despite being SCORM friendly, Litmos also gives you the opportunity to move away from the complexities of the standard. Leaving SCORM is Easy Moving away from SCORM will no doubt upset the large market built around it's existence. But the writing is on the wall, and has been for a while now. Moving learning content to native media formats and HTML5 will eliminate many headaches you are no doubt feeling due to SCORM. It's time to unpack your media content from the confines of the SCORM package. Just think about how you use the internet on a daily basis. Does it feel anything like the SCORM experience you put your learners through. If your learners wanted to review just one part of your SCORM course again would it be possible without relaunching the entire course? Your learners are using the internet for almost every part of their lives. And those interactions work in a very specific way. Giving them an experience that feels old and inflexible will not gain supporters for your training efforts. However creating learning content that looks and functions like normal internet content will eliminate that layer of complexity that intrudes upon the learning process. With Litmos it's easy to create training courses using media formats already supported by the internet and familiar to your learners. Start a FREE trial today and find out for yourself.   The post Free Your Training Content from the Chains of SCORM appeared first on Litmos.

Recently, I was watching The Wonderful World of Disney: Disneyland 60th. It was a grand celebration in a way only Disney can do. Towards the end of the special, Neil Patrick Harris donned a pair of mouse ears, took a selfie, and posted it on Twitter with #ShareYourEars. Reason being, Disney will donate $5 to the Make a Wish Foundation for each picture posted, up to one million dollars by March 14th. So I immediately started twittering. Needless to say, it wasn’t too difficult to do. I’ve been to both US Disney parks...well, a lot...and I have my share of various park anniversary mouse ears, Year of a Million Dreams mouse ears, Santa mouse ears, stocking hat mouse ears...it’s a long list. During my many happy adventures, I have often seen families with the Make a Wish sticker. It’s not the big PR event that the Nelly Negatives expect it to be, just a family with a sick child, trying to forget the realities of the real world and immersing themselves in fantasy. Trying, if just for a moment, to create "normal." The Make a Wish campaign made me think of patient engagement because Disney epitomizes it. I know, I know, they don’t treat patients, but they have the two most important aspects of patient engagement—a sick patient, and the desire to make them happy. Isn’t that the root of patient engagement? What if your patients left your office with smiles as big as the Make a Wish foundation recipients have when they walk onto Main Street, USA? So where do you start? For goodness sake, start by not treating them like sick people. Yes, they're coming to you for treatment, but they aren't a diagnosis, an infectious disease, or a terminal illness; your patients are people first and deserve to be treated as such. These people are scared, probably terrified; seeing them may be business as usual for your staff, but it certainly isn’t for the patient. Give them your full attention for as long as they need it. If you’re too busy, get someone like a nurse navigator or a counselor to talk them through all their questions. Know who you are seeing, not the ICD-10 code for their ailment. Acknowledge the caregiver. So much of the focus during an illness is on the patient, as well as it should be, but a caregiver needs support too. Who is looking out for the mom sitting in the cancer ward watching chemo course through her child’s veins? How much effort does it take to bring that mother a magazine, glass of water, or relieve her so she can go to the restroom? Caregivers need to know they are not alone. Communicate with everyone involved in the diagnosis and care for the patient (within the HIPAA laws of course). It’s important to be honest and positive, but in a way a lay person can understand. Friends recently asked me if having chemo before a mastectomy, rather than after, would get rid of the tumor and possibly allow her to avoid surgery. I’m not a doctor, but I am quite certain that isn't how it works. However, it seems that what was inferred by the doctor, or what she understood. Either way, there was a break in the communication. Don’t send someone away with false hope, only to crush them later. A doctor once put her hand on my knee and said to me, "You’re going to die someday, but not from this." It may sound harsh, but she knew me enough to know it was the fire I needed. She was right. A little humanity will go a long way. A dear doctor friend of mine believes in placing her hand over patients when delivering scary news and is known for hugging them after excellent news. Of course, each situation should be evaluated case by case, but a little human touch can go a long way. And remind them there is more misinformation on the Internet than viable information. Give them peer-reviewed articles and access to sites that have accurate and updated information. Or better yet, discourage them from doing a Google search on brain tumors! When you walk into the room of your 30th sick patient of the day, ask yourself this, "How would this interaction change if this person was my child or parent?", then adjust accordingly. Off to Tweet. The post Make a Wish for Patient Engagement! appeared first on Litmos.

I attended the Edtech day of Phoenix Startup Week last week. And today some of the presentations went live on slideshare. The CEO of picmonic gave a presentation on Starting a Company in Arizona, and was not part of the edtech track. So I'm glad I stumbled onto their slideshare and their company called Picmonic. I'm always looking for new innovative learning solutions to share with the L&D industry and this got me thinking of a lot of things. What got my attention was the scientific approach they took to solving a knowledge problem. "The "visual learning platform" delivers content in the form of audiovisual mnemonic cards that currently cover nursing, medicine and MCAT test prep." And no, these aren't just your average flashcards. Before I continue, and potentially start to rant, I want you to take a look at this video. Very cool, right? A couple brothers and a friend see a problem and research an idea to fix it. And I'd say they've got something very compelling. Applied Science of Learning At the risk of starting to rant, I need to ask a question. Why is it that 3 guys can figure this out and yet an entire industry of professionals, many with Ph.D.s cannot? It's not that I haven't seen some very interesting training solutions. But they are few and far between. Why is that? Have we become so blinded by the authoring tools, we think we need to create "effective eLearning", that we forget the simplest ideas based on research? Remember Monday's post: Text, images, and video. Let's get that right first and then figure out the rest. Yes, picnomics is a very interesting technology-based learning solution. But the underlying premise as to why it works to improve learning has been around for many years. We pay attention to and remember written words better when accompanied by graphics, than with text alone. This is not new. Remember the saying a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, it's only sort of right. Our brains work to produce meaning first before attending to the details. If there currently is no meaning attached to an image, our brains work to create meaning. We seek out familiar patterns in an effort to make meaning by connecting the new information with old information. And bla bla bla ...all the other stuff I know you already know. Here is an interactive infographic with links to all the research. Don't Bore Me! But while any related graphic is good. A novel, interesting, or even shocking graphic is better. According to Brain Rules by Dr. John Medina "we don't pay attention to boring things". We also know, and Dr. Medina reminds us, that in order to move information from short term to long term memory we must repeat, repeat, and repeat again. So, novelty and repetition are important for attention and memory. Put both of them together and you have a powerful learning tool. I don't know about you, but I've still got that visual of a knee holding up a mushroom with a rabbit sitting on top blowing bubbles and holding a spindle. Now if I could only attach the meaning part I'd be good to go. And I know the next thing my colleagues in corporate L&D are thinking. "Well, Brent, WE can't do that kind of thing in OUR business. We are in the [insert stuffy business type] industry and we need to keep things at a professional level". My answer to that is prove it! There is nothing that says "novel or shocking" needs to be a cartoon. This is just one example of effectively putting the science of learning to good use. Don't you think your stakeholders would respond to a 330% increase in learner retention? If you told them you could make that happen, do you think they would really care how you do it? This is where our jobs require creativity and innovation. Design effective imagery, and words, first. Then worry about the interactive, engaging, drag'n'drop, click-next, possibilities with the latest authoring tool. The simplest solution is often the best. I do not know the guys at picnomics but just seeing what they've done gives me hope that learning content producers will begin to take the science of learning seriously. Even if the best solutions come from people outside of the L&D industry. I'm just happy to share it when I see it. If you want to find out more about picnomics, you can find them at picmonic.com. Here is a research study done with their product and a control group. Research done on the effectiveness of picmonic   The post How to Improve Learning Retention by Over 300% - Hint: Don't Bore me! appeared first on Litmos.

Creating e-learning with accompanying voice-over is something we are seeing more and more frequently with our clients, especially when delivering compliance training. In this article, I will outline a simple step-by-step process for building a slide in Articulate Storyline that forces the learner to listen to the audio on the first visit but provides free navigation if they are revisiting the slide. One of the most common requests from those clients for whom we’re building e-learning with voice-over, is that they want to force the learner to listen to the audio within a slide before being able to click the next button. However, when the learner revisits the slide for a second time, they should not be forced to listen to the audio again. Thus allowing free navigation throughout the course once they have completed each slide. Devil’s Advocate It could very easily be argued that forcing a learner to listen to audio is an ineffective way to deliver e-learning, and to a certain extent I would agree. If you want to give the learner responsibility to navigate the course and dig out the information that they think will be useful for them, then locking down the slides so they have to listen to the duration of each can be a bad idea. The Exception But there are certain situations where forcing a learner to listen to the audio for each slide is useful, one example I can think of is compliance training. Within this form of e-learning, it is essential that the course administrator knows that the learner has completed the training, which means the company will be compliant. The Process There is a simple process you can follow to create limitations on the navigation within your e-learning course built in Articulate Storyline. What follows is a step-by-step guide on how to do this. Setup the Slide To begin this procedure, you will need to open Articulate Storyline. Let’s assume you are looking at a slide which already has an audio clip containing narration Inserted. You will also need a next button. We can always use the built-in back and next buttons in Storyline, however if you have seen any of our e-learning designs - we always like to use custom designed buttons. The same principles apply, however the execution varies slightly depending on which method you use. For the purpose of this exercise, I’m going to use custom designed buttons. Step 1) Create variable The first step is to create a simple variable for each slide upon which you plan to force the learner to listen to the audio until completion. I usually name these variables with a reference to the slide number so you can quickly find it again in future. Click the variable button on the Triggers pane Click the Add Variable button. Give the variable a name I always name the variable with the slide number and something obvious - I use the word ‘progress’ so I can differentiate this variable from any others on the slide. Choose a True/False variable Change the default setting to False This is important because when the learner arrives at the slide, we want the variable to be False. You won’t see anything change on the slide, but you have set up the variable in the background. Step 2) Add Cue Point at the end of the slide Next job is to add a Cue Point onto your timeline. This is a better way than using the a trigger that activates at the end of the timeline, because it enables you to drag the Cue Point along the timeline and any trigger that refers to that Cue Point will still work. Click somewhere on the timeline c Tap the letter C on the keyboard. You will see a small triangle appear which a Cue Point. This Cue Point is going to be the reference that we use to adjust our variable Step 3) Adjust variable to True when Timeline reaches Cue Point #1 Our next job is to create a trigger that changes when the timeline reaches the key point we created in the previous step. Click New Trigger This will bring up the trigger wizard. Adjust the settings based on the image below: Change Action to ‘Adjust Variable’ Choose the variable we created in Step 1 Operator should be set to =Assignment Change Value from Variable to ‘Value’ and ‘True’ When should be adjusted to ‘Timelines Reaches’ ‘Cue Point’ and ‘#1’ Step 4) Change default button state to Disabled Obviously we need a button on our slide, which will be disabled when the slide begins for the first time. The idea is that this button changes from disabled to normal after the learner has viewed the slide for the first time only. Select Next button Click ‘States’ (at the bottom next to Timeline) Click ‘Edit States’ At this point we need to add a disabled state, and then we will change the state of that button to a different colour which shows a Disabled state, so that is obvious to the learner. Click New State (shown by white paper in States menu) Choose ‘Disabled’ from menu Click ‘Add’ I usually make my disabled state a black-and-white version of the colour button, and also increase the brightness and contrast so it is obviously not clickable. Change state of button by adjusting colour/brightness etc Click ‘Done Editing States’ The final step in this process is to ensure that you make the default state for that button disabled. This is really important, because when the learner arrives at the slide, we want to ensure that the button is not clickable. Click Initial State dropdown Change to ‘Disabled’ Step 5) Change state of Next button to normal when Timeline reaches Cue Point 1 Now we have correctly set up the slide, we now need to create a trigger that changes the state of the Next button to normal when the timeline reaches Cue Point 1. This will enable the learner to click on the next button at any point after this Cue Point (i.e. only at the end of the slide) Click new trigger This will bring up the trigger wizard. Adjust the settings based on the image below: Change Action to ‘Change State of’ On Object ‘Next Button’ (or whatever your button is called) To State ‘Normal’ When ‘Timeline reaches’ Object ‘Cue point’ and in the second box select the Cue Point ‘#1’ So this means that the Next button will change to Normal when the timeline reaches the Cue Point. Step 6) Add trigger to change the state of next button The next part of the process can be confusing. The reason for this is that when the timeline starts on the second visit to the slide, we want to ensure that the next button can be clicked. So we need to add a trigger to change the state of the next button to ‘Normal’ when Timeline starts - but only if the slide has already been visited i.e. if the variable equals true. Add New trigger Set Action to ‘Change State of’ On Object ‘Next button’ (or whatever your button is named) To State ‘Normal’ when Timeline starts Object ‘1.1 Current slide’ (depending on what your slide is called!) Once you have these settings correctly configured, you will need to add a condition as shown in the image. Click ‘Show Conditions’ Click blue cross List Variables If Slide04_Progress (or whatever your variable is called) Operator ‘Equal to’ Type ‘Value’ Value ‘True’ Step 7) Add trigger to Next button The final step is to create a trigger that jumps to the next slide when the next button is clicked. Add New trigger Set Action to ‘Jump to slide’ Slide ‘Next Slide’ (or any other slide you want to link to) When User Clicks Object ‘Next button’ (or whatever your next button is called) Because we have set the button to change from disabled to normal, we do not need to add any conditions to this last step. And that’s it! You’re all set! The Bonus tip Once you have set up all of these conditions within your slide, you can quickly duplicate the slide several times and adjust the variables and conditions on each slide. This will be a much quicker way of setting this rule throughout your whole course, rather than having to follow each of these instructions for every slide individually. Conclusion As with anything in Articulate Storyline, there are always several different ways of achieving the same result. I’m sure this is the case for what I have shared here, I would be keen to hear if there are any quicker ways of doing this! Please share in the comments below. If enjoyed this article, you might enjoy 5 Questions to ask Yourself Before Finding Someone to Build your Elearning Course. The post Step-by-step Storyline Guide: How to Limit Progress Within Narrated eLearning Course appeared first on Litmos.

Everyone gets busy and the fire hose of information from the internet can be overwhelming. Just in case you missed something from Litmos.com last week, here is a quick overview. Blog Posts Step-by-step Storyline Guide: How to Limit Progress within a Narrated eLearning Course This is a guest post by Ant Pugh from the UK. Here is what you'll learn: "Creating e-learning with accompanying voice-over is something we are seeing more and more frequently with our clients, especially when delivering compliance training. In this article, I will outline a simple step-by-step process for building a slide in Articulate Storyline that forces the learner to listen to the audio on the first visit but provides free navigation if they are revisiting the slide." How to Improve Learning Retention by Over 300% - Hint: Don't Bore Me! After attending Phoenix Startup Week I discovered a small company actually applying the science of learning in their learning product. By using images and mnemonics they created an impressive learning application that helps medical students master the volumes of information they are required to memorize. They've also expanded beyond medical content into other domains as they've grown. Take a look at picmonic.com. You may find that you can use the same design philosophy to some of your training. Free Your Training Content From the Chains of SCORM In this blog post I highlight the nature of our industry to "package" media content. And that SCORM has become the standard package for eLearning. However, I wanted to get everyone in training, learning, and development to realize that the internet already has successful content formats that should be mastered by professionals in our industry. L&D Talks - (aka @bschlenker office hours) Every day, at some point between 8am and 9am mountain time, I start a conversation in blab.im. It's been an interesting experience and gives me a glimpse of what the future of learning might look like. We've discussed a lot of issues in L&D Talks including VR, AR, video, mobile apps, training design, and a lot more. You can watch the recordings at my blab profile page. We recently discussed an iPhone app called Anchor. If you're interested in following me in that app we can start a conversation about how we might use it in a learning/teaching context. And of course you can also learn more about streaming video by following me on Periscope.tv. Start a free trial of Litmos.com to see how easy it is to launch your next training program.   The post Did You Miss it? Blogs and L&D Conversations appeared first on Litmos.

"If content is king, then context is god!." - Gary Vaynerchuk This statement is fairly common, but it may be hard to understand why. The origin of the statement comes from marketing. The old adage that marketing is content has been undermined by more tailored approaches, understanding the audience and providing specifically appropriate context. This takes a different twist for learning. Among the findings in learning is that learning is better when done in context. You may have heard that you should study in the room you’re going to be tested in. In short, if you learn in a context like the one you have to perform in, your performance will be better. If you want people to be able to do new things, you have to put them in a situation to perform the new thing, and give them a chance to practice. That’s what a designed learning experience is. But there is a lot going on here. Do Abstracts Work? Abstract learning doesn’t transfer to other situations. You might think that learning in the abstract gives you the flexibility to transfer to other situations, but it doesn’t work that way. What you get is the ability to perform on abstract problems, but not to apply it in particular contexts. It just doesn’t get activated. You can’t get good performance from abstract problems. (See: too much of what happens in school.) So, if you need transfer across contexts, you need to learn in a variety of contexts that span the space of potential application. You don’t need to learn in all the contexts, but in representative ones that cover the space. So, for instance, if we want someone to learn to negotiate, we might practice it in a compensation discussion, a vendor negotiation, and a project role. You thereby increase the likelihood that the learning will be accessed and used in an appropriate situation. How Does the Brain Work With Context? What underpins this is that our brains abstract across the contexts to decouple the things that can change from the things that define that this is a situation for the topic. So the negotiation basics of a goal, and an entity you have to convince to provide what you need to achieve your goal, don’t vary, but the goals and the entities and constraints will. There are elements that signal that this is a situation that calls for the particular ability being developed, and others that can change. If we choose the right contexts, the learner’s brain will learn to recognize the trigger conditions for the ability, and the elements that can change without affecting the requirement to execute. This also includes situations that suggest how to adapt the skill to different situations where it’s still relevant. Selling cars is different than selling computers, but some elements stay the same and some differ. If you want generic sales skills, you have to train across products and services. If you want car-selling skills, you just have to train across different cars, perhaps minivans, sports cars, sport-utility vehicles, etc. How Do We Choose Appropriate Context for Learning? This means we have to carefully choose our learning contexts. Ideally, we have existing situations we can leverage. Or we can anticipate the appropriate situations. And, again, we have to choose ones that are representative and will support decoupling the necessary components and making a robustly transferable skill. (And contextualized practice is what makes a difference in ability to do, not the ability to recite information!) One of the things we do in learning is create contexts to practice in. We can run role-plays, or scenarios, or even serious games and simulations. The point is to minimize the difference between the learning event and the performance environment. And, the more that is at risk for performance, the closer we need to go. So, in medicine and aviation for example, when lives are on the line, there are a lot of simulations and mentored practice. And developing the context doesn’t have to be completely rigorous. While simulations and virtual worlds can create really deep immersion, the minimum necessary contextualization is often a better idea to both provide support in abstracting and transferring to other situations. (It also works to be more cost-effective too.) We know that extraneous content can interfere cognitively, so working on the elements that will convey a context and the triggers for the action are more important than a full rendition. How Can We Leverage the Context of IRL? One of the opportunities we are increasingly seeing, however, is not creating context, but turning real performance contexts into learning opportunities. Learning in the work is becoming possible. We can detect and understand where the learner is, and provide support. So, either in a particular physical location (say a library or an office), or at a particular place in a piece of software, we can have a learning challenge. The advantages to contextualized learning are several. First, if this is the real context, we are minimizing transfer distance. We can mimic a real situation in a context it would actually emerge in. As a consequence, we also do not need to provide as much content to convey a particular situation. And we do this naturally in developing on the job training and mentoring. But we can take it further. Increasingly, our software can be aware of our situation. In a software program, it can know where a learner is. If that’s coupled with what a learner knows, the learning can be personalized to the individual. Even more generically, however, we can provide a sample task to perform as a refresher. Don't Confuse Performance Support and Learning Be aware, however, that there is a difference between performance support and learning here. We have systems that can know what you’re trying to do, context-sensitive performance support, that can provide hints and tips about what’s required in this situation. Similarly, we can just access a ‘how to’ video about this particular tasks. In both cases, learning isn’t the desired outcome, the goal is to get the job done. This is very valuable, but it’s not necessarily learning. A separate situation would be required to layer on some additional information about how and why this is the right solution before it could be considered learning. This brings us back to marketing: the right content to the right person (and more: at the right time and right place on the right devices…). What is required are content models to get more granular, and content engineering to deliver it in systemic ways. And these capabilities are now available, and it’s time for learning to catch up with marketing and start treating content as a discipline. Going forward, mobile is going to be supporting both contextual learning and performance support. Increasingly, the sensors provided with these devices can assist systems to detect a user’s situation in more than one way (e.g. not just location), and provide specific help because of where and when you are. And, coupled with an understanding of your learning goals, they may well be able to make contextualized learning available as well. While content is critical to support learning even in contexts, being aware and leveraging context can mean new opportunities to improve the learning, and performance, outcomes. The post Understanding the Importance of Context in Your Learning Solutions appeared first on Litmos.

If your course development projects are taking longer than a week or two you may need to rethink your strategy. In many cases I'd argue that your first course release should take less than a day. But I'm also practical enough to know that every situation is different. And there are many factors, outside of the course designer's control, complicating the process. It's  release a course within a day because the content already exists. The cry for training on topics with existing content usually grows from lack of access. In which case simply uploading the content in it's existing format is good enough to get started. And that's why you can launch a course in less than a day. It's possible. The Marathon I often refer back to the early days of CBT, WBT, and eLearning development. Those were the days of the development marathons. I remember them well. It's how we all learned tools like Authorware, and Toolbook. Most courses took 6 weeks to 6 months, or longer, to design, develop, test, and release. And it wasn't just eLearning developers that required so much time. Every other type of software development was equally time-consuming. But then the internet arrived and changed everything. Today app developers have updated their processes. Developing software systems for the internet presented a completely new set of both challenges and opportunities. Without the need for floppy disk, or CD distribution, software teams could release new updates, features, and bug fixes quickly and easily with little to no disruption to the user experience. They no longer needed to develop within 12-18 month release cycles: The marathon. Teams of software developers adapted to the changing landscape of technology brought on by the internet. elearning development teams have been slow to embrace this change. Even when simple to use, powerful, and flexible SaaS based learning management systems like Litmos arrived, the practices and processes of developing courses remained mostly unchanged. The idea of what software can be changed while the idea of what a course can be did not. The marathon process of eLearning development mostly remains "one and done". Meaning we create a course as a product and after it's release we forget about it and move onto the next course. With software development the work of development is never "done". And this is the mindset that eLearning developers need to adopt. Courses should never be done. They should be continual works in progress. If we are focusing less on training products and more on supporting the learning process then why not rethink how we create our learning solutions? The Sprint The idea of a development sprint is exactly what it sounds like: Get from point A to point B as fast as you can. Slow and steady no longer applies. The concept was originally created at Google ventures. Here is how they begin to describe the sprint: "The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Developed at GV, it’s a "greatest hits" of business strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking, and more — packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use." - Google Ventures, Sprint Obviously there is more to a sprint than just the ability to act quickly. My favorite part of this process is the concept of combining so many elements of product development into that short period of time. The learning industry draws from many different disciplines, and we discuss them quite a bit. However I rarely here anyone speak of putting all the pieces together. I've heard people talk about brain-based learning. I've heard of emotional learning. Research based learning is popular. Learning based on cognitive psychology and what anthropology may or may not have to do with our work. We talk about a lot and that's good. But I have heard few, if any, discuss how all the elements of training, learning and development, work together in creating a learning solution. The specific tasks of the sprint created by Google ventures is obviously not exactly how it should be applied to course development. The tool provides a good framework for us to start with. It's been tested and proven success for other businesses and products, and I see potential in adapting our development processes to something similar. I have created courses in less than week, but I've never specifically used the GV sprint process. However, I've done enough course development to know that it feels like a useful framework that our industry can leverage. Let me know what your thoughts are. And if you are already doing something similar I'd love to hear about your experience. Don't forget to register for the Future of Learning C3 event coming May 9-11 to the Wynn in Las Vegas!   The post eLearning Development is a Sprint Not a Marathon appeared first on Litmos.

If you spend anytime on the web, specifically looking at product or service sites, you probably have noticed some interesting capabilities.  For instance, you can specify a search term, and then get options to customize the view based upon a number of criteria such as size, price, brand, and more. Even more interesting from a ‘user experience’ standpoint are recommendations, where your previous behavior leads to some specific suggestions for you. This is the future of content; customized, personalized, even adaptive. This customizability and adaptivity is not what we see in the eLearning space. There are a few examples, companies like Knewton and such, but by and large our courses are monolithic objects of code. They aren’t accessible in small bits, they can’t be reassembled in different ways, and they are hard to manage.  We can do better. The New Reusable Learning Content Let’s get a little clearer about what we’re talking about, specifically for learning. There’s been much talk about the value (or not) of reusing or repurposing content. Here, the point is to make content flexible so that it can be combined in different ways to meet different needs.  And the benefits here are to reduce redundancy and increase opportunity. So, in a typical scenario, content comes from marketing about a new product or service. It may go through engineering or operations to add detail.  But what happens then is that the same information goes to sales training for development, but it also goes to customer support, and to technical communications, and maybe even customer training. There’s training and documentation being created all from the same source material, but likely with redundancies. Another situation is that content is created to create a particular need. So, in the course of developing training, a job aid is created to help comprehension and serves as a guide for practice.  This particular content would be valuable to be accessed by the learners after the class, when they’re performing, but it’s not systematically thought through nor automatically made findable.  This could be internally, or as a more comprehensive customer solution from elearning providers, but the point is that it is a missed opportunity. And yet another situation is the familiar legacy content.  When I ask at events whether anyone has content hanging around that’s out of date or no longer accurate, but it’s still available, I always see hands.  There’s no process for managing content in a particular way.  Yet without a systematic process of content review, people can get confused about what’s up to date, relevant, and more. In web marketing, these problems are being increasingly handled in a mechanism called content systems, composed of content strategy, engineering, and management.  They’re working towards intelligent content, content that meets what Wayne Hodgins once termed the ‘right stuff’: the right content to the right person at the right time and the right place in the right way on the right device.  Think of this for learning: would you love to have a learning experience that was uniquely configured for you?  That’s the possibility.  So what’s involved? A Custom Learning Experience Built Just for You One of the first steps is getting more rigorous around content. We need content definitions and descriptions that allow us to know what we have and how to access it.  Then we need to have systems that support hosting and delivering this content in rich ways. Finally, we need to have a strategy about developing, delivering, and managing the content. To start, we need a tight level of granularity.  I’ve previously suggested that the right level of granularity can be approximated as ‘the smallest thing you’d give one learner versus another, depending on their performance’.  A more systematic approach is to talk about content from the perspective of its learning (or performance) ‘role’. That is, to be clear about whether it’s an example, practice, concept presentation, job aid, or more.  And yes, that means we must be more discrete in our content development. We must also be very specific about describing this content, since we will want to pull it together by description, not hardwired together.  To do this will require rigor in tagging.  We need to describe learning role, topic, context, media, and more.  This is the role of a content model, to determine what types of content are needed to fulfill the learning and performance roles we expect. What is the full suite of content needed?  This will differ by organization, with a publisher having different needs than a B2B company, etc.  With good structure and good descriptions, we facilitate search as well as more flexible content, able to populate different business models and use cases. Adaptive Content Using Rules The ultimate goal is to be able to personalize content and make it adaptive. We want to be able to call up content by labels, so we could grab an <example> about <product X> in <context Y> with <video> by rule, and then combine rules to sequence content into courses for different roles on the same content, and vice versa, rather than have to develop them separately. Going forward, we will be able to have rules that provide simpler problems if the learner is doing poorly, and advance them more rapidly, to take advantage of context, and more. At the same time, we can also be more specific about what constitutes a ‘good’ example, practice, etc.  We currently are too lax about the details about what constitutes a really good learning component. So, for instance, a good example wouldn’t be missing elements like cognitive annotation, etc. Here’s an opportunity to address those gaps, making content templates about learning, rather than just window-dressing. We also need to have systems that can host content, descriptors, and rules, and combine and deliver the content as dictated.  While the LMS can still serve the courses and manage competencies & users, the content itself may well be launched from a content management system, perhaps leveraging the content system likely already in use by marketing!  There are fundamental capabilities and increasingly we need to think about integrating technology in systemic ways to combine capabilities for new needs. Learning Content Lifecycle Management Finally, we need people and processes.  We need to make sure that the content lifecycle is covered, from initial strategy to deletion. Who has responsibility for what’s said, for how it’s said, and when it needs to be updated?  We need to determine what services content delivers, and how we’re going to get there. We need people to determine the tagging scheme, content model, and ultimately write the rules.  And, of course, we also need people who have the job of creating the content! This is an initial step in going beyond the silos.  Properly done, this includes content coming from related business units like technical communications and customer services.  While initially it can focus on learning and performance support, eventually all content should be systematically addressed. And let’s be clear, this isn’t going to happen overnight. We are still in the infancy of custom content development. The point is to start planning and working now on getting to the point where you are using content in more systematic ways.  The short-term benefits are in having a more structured approach to content, such as a finer granularity and a deeper definition around the learning content component.  The longer-term benefits are in laying the foundations for delivering a more complete learning and performance solution, internally empowering more successful outcomes and externally creating a more complete customer experience. It’s time to be intelligent about content, so we can start getting the advantages of intelligent content. The post Thinking Differently about Learning Content Development and Maintenance appeared first on Litmos.

SXSW Interactive is a massive event. Even writing that statement doesn’t feel like I’m doing justice to the size of the event. Most events that I attend are confined to one location, like a hotel conference center or complete convention center. But SXSW is large enough to take over a convention center, an events center, and several hotel conference centers...and just about every available open space in between. The Corporate Houses of Downtown Austin The entire downtown of Austin Texas is completely taken over by "houses". A house is a building or area completely designed, sponsored, and some times built, by one company. The space is fully re-branded with the company logo and is filled with demoes, mini stages for presentations, food trucks, and/or full bars. As an example, on my first evening Gina Minks took me to the Dell house. We got there just in time to see the end of a session led by the leaders of Dell labs. Dell had a focus on VR to show off the strength of Dell computer systems driving the VR experiences. I tried to visit as many houses as I could but I’m certain I missed a few. I spent some time at the Mashable house, the IBM house, and the Samsung house. All showing off products, and new cutting edge tech. The Dell House and The Lonely Whale VR Experience After attending both CES and SXSW this year, I can honestly say that VR is the next big thing in learning experiences. At the Dell house I had the opportunity to experience VR as a learning experience. Dell's and it's Social Good Advocate, Adrien Grenier, partnered to create quite an amazing experience. The VR experience for the Lonely Whale project included active seating that moved and reacted to the VR movie. So not only did you get the visual experience but you also had the sensation of tipping forward and back and feeling bursts of air at just the right moments. It was quite a compelling experience. Watch this short youtube video to get an idea of what it takes to create a learning experience like The Lonely Whale. I don't expect to see fully activated seating in training rooms any time soon, but that element of the experience was just an added bonus feature. The reality is that VR is now inexpensive enough to become a legitimate technology based learning solution. I see the VR learning experiences of today as being where computer-based training was in the late 80's. The technology of learning in the 80's was just beginning to handle multi-media.  Producing CBT was time consuming, costly, and difficult to prove ROI for corporate training purposes. But today we are able to create eLearning courses fast and cheap with more features, and capabilities than learners even need. VR is going through the same cycle with regards to the L&D industry. I predict in 5 years we will have at least one authoring tool available for instructional designers to quickly and easily produce VR learning solutions. The Qualcomm Augmented Reality Experience AR (augmented reality) is growing as fast as VR, but just not getting as much press. Qualcomm built a small museum based on AR technology within the Mashable House. The idea is that you can supplement a real world experience with a layered virtual experience on top. This is possible using mobile devices with cameras. The system recognizes an object or structure and triggers the digital layer of information to be viewed on top of the real world image being shown on the screen. The IBM Cognitive Studio House The IBM Cognitive Studio was filled demos showing off Watson. It's hard to explain Watson, and how it may or may not impact our industry. But I will say that without a doubt it will have a significant impact. The IBM Studio experience started with a questionnaire so that Watson could learn a little bit about you. That information was coded into a wrist band. As you walked through the studio you could wave your wrist band at an exhibit and you would get a customized experience. They even had a bar that would create a customized drink for you based on certain preferences identified in the questionnaire. You could play Rock, Paper, Scissors against a robot or have Watson analyze your personality based on your twitter feed. But my favorite part of the IBM Cognitive Studio was interacting with a robot named Pepper. While talking to the IBM engineer about Pepper I could see that she was "listening". It's head was turned slightly with it's big eyes watching us as we talked. Then Pepper asked me for a fist bump. On my first try I only tapped it's robot knuckles and nothing happened. The engineer explained that it was okay to fist bump Pepper as hard as you might fist bump with a human. So I did and Pepper responded by blowing it up. It made me laugh and so it asked if I wanted to fist bump again. That's the one I recorded above. Pepper is obviously a robot, and obviously not human. And that's what made it so strange to actually feel a personal connection with Pepper. The engineer spoke to Pepper as if it were a living thing and so it just felt like it was part of our conversation. And after the fist bump, things got weird. After talking with the engineer for a few more minutes Pepper said, "You look like you could use a hug". The engineer said, "go ahead and give Pepper a hug." And so I did. And it was strangely comforting. Pepper could nuzzle her head into your neck and shoulder and wrap her arms around you. I gotta be honest. I enjoyed the robot hug. Capture the Data of Experience Representing the L&D community at SXSW was Craig Wiggins and Margaret Roth presenting a session on xAPI. They also presented their session at SXSWedu, and I was told it was well received. It was fun to hang out with Craig at the event and learn more about xAPI and how it’s currently being used. Here’s my take on xAPI. As far as I can tell, the biggest roadblock to an xAPI implementation is getting access to non-learning systems to insert the code for generating xAPI statements. I mean, some training departments still struggle with getting access to basic IT resources. So, figuring out how to request coding updates to critical business systems may prove challenging for many. And building an LRS is relatively simple as far as I understand it. But building a system to parse all the data and make it meaningful is harder. I feel like much wider adoption of xAPI needs a kickstart by a big enterprise. Its probably going to take a large software developer like Microsoft, Apple, IBM, or Salesforce.com, or another. And this is only supporting the learning experiences within software. xAPI can and should be collecting other data as well. Specifically data from the internet of things. But basically from any device, or software, that currently collects data about performance in some way or another. It's obvious that xAPI is building momentum within our industry, but widespread adoption still is a ways off. But maybe not as far off as we might think. There is a lot more to SXSW than what I can reflect on in a blog post. SXSW Interactive is a non-learning community event filled with excellent learning experiences for everyone interested in technology. And everyone should be interested in technology. I would highly encourage my colleagues to attend at some point in their careers. Don't forget to register for C3 coming up April 9-11 at the Wynn in Las Vegas. The post The SXSW Interactive Experience with L&D Perspective appeared first on Litmos.

The annual Calliduscloud Connections Conference is only a few weeks away. It's at the beautiful Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas again May 9-11. Those who attended last year will tell you about the amazing venue including the over-the-top customer appreciation party. But you don't even need to be a customer to register. The event is growing every year and this year's program is packed with more great content than ever. At C3 2016 you'll learn from industry experts, the Litmos product team, and your training colleagues driving business value with the Litmos LMS platform. Besides amazing world class keynotes, this year we also have 3 learning tracks to enjoy: The Business Track In the business track you can expert to learn more about the Litmos roadmap and the new features coming soon. The experts in this track will discuss best practices in Compliance training, eCommerce solutions, and how to build the best training content based on the needs of your business. They will also be discussing topics like ROI, and building a business case for learning. And if the content isn't enough, you will happy to know that we've put aside some time for networking, and collaborating with your colleagues and friends. The Product Track In the product track you can expect to dive deep into the nuts and bolts of Litmos. Within this track you are sure to discover many new nuggets of information helping you take your Litmos LMS solution to the next level. You will learn from those who have developed the Litmos platform, and from the many super-users who have effectively implemented the many powerful features of the platform. The C3 Learning Product track is the perfect place to expand your Litmos skill set and grow your career in building corporate training solutions. Ask The Experts and Speed Networking So many conference experiences over plan your experience. This year we have a special track that allows you to take control of your learning path. We will have stations setup with experts ready to answer your specific questions and talk with you about your specific needs and concerns. There will be a Developer Station, Support Station, and Instructional Design Station available all day. You get to make this track whatever you need it to be. Whatever your questions are, we have someone who can answer them. Choosing a conference to attend is often a difficult task. But if you are a Litmos user, or a corporate training professional just looking to enhance your skills, then C3 is the place you want to be. You can contact me directly on twitter @bschlenker. Or you connect with the Litmos team @litmos.  Don't hesitate to reach out if you have questions. Register for C3 NOW! The post Why You Should Attend C3 2016! appeared first on Litmos.

2016 has been the year of Snapchat. For those of you not following social media trends, what has happened is similar to the slow adoption of twitter. I remember very clearly being told by many that twitter was a joke and they didn't see the need for "knowing what everyone had for breakfast". Real time communication to a widespread audience was not understood back then. People just didn't get it. Now look at twitter. It's used for all sorts of communication: breaking live news coverage and it's made many people overnight celebrities. Why You Don’t Get Snapchat Today snapchat is where twitter was back around '07 '08. And you’re in that familiar spot where you just don't get it. You probably first heard about Snapchat as a private messaging app that deleted your message after it was viewed. And of course this led to Snapchat becoming the poster child (app) for the sexting trend. This gave Snapchat a very dirty reputation. Then, in October 2013, Snapchat "got social" with Stories. Snapchat Stories Changed the Game Stories changed everything. Instead of messaging only one person at a time, you can now post to your Story and everyone that follows you is able to see your snaps. But each post is only viewable for 24hours, then it’s gone. That’s a pretty significant constraint if you’re uncomfortable having your creative work disappear 24hours after you’ve posted it. Learn to Accept Vertical Video Snapchat is also a vertical video medium. And, for many people, that is still just not acceptable. But you better get used to it. Some very creative snap chatters are already mastering the art of vertical video production. And most YouTube celebrities have already extended their brand into Snapchat. So, I think it's safe to say that we should stop judging vertical video so harshly. It's here to stay. Filters, Text, and Drawing in Snapchat And I can’t talk about snapchat without mentioning filters, text, and the drawing tool. These are the elements that set snapchat apart. And they are also what gives creatives the ability to add an artistic flare to their snaps. It’s more than just snapping a quick photo, or 10 second video. It’s about snapping just the right shot, in just the right way, so that you can creatively add these other elements. Just do a google search for best snapchat stories to get the idea. Relating Snapchat to L&D How does this relate to eLearning, or L&D, or corporate training? It doesn’t if you think snapchat will become your next authoring tool, or your next corporate social network. It’s not about the tool itself, but the trends it represents. Being creative within constraints is something people are getting comfortable with. And telling stories has been discussed in the L&D community for several years now. Surviving Disruption in L&D The disruption currently impacting L&D is about control, and relevance in the workplace. The industry struggles to find it’s place at a time when there is an abundance of content to learn from. And the workers of tomorrow are learning how to communicate in new ways today. The methods we created decades ago for L&D will not survive as they were. And if we are to better understand what is expected from future corporate learners, then we better learn to accept how they are learning to communicate and engage via technology. It’s not about supporting just training events, but instead supporting the entire learning process. It’s not hard to see how current social media trends might play in the future of L&D. Storytelling always has been, and always will be, an important factor in learning. With new technologies like Snapchat, we also need to stay open-minded about the possibilities presented to us within innovative technologies filled with constraints. Think Inside the Box What are the constraints that can lead to a more creative training organization? You know them already. They are the same constraints that you uncover every time you do an analysis of the content, audience, or context. What you are discovering are the constraints within which you create a learning experience. They create the box for you to think inside of… not outside. In the case of constraints you’re thinking inside the box. And that’s a good thing. Understanding the comfort your audience has for tools like Snapchat will give you insight into how our industry might be delivering content in the future. Training, Learning and Development L&D departments may be changing, but that doesn’t mean they are going away. Just because employees can communicate more efficiently and effectively than ever before doesn’t mean training isn’t necessary. New technologies always bring new challenges into businesses. And at the rate new technologies are growing, businesses are already falling behind. The L&D and training departments are uniquely positioned to bridge the skills gap. By offering learning content in newer formats, making them available on newer devices, and delivered at just the right time, we can become a critical part of the business again. The future is L&D’s for the taking. We can squander it wrestling with outdated methods, models, and tools, or we can embrace massive change, accept short term failures as we learn, and begin to accept training, learning and development as equals: One not better or worse than the other. As my friend and colleague Trish Uhl says, "Training is necessary, but not sufficient for learning." The post Snapchat: A Possible Future for Learning and Development appeared first on Litmos.

This article from HBR.org got me thinking more about how Training, Learning and Development fit into the future of work. Over the years there have been a few research organizations looking into the future of the workplace. But this particular look into the future comes from a unique perspective. The article is built upon the work of a consortium called CHREATE : "Important clues are emerging from a unique consortium of human resource executives and other leaders. They have gathered through CHREATE (the Global Consortium to Reimagine HR, Employment Alternatives, Talent, and the Enterprise) to map how organizations must evolve to meet future challenges, to identify pivotal initiatives to accelerate that evolution, and to design the actions needed to make the future a reality." They have identified 5 fundamental forces driving the changes in business organizations. I'll let you read the details if you are interested. Here is the list: Exponential Technology Change Social, Organizational Reconfiguration A Truly Connected World All-inclusive Talent Market Human-machine Collaboration I think all five of these forces have already been identified in other posts, forums, etc. And so, these feel self-explanatory to me. However, if you'd like to read more deeply into how the consortium views these driving forces, then navigate to the link above before continuing. The 4 Quadrants of the Future of Training, Learning and Development The part I find most interesting is their 4 quadrant depiction of the future. Along the x axis is Technical Empowerment from low to high. And on the y axis is the Democratization of Work from low to high. You can view the chart here. Democratization and Tech Empowerment are driving disruption in L&D [tweet this] We often talk about how technology is disrupting the world of corporate training, learning and development. And we also talk about how the internet has democratized...well... everything! And learning is certainly not exempt from the effects of either one. It very interesting to see how HR professionals collectively have integrated both trends into a picture of 4 different types of work environments. I think I've had experiences in all 4 to some extent. The HRB.org article does a great job of describing each of the 4 types from the level of the organization. What I'd like to do here is look at the same 4 types but directly how they relate to the work of Training and L&D organizations. The Current State of Training, Learning and Development I love that they put the current state of work as part of the future of work. I think that all too often we envision future states, or innovations, as eliminating the old state. In some case that may be true. But in the case of training, the classroom is here to stay despite futurists claiming the contrary back in the '90s. Many training departments are functioning quite well in their current state. And in larger companies, with L&D organizations, the status quo is getting the job done. There are plenty of reasons why they might want to transition to newer learning solutions, and some are doing exactly that. But they also have the luxury of a working system that keeps the business running while they experiment with newer, more innovative alternatives. The current state of training will absolutely continue into the future for some businesses. The Current State of the Turbo-charged Training, L&D Department This type of future training department seems to be the fastest growing from my perspective. Along the x axis of technology empowerment we are seeing many companies turn away from traditional LMS's and opting for easier, more flexible, and powerful, cloud-based LMSs, like Litmos. In some cases individual departments are taking ownership of their training by going rogue: Buying their own cloud-based LMS, despite the company having one of the larger more unmanageable legacy systems. Turbo-charging the training department with a tool like Litmos gives you the ability to automate much of your existing administrative work, continue to use current methods and models, but also enjoy the power of a platform being built for the future. The Reimagined Learning Department In this quadrant we see a high democratization of work. Training departments are experiencing this as well. The need for training continues to grow, and the current training design/development processes struggle to keep up. So many organizations, departments, teams, and individuals are taking matters into their own hands. Waiting for the L&D department, or training department to get the resources to fund your need is no longer an option. It's much easier to simply do the training yourself. It's easier than ever for individuals to share their knowledge and teach others what they know. We see it all over web sites like Youtube. Everyone has something they can teach others. And today, the technology exists to empower those motivated enough to just do it. The democratization of learning is a major disruptor and this type of workplace learning culture will begin to grow as the next generation moves into these jobs. Uber Learning and Development This quadrant is the holy grail we all seek. Today's futurists speaking at Training, Learning and Development events across the globe pontificate about this future. A future where everything is Uber-fied, robotized, and virtualized. This is also a future where we see a strong, independent learning culture fully matured. A learning culture where learning is simply part of the work, and everyone is self motivated to learn from, and teach, each other.  It sounds like a utopian workplace that may be unachievable. However, there are a few orgs very close to this future today.  This future still includes a Learning and Development organization but the role we play is dramatically different from what it is today. Just how dramatic that difference is remains to be seen. Perhaps is a new role as curator of content. Or maybe even our new authoring tools will include the ability to quickly create virtual reality learning experiences. It's possible. I've seen what can be done. We are not that far away from uber learning and development. What Quadrant is Your Training Department In? I'm sure you've been thinking about this question while reading. If not, then think about it for a moment. Where are you today? And which direction is your strategy taking you? Are you seeing more democratization, or tech empowerment, or both? I'd love to hear what you think. The post The Future of L&D in the New World of Work appeared first on Litmos.

Instructional Design has been in slow decline since 2005.   Why has the interest in instructional design declined over the last 12 years? Some say it's dead, others say it has evolved. But into what, nobody really knows. One thing is clear, the work we do as instructional designers has been disrupted. And there is no clear path to what is next. We hear about and discuss social learning, mobile learning, informal learning, and other terms. But the instructional design of these solutions is left out. Does that mean instructional design is no longer necessary? Do people just not care any more? Historical Perspective on Instructional Design There was a time when, training was requested, it meant classroom training because that was the only option. And there was a time before that when the school house was not quite so structured. During the industrial revolution we got really good at standardizing processes...for everything. So, of course, we defined processes and models for designing the perfect classroom learning experience. And then dispensed that template across the nation to every other school house. The school teacher was no longer on her own. He/she could simply acquire the curriculum on a particular subject. That came in the form of a student/teacher guide. And it was instructional designers who were needed to design those materials.  But then the digital revolution began. Instructional Design Status Quo Didn't Work Our first response was to pave the cow paths as the old saying goes. We used the same process for creating student/teacher guides and used it to create self-paced computer-based training. No teacher required. It has taken our industry a long time to realize that new processes would be required for this new delivery model. Not to mention the fact that we still need instructors. But that's another story. One might argue that the industry still hasn't accepted the new reality of 21st century learning. There is nothing in the legacy instructional design process about supporting learning as a long term process, or how to deal with mobile phones, or user-generated content. Legacy ID was "one and done". Build a course and deliver it...over and over. But in the digital age of "fail fast" and "the lean startup", one and done does not fly. Could this be why instructional design is no longer trending? The google trend graph for instructional design, the term and field of study, would seem to indicate that interest has declined steadily over the last 12 years. And while it looks to be flattening out, it is still trending downward. And that would seem counterintuitive given the massive amount of digital content being generated each day. At least a small portion of that content is designed specifically to be instructional. And that small portion is no doubt significantly greater than all of the published student/teacher guides combined to date. Oh and did I mention that the majority of that instructional content is NOT created by instructional designers? So how can we explain the decline of instructional design? The Mystery of Nothing Special Exposed Perhaps the magical mysterious processes behind the curtain of instructional design have been exposed as an elaborate ruse? It seems many have discovered that simply showing people how to do something is good enough. And even recording one's self explaining something also seems to be okay. And better yet, practicing and failing rounds out the magic of learning. Explaining. Showing. Doing.  These are powerful methods of instruction. But it doesn't take a Ph.D. in instructional design to recognize that. With the digital revolution we've seen the growth of tools allowing anyone to create content that explains and shows others something new. And the tools for creating simulated experiences are getting better and better. Could it be that specializing in the legacy process of instructional design, or the field of study, is simply not necessary? Or maybe just trending downward? The legacy version of instructional design is what we see declining in google trends. But the work of Training, Learning and Development, continues on and is more important than ever. Today we accept that any content capable of influencing the improvement of performance is valuable to the business. It doesn't need to be a course. And what we define as a course doesn't, and shouldn't, be what it's always been. Courses are still necessary, but not sufficient to support the long term process of learning. This is why the modular structure of course development within the Litmos LMS continues to be effective. A course can be whatever you want it to be. And anyone can upload content and publish a course. It's the democratization of course development and delivery. So while instructional design may be declining, course development is just starting to boom. Understanding the business that you work in and environment of the employees is not part of instructional design. It's part of the job. The job of helping the company succeed. And that means improving the performance of those who work in it. When you focus on that, there is no instructional design required. And that's why instructional design is no longer trending.   The post Why Instructional Design is No Longer Trending appeared first on Litmos.

It's official! Peyton Manning will be keynoting C3 this year. Peyton Manning is a five-time MVP in the NFL, two-time Superbowl champion, and the all-time leader in passing yards. And if you're new to American Football, that means he is one of the greatest team leaders in sports history. You probably heard his name mentioned frequently earlier this year as he played in the Super Bowl. You can read a lot more about him at the C3 Keynote Speaker page. C3 is targeted at all sales, marketing, learning and customer experience professionals. This mix of disciplines makes for a unique conference. As technology disrupts every industry, it also brings professionals from different departments closer together. Your work and your success is no longer measured by how well you perform your individual job, but also how well you help others perform at their jobs. Sales, marketing, learning, and customer experience rely on each other to make a successful business.  C3 offers you a unique opportunity to engage with those working in your field, but also with those outside your field needing your help. C3 is at the beautiful Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, May 9-11. Take this opportunity to learn from the successes and challenges of others, and share your experiences as well.  It's an event experience you won't forget! Register today!  The post Peyton Manning Announced as Keynote for C3 2016 appeared first on Litmos.

Recently our team went to the 2016 HIMSS Conference in sunny Las Vegas, although it has been quite a few years since I attended HIMSS, nothing could prepare me for the sheer volume of people I encountered. Not even Disney World spring break crowds could compare to the number of people wedged into the hallways of the Venetian Resort, everyone making their way, at a snail’s pace, towards the exhibit halls. That is no exaggeration. With 46,000 attendees and two exhibitor ballrooms separated by one long hallway, no one got anywhere very fast. As an exhibitor, it presented such a great opportunity to connect with an audience that was relatively new to us. Before traveling, I was quite smug with our booth placement, kitty corner from the "Cyber Security Command Center!" and in full view of an audience interested in information security. The map of the exhibit hall showed real promise, two large presentation stages, surrounded by seats for the potential attendees, and direct view of our booth. With a new library of Information Security course relevant to any Information Security department, we were in like Flynn! Finally, so it seemed, healthcare was taking the matter of cyber security seriously! Until they weren’t. Security is that item on the grocery list that never gets crossed off. Healthcare organizations know they are infamous for weak security protocols and for their valuable patient data, but they don’t seem to care. It seems despite the various acronyms after most attendee’s names, no one really understands how to fight the growing trend in healthcare breaches. Despite the lip service that was given regarding the "Cyber Security Command Center!" it was quite small and hidden away near the bathroom in the Sands Expo, not even close to the Venetian Ballroom, the hall that was considered the "main" ballroom. Regardless of the fact that 2015 had a record number of breaches and the number of compromised patient data reached into the millions, no one seemed alarmed. Budgets are tight and it seems that gambling that your data won’t be compromised is a safe bet. However, the house always wins! And in this case, the house is the data mining trolls. The investment in a platform that will protect your organizations data and the small cost of security training is far more affordable than the cost of even the smallest breach. A breach, which by the way now comes with civil suites and penalties and potential jail time, doesn’t seem worth the risk everyone seems willing to take. One exhibitor had a very clever setup, they drove in an actual Delorian into the exhibit hall, their booth personnel were dressed up in their best Marty McFly outfits and had Huey Lewis and the News’ song, Back in Time, blasting from a generous sound system. Let’s be real: Healthcare doesn’t need to go back in time because they haven’t moved into the future of information security yet. The post Healthcare Security: The Gushing Jugular appeared first on Litmos.

Powerpoint is one of the most popular business tools in use today. And when it comes to making presentations I'll just take a guess and say that it is number one. I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on that. But the point is that it's very popular, and useful. Nobody would use it if it wasn't meeting their needs. Classroom trainers use it for presentations. eLearning developers use it to storyboard. Rapid eLearning developers use powerpoint presentations as a good starting point. You can even use it to make images (.jpg) and movies. But it wasn't always embraced so openly by the designers and developers of computer-based training. It started as most software apps do with very humble beginnings. Now it's features are as complex as you need them to be. Some may say too complex. How does a simple slide show presentation system turn into the most used tool in corporate training? I only recently learned that Powerpoint didn't start out as powerpoint. It was originally called Presenter. And even more shocking than that, Presenter was developed for the Macintosh. I am joking of course. It's not that shocking. But as an open fan of all things Apple, it was an interesting little factoid. And that got me thinking about how it all started. These are my personal reflections on how I experienced Powerpoint during the birth of the computer-based training and development industry. HyperCard Starts the Race Towards Authoring There is a little more to the story of Powerpoint and it's connections with computer-based training authoring tools. In 1987 Apple launched a product called HyperCard. It was an amazing product for that time. People without any heavy programming skills could use HyperCard to produce interactive content. It was a huge success, and used in many different ways: Teachers built interactive educational applications, game designers built fantastic games like the legendary Myst, and it was used heavily as a presentation tool as well. But it was only available on the Macintosh. PCs were becoming deeply embedded into the enterprise and needed a similar tool. Microsoft acquired an application called Presenter that added the presentation element the corporate world needed. Powerpoint and Toolbook Cut From the Same Cloth Hypercard proved that authoring tools were useful and wanted. There was an undeniable need for interactive multimedia applications giving everyone the ability  to create programs. In 1990 Microsoft launched its first version of Presenter under the new brand Powerpoint. In the same year, former Microsoft founder Paul Allen founded a multimedia company called Asymetrix and launched their first product Toolbook. Toolbook used the book metaphor with pages, but there was no mistaking the similarities to Powerpoint: Pages, slides, same thing. Powerpoint and Toolbook may have shared a similar interface, but Toolbook was primarily built for authoring simple Windows based programs. This made it far more powerful than Powerpoint in so many ways. And made it more of a threat to Visual Basic than to Powerpoint. While HyperCard was launched the Mac authoring market, Toolbook gave PC users a chance to become program creators as well. And Powerpoint remained a humble presentation tool for delivering corporate presentations. CBT Development Grows and Leaves Powerpoint Behind The introduction of HyperCard stacks in schools led to its obvious use as a computer-based training development tool. And in my early days of graduate school Toolbook was often referred to as "the Windows version of HyperCard". Not everyone had Macintosh computers at work. In fact, very few did. But everyone had a Windows PC on their desk giving Toolbook a huge advantage in the corporate training market. And in 1994 Asymetrix released Toolbook 3.0: The CBT Edition. This was also influenced by other authoring tools growing in the market. But my early experiences presented CBT developers with two choices: Hypercard or Toolbook. Powerpoint was not only NOT an option, it was seen as the anti-CBT tool. It's uses were mostly limited to the board room, or the classroom based training room. It was the digital replacement for transparency projectors (Anyone remember printing "foils"?). If you were serious about creating self-paced computer-based training, Powerpoint was not even an option. It was the enemy: The epitome of old-school classroom training. And we were having none of that. Self-paced interactive multimedia computer-based training was the future. And we were all in. New Authoring Tools Push Powerpoint Aside And as I mentioned above, there were other authoring tools hitting the scene at about the same time. Authorware was founded in 1987 by Dr. Micheal Allen. Macromind Director 1.0 launched in 1988, but didn't become Macromedia Director until '93. And there were others. But my early career and experience with authoring was dominated by these major players. Authorware was an immediate hit quickly gaining 80% of the market in 3 years. However it suffered the Mac only syndrome, which obviously did not hinder it's growth. But in my experience, as an internal CBT developer, Mac only products were difficult to justify since PCs dominated the enterprise. Toolbook was PC only and similar to Powerpoint which reduced the learning curve. And being created for the PC made it easy for us to justify the purchase. While Powerpoint was pushed aside as a potential authoring tool it remained deeply embedded in the corporate culture. It was marginalized, but not dead. HyperCard, Toolbook, Authorware, Director, and a few others battled for the new and rapidly growing CBT development market. And Powerpoint was not in the mix. Powerpoint was pushed aside as an old product just for delivering presentations, and not useful in the coming eLearning revolution. But no matter how hard instructional designers and developers tried to ignore Powerpoint. It was hard to deny it's usefulness and its reach across a large population of professionals. It lacked the sexiness of the authoring tools that pushed it aside, but it survived, and has become the workhorse of the corporate training industry. In my next post I'll look back on what happened to authoring tools, and consider how Powerpoint finally became one of the cool kids. Don't forget to register for the C3 event with special guest keynoter Peyton Manning! The post Powerpoint in eLearning: Part 1- Presentation Pushed Aside by Authoring appeared first on Litmos.

The billing and collection staff in most healthcare organizations often suffer the highest rate of turnover, yet they are imperative to the continued operation of your business. These staff members, sometimes called the patient access staff, don’t always have the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships with your patients or interact in any way other than asking for payment. It's likely a safe assumption that most patients understand that they will have to pay for the services and care they receive. But imagine, just for a moment, that you are the patient and your physician told you that you have a cancerous tumor that has spread. What are you thinking about? Living or paying your $20 co-pay? This is the type of environment your patient access staff works in. They are looking at ICD-10 codes, attached to an account number, which is attached to a name, but they don’t have the opportunity to know the person at the other end of the name. They’re adding a straw to the camel’s back, maybe even the final straw. It’s no wonder the turnover is high. The healthcare environment is constantly changing and with that change brings higher patient responsibility (which translates into a bigger straw on the camel’s back). As an organization, you must adapt and be the "face" change. Regardless of your generation, it is imperative to recognize the importance of technology and the role it plays in the revenue cycle process. Analyze your organizational and patient needs and adapt the processes that will make you the most efficient. My chiropractor uses technology quite well and at a low cost to his one doc shop. Prior to a patient’s first appointment, his front end staff person verifies the benefits and communicates clearly to the patient what their responsibility will be at that first appointment. If a deductible is present and unmet, this person explains what the cost will be, as well as subsequent office visits until all deductibles are fulfilled. An automated appointment reminder is sent out 24 hours in advance, I opt in for a text message that allows me to create an appointment on my calendar if I forgot to do so at the office. Within the message, you will find all the information needed to cancel the appointment if necessary. At the visit, all fees are collected before you see the doctor and you can have your receipt emailed, texted or printed out. Automating the patient intake and billing process, allows his office staff to connect to patients on a more personal level when they arrive. They also have very few missed appointments or the need to collect on patient balances. What are the steps you can take to automate and create a smooth revenue cycle? Set a positive tone for the entire patient experience Complete the patient financial clearance process correctly Collect appropriate monies due at the time of service Assure that patients get to the right place with the right provider at the right time Find a third party vendor that can automate your needs Educate your staff on patient engagement and collections   Baylor All Saints of Fort Worth creates a career ladder approach for their revenue cycle (or patient access) staff. An employee starts by working in the support staff services, accessing data for management and all staff members. From that point, they progress into billing and balance adjudication or payment and adjustment posting. That position moves into the collections department, with a clear understanding of intake and billing, as well as patient payment expectations. The collections position, allows the staff member to work into contract compliance, transplant claims adjudication and customer service. Once this final step of the ladder is achieved, this same person can progress into management or director positions.* Baylor makes a position that many consider a dead end into a jumping off point, creating an employee that is well-versed in the revenue cycle process. Your front line staff is the face of your business and your billing and collection staff is the last memory. What picture are they painting of you? *Source: Strategies for a High Performance Revenue Cycle, HFMA The post Patient Access and the Revenue Cycle appeared first on Litmos.

In my previous post I reviewed the beginnings of Powerpoint in relation to Authoring tools. I wrote from my own perspective with the help of wikipedia. It was not intended to be a fully researched academic paper. The intent was to simply review my personal experiences in this industry and how I engaged with authoring tools a couple decades ago. If you missed it, you can read it here. In this post I'll extend those reflections into how Powerpoint got to where it is today. Not in the business or product sense. But as a tool in the Corporate Training industry. As I mentioned in the last post, Powerpoint was not a favored tool by anyone developing eLearning back in the '90s. It was the tool of classroom trainers, and not capable of doing the cool multimedia interactivity that authoring tools allowed us to do. We were all very excited to be able to create interactive programs as self-paced training courses. We all saw Computer-based Training (CBT) as the future. But despite being shunned by the CBT development crowd it was still in heavy use within corporations. There was no stopping the Microsoft Office juggernaut. Everyone working in an enterprise had access to Excel, Word, and Powerpoint. And everyone was creating presentations with Powerpoint. By the time the term CBT transitioned to "eLearning", Powerpoint had become the main format for any and all presentation requirements. And this included online training courses, and eLearning. Powerpoint may have been ignored by the eLearning development community but it was the tool of choice for everyone else required to teach something. Professionals vs Subject Matter Experts Once it became obvious that Powerpoint was not going away, the industry began to embrace it. We soon saw "rapid development" tools coming to market blending the basics functions of elearning authoring tools directly into Powerpoint as a plugin. We learned a lot during the early years of CBT development. Instructional designers were working with subject matter experts who delivered their content via Powerpoint. And developers loaded the Powerpoint content into authoring tools so they could add the interactive elements in the hopes of making the learning experience more engaging. This was a pattern that emerged over time and became a common process for developing eLearning. Understanding the relationship between the SME and instructional designer/developer got everyone thinking about options. Why not let the SMEs create their own eLearning courses? And if we wanted to allow them to do that, what would be the easiest way to help them get it done. The answer was simple. Start with Powerpoint. It was the perfect starting point because everyone knows how to use Powerpoint. The next step was a little more complicated. How do we make it easy for non-developers to develop eLearning courses with the same interactivity from their Powerpoint content? And the answer came in rapid development tools that embedded advanced development features into Powerpoint. It worked for a long time, but not everyone was happy about it. Instructional design professionals balked at the idea of letting SMEs create their own courses. The concern was based on the idea that SMEs don't understand instructional design. And that anything they create is just information, or an interactive communication. The instructional design magic had not been properly applied. This is a battle that plays on today, with both training professionals and SMEs actively creating course content. Personally, it's something okay with. In fact I actively encourage it. There is a time a place for both. The Cloud Rolled In Rapid development meant publishing Powerpoint based courses as SCORM files which were then uploaded into learning management systems. It didn't matter who was creating the SCORM files at this point. SCORM had become the most popular standard for self-paced eLearning courses. And learning management systems were built to manage their distribution. Early LMSs managed courses only if they were in a pre-defined format like AICC, SCORM, or others. And that was your only option. Because back then training was packaged as a course. And a course meant having all the elements wrapped up into one package. But cloud-based LMSs were born and changed everything. The introduction of cloud computing opened up many opportunities. Soon systems from all industries began moving to the cloud. And so did LMSs. Litmos was one of the first cloud-based LMSs to launch and disrupt the LMS market. But this was also a time when YouTube and other self-publishing platforms were being born in the cloud. This opened the flood gates of massive content creation. Massive content creation that included instructional content being created by NON-instructional designers. And while YouTube dominated the video publishing market another cloud based system launched called slideshare. Slideshare gave creators of presentations a place to share their Powerpoint content. And the story goes on with content publishing in all media becoming easier and easier. These cloud-based tool made it okay for anyone to produce and publish instructional content. And idea is now spreading into the enterprise. Powerpoint is Still The Most Popular Training Tool Today Powerpoint is no longer as openly hated as it used to be. Yes, like any other tool, it gets misused. But that's not Powerpoint's fault. Powerpoint is used by many instructional designers for storyboarding their elearning projects. The slide sort view makes it easy to rearrange slides as needed, and since Powerpoint is known by all, it makes the review process flow more smoothly. Powerpoint is useful as a starting point. All content can be useful as learning content to someone. Starting an online course with just a simple powerpoint is now part of an iterative development process for many. It's a modular approach to course development that allows rapid prototyping, rapid development, rapid feedback loops, and immediate value added to the business. Powerpoint is one of the cool kids now. It is used as both a design and development tool. And without the need for an authoring tool acting as the middle man you can upload your .ppt file directly into the Powerpoint module of Litmos. Then you can add quiz modules before and/or after it as well as adding modules for many other media types. There is still a time and a place for more powerful authoring tools, but necessity is gone. Powerpoint was born with the authoring tools and moved through some transitions over the years, but has stayed a strong, valuable tool, for corporate training professionals. With Powerpoint and a cloud-based LMS like Litmos you've got everything you need to start a powerful training program. The post Powerpoint in eLearning: Part 2 - PPT Becomes Critical App in Course Development appeared first on Litmos.

As you may know, there are more than a few federal agencies that impact HIPAA and its compliance. Two or the most important are the Office for Civil Rights, known by its acronym OCR, and The Office of the National Coordinator, its acronym is ONC. OCR writes and enforces the HIPAA Privacy, Security and Breach Notification Rule. OCR is also responsible, along with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), for the Meaningful Use Rules and Standards. One of the major things that meaningful use is about is gaining more "real" interoperability between and amongst the electronic records and there systems, ePHI, that is still distributed in SILOS across the healthcare industry! Until February 2016 the HIPAA guidance on privacy, security and breach notification was all written and posed ONLY by OCR. Last month ONC posted four very good blogs on HIPAA compliance as it relates to Meaningful Use. Remember, all three stages of Meaningful Use require the providers and hospitals that have received or will receive EHR $$$$ must do HIPAA compliance not only within the HIPAA Rules and the Meaningful Use Rules. The blogs, in order of publication, are: Blog post 1: The Real HIPAA Supports Interoperability Blog post 2: Permitted Uses and Disclosures Blog post 3: Care Coordination, Care Planning, and Case Management Examples Blog post 4: The Real HIPAA: Quality Assessment/Quality Improvement and Population-Based Activities Examples All four blogs include practical and real life examples, figures and rule citations. Plus, they are written in understandable words and terms, not in either legalese or technical-ese. The interoperability blog includes information in the following areas: For Healthcare Operations Case management ACOs, and Population-based activities For Treatment Hospital and treating physician Physician and care planner, and Hospital to hospital transfer The permitted uses and disclosures blog deals with the Privacy Rule requirements and the sharing of PHI and ePHI in the new digital environment, including: Quality assessment and improvement activities Patient safety Reviewing healthcare professional qualifications Evaluating provider and health plan performance, and more In the third blog about care coordination, planning and management are excellent diagrams, and well as information for: Provider care coordination Provider care planning, and Case management The last blog addresses population-based activities, including, within and through: HIE ACO, and With multiple-provider quality assessment activities All of the information within the blogs is very good information for any provider, health plan, clearing house or business associate to use as both training material, and to augment your organization’s current HIPAA documentation. The post ALPHABET SOUP and HIPAA Compliance appeared first on Litmos.

Text is a very interesting medium. But I don't think we give it enough credit. Text is the starting point of every project. A simple .txt file can be read/imported into just about every software system and application that exists. HTML is the foundation of the internet we know today. And writing those .html files can be done in a simple text editor. Text a digital medium is a powerhouse. The many uses of text are obvious but let's review a few. We write down our thoughts using text in journals. We blog our ideas using text. Movies begin as scripts using text. Products are described and sold to us using text. It's the fastest way to express ideas and have those ideas consumed and potentially understood. Because everyone knows how to read and write text. Some better than others, but quality aside for now. I have no data but I would argue that text is the most used medium. A recent conversation on blab.im got me thinking about text because Anthony Altieri mentioned a few text editors as his favorite tools for creating learning content. This was intriguing to hear. I understood where he was coming from, but also know that so many eLearning developers lack the basic understanding of text.†Or maybe it's the intermediate level of understanding that is required? I'm not sure. But I do know that most don't remember a time before WYSIWYG. And definitely not a time before browser based text editors with formatting capabilities. †Let's start with the basics and I'll look to this blog's audience to continue the conversation and discover how important text may or may not be.   The Simple Text File .txt In the digital world the most common text file format is not .doc. Text in its purest form is saved in the simple, yet handy, .txt format. You may have heard your geeky programmer friends refer to it as a "flatfile". And at this point I'll confess that it can get much more complicated than our purposes require. If you want to deep dive into the nuances of text files, text formats, and plain text, I'll direct you to the wikipedia entry here. In our work text files come in handy for transferring data from one system to the next, or storing scoring, and other user data on their drives or other external system. Text files hold no formatting. These days imported text files are always treated to some sort of formatting or other conversion process. You may never see plain text in all of yours as an elearning developer, but you would be doing yourself a favor to learn more about this powerful and underutilized file format. The Lowly Text Editor Text editors are the very plain uninteresting applications that come preloaded on every computer. You may have used a text editor thinking it could do the things MS Word can do. But shut it down on discovering how few features are available. But those who use text editors on a regular basis love how fast they load, and how responsive they are. †The simplicity is what makes them so powerful if you learn to use them effectively. For a long list of text editors check out this page. You will likely recognize notepad and textedit. I only recognized 3 or 4 others from the list. HTML: Hyper TEXT Markup Language Most non-techie types would probably be shocked to know that the entire internet is built on a simple text based protocol. There is more to understanding HTML than merely understanding how to use text. However, it's a lot more accessible than trying to communicate with ones and zeros. HTML is text based and uses tags to describe how content should be displayed within the browser. But I'm certainly not the expert on all of technical details of HTML. Wikipedia explains HTML elements this way: HTML elements form the building blocks of HTML pages. HTML allows images and other objects to be embedded and it can be used to createinteractive forms. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists,links, quotes and other items. HTML elements are delineated by tags, written using angle brackets. Tags such as <img /> and <input />introduce content into the page directly. Others such as <p>...</p> surround and provide information about document text and may include other tags as sub-elements. Browsers do not display the HTML tags, but use them to interpret the content of the page. That may not mean anything to you. But if it does, you'll know if you need to learn more or not. Over the years rapid development tools with wysiwyg editors have mostly removed†the need for understanding web pages at this level. But like anything else, a little extra knowledge can go a long way. As an eLearning professional, should you get familiar with a text editor? I would say absolutely. But how deeply you dive into it is the next question. You can greatly increase your development time even if you use an authoring tool. Most authoring tools now export to an HTML5 format. And knowing how to view that output in a text editor will come in handy some day. I can almost guarantee it.   The post What You Don't Know about Text Limits Your eLearning Development appeared first on Litmos.

Today on L&D Talk we had a great conversation about modular training course design and development. We covered the concern of consistency in modular design as well as wondering if consistency is even important. The issue of a complete course in one package versus a modular design covers a lot of territory. We didn't cover it all in this blab session but it was a fun conversation. Check it out and let us know what you think. If you want to hear more about modular course design I'll be presenting a webinar†titled The Power of Modular Course Design. And if you will be attending ATD 2016 you can dive even deeper with me and your learning colleagues at†my session. Litmos was designed with a modular course structure at its core. Its been a revolutionary approach to instructional design that many organizations are embracing around the world. And don't forget to register for C3 in Las Vegas, May 9-11. Customers and industries professionals will be learning together and building the future of learning on the Litmos platform. You won't want to miss it. Peyton Manning will be the featured special keynote. Register today!† The post VIDEO: L&D Talk - Modular Training Course Design appeared first on Litmos.

Video is a hot topic in the eLearning industry. Not because it's an effective learning medium, because most will tell it isn't. And not because user generated videos are so popular, because most will tell they aren't instructionally sound. And not because video cheaper and easier to use than ever before, because many will tell you it isn't. Video is hot because it's disrupting everything we thought we knew about using video as a tool for learning. It's disrupting everything because it's everywhere! It's hard to find any social media site or app that doesn't allow for simple video publishing. YouTube made self publishing video popular 10 years ago, and now, true to form, the elearning industry is finally coming around to embrace it. But what is it about video now that makes it more popular than before? There probably isn't one single element, but more of a perfect storm of technologies combining to improve the video production, publishing, and viewing experience. Mobile Devices for eLearning Cameras on smartphones quickly became popular. Many image sharing apps like Flickr.com began to pop up supporting the sharing of mobile photography. But the original resolutions were low by today's standards. And that meant video did not look good at all. But it didn't take long for resolutions to increase and people began using their mobile devices as their primary picture taking device. Social Media Learning Apps Social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Vine, and so many others have quickly taken advantage of video publishing. And the newest social media sensation, Snapchat, is even making it cool to shoot vertical video. I never thought I'd see that day. Cloud Services Driving eLearning Change Cloud technologies have come together to connect the final pieces of this tech ecosystem. It's sort of the glue that holds together and connects Social media platforms with devices. The cloud has disrupted many industries already and it is still in it's infancy. We are only just beginning to use the cloud to connect everyone and everything. Online Streaming Disrupting Everything It's one thing to record a video and upload it to the cloud via your mobile phone. But live streaming video within an app has taken video to a completely new level. Apps like Periscope, YouNow, Facebook Live, and blab.im make streaming live video quick and easy. They even include chat capabilities or even collaborative streaming. The eLearning industry has never had these technologies in the hands of users before. It should be completely disrupting our strategies and plans for the future of our training solutions. But somehow we ignore them or discount their importance to learning. We are so busy building SCORM packages that we forget how a simple modular structure to course creation and delivery can utilize video in so many simple ways. Litmos customers are already taking advantage of video and a modular design structure. But soon training departments will have no choice but to change. I'd like to help make that change less painful. Our industry needs a wake up call. Join me on Fridays 8am PT on blab.im for L&D Talk: Video Friday. Me and my cohost Sam Rogers (@snapsynapse) will be guiding the conversations on how video is being used in Training, Learning and Development. Here's a sample from today's session: The post Videos in Modular Training Course Design appeared first on Litmos.

One of the recent innovations in the training industry has come through the use of social technologies to support informal learning: organizations have experimented with Twitter, in particular, to increase employee awareness of when and where eLearning content is available for them. Others have tried to bring social networks to their organizations to connect learners to experts and content. However, in most of these projects, the Learning Management System (LMS) where much of the content is located, has remained outside of the social environment, and learners have had to navigate their way to it, leaving behind their social feeds and connections. The two areas exist in isolation and so much benefit is lost as a result. Why Is It Important? Harnessing social learning is important because employees attain useful knowledge about how to do their jobs from other employees and experts in their organization, and much of this is transferred in social learning moments. So delivering this successfully is one of the key goals for organizations in the next few years. eFrontPro For Connections Epignosis, the makers of eFrontPro, have recently developed an integration to the world’s leading Enterprise Social Network (ESN), called eFrontPro For IBM Connections, that now delivers truly connected social learning. Learners can see their training catalog and subscribe for courses and training events without leaving their social workplace. They can create and share content with their colleagues in communities around specific areas of interest, and managers can assign content they consider relevant to their team members. The learner will also receive notifications about their training directly in the IBM Connections social feed, for example, notifying them that a training certificate is about to expire, or that they have been registered in a training course by their manager. Tests, assessments and surveys can be conducted and results are tracked and monitored for performance improvement discussions in the Learner Record Store. Baseline testing can be used to identify gaps in the employee’s knowledge and then the appropriate course or content can be served up automatically for the employee to take. Self-service learning is one of the principles behind the development and with this integration employees can manage their training needs in the same place they have email, calendar and social connections. Why Integrate? The reason behind this integration is to empower the employee to take control of their training needs from within their social workplace and to deliver a richer training experience. The employee can collaborate with other employees in learning communities, where they can see training course and content recommendations and decide to register themselves based on their colleagues’ comments. But, managers can also take part by assigning online courses and content, or classroom-based training, or perhaps schedule an online training session. There are many things the employee can now do to enrich their training and the best part is that they can do it without having to leave their social workplace. Status and Gamification EfrontPro delivers a dashboard within IBM Connections so that employees can see the status of each of their courses. At a glance, employees can see which courses are left to be completed, which ones are done, and if Gamification is enabled, they can see how they compare to other employees in the organization. This fosters competition and leads to better performance, in most cases. On The Go? Many employees now travel extensively to do their jobs. Whether it is on a commute, or to another part of the country, or internationally, most employees now work on their mobile device more than on a PC. EfrontPro delivers courses and content to the learner on any device wherever they are, and whether they are connected to the internet, or not. Online and Offline mobile training is a reality with the responsive design capability that ensures the learner sees the course or content exactly as it should be, and with the download option that allows a course or content to be downloaded directly to the learner’s mobile device for when they are offline. And because the learner is using their browser, all the functionality of eFrontPro for IBM Connections is available while they are online. Don’t Have IBM Connections? Don’t worry. If you aren’t using a social network at your organization this can be provided for you as part of the overall solution. We have many IBM Partners who work with us to deliver eFrontPro For IBM Connections. If you use a different social network there is still no need to worry. EfrontPro can probably be integrated to your social network directly to ensure you receive all the benefits of social learning. This is one of the strengths of the product. Contact us for a discussion about how we could help. Summary eFrontPro For IBM Connections makes social learning a reality for organizations today. Further development will continue to ensure greater enhancements to this exciting new solution. This is one of the great futures for our industry being delivered today and bringing the benefits of leveraging the expertise and knowledge in your organization for the improvement of other employees’ performance. If you’d like to see how this could help your organization why not schedule a demonstration or appointment with one of our Value Added Resellers in your country? For further information just contact us. The post eFrontPro For IBM Connections appeared first on eFront Blog.