I've received very positive feedback and lots of good ideas on the concept of having a combined calendar of Free Webinars. The really nice thing about the way Jon Udell has set up his elmcity project (the system we are using) is that it acts a lot like social curation on RSS sources as provided by Browse My Stuff, but brings together designated calendars instead of blogs or other RSS sources.In English, that means that we can have many different people each own their separate calendar and we can bring it together.The initial list of calendar entries, we added ourselves. But I'm pleased to announce that we've just signed up our second calendar curator - Coaching Ourselves. Their events are now appearing in the listings:Free eLearning WebinarsFor now you won't be able to necessarily distinguish the source, but we will work on exposing that in the future. One of the recommendations we've already received.It is exactly because we can distribute the load of keeping this list current that makes me think this will work really well in the long run.If you are doing webinars that would be of interest to workplace learning professionals, please contact me: akarrer@techempower.com. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording at HR.com.       Try out BizLibrary's Online Library! BizLibrary provides 10,000+ training videos and eLearning courses in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.   How to Measure the Impact of Employee Soft Skills Training We know great "people skills" when we see them or experience them. However, soft skills don’t always lend themselves to easy measurement for excellence. Measure the business impact . . . Well, that’s just not something the ROI and traditional approaches to training investment don’t really help us do very effectively unless we dig deeper. Start measuring your soft skills training and download this eBook today.

by Jennie Ruby  If you've taken any of our Adobe Captivate, Adobe Presenter, or Articulate Storyline classes, you are probably aware that these programs provide a selection of screen characters--cut-out pictures of professional actors in business, medical, or business-casual clothing posed as if they are talking to you. They are intended for use as a kind of avatar of the trainer. There is research that shows that using a screen character as a pedagogical agent or learning coach, who speaks informally and appears to be giving the lesson, increases learning. (My reference for this is Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer, eLearning and the Science of Instruction.)Over the past few weeks, I've had multiple students ask how hard it would be to use themselves as the learning coach. Believe it or not, becoming a pedagogical agent is easier than you think.   Put Your Picture into the Lesson. Place a professional head shot of yourself, your trainer, or expert on the introductory slide (including job title, credentials, etc.), and then have that individual record the audio narration for the project.   Create your own screen characters. Photograph your expert on a green screen background for a full set of screen characters in various poses. The IconLogic Blog has a whole series of articles on how to do this:   Green Screen Part I Green Screen Part II Green Screen Part III Green Screen Part IV   Create cartoons of yourself or your in-house experts. You can use the images over and over in on-going training videos. Here is one article to get you started: Using Bitstrips Characters. If you don't have specific, known individuals in your company to act as your learning coaches, you are not stuck with the same four or five actors that come with your software. You can purchase additional screen characters from The eLearning Brothers. Or you can just make good use of some inexpensive clip art. By trimming out the background in ordinary office photographs, you can get some nice effects.   Whether you use generic actors or your own home-grown experts, screen characters are an excellent way to add the personalization, engagement, and local feel that will bring your eLearning to the next level.   Once you have your screen characters, how do you know what to make them say? Join me for an afternoon mini course on writing voiceovers to find out.

Did you ever do something and know right away that what you’re doing is a mistake? Then did you do it again later? If you’re normal (and being honest with yourself) the answer is almost certainly, "Yes." New manager and new supervisor development and training is usually like this. We know that promoting our top performers to manager roles is usually a mistake. Admit it - go ahead. You know it’s true! The skills and competencies, traits and behaviors that come together in great individual contributors don’t always match what we need in great managers. So why do organizations insist, over and over and over again in following this pattern of career advancement for our top performers? I don’t have a good answer. If I did, I’d write a book about it! However, I think I have an answer - but truthfully, it’s not a "good" one. And the answer is: Most organizations promote top performers to manager or supervisory roles because that’s what we’ve always done. Really - I don’t believe the reason is any more complex than that. I don’t think organizations deliberately put their best employees in very difficult situations, but approaching this important stage of career advancement without providing the training and education these employees need isn’t really fair. We’re just lucky so many of these great employees end up doing well on their own! We don’t have to keep promoting people into roles for which we didn’t prepare them. But there is a solution. First, we have to promote the right people for the right reasons. Second, we have to train our newly promoted managers on the skills and competencies they need AS managers. Finally, we have to prepare the people to whom these newly promoted managers report to support their ongoing professional and personal development. This moment in these valued employees’ career should be a time of excitement and a time when we set them up for success. Let’s not just assume they will find a way on their own to be successful. Let’s set these employees up for success by planning for it! SELECTION The skills needed to successfully manage others are rarely the same skills people need to be high performers as individual contributors. That’s why well-designed succession planning and high potential development programs are so important. Find people in your organization with the traits, motivation and potential to succeed in more complex roles. Nurture those skills and find ways to tap into their potential. The key is to look for people with the ability to manage others. Generally, this means you need people who are motivated by the success of others, who possess good listening skills, who know how to communicate and build trust and who understand the basics of employee engagement and motivation. TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT The transition from individual contributor to manager or supervisor is really more of a transformation along a person’s professional career. Sadly, it’s a transformation many managers fail to make, and it’s not always the fault of the manager. We just don’t do a good enough job preparing them for the job of managing others before we promote them, and we frequently don’t do enough training after we’ve promoted them, either. Some suggested competency areas to carefully consider for training and development include: Delegation Problem solving Active listening Communication And the biggest single area of development ought to be emotional intelligence . This single competency can be the difference between a high performing manager and failure. But don’t neglect the foundational management and supervisory skills either. In the end, a manager’s job is a complex blend of leadership and management. Newly promoted managers need training and development to navigate the demands of their new roles. MANAGER SUPPORT One of the main reasons any training or development initiative stalls or fails is the lack of manager support. In other words, for the training of newly promoted managers and supervisors to succeed, we have to make sure we prepare the managers’ manager to fully support the development plans we have for these important high potential employees. Some specific examples include teaching all of our managers how to incorporate learning opportunities into the day-to-day routines and conversations around the workplace. We all learn best when we apply what we are learning to actual job challenges, and we need to ensure that each and every manager knows how to fully support this aspect of our development efforts. LAST WORD If you want to learn a little more, let we recommend this 12 part New Supervisor series. Here is a preview: To try this New Supervisor Series and more, start a free 30-day trial!

by Sean Stoker   In our own, considered, humble opinion, we have an awesome blog that every eLearning professional should read.But sometimes we like to see what our colleagues are doing, which means taking a look at the multitude of eLearning knowledge that exists all over the web. Here are a few blogs that you simply must bookmark and read on a consistent basis: eLearning Industry. This website publishes original eLearning content with 360 authors and more than 90 original articles published per month. The eLearning Coach. Instructional design know-how from a highly experienced eLearning guru, Connie Malamed. E-Learning Provocateur. E-Learning Provocateur is the brainchild of Ryan Tracey, a member of eLearn Magazine's editorial board. Tracey hopes to "provoke deeper thinking" in the world of eLearning. Cathy Moore. Cathy Moore is an impassioned advocate for interesting and stimulating eLearning. As a speaker and adviser she is in very high demand, and her impressive resume includes companies such as Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, FedEx, and even the American Government, amongst a multitude of others. E-Learning 24/7 Blog. Blogger Craig Weiss was recently named the most influential person in the eLearning industry. He is an expert on Learning Management Systems and a well-known public speaker. OpenSesame. OpenSesame is a unique website that allows for easy buying and selling of eLearning Courses. The Learning Generalist. Written by Sumeet Moghe of Thoughtworks Technologies Pune. Social Learning Blog. An industry blog brought to you by LMS giant Interactyx. Upside Learning. One of the most socially shared eLearning blogs on the internet. Technology Enhanced Learning Blog. By David Hopkins, the 2014 ALTC Learning Technologist of the Year. Learning Solutions Magazine. The eLearning Guild's publication, boasting more than 1000 articles since 2002. Rapid eLearning Blog. By Tom Kuhlman, an eLearning pro with two decades of experience. I Came, I Saw, I Learned. An informative blog about the software and design side of things from IconLogic. Allison Rossett. A blog hosted by Dr. Allison Rosset, an eLearning expert and professor of Educational Technology at San Diego State University. The Spicy Learning Blog. "The Spicy Learning Blog" is posted by Saffron Interactive, Europe's prolific eLearning organization. Kasper Spiro. From the mind of Kasper Spiro, CEO of easygenerator. Docebo E-Learning Blog. A blog created by Docebo, one of the Top Ten Learning Management Systems of 2015. LMS Blog. Insider knowledge from the respected LMS, Latitude Learning. E-Learning Acupuncture. An eLearning blog created by accomplished scientist and Educational Developer at Queen's University, Eric Tremblay. E-Learning Academy. Tips from e-coach Alison Bickford. Is there a blog you would like to add to this list? Feel free to name your go-to blog in as a comment below. *** Looking to learn to create your own eLearning? We offer several live, online classes that'll get you up and running in no time. Classes range from 3-hour mini courses to full-day, multi-day events.

In the T+D article Learning Gets Social, Tony Bingham paraphrases something I said: In the May issue of T+D, Tony Karrer, an e-learning technologist and CEO of TechEmpower, encouraged companies to start adapting to the current trend in informal learning because otherwise, they will find themselves marginalized in the business. I thought it would be good for me to put some context around what I meant by this.  Especially given that there's been some push-back on the term "marginalized." In the Business of Learning, I pointed out that there were some pretty significant questions facing the training industry.  Budgets have been hammered this year, and there's a question as to what spending levels will look like going forward.  During the Free Online Conference - Future of Learning we heard different perspectives.  Skill Building Still in Demand.  There was definitely the belief that there are continued need for skills development.  If anything, there is increased need. Catalogs / Courses Commoditization.  At the same time, the business of selling a catalog of courses is seen as being tough going forward.  Unless you do something to differentiate yourself in a real way, you will be more and more of a commodity. Many Ways to Differentiate.  We heard several people talking about focus on performance.  We heard about use of assessments.  There was discussion about a lot of the things that need to happen outside the training event. While there are great content vendors out there, I really didn't hear anyone who was claiming that being a content vendor was a great business right now.  Instead, they talked about other kinds of things that would differentiate them in the marketplace. I believe the same thing is true for internal learning and development organizations.  If you are seen as being the place you go for training / content production, there will still be need for your work, but it will be under greater pressure, just like external training suppliers. There are some other big picture trends going on that have impact on this: Faster pace Greater focus and value on high end concept work  Job fragmentation - fewer people in any single job role Shorter job tenure These pressures suggest that there are greatly increased learning needs within organizations.  However, less of these learning needs will be successfully met by traditional methods.  If you look at what makes a good situation for formal learning: Large Audience Similar Level / Needs Known, Stable Content Few Out of Bounds Cases Of course, these are almost the opposite of the trends I mentioned.  So, while formal learning solutions will make a portion of how learning will occur, the increased demand for learning will be met through other forms. This leaves us with the questions: What the role of learning and development relative to all of this? If L&D leadership chooses to focus primarily on traditional methods and less so on informal learning opportunities, will they be marginalized in the business. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording. Webinar handouts: Customer Experience Strategy and Core Values Development Plan Performance Management Competencies     Try out BizLibrary's Online Library! BizLibrary provides 10,000+ training videos and eLearning courses in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.   How to Measure the Impact of Employee Soft Skills Training We know great "people skills" when we see them or experience them. However, soft skills don’t always lend themselves to easy measurement for excellence. Measure the business impact . . . Well, that’s just not something the ROI and traditional approaches to training investment don’t really help us do very effectively unless we dig deeper. Start measuring your soft skills training and download this eBook today.

by Mira Rubin   If you've spent any amount of time working with Adobe InDesign, you probably know how to create Paragraph and Character styles. Nested styles take Paragraph styles to a whole new level with complex formatting you can apply with the click of a button. Nested styles are ideal when the paragraphs being formatted follow a consistent pattern such as entries in a catalog, directory, or bibliography. Let's take the example of a contact list, where each entry is a paragraph with the following elements in common: Last name, First name: (Phone Number Exchange) Phone Number   In this example, the paragraph structure is an assemblage of modules separated by markers--the comma between last name and first name, the colon before the phone number and the parentheses around the number exchange. You can apply different formatting to the modules using the markers as transition points. The trick to nested styles is to first create character styles that capture the variations in formatting. The character styles are then assembled to build a super smart paragraph style.   The example we'll use employs four variations in formatting. The phone number itself will be captured in the foundation paragraph style and the other three formats will be captured as character styles.       To begin, set up the paragraph so the last name, first name, number exchange and phone number all have distinct formatting. Be sure to include the comma, the colon, and the parentheses around the phone number exchange.With the Type Tool cursor positioned in the last name, choose Window > Styles > Character Styles. When the panel opens, hold the Alt key (Windows)/Option key (Mac) and click the Create new style button at the bottom of the panel. When the New Character Style dialog opens, name the style lastName. Notice the summary of formatting properties in the Style Settings section of the dialog. Click OK to close the dialog.Repeat the process and create character styles that capture the formatting of the last name and the phone number exchange (name the styles accordingly). Now comes the fun part--assembling the paragraph style from the character style components.Because InDesign captures paragraph properties from the formatting of the text at the cursor location, position the Type Tool cursor in the main phone number text. Choose Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles and, when the panel opens, Alt+Click/Option+Click the Create new paragraph style button at the bottom of the panel. Name the style listing.Click the Drop Caps and Nested Styles category at the left of the New Paragraph Style dialog to display the nested styles options.Click the New Nested Style button, then click the drop-down menu to the right of the word None in the first text field. Choose lastName from the list of character styles.You want the last name and the comma following it to have the same formatting so, ensure that through is selected in the second column of options.Select the word Words in the third column, and press the comma key on your keyboard to enter the comma as the delimiter.Click the New Nested Style button again, this time assigning the firstName style and a colon as the delimiter.Click the New Nested Style button a third and final time and assign the exchange style with a closing parenthesis as the delimiter. (Click OK to complete the style and close the dialog.) To use the style, select the paragraphs you want to format and click the style name in the Paragraph Styles panel.Whether it be one paragraph or a thousand, as long as the paragraphs in your document are uniformly structured, nested styles make it possible to apply complex formatting reliably and consistently at the click of a button.   *** Looking to learn Adobe InDesign? Check out these live, online classes.

I'm looking to find lots of examples of where informal or social learning has been used successfully in the workplace and where it was led by the L&D organization. This can either be already written up, or it can be the name of a person and organization where it was done.Can you provide me pointers?If you would be more comfortable, feel free to send me information via an email: akarrer@techempower.com. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

by Kevin Siegel Last week I taught you how easy it is add a hyperlink to caption text in Adobe Captivate. This week, let's tackle object hyperlinks. First of all, keep in mind that any interactive object can take a learner to a website. Interactive objects include, but aren't limited to, click boxes, buttons, text entry boxes, and smart shapes (assuming the smart shape is being used as a button).To insert an interactive object, click Interactions on the Main toolbar. In this example, I'm going to use a Button.   With the object selected, go to the Properties Inspector and select the Actions tab. From the On Success drop-down menu, choose Open URL or file.Select Web Page from the Link To drop-down menu and then type in the web address. And just like I mentioned last week when creating a text hyperlink, prior to clicking the OK button, visit the drop-down menu to the right of the web address. Select New from the list of options. (This will ensure that the page that appears after the learner clicks is a new page or tab, rather than a page that replaces the current lesson.)   When viewed via a web browser or a PDF, the learner will be taken to the web address you specified in the Link To area if the interactive object is clicked.***  If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you. 

This is an area of employee development most organizations invest time and energy in just about every year. It’s important, and it’s relevant. It’s also evolving, and therein lies the issue with most leadership development programs. Many programs are not evolving with changing market conditions and the changing needs of organizations. Here are some questions to ask about your current leadership development program as a check list: Have you reevaluated your leadership competencies in the last 6-12 months? Have you performed a SWOT analysis to test whether your current leadership’s capabilities are effectively addressing organizational strengths and weaknesses? Have you performed a SWOT analysis to test whether your have necessary future leadership capabilities to effectively addressing organizational opportunities and threats? Is your organization agile and adaptable enough to address rapidly changing competitive challenges or product innovations? Has your organization introduced innovative new products or services in the last 12 months? Would you describe collaboration AND innovation as organization strengths today? If you answered "no" to three or more of these questions, you might need to reevaluate the current state of your leadership development efforts. In today’s rapidly evolving, complex and highly ambiguous business environment, organizations should be looking to increase their capacity for improvement, learning and change as competitive differentiators. Leaders - both current and future - will be critical in all of our organizations’ success in improving on these important organizational competencies.     Try out BizLibrary's Online Library! BizLibrary provides 10,000+ training videos and eLearning courses in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.

by Jennie Ruby Right at a time when flat design has become the rage, removing the three-dimensional look that for 30 years (happy anniversary to Windows this November!) has informed us that "this thing looks like you can poke it in! It must be a button!" people are starting to worry and become uncertain about the clear vocabulary that has helped us to write about software and computers for just as long. In a recent class I had one participant tell me her office has forbidden the word "click" in favor of "select." Another told me that her office had done just the opposite! The two concerns in question are whether the word "click" loses its meaning on mobile devices, and whether the word "click" is exclusionary toward individuals with disabilities or different abilities. The good news is that using the word "click" is not ableist, nor is it declaring the hegemony of mouse users over mobile device users. It is just the standard word in technical communications to indicate "execute," on certain kinds of interactive items on screens. In other words, "click" means "hey you, button, do that thing you do." The button, as with so many things in the computer realm, is an analogy to real-world little pokable nubbins that make things happen on electric devices from vacuum-cleaners to doorbells. Even real-world buttons have undergone some changes in the ways people use them. The buttons on my microwave and stove are now flat to the surface and covered with a plastic sheet so that spaghetti sauce and porkchop grease can't get in and ruin the mechanism. But you still actuate them by pressing them--and most of them still emit a satisfying "click" sound (or a beep) when you do so. By analogy, "click" is whatever action you do to an on-screen button to make it do its thing. It is executed on various devices and by various computer users in various ways. Many of us already made the leap from "press and release the left button on a mouse device" to "press and release the left side of your mouse even though it no longer has a button" to "press and release the entire touchpad on your Mac laptop so that emits a click sound" to "tap ever-so-gently on the hair-trigger touchpad of your new Windows laptop" to "tap once on the screen of your iPad or phone" to "tap once on the screen of your touch-screen laptop" to "tab to the button and press the Enter key on your keyboard." And with Windows Speech Recognition, to actuate a button, you actually speak the word "click," as in, "Click OK;Click File; Click Bold; Click Save; Click Close," and so on. To back away from the word "click" right now is as unnecessary, and even nonsensical, as deciding that the Save icon has to be changed because no-one has used an actual mini floppy disk since 2005. The Save icon has become a symbol that will retain its meaning like other permanent glyphs, such as the Arabic numerals or the smiley face. And the word "click" is the way you indicate "actuate" for certain screen items. But that is not to say that the word "click" should be used for every screen action. By now I hope I have made clear that a "click" is a characteristic of certain screen items-buttons, icons, tools-not of the physical method by which you actuate them. So even though you may also click your mouse to execute the following actions, the word "click" is not the clearest vocabulary word for them. You "choose" something from a menu, because you are "choosing" from a list of "choices," and once you "choose" the one you want, the chosen command is immediately executed. choose File > Close You "select" something that, once you select it, stays selected. You select a cell in Excel. You select part of the text in a document. You select an option from a list and the option stays selected-as in a drop-down list or a list-box. You select a radio button, and you select a checkbox. And they stay selected. Until you "deselect" them. select the Portrait Orientation radio button select the Kerning checkbox from the Font drop-down list, select Verdana select the first paragraph in your document deselect the Enable Live Preview checkbox You "press" a key on a keyboard or a real button on an actual piece of hardware. (The word "press" definitely cannot be used to describe what you do to an on-screen button, because it may create ambiguity: Does "Press Home" mean on the screen or on the keyboard?) press the Enter key press the F6 key press the Power button (on the microwave) And finally, you "click" an on-screen button, an icon, or a tool. click the OK button click the Bold tool click the Wifi icon As this vocabulary discussion continues, I would love to hear your take. Is your office using "select" for everything? Are you using "press" for mobile devices? Or tap? Are you combining commands, as in "click or tap the link"? Email me. References Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications: "Do not use choose as an alternative to click or double-click. Choose does not convey any additional information to those who do not use a mouse, and such users normally understand the equivalent action that they must take when a procedure step says to click." Web page: Use Speech Recognition to operate windows and programs ***Do you need to learn how to write eLearning scripts? Come check out my live, online mini course.

You can find all sorts of interesting resources via eLearning Learning around Adoption.  Not surprising, the terms most closely associated with Adoption are Adoption of Social Software and Adoption of Enterprise 2.0.  There are some great resources on this such as: Ten tips for choosing & using social software Adoption of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 Revisited Social Media - The Challenge of Adoption - Rob’s Dummies Guide The secret sauce to successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption Facilitating Adoption of Web 2.0 Tools Adoption Ideas Webinar Software - Adoption Advice Enterprise 2.0 - What's the PU? Web 2.0 Adoption in the Enterprise - It's Personal Adoption Pendulum As I do presentations where I discuss Tools and Methods for Knowledge Work, I find myself wondering about adoption levels of these tools, and the following pendulum definitely describes how my feelings swing back and forth:   Social Software Deployment Levels Over the past few years, there's definitely been greater deployment of social software in the Enterprise.  Dion Hinchcliffe declared 2009 - The year of the shift to Enterprise 2.0.  Reported numbers vary widely … Forrester: Despite the novelty of the technologies (only 3 years old), the percentage penetration is very high, about half of all enterprises globally. Survey Results: Enterprise 2.0 Adoption: 98% of those surveyed are using Enterprise 2.0 technologies for internal communication and collaboration within their company. The most popular technologies used are instant messaging (74%), wikis and team workspaces (67%), and blogs (51%). And my personal experience is that it's pretty rare to run into an organization that is not at least planning on adopting some social software solutions.  And I'm certainly seeing a lot of SharePoint. Deployment vs. Adoption But it's important to keep in mind that deployment of social software does not mean adoption / use.  A new report by web usability guru Jakob Nielsen tells us: A main finding from our study's interviews is that most companies are not very far along in a wholesale adoption of Web 2.0 technologies. But the same report tells us: Social software is not a trend that can be ignored. It's affecting fundamental change in how people expect to communicate, both with each other and the companies they do business with. Email Comparison Often people cite the adoption of email as a technology adoption cycle with the claim that social software will follow a similar path.  Certainly, email went through a bit of a similar early pattern where there was sporadic adoption, lots of debate, executives that had their secretaries (they were not administrative assistants at the time) print their email and put it in their inbox (and I mean an actual inbox).  Eventual adoption of email was a certainty.  Once enough people in the organization adopted email, it was very hard for any individual to avoid adopting it.  It would just be too inefficient not to adopt it.  You were somewhat forced into learning the skills required.  Typing, basic computer use, email etiquette.  Of course, this was over the course of several years. Distributed Content Editing In thinking about various social software, I'm not so sure that I believe that adoption is nearly so neat.  Some technologies seem like they will reach tipping points in organizations where resistance will become hard.  There will be enough people using the technology that it will reach a tipping point where you pretty much have to adopt it.  An example of that is the adoption of Distributed Content Editing via an agreed to technology such as Wiki, Shared SharePoint Documents, Google Docs, etc. Once a work team agrees that will be how they collaborate on a given piece of content, it becomes very inefficient for an individual within the team to not adopt the same technology.  Sending a Word document in an email when there's a collaboratively editable version of the content somewhere else causes enough pain that the group forces the use of the new technology through peer pressure.  Once enough people in the organization adopt that as the approach, it becomes hard for other forms to exist.  I personally expect that the days of emailing around documents will be long forgotten.  Instead, the model shown by Google Docs with an email that alerts you to a shared document being the norm and successive alerts coming via email or RSS about changes.   You won't think of things like the location of the document (local, email attachment, network drive, SharePoint) or multiple versions in files at all. Oh, and real-time editing with multiple authors will be standard. Discussion Group Software Comparison While I believe that adoption of tools for distributed content editing is a sure thing, in looking at other tools, I suspect that adoption patterns are going to be quite different.  Many of the tools that we include in the list of social software are things that may be more like discussion group software.  This software has been around for many years.  There is a network effect with the adoption of discussion groups.  If enough people in a group adopt it's use, then it becomes more valuable and progressively harder to remain a part of the group and not adopt the use of the software. Adoption of discussion group software certainly has followed a very different path than email.  It's pretty rare where work teams and certainly not organizations have made it the norm to adopt the software.  Instead, it's most often left up to the individual to make a personal choice about adoption and adoption level.  Lurking is considered legitimate peripheral participation.  Not reading everything is often okay.  The adoption pattern is quite different than adoption of email or collaborative content editing. I'm wondering if there aren't quite a few of the tools that we discuss as social software that will follow this kind of adoption.  A prime example are blogs.  Blogging is somewhat a personal/network version of discussion groups.  I would guess that it will have limited adoption - but that's not to say that even with limited adoption it doesn't bring value.  In fact, part of the comparison is that discussion groups and blogging both bring value with limited adoption. Social Networks With this slightly different lens, I'm wondering what this means for the adoption of social networks as a means of expertise location.  If you look at what I've said above, I'm asking: What's the pressure from others in the organization or work team to adopt? What happens if you don't or partially adopt? In the case of email and collaborative content editing, pressure is high and partial adoption doesn't work. In the case of discussion groups and blogs, pressure is generally low and partial adoption is generally okay. With social networks there will be some level of pressure to participate.  If you want to be seen as an expert in the organization, you really need to play along.  However, you can likely get away with only partial adoption.  You may not really use it as a means of finding expertise yourself.  So, while I feel there's tremendous value in social networks as a means of expertise location, I'm currently thinking that adoption is going to be a bit like adoption of LinkedIn.  Widely varying levels of participation, even for those who are registered. Social Bookmarking Social Bookmarking has a stronger pressure level when it's adopted by a work team.  If you are tasked with research, and you don't share what you find via a social bookmarking system, the team likely will put pressure on you to do so.  The perceived utility (PU) of social bookmarking is not that high, it's perceived ease of use (PEOU) is high and with the network effect, it would seem that social bookmarking should be something that gains widespread adoption. However, that's not what I'm seeing out there.  Awareness of these tools is lower than other forms of social software.  IT organizations are adopting these more slowly.  This seems like a long-term winner.  Am I missing something? Questions In previous looks at this, I've relied more on the traditional TAM model looking at things like Perceive Utility and Perceived Ease of Use.  What I'm talking about in this post is that we need to take into account work team and organization network effects that bring pressure as an important factor in adoption.  We also need to recognize what adoption might look like (partial). All that said, a bit of this is crystal ball gazing. What will social software use look like inside organizations in 3-5 years? Where tools should IT be providing and organizations be facilitating and support? Should organizations encourage adoption? I can't say that I'm not going to swing back and forth on the pendulum a bunch more times.  I certainly am curious what people think around this. How it Feels Sometimes I'm sure we can all relate to this: eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

View and download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording.         Try out BizLibrary's Online Library! BizLibrary provides 10,000+ training videos and eLearning courses in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.   To download The First 7 Things to Do When You Get Promoted from Kevin Eikenberry, click here .

What are you doing Saturday? Are you going to build something? A storage shed perhaps? A deck? Face it, there's no way you'll finish either of those projects tomorrow. If you want to build something that matters, and get it done in a day, why not focus on your LinkedIn Profile?  Whether you are in the market for a new job, just starting your career, or are a well-established professional, LinkedIn is one of the most important tools for establishing your online presence.   Good practices from the start help you to "brand" yourself & determine what kind of message you want to offer about yourself to the world. During this class, you will learn to use the most powerful features of LinkedIn to get your profile noticed. You will discover best practices for creating an online presence, learn about privacy and other settings, get tips on networking and protecting your online reputation, and more. The class will use a series of worksheets (provided) for exercises in gathering keywords, writing your summary, and listing your skills and strengths. We'll do some fun group exercises to get everyone thinking of how to improve their own profile. Learn more and sign up here!

I've been slowly going through Chris Anderson's book Free: The Future of a Radical Price. There's a lot he gives you to think about and definitely a lot that relates to the Business of Learning. There's quite a bit in the book that really resonates with me: We can't help it: We value atoms more than bits. Bits want to be free. A common theme throughout the book is that people naturally understand the differences between bits and atoms. We somewhat intuitively understand that near-zero marginal cost is true for bits. Thus, they treat content delivered as bits as having less value than the equivalent atoms version. Chris tells us: It's time to stop treating bits like atoms and assuming the same limitations hold. There's definitely a lot of questions raised by the book that will undoubtedly add to my thoughts around New Learning Solutions: What are the versions of offerings that can have different prices? Because of downward price pressure on anything that is bits and relatively undifferentiated, what are the ways that offerings can include other differentiating aspects? Where can users add value back into the system?What are network effects that we can leverage for greater value?Where do network effects outside a single organization instance help drive value? How do we effectively compete in the Attention Economy? (see Corporate Learning Long Tail and Attention Economy) This will be fun to explore. Likely through my Free Blog and Free Webinars. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

You might call it a "perfect storm." Others might use a different term, but in the end, the term is immaterial. We all have to deal with the broad social influences converging on our workplaces affecting employee learning and development. In some respects, employee learning and development has never been more important given this current climate some commentators describe as "VUCA," which means volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. For generations, employee training programs had a clear focus. We helped employees improve skills to solve known problems. But something foundational has changed. In today’s VUCA world, we need a different focus for employee development. We need a different approach to employee development that enables employees to learn new skills and help our organizations become more agile and adaptable. A critical element of effective employee learning in such a world will be a next generation of learning content strategies. Traditional approaches to learning content are perfectly suited to an environment where improving skills to solve known problems is the strategic objective. But an analysis conducted by LinkedIn of some of the most "in demand" jobs reveals something that tells an interesting story. After looking at 259 million LinkedIn profiles, eight of the 10 job titles with the fastest growth since 2008 are: IOS Developer: 142x growth Android Developer: 199x Social Media Intern: 174x Data Scientist: 30x UI/UX Designer: 22x Big Data Architect: 3,360x Cloud Services Specialist: 17x Digital Marketing Specialist: 17x The other two were both fitness related. So today’s employee learning and development initiatives need to shift from preparing employees to solve known problems, to preparing employees to fill jobs that don’t exist yet. How do we do that? We start with content. No learning or development can occur unless we deliver content to employees, but we have to rethink learning content if we are going to shift the strategic focus of employee development to reflect the broad influences of demographics, technology, behaviors, and future needs of both employees and the organization. Three Elements of a Next-Generation of Learning Content Strategy Content Definition: Let’s start with a new definition of content. Content can be anything that answers a question an employee might ask that can improve or influence performance. Curation: Content needs a structure to be effective. Curation is about providing context so the content employees need is usable, accessible, and can be applied in the moment of need. Delivery: Employee performance cannot be improved without content, but the content must be delivered to employees to be effective. The delivery of content, therefore, must be a key part of any effective content strategy and must take into account how employees access information. Content A traditional approach to defining content would restrict content to learning objects generated by the organization, usually the Training or HR department, and delivered to employees via formal training, either a classroom or an online course. Other content might be from third-party vendors such as online courses or seminars conducted by outside subject matter experts. At the core of a traditional definition of content is the idea that content is what the organization deems it to be. That’s fine, as far as it goes. But learning professionals have known for quite some time that employees learn most of what they need to know to effectively perform their jobs informally or socially. The 70-20-10 or 80-20 theories of social and informal learning long have dominated thought leadership in the industry, but traditional learning content strategies did not adequately address this reality. In fact, many traditional learning professionals tried to "formalize informal learning." A far more effective approach is to simply accept reality. Social and informal learning are real, and our employees already are engaged. Additionally, employees already are accessing content on their own, when they need it, and on their own mobile devices, too. To employees, it doesn’t matter where useful content originates. If it’s useful, it’s…well, it’s used. To employees, learning content is anything that helps them in the moment of need. This practical, real-world approach to learning content is exactly what we as learning professionals have to adopt, and we have to adapt our content strategies accordingly. Curation This leads us directly to consider the second key element of the next generation of learning content strategies—content curation. If we accept that content can be anything, then we also have to accept that this definition creates risks and can be a little scary. What if employees access content that is inaccurate or not vetted by subject matter experts? This is why we have to have an effective strategic plan in place to organize content and provide a context for employees. Guiding our employees to great content will become an important role for learning professionals in this evolving environment. Curation of content, therefore, is crucial. If content is king, context is queen. Delivery The third and final element of the next generation of content strategies is delivery. Since we’ve broadened the definition of content, and recognized that content is king and context is queen, it follows that we must have a platform to deliver this organized and collected content to employees. What’s happening in the market in this specific area is amazing. The technology advances in social sharing and social media-inspired learning platforms and mobile delivery continue unabated. As we see more and more employees using tablets and smart phones for work-related purposes, it’s important that our learning content strategies give employees something useful that delivers content straight to those devices. Our employees are already there. The real question we have to ask ourselves is, "Why aren’t we?" Mobile delivery of effectively organized content will be effective and important for the next generation of learning organizations, and will be central to the next generation of learning content strategies.

by Willam van Weelden   In my last article I introduced you to merged help and showed you how to create merged Microsoft HTML Help (CHM). This week I will show you how to create links to a merged project. Create a Link to a Merged Project from Within a Topic Using RoboHelp, open a topic in one of the merged projects. Select some text and choose Insert > Hyperlink/Popup to open the Hyperlink dialog box. From the Link to drop-down menu, choose Remote Topic.   From the HTML Help file name drop-down menu, choose a CHM file. (If your CHM is not in the drop-down, click the Browse button and open it.) From the Topic area, select the topic you want to link to.  Click OK to close the Select Remote Topic dialog box. Click OK to close the Hyperlink dialog box. You created the link to another project. Please note: Should the file name of the topic in the remote project be changed, the link will no longer work.   Create Link to Merged Help Within a TOC In much the same way as from a topic, you can also create a TOC link to a merged project: Open the TOC and click New Topic Page.  Click the Link to drop-down menu and choose Remote Topic.   From the HTML Help file name field, select the CHM file. From the Topic area, select the topic you want to link to. Click OK to close the Select Remote Topic dialog box. Add a title for the TOC page in the Page Title field. Click OK to close the New TOC Page dialog box.  The link to the topic is added to the TOC. The same warning I gave you above applies: If the file name of the topic in the remote project is changed, the link will no longer work. Be careful not to change the file name or location of a topic once it is referenced it in another project. *** Looking to learn RoboHelp? We offer a live, two-day online RoboHelp class once a month. Feel free to contact us to learn other ways to meet your RoboHelp training requirements.

Great video similar to Did You Know?Here are some of the stats from the video:By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social mediaAlways love to see this. And I like to add that the marriages that came from eHarmony (roughly 1% in US) will be better than those that came through other means.2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…on their phoneAccording to Jeff Bezos 35% of book sales on Amazon are for the Kindle when available24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.Pretty amazing stuff. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Download the webinar slides. View the webinar recording from Go to Webinar.   VIEW RECORDING FROM YOUTUBE:   Try out BizLibrary's Online Library! BizLibrary provides 10,000+ training videos and eLearning courses in various business training topics, with new courses added every day.   Coaching Skills for Managers and Leaders In this eBook we’ll discuss emerging principles in employee coaching for managers and the objective of coaching in organizations. BizLibrary's Mobile Learning App meets the needs of today's digital learners. Employees no longer wait for training departments to push learning content to them. Employees are used to pulling information to themselves, when they need it, on their own terms and conditions, and on their own devices.

by Kevin Siegel    Over the past few weeks I've taught you about text hyperlinks and object hyperlinks. This week, let's dive into yet another way you can get your learners to a website: Web objects.While both text and object hyperlinks will take the learner to a website, the resulting website will either appear in a new browser window/tab, or replace the lesson completely. In the case of the latter, the learner will need click the browser's Back button to get back to the lesson.Web objects allow you to embed a website directly on a Captivate slide. Once the website loads, the learner can interact with the website as normal (without ever leaving the lesson) To add a Web object to a slide, click Objects and choose Web.  With the object selected, visit the Properties inspector. You can add a Web address (just like any hyperlink). In the image below, notice that there is an Embed code option. You'll find the ability to Embed code particularly useful if you want to control the size of the window when it appears on the slide or its relative position onscreen.You have the ability to Auto Load the website and control whether the website appears on the Slide (which is the default) or in a new browser window. And you can add a border to the object, allow the learner to scroll through the website, and add a Loading Animation (useful if the target website is large and is going to take some time to download). In the image below, a web address has been added to the Address area. Notice that it appears directly on the Captivate slide (there's no need to preview in a Web browser first).In the image below, check out how the web browser displays the website (and I was able to scroll around the website).***  If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you. 

Why are coaching skills Important for managers and leaders? As an isolated question, a study conducted by Bersin by Deloitte showed that organizations with senior leaders who coach effectively and frequently improve their business results by 21 percent as compared to those who never coach.   More broadly, organizations that invest in leadership development are more profitable, more innovative, and more likely to be market share leaders than their peers. It’s just no longer optional to take the time and allocate the resources to effectively develop leaders at every level of your organization.   One of the most significant issues confronting businesses today is a glaring lack of next generation leaders, coupled with a stunning lack of success for both newly promoted leaders and leaders recruited from outside the organization; you have a genuine leadership talent crisis brewing. Which makes effectively coaching current leaders and current talent mission critical for organizations.   Developing sound coaching skills in leaders makes business sense. Coaching skills can help with key employee retention, performance improvement, skill improvement, and knowledge transfer. While there are other important leadership skills and competencies, coaching is central to improving the performance of entire teams. That’s why there is such a clear and direct connection between business results and organizations that place an emphasis on leadership development generally and improved coaching skills more specifically.   7 Coaching Tips for Managers and Leaders Teach managers to ask good questions to enable the process. Great questions lead to great answers, and that leads to great conversations. Meet the employee on the employee’s terms. Great coaches are motivated by the success of others, and that requires a relentless focus outward . Help managers understand how to guide conversations . This is where communication skills and emotional intelligence really come into play. You guide a conversation by asking questions not by giving direction or directives. Employees learn the most and grow the most when they uncover the answers themselves. Reinforce effective listening skills to make sure that the feedback understood by the employee. Show managers and coaches how to ask follow-up and clarifying questions to do this and make sure every communication is clear and understood by all parties. Emphasize to managers their central role in the success of the development programs of their employees . No other stakeholder has as much influence over the productivity, engagement and learning as the manager over her direct reports. Support both the employee and manager in this effort. Teach the importance of coaching in the moment. Learning happens best when things are occurring. Employees learn best by doing, so coach as you go!   Looking for online resources to develop the coaching skills of your managers and leaders? Sign-up for a free trial here ! We provide our clients with thousands of video and eLearning courses. Whether you’re targeting leadership development, new manager and supervisor training, project management, communication, computer skills, compliance or safety, we pretty much have something for everyone. So, try out some courses…have your employees try out some courses. Just fill out the short form to the right and start a free 30-day, no risk, no obligation trial! Check out the BizLibrary Collection! --> -->

A great comment from Ken Allan on my post Free: My family listen to NZ Radio a lot. Current affairs progs are now all available, free, as podcasts (bits) on their site. When someone misses a broadcast they wanted to hear, their dismay is ameliorated with, "I can always access the podcast". Of course, this event rarely actually happens. So not only has bits reduced the value of some things, it also shelves the possibility of their use. I'd already realised this was happening last century when people would stock up on videoed TV programs that they would never have the time to watch because they were watching the broadcasts - a time debt that was not able to be paid. The same (actually) applies to reading blogs. As Sue Waters pointed out to me about indexing blogs, "people don't use blogs that way". I completely agree with Ken that content seems to stream by and if you miss the stream, it somewhat gets lost later as there's the continuous flood.  I believe that things will eventually circle back to it, especially if it is important.  But it concerns me that Ken may be giving up on our mutual quest to figure out alternative views of blog content.  This is something I discussed in my post - Index Page where I describe the core challenge as: How do we create resources on our blogs that will help a new reader or a search visitor understand what's on a blog and orient themselves? Sue Waters responded previously: Most of the time they are a lot of work for minimal return so you really do need to consider whether the time spent is good R.O.I. Think about it. How often do you go to another person's blog to find specific information? Guaranteed either never or seldom. And the main people who you would return to are those that you know provide informative posts. Reality of a blogger is we are only as good as our last post :) . With good use of search, categories and tags on posts combined with making each post count is probably time better spent than creating index pages (however they can be useful for the blogger themselves). In terms of the ROI of spending time making other views, I have a slight advantage in that I can get automated views of my blog via eLearning Learning and have it do interesting things.  My goal is still to figure out what the views are of a blog that can help make it more accessible.  Get that into eLearning Learning.  And then make that available to other bloggers.  Thus, the ROI becomes high because the Investment is small (zero). In looking back at Sue's comments, I actually go quite a bit to blogs as sources of specific information.  That's a big part of the value of eLearning Learning.  I do think that use of categories/tags is part of the answer, but I'm hopeless when it comes to that.  And I'm not willing to go back and tag older posts. I'm hoping there's still some interest and thoughts on what should emerge as alternative views of blog content. Some specific questions: 1. Would it be helpful to have a tag cloud view instead of the long list view of a blog content as shown in my sidebar that is auto-generated by eLearning Learning? 2. Are there a set of views that are combinations of recent, best of, organized by keywords, essentially the information we have via eLearning Learning that would be compelling to first timers, or for going back through a topic, etc.? eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

by Jennie Ruby  "In this course you will learn the functionality of [insert topic you've never heard of]. By the end of this lesson, you should be able to [do a bunch of procedures the utility of which is not immediately evident]." Traditionally, many of us have written these types of sentences at the top of page 1 of our courseware materials or eLearning scripts, and then that has served as our audience's only introduction to the topic of the course. It doesn't have to be that way. I'd like to introduce the Introductory Narrative--a brief paragraph prior to the sentences above and the list of objectives. Its job is to engage the learner and perhaps provide a little positivity and motivation. The introductory narrative should do five things. Signal the correct audience. Use the word "you" to talk directly to the learner. Explain the "what's in it for me" (WIIFM) for the learner. Say some positive and encouraging words about the topic of the training and/or the process of learning it. Finally, name the [topic you've never heard of] as the very last words of the paragraph. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be exploring each of these topics in turn. Today let's look at the first one: signaling the correct audience. Signaling the correct audience is indicating in your first sentence who the intended audience is for the course or lesson. It can be done a couple of different ways. First, you can always indicate the correct audience for a course or lesson by explicitly naming the job title or describing the situation of the person the learning is meant to address, and using the word you: As a warehouse employee here at ABC Company, you... As the parent of a newborn, you... Another popular way to signal the intended audience is to ask a question. If the learner answers yes, they are the correct audience: Have you ever taken a picture of someone and had their eyes come out red? Do you need a quick way to transfer files between computers? Do you need to build an authentication and identity API? Learners who answer yes, immediately understand that the lesson is for them. Those who answer no or don't recognize what you are talking about will instantly know that the training is not intended for them. A more subtle way to signal the correct audience is to describe a real-world situation with "you" at the center: So you've landed the interview. Now you've got to land the job. Without directly saying "this training is intended for persons who are currently seeking employment," the message is conveyed that if you are currently trying to get a job, this training is for you. Of course the introductory narrative for training materials is not the only place you might need to use these methods of signaling the correct audience. You might need to do this in the subject line of a company-wide email aimed at a subset of employees. Or in the first paragraph of any article or blog entry. Or you might need to write a course description to help potential learners identify the correct training for them. Do you have other interesting ways to signal your correct audience? Please post your suggestions as comments below. Reference Kevin Siegel and Jennie Ruby, Writing for Curriculum Development 3.0, 2014, IconLogic. ***Do you need to learn how to write eLearning scripts? Come check out my live, online mini course.