I received a question that I've heard in many forms and I'd like to ask help on this. I am looking for some advice about whether or not my choice to use Dreamweaver with learning extensions (CourseBuilder + Learning Site) is a good idea or not.  I understand that Dreamweaver is not SCORM compliant (or at least it wasn't). The reason why I thought it would be good to use, is because I work for a small company, and I am the only Technical Writer / eLearning Developer, so needed something simple and straightforward to use, but that could also offer me flexibility to design my own modules.  My modules are going to take a previously written training guide and turn it into an online interactive format.  It will need to have Forward & Back buttons, interactive exercises, tests & quizzes integration.  We don't have an LMS at this point, but we may need to track it in the future. Also, Dreamweaver is relatively cheap, so I could make a good case to my managers to buy it for me.  There's also good help material available online, and there is a good book written by Michael Doyle "Dreamweaver MX e-Learning Toolkit" (although it was written in 2003). I do use Camtasia to create my training videos, but have heard that Adobe Captivate is a good product as well. Dreamweaver appears harder to use than other eLearning tools I have seen out there, but I appreciate its flexibility. So, first, let's admit that many people in our industry are pretty much solo developers of eLearning.  They have to do everything on their own.  And they also are not building that much eLearning day-to-day, so it's pretty common to have to go through figuring out what tool to use.  And because they are solo, there's no time to spend evaluating a bunch of different tools.  Yes, I could download the free trial version and try it out, but that would take a fair bit of time.  At the same time, if I don't make a good choice, I could be suffering a lot of unnecessary pain.  Sound familiar? So can you help me (and the reader) out? Decision Process? If you were this person, how would you go about selecting the tool to use?  Given there are a lot of Rapid eLearning Tools and Software Simulation Tools out there, how do you choose which tools to consider?  How would you decide which to download and trial?  Anything else you would do to make this decision? In terms of the specific tools here, any suggestions?   Dreamweaver?  Camtasia?  Adobe Captivate?  Articulate?  What others jump to mind? Thanks, in advance. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Interesting post by Vic Uzumeri where he responds to a question that I asked him.  I'm going to also address the broader concept he raises about Work Networking.  But in this post, I want to consider: We developed CoSolvent because we couldn’t find a reliable way move rich media (typically video) to and from the individual subject matter experts (SMEs) and managers among our various corporate training clients. Living near Hollywood and the many different production companies and studios, I've talked to and worked on several projects that were digital asset management systems.  This includes working on the software the runs sites like Nasa Images.  So, I'm pretty familiar with the issues of digital asset management (DAM) and having to move large and manage large media assets. Vic provides the following list of reasons that companies use his digital asset management software for eLearning projects: The companies that employ our target audience strongly discourage employees from putting company assets on ‘public’ sites. Workers often didn’t want their co-workers to see their materials until they had a chance to approve them. People often work with collections of related, but dissimilar materials.  We wanted to accommodate all types of video as input. What's interesting is that my impression is that most corporations don't have that much of an issue with digital asset management and that these concerns are there, but not enough of an issue for people to jump on these solutions.  Am I wrong on that?  Is there a need and desire for software or software as a service that provides digital asset management as part of eLearning projects?  Does the LCMS already provide this for you?  Does your enterprise content management solution provide this for you? I do know of a couple of large corporations that do a good job of cataloging and organizing the digital assets - images, digital videos, documents.  They have hundreds of hours of courses.  And there developers are geographically dispersed.  Even still, most of these companies use relatively simple organization methods and the issues are getting developers to contribute assets, catalog them and then provide effective search and browsing.  In one case, they use a fairly rich enterprise content management (ECM) solution (a corporate-wide solution). By the way, my impression is also that the digital asset management that comes with LCMS solutions is pretty limited.  Theoretically, this provides this same ability to organize digital assets so they can be shared by developers.  In practice, once things scale up, it becomes pretty hard to keep it organized and effectively find the assets you want. I have heard a common lament that large files cause a little bit of an issue in that many IT departments limit network storage because of the need to provide robust back-ups and retention.  But using a storage as a service model with these large assets outside the firewall doesn't make much sense in that there's also often a restriction on network traffic. The workflow and access restrictions are there.  You don't want people seeing your stuff that's still in development.  There's some course content that should not be accessible outside a particular group.  Again, most of this gets handled by standard network folders and permission structures. Oh, and let's not forget that a lot of companies are Using Sharepoint for the exact purpose of organizing the efforts and assets of learning development. Maybe it's because I have not run into these situations, but my impression is that there's not that much need for digital asset management solutions around eLearning and that you are probably already served by your LCMS, enterprise content management, or SharePoint if it is an issue. Please share your experience and knowledge around this. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Interesting post by Dan Pontefract where he provides definitions of some different "2.0" definitions and the HR & Organizational impacts. It's worth taking a look at some of these: Enterprise 2.0 Definition (via Andrew McAfee): the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers HR & Org Implication: Enterprise 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 concepts in an organization; thus, failure to drive its introduction may result in redundant platforms/processes & confused employees Learning 2.0 Definition: the shift from a predominantly formal instructor-led/eLearning model to one that encompasses formal, informal and social learning methodologies HR & Org Implication: organizational culture can evolve via a strong learning ecosystem; to continue with antiquated ‘spray and pray’ formal only training models is akin to GM’s 2011 automobile lineup being full of SUV’s Work 2.0 Definition: the shift from a 9-5 workday to a flexible workweek inclusive of work location (ie. home, shared workspace, coffee shops, etc.) HR & Org Implication: the performance of an individual should be measured not on when they are in the office or present in their cubicle; rather, on the end result and its merits for the organization itself (whenever the deliverables are accomplished) While people may not like the "2.0" terms, I believe there's merit to using them if only to indicate the substantial impact that these things will have on organizations and particularly on Learning and Development. The theme of LearnTrends 2009 is a term I call Convergence. It's really about the fact that learning and development leaders have an opportunity to embrace 2.0. This means: providing solutions beyond traditional training / courses working closely with other parts of the organization including Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, Corporate Library, OD, IT and, of course, the business getting smart about a whole lot of new kinds of solutions looking outside the firewall for solutions And all of this comes in an ever more challenging world: The Business of Learning faces real pressure and we are expected to do more with less. We need to provide value to concept workers who are the highest value people in the organization and are in a continuous learning mode - it's part of their work. But concept workers don't get as much value in traditional learning solutions. These workers direct their own learning. Learning and Development is likely not producing much content that will be useful to their day-to-day work except by building core skills. Thus, we must look to provide value in the long tail of learning. The nature and value of content production is changing. There's a ton more content available both inside and outside the organization and some of it is free learning There's much greater accessibility of experts inside and outside the organization and ways to engage with them. When I described eLearning 2.0 back in February 2006, I focused on the technology aspects. But there's so much more to all of this picture. I'm not sure if Convergence quite captures it, but … These are truly interesting times. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

We just saw an interesting post at JM Consulting’s site titled, "What’s Really Keeping HRDs Awake at Night?"   https://www.jmconsulting.uk.com/whats-really-keeping-hrds-awake-at-night/ The author does a pretty good job of asking questions and identifying the concerns, as illustrated with the nifty graph we’ve reproduced. The article does not offer many solutions, and that’s what we want to suggest. So, here are some ideas for solving the top 8 issues identified in the survey results cited in the article:   Talent Management & Retention   The paradox many organizations face related to talent retention is neatly summarized by a joke.   CFO: What happens if we spend all of this money training these employees and they leave?   CEO: What if we don’t and they stay?   If highly skilled employees are so valuable and hard to find, doesn’t it make sense to train as many of them in-house as possible? After all, you don’t have to recruit current employees. If you’ve hired well (for character, capacity to learn and grow and attitude), then your current employees ought to be the single best and most cost-effective source for highly skilled, highly sought after skills you need. The trick - you have to invest in actually training and developing them.   Succession Planning   The importance of managers, front-line managers in particular, cannot be overstated. Once again, this is an area where organizations face the choice of developing home-grown talent or hiring from the outside. Truthfully, a blend of both approaches probably makes the most strategic sense, but developing internal talent takes a commitment to the future. That means developing and deploying an employee development program that helps you find and promote the best available talent.   Employee Engagement   In the annual Gallup report on the State of the American Workplace, Gallup tells us about the percentage of American workers who are engaged, disengaged and actively disengaged at work. It’s easy to read the report and get discouraged. But, the great news in the report are the findings that front-line mangers can have an immediate impact on the levels of engagement across entire organizations. So we’ve never had so much data proving the value and impact of manager training as we do today. But, we continue to see disconnects between the clear positive impact of manager training and organizations’ commitment to delivering the kind of training their managers need.  See this excellent report published by Harvard Business Review for more information: Frontline Managers: Are they Given the Leadership Tools to Succeed?   Sufficient Training and Skills Development   This is the least complex of the issues. Just do it. Employee training and development produces a myriad of benefits from increases in employee productivity to customer loyalty. The fact that respondents to a broad market survey site the LACK of training as problem in today’s world is mystifying. What it points out is an inability on the part of many professionals to make effective business cases to their senior leadership for making an investment that yields such obvious benefits.   Managing and Reducing Workplace Stress   There are so many reasons HR professionals might be stressed that it’s virtually impossible to pinpoint any single dominant cause. However, providing employees guidance and direction on career development, stress and time management can provide needed and helpful coping strategies to help.   Enabling and Managing Remote Employees   The virtual workforce isn’t a fiction or something "other" companies do. If you have employees that travel, connect to e-mail from off-site locations like a hotel, home or use a smart phone or tablet for work related purposes, you have a virtual workforce on some level. So it’s not whether you have virtual employees. The better question is how are you facilitating their success? Just like every other employee, virtual employees require immediate, on-demand access to the resources they need to answer the questions they are asking every day at work. It doesn’t matter if the question relates to a new product or in preparation for a meeting. Do you provide the learning and training resources necessary for every day success in this work world?   Identifying and Implementing the Right Technology   The challenges we face facilitating the success of virtual employees lead directly to technology solutions. As the HR and L&D professions evolve, the need for ever higher levels of technology literacy grows on a continuous basis. We must embrace technology enabled learning to meet the needs of each and every employee. So learning management systems, online training, enterprise social learning are all tools we must know about and be able to use effectively to solve the training and performance improvement problems our employees face.   Managing and Aging/Intergenerational Workforce   The facts are pouring in about the rates at which Boomers are retiring. The Federal Office of Personnel Management estimates that between 2006 and 2011, 290,000 Boomers retired. Boomers aren’t getting younger, and many of them aren’t going anywhere soon. So, what do we do? We are free to ignore the problem. After all, Boomers ARE retiring, so at least that part of the issue will go away eventually . . . . But that doesn’t seem like a very smart solution. That means we have to face the challenge and manage the problem differently. Once again, quality training provides the first steps for managers, and every single stakeholder. Managers need the tools to solve problems and communicate to every member of their teams. Team members need the skills to deal with the diversity of today’s workplace. And lastly, we need tools to capture the collective wisdom of this aging workforce, organize it so everyone can access it and it’s not lost the minute our Boomers retire.   CONCLUSION   Training. Employee training has never been so pivotal to solving the problems that confront us every day. It’s not the total solution, but providing our employees and managers the skills they need for success helps retain talent, find talent, prepare talent, and engage talent. We just have to learn to make strong business cases for employee training by turning our attention to these business challenges and the bottom-line benefits to our businesses as we solve them.       Looking for online training for your employees? 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! --> -->

Are people noticing this? It seems that face-to-face and online presenting are becoming more similar. Some aspects: Wireless access is becoming more common in places where presentations occur. If you are a conference organizer and you don't arrange for wireless, be prepared for some negative comments. See Better Conferences. A larger percentage of the audience these days brings a laptop to presentations and it seems that the factor of Laptop Distraction is quieting down. If your audience is already on a laptop and connected wirelessly, then you can use techniques such as Twitter Conference Ideas with twitter as a back-channel or twitter to post links to the audience. You can get the audience to provide thoughts and suggestions just like chat online. In fact, this is on of my favorite things about online presentations (see Examples of eLearning 2.0 for how great the audience input can be). But now you can somewhat do this at Face-to-Face presentations. It used to be that your online audience was distracted. Now your face-to-face audience may seem distracted as well. I had a recent presentation at a large corporation. 75% of the audience had a laptop. Some percentage of that audience was taking notes and chatting on Yammer. Some percentage was reading email. Hard to tell which was which. The last bullet is probably the biggest change here. I'm used to presenting in-person where the audience is highly engaged, taking notes, etc. It was a bit different for me to see an audience looking at their laptops that much. I've talked about this in Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences and made the comment that: In-person conferences have an advantage of getting more attention from the attendees. That's still probably true as there's a higher commitment level, but the gap is narrowing. Clive as points to this in Multitasking is now every presenter’s problem. What struck me is how the gap is narrowing between face-to-face and online events. You could usually rely on a fully attentive audience face-to-face while bemoaning the ease with which multitasking occurs online. The reality is that the same phenomenon is now occurring in each setting. What's interesting here is that it used to be that you could count on your in-person audience to be singletasking (is that a word?) and paying attention. Now, they are going to be multitasking just like your online audience. I've always said that one of the wonderful things about face-to-face presentations is that you can see your audience and get immediate reaction based on their faces. But what about when they are looking at their laptop? If anything it's worse than online. When you present online and the chat channel is active but on-topic, you feel you are doing good. When you are in-person and everyone is looking at their laptop, it doesn't feel good. Hmmm… One last thought … I recently presented to a group of professional speakers about the use of social media. There was quite a bit of discussion around Face-to-Face vs. Online Conferences. I'm still of the opinion that Face to Face Still Matters. However, because of the dramatically different characteristics of Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences and because of the narrowing gap between face-to-face and online presentations - we will see a shift towards more online conferences such as LearnTrends 2009.Update: Since this comment block is too small for such big questions, I've decided to make this the Big Question on ASTD for October 2009. You can find the question here:New Presenter and Learner Skills and MethodsFeel free to comment here as well, but I'm hoping we will attract a few longer entries there. 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. Looking for online training for your high potentials? 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! --> -->

We’ve all been reading about the generation "wars" in the workplace for quite some time now. For many of us, it’s more of a "silent" non-shooting sort of affair as we slowly, but very surely, succumb to the inevitability of time and numbers. They outnumber us, and it’s getting worse. It’s sort of like that transition as parents going from two children to three. With two kids, you and your spouse or partner could always have a pair of hands one each of them. It was, at least on those terms, a fair fight. The third one changed everything. They had us. They outnumbered us, and we couldn’t do anything about it except adopt new strategies to cope.   The workplace is starting to feel just about like that for many of us who count ourselves as "Boomers." We know about time. Trust us. We KNOW. We also "get" the whole numbers game, because we are watching the whole thing play out as more and more bright, talented really smart young people join our organizations every day. The problem for many of us, is that we are trying to sort out exactly what strategies we need to adopt in order to effectively cope with all of this.   So, as a younger Boomer (demographers describe me as Generation Jones, and I’ll take whatever I can), who leads an entire team of Millennial aged colleagues, I’ve failed, I’ve succeeded, and I’m coping. Here are a few tips from the front lines:   It isn’t about you anymore. WOW. How’s that for some cold water in the face. We are the ultimate "me" generation, right? But if we are going to lead young, talented teams, then we have to give up on anything about our teams being about us. It’s all about them - the team. We really must get our heads and hearts wrapped around defining ourselves and our careers differently, and that’s a big change. We do not have to be defined solely by our careers. When you picture a "workaholic" the employee that comes to mind is almost always a Boomer. We work. We’ve always worked. For men of my generation, we defined our entire selves by WHAT WE DID for a living. Well, at least many of us did that. The great news is that we don’t have to do this anymore. I find this liberating. It’s scary. It can be intimidating. It can be weird to get used to thinking about ourselves differently, but we are free to do so. We can be writers AND marketing professionals. We can pursue passions involving more than just our work, and we can free ourselves to be more present in the moment - every moment. Live in the present. Millennial employees are wonderful. Really. Are they easy? No. Do they make me shake my head sometimes? Yes. Do I understand them all of the time? No. But they are bright, motivated, energetic, driven, and they are usually hard-wired to succeed - now. That really helps keep me grounded in what we are all doing, and it forces me to be really "present" when I am working with them. Encourage and teach, don’t frustrate and tell. Okay, that sounds like one of those leadership platitudes I hate so much. But here’s what I mean. Most people work very well when they know how they stand. So provide encouragement when appropriate. I entered the work world when hearing from the boss was the LAST thing an employee wanted. Millennial employees WANT to hear from us. It took me time to learn that, but I work hard to interact in some meaningful with my employees every day. I try to make sure they know I value their contributions, and I do my best to get out of their way so they don’t feel micromanaged and frustrated. Find a way to improve your EQ. I am not particularly high in emotional intelligence. I try. I’ve improved. But I am a work in progress, and I will likely always be a work in progress. But that’s a valuable lesson I HAVE learned. EQ can be improved, and it’s important. We generally get better at it with maturity (thankfully!), but there are many facets of this complex set of skills we can all learn and improve. Millennials are not any more or less needy than other employees. I don’t care what some of the "pop" literature says. Leading them isn’t easy, but leading isn’t easy in any set of circumstances. Millennials expect to be valued for their skills and contributions, and working to understand them by improving OUR EQ helps immeasurably.  Remember my first tip? It’s about them.

eLearning Learning continues to improve, but I'm hoping to find people who want to work with me to make it even better. How eLearning Learning Works I've described all the elements of eLearning Learning before, but never in that much detail.  I've pulled together the following diagram to hopefully help explain it a bit better. Curators Topic Hubs like eLearning Learning start from a group of Curators deciding what content should go in.  We currently have several different groups of Curators. Calendar Curators - they find free eLearning webinars that will be of interest to people interested in eLearning.  They add these into a calendar that then gets pulled into the topic hub.  I've announced a couple of the people who are contributing this way: Second Calendar Curator Joins to Help with List of Free Webinars, and Brandon Hall Free Webinars Added. Blog Curator - right now this is me.  I try to find the best blogs that will flow into the topic hub.  See 15 More Workplace eLearning Blogs and Top 99 Workplace eLearning Blogs for a bit more detail on this.  For now, I plan to continue in this role. Content Curators - we allow people to manually mark pages that should be included.  The content should be like an article on a topic related to eLearning.  As these pages are marked, they flow across into the topic hub. Combined this forms the body of content that the topic hub aggregates and organizes. Everyone and Social Signals The second very important group is Everyone.  We don't divulge all the details of how this works, but basically we are looking for social signals that indicate that someone thinks this content is good stuff.  I've discussed some details of this in Social Filtering.  The gist is that as everyone interacts with the content by: Interacting on the Topic Hub Viewing content Social Bookmarking Tweeting Linking Searching We obtain signals that indicate Valuable Content.  See also An Aha Moment - del.icio.us as Indicator of Valuable Content - Importantly My Content. Eventually, we will get more sophisticated and treat some people as being more important, but for right now, everyone is treated the same as they interact within the network.  We will definitely get more social signals over time.  And as more bloggers add the widget to their blog, we should be able to get more information that helps bring their best stuff to the top. Topic Hub The topic hub brings together content that its told about by the Curators, organizes it based on keywords that act a bit like tags, and uses social signals to figure out the best stuff.  This all sounds pretty simple, but there's some real complexity to managing all that's going on in a scalable way.  But rather than focusing on that, I think the key is some key decisions we've made around Aggregation: Centralized content or distributed content. Do they pull all the content into the central site or leave it distributed on the original source? Organization and Access - how do they organize the content. Human tagging? Automated? How do you access it? Editorial Distribution - Single person, small group or widely distributed control of what comes in and what is best? For Browse My Stuff and eLearning Learning, I've made some very specific choices about how we approach aggregation. We believe strongly that this is part of a distributed network of content and people.  The goal is to help people find good, relevant content.  But to make sure that they ultimately arrive at the source of that content. Our content is organized around keywords that act a little like automatic tags.  This is not perfect, and we hope to improve it over time.  Still we believe this does help people find relevant content. We allow for distributed curators and editors.  I'd like to see more of this.  Hence this post. Editors Each week I generate a Best Of post that uses the social signals to tell me what the best content is for that time period.  This results in posts such as: LearnTrends - Sound - Best of eLearning Learning Design - Knowing Doing Gap - Best of eLearning Learning Camtasia - LMS - LCMS - Best of eLearning Learning August 2009 These posts are sent via email to people who have subscribed to the Best Of.  I won't rehash the discussion in Subscribed to Best of eLearning Learning - but just let me say that I believe this is a really valuable subscription that everyone should subscribe to if they are interested in eLearning. Certainly, the Best Of can and will improve.  I've received feedback on these posts that they are much better when there's a bit more editorial to them.  Today I saw this post: Best of Tony Karrer’s E-learning.  Sophie has added editorial to my Best Of post.  I'm hoping that I can maybe get other people to produce Best Of with additional editorial. There are lots of other opportunity for editors.  The Top 100 Learning Game Resources by Upside Learning is a human edited (think editor) that came from a process where the person went around collecting web pages and articles on games and simulations.  They then used the Best Of capabilities within the system to pull back out the top items.  This is the approach I used to create: 100 eLearning Articles and White Papers which is a fairly popular item on my blog. Opportunities to Get Involved If you've read this post in detail, then you probably noticed that there are several places where you can get involved in eLearning Learning: Calendar Curator:  Look for events that will be of interest to the audience and add them into a calendar. Content Curator:  Look for interesting content or as you see interesting content bookmark it into eLearning Learning. Best Of Editor: Help with posts about what's the best stuff for the week, month, etc. Research Curator/Editor: Pick a topic you want to research.  Find good content and bookmark it to be included.  Then edit a Best Of post with all the good stuff you found. I want to really highlight the last kind of involvement.  If you are about to research just about any topic, this is a great way to do it.  While not related to eLearning, you can see me doing it to learn about professional speaking with posts like: Speaker Introduction Rehearsing for an Upcoming Presentation Contact me by Leaving a Comment or by email: akarrer@techempower.com if you are interested in any of these opportunities. 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.       Looking for online employee training for soft skills and emotional intelligence? 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! --> -->

As way of background for this month's big question - <Insert link to Big Question>, I went to eLearning Learning and looked up Multitasking.  Found some great posts.  But the basic gist is that Multitasking Generally is Bad for Work and Learning Clive Shepherd - A challenge to the multitask assumption tells us: According to work conducted at Stanford University and reported by Constance Holden in ScienceNOW Daily News under the heading Multitasking muddles the mind, "cognitive performance declines when people try to pay attention to many media channels at once." Clifford Nass, co-author of the study, claims "the study has a disturbing implication in an age when more and more people are simultaneously working on a computer, listening to music, surfing the Web, texting, or talking on the phone. Access to more information tools is not necessarily making people more efficient in their intellectual chores." Also disconcerting, he notes, is that "people who chronically multitask believe they're good at it." Will Thalheimer - Younger Generation NOT Good at Multitasking Either! Read this great article in the Monitor on Psychology by Rebecca A. Clay. It says: People in general are not good at multitasking. Young people are no better than their elders at multitasking. Multitasking actually takes longer. It is NOT a time saver. Learning done while multitasking is shallower learning, leading not to deep understanding (and flexible mental models) but only to an ability to regurgitate rote information. George Siemens - Multitasking A report on multitasking (via Mark Bullen) states "heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability, likely due to reduced ability to filter out interference from the irrelevant task set". BBC provides more commentary. Ray Jimenez - Over-rated - The Myth of Multitasking Christine Rosen writes on The Myth of Multitasking,, on the different studies debunking the idea that we learn best by multi-tasking. "Discussing his research on National Public Radio recently, Poldrack warned, "We have to be aware that there is a cost to the way that our society is changing, that humans are not built to work this way. We’re really built to focus. And when we sort of force ourselves to multitask, we’re driving ourselves to perhaps be less efficient in the long run even though it sometimes feels like we’re being more efficient." Doodling and Note Taking is Good Lars Hyland - Doodling, multitasking and memory doodling doesn't detract from concentration. On the contrary, a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander. I did a cursory summary of note taking and found that most research suggests that effective note taking practices with appropriate summarizing generally results in greater retention.  I didn't find a really good summary of this, so would appreciate any pointers that provides a pretty good summary. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

How many reports and surveys are we going to see that regurgitate the same tired data from the same sources? As learning development professionals, what is our first and foremost challenge? If we relied upon the never-ending stream of reports and research about the "state of the industry", we would be tempted to say the following: Spend "X dollars" per employee per year on training Get employees to spend "X" hours per year in our formal training programs See employees complete "X courses" in the next 12 months Great. And this old school approach to the "state of the industry" is exactly why the industry is in its current state. We need a new "state" that is much more employee focused.   That’s why we are running this survey. We want to know, "Where are the employees in all of this?" Employee training, if it’s to be truly effective and actually yield business benefits must put employees first.     Part of the problem is a stunning lack of data from the employee perspective. And it’s because nobody from a broad, industry perspective is out here talking to employees about what they want and what they need.   We are about to change that.   Here is a survey we are launching aimed at EMPLOYEES asking them questions comparing their employer provided programs (if such programs exist) to the types of content and technology access employees prefer.   http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/2103941/Employee-Perspectives-on-Company-Provided-Training If you are a consumer of employer sponsored training, we’d love to hear what you have to say!   We think this is the first of several surveys we will sponsor. We hope you take the 2-3 minutes this one requires to help us establish a baseline of information, and stay tuned! We will release the results around September 1 st !

View and download the webinar slides. Access the webinar recording at SHRM.org   Looking for online training for your new managers and supervisors? 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! --> -->

I wanted to share some discussions I've recently had around an interesting project where the company provided the sales team a collaboration, content distribution and expert access portal.  Do you have a case study for me? I'm hoping to do a lot of case studies over the next 6-12 months looking at interesting examples of the use of social/informal/web 2.0 learning.  If you have an example, please drop me an email: akarrer@techempower.com.  Another example of this is: Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank. Background I can't reveal the company used in this case study at their request.  They are a large, distributed organization.  Their large sales team sells a diverse and complex set of products and services to multiple markets. Traditionally, the sales team searched for information on topics such as government regulations, product support and technology through a confederation of five Web-based collaboration and document management software systems.  The sales team often would find themselves spending time navigating the many software systems for archived knowledge and often found documents that did not exactly address their question. So, they would then go straight to the experts by phone and email for answers.  And then they would sometimes take these answers and create new pockets of information which made the situation even worse. This is a fairly common situation that many organizations face. And a big part of the genesis for the project was when an executive was asked by a colleague about where to go to find a particular piece of information.  The executive realized that they needed "One place to find all of our information."  That's where things really began to take off. Exploration They did a lot of exploration before landing on a solution.  They went around to ask employees what issues they had with existing systems and what they needed.  They asked what web sites the sales teams liked.  "MSNBC, CNN and ESPN were good Web sites and simple to use. They could find just about everything from the home pages. If they didn’t, they could easily find what they needed by searching the site." Clearly, they wanted/needed the  knowledge-exchange platform to be easy to use. Employees needed to be able to find information with a few clicks of a mouse. If the information did not yet exist in the system, employees wanted to be able to route it to an expert and get a timely response. They also wanted the expert’s responses to the sales team’s questions to be captured by the system. If the information already existed, employees should be able find information without repeatedly asking the experts. The software would also need to appeal to a cross-section of demographics. The team went around to other companies to explore how they had addressed similar issues, what their solutions looked like and what their experiences had been.  One particular conversation was with McDonalds where they found that a similar kind of system took several years before it really took off. Initially they considered just doing the solution as a search solution that would be able to find content across the various systems.  But the need was really for more than that.  They needed to make sure that content was consistent.  They wanted to be able to access experts and begin to build better communication.  They really felt they needed more of a portal. They looked at several different portal options and chose OutStart Participate.  Part of the decision was also based on that they had good experience with Outstart products previously and they knew that it would be easier to get approval from IT and information security - which it was. They then went around to executives within the sales organization to talk about what they wanted/needed.  Of course, a big part of the conversation was making sure they had executive support and to set expectations about what was going to happen.  They coached the executives around the need to point people to the system.  They talked about patience.  They discussed iterations.  And they set reasonable expectations around the system. Solution The heart of the site is the document repository.  Most all of the sales materials that sales people need are found on the site.  This makes it a mission-critical part of their work.  It means that sales people can upload selling documents or pass best practices back and forth easily without relying on e-mail.  The site is segmented into eight communities based on different departments.  Those departments have some flexibility in their design and can have their own documents.  Each community has several team members responsible for that community and certainly some communities are more active and creative with the site than others.  For example, the clinical team uses the portal to share updates on new clinical offerings and services as part of their roll-out package. One of the key features of the portal also is the "Expertise Exchange," where sales people can communicate with experts.  If you have a question about a particular product, just type in that question and get an answer from an expert or from the existing knowledge bank.  The portal promises to get answers back within 48 hours, but the median time is roughly 4 hours. The system has a section dedicated to looking at current news and what it means.  For example, if a major publication does an article on the company or their specific part of the industry, it's important that a sales person is ready to address questions on their next sales call.  So, a few directors in Sales Communications continually look for interesting news and then create a piece that links to the article, provides a bit more background and helps the sales person have a good answer to questions around the piece. Originally this system started out as a replacement for several existing systems that had lots of content.  Unfortunately, during the planning of the system the team came to realize that much of the existing content would not be usable in the new system.  A lot of it was outdated or never approved. Branding, Marketing and Roll-Out One of the areas that I personally think the team did extremely well is in the branding, marketing and roll-out of the system. The Sales Operations team branded the new system with a catchy name. They designed a nice logo for it.  Came up with various associated things like the popular pen.  They spent time making sure that the site would come across as something different and fun.  Posters were funny.  Yes, they highlighted useful features, but also made sure it was different from the posters they were used to seeing.  This goes along with the nature of the site in that it's designed to be social.  It's not complete (iteration required).  And while it has a serious purpose, we can celebrate the fact that its not perfect. To roll-out the project, they went on a road-trip where at each stop he led the users through a game based on "Who wants to be a millionaire?"  The game required people to tell him how they would find some piece of information, get help, etc.  Basically they had to show how they would use the system.  They gave away prizes.  And everyone had a good time. If you look at the case study Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank, you can find some similarities in how this system was rolled out and the need for a lot of help for users to get things moving.  The team clearly recognizes the importance of branding, marketing and roll-out.  A lot of similar kinds of sites get launched with an email.  People just won't adopt if they don't really understand it and don't think about it. Results There are approximately 1,500 employees now relying on the portal for information, expertise and knowledge exchange. These employees are mainly comprised of sales executives, account managers, clinicians and consultants. The collaborative nature of the portal is starting to change the culture. More and more people are using the portal as a place to update the sales organization about industry or product news and to share their latest experience.  This practice eliminates much of the mass e-mailing that has gone on in the past, and experts are receiving fewer and fewer of the same kinds of questions. After unveiling the portal, surveys were sent to several hundred members of the sales team to gauge reaction. Ninety-three percent felt the ability to ask for documents or support was "very or extremely helpful." Ninety-five percent said the "training was clear," and they "enjoyed learning about the portal." Ninety-two percent said they would "visit the portal regularly each week." On a weekly basis, there is more than four times the number of active members on the portal versus the old patchwork of tools.  The portal handles 17 times the number of questions from employees that the old tools fielded. All the answers to the questions are immediately available. In addition, sales people can ask a question using their wireless devices and get immediate answers if the data is available. If the question goes to an expert, the sales person will get an e-mail when the answer is available. Where's Learning and Development? You may have been wondering as your read the case, where's L&D in this?  In this company, L&D falls under the same unit as Sales Operations where the team sits.  Yet, interestingly, L&D was not really involved in project. They have another tool they use to put up learning content.  They are discussing merging some of the content going forward.  And they are discussing how we can merge learning tools inside of the portal. To me, this may have been a missed opportunity for the L&D organization.  If they want to be seen as providing day-to-day value, they need to get into the flow.  And the flow is now going through the portal.  Likely there are some fairly simple technical solution as to get learning content to come through the portal. Have Patience Executives, users, and other stakeholders often go into this kind of project having the expectation that as soon as you launch, everyone will immediately jump in and use the system.  Even with the great job that the team did around rolling out the system, he still preached that everyone needed to be patient around adoption.  You will get an initial burst, followed by a lull and then slow adoption.  Be prepared for that.  And know that you can provide real value even with partial adoption.  You also should expect to iterate to make it better.   The team regularly conducts focus groups with 6-8 users in a room (no executives).  You need a thick skin during this, but you will get some real nuggets.  And again, you need to set the expectation that this is a work-in-progress.  Lots of changes will be required.  For example, discussion boards and blogs have not been used that much in the system.  The team has some ideas on where these might go.  They also expect to have lots of changes to the UI over time to make it easier to use and easier to find information. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

I've had a similar discussion several times over the past few months.  These discussions center on what requirements should go into an LMS RFP and more broadly how the LMS should really be integrated into the organization. Initially, the conversation was about having learning content appear on the enterprise portal.  Many LMS vendors provide portlets, gadgets or widgets that allow for access of learning content (most often meaning courses and courseware) through the corporate portal.  Assuming that your learning audience regularly visits the enterprise portal, then its great to be able to show employees upcoming learning events, training requirements, content that might be of interest, or other similar things. This has been a common requirement for a number of years.  And it's definitely a nice thing to have done.  It's certainly better than putting a static link to your LMS somewhere on the corporate portal / intranet. But this only scratches the surface of what it means to integrate the Learning Management System (LMS) into the systems that people use day-to-day in an enterprise.  And this whole question is becoming more complicated as we look at the integration of the LMS and Social Learning.  There's a question of whether social tools will be part of the LMS or outside the LMS.  My gut says these tools are going to be separate from the LMS, e.g., SharePoint.  So, this naturally brings up how you integrate the LMS with social tools as well. So, when I'm thinking about eLearning Portal Integration, I'm now thinking about: Exposing links to learning content in the enterprise portal Searchable learning content integrated with enterprise search Integrating social tools with learning content Integration learning management with other day-to-day tools Links and Searching Content The first two items are a bit more common today and it really starts with the question: Is there content and knowledge in the LMS that would be useful day-to-day?  In the post What Goes in the LMS? the general conclusion was that the LMS was really about housing finished course materials that need close tracking.  But generally some of that content would be useful in a day-to-day context. The first stage of integrating this content is to simply provide links to individual content items that are housed in the LMS.  This requires the simplest kind of deep links.  You can refer to a SCO from outside the LMS and launch directly to that SCO without the user needing to do anything else.  FYI - deep linking is the ability for learning content to be linked to and launched from outside the LMS.  Many LMS vendors provide this capability.  And it can be really important if you want to create web sites outside the LMS that might provide context to a set of courses in the LMS.  For example, a Plateau case study (PDF) talks about: The biggest benefit Reuters has seen from its Plateau LMS to date is from deep linking functionality. Previously it took users up to 15 clicks to go from system access to content launch. With deep links in Plateau, users can launch content in two or three clicks. Deep linking also enables Reuters to have a centralized, single point for all content. Which also addresses why we don't really want to plan to send the user directly to the LMS for day-to-day access.  See also:  Tools for On-Demand Information - An LMS?  But the next level of content access from outside the LMS is search.  The idea is that the course content should be integrated into enterprise search so that it can be found and used when the person needs help with something. This is a more complex requirement as it means requirements for enterprise search, the LMS and most often the content as well.  The content must  content must be indexable, in other words, the search engine must be able to run through the content to see what's in there.  For web pages, wiki pages, PDFs, Word Docs and other standard content that's easy.  For courseware it can be hard.  First the search engine may not be able to index the content because it'd buried in a proprietary format.  Second, even if the search engine can find it, it may not know how to get a user to that piece of content.  Launching a user to the beginning of a one-hour course because there is something in the middle that relates to the search is not a great result. I would definitely like to hear from people who've made this level of integration happen - search level. There are some off-the-shelf content vendors that have done a pretty good job around search integration.  For example, Skillsoft along with its Books 24x7 provide good hooks for search and deep linking.  And what's interesting about both of these requirements is that we really are talking to exactly the issue that David points out in Who wants to see the LMS anyway: Afterall, with the exception of the LMS vendor and the team who put it in, who really wants to see an LMS anyway....? Integration with Social Tools or Other Day-to-Day Tools A couple years ago, in New Kind of LMS?, I raised the question of whether we are headed to a new kind of LMS that will be much more integrated with day-to-day activities.  What seems to be happening in the market is that LMS vendors are integrating social capabilities, but I'm not sure that gets us where we need to go.  It somewhat relates with the issue above around search.  Is the LMS only aimed at big pieces of content that will be used separate from the job?  Or will it try to integrate into day-to-day. If it's separate from the job, then having embedded social tools might not make a lot of sense. Other vendors are looking at taking things a different way.  For example, SumTotal Systems recently announced SumTotal Stream that provides integration with particular tools: Microsoft Outlook: SumTotal's integration allows access to Talent Development tasks within the widely adopted Microsoft Outlook email client.  Not only will employees be able to react directly to Application alerts, they will be able to view Profile Information and provide real-time feedback to other employees with the SumTotal profile launch button that is available next to each User within the email view screens. Facebook: With SumTotal's new Facebook Application, employees who typically use this Social Network will be able to receive Talent Development alerts and connect with colleagues all while in the Facebook site. LinkedIn: SumTotal's LinkedIn API integration will allow employees to maintain their Portable Career Profile in LinkedIn, and then make this information available through SumTotal's ResultsOnDemand Performance application.  I applaud SumTotal for recognizing that these tools exist in a network of other systems.  The interface is not really even the enterprise Portal.  The interface is all of the places where that user goes and does things.  Great move SumTotal! This is really all about the issue I raised 3 years ago in terms of strategic choices for LMS Vendors in a few different posts such as: Moving from One to Many - LMS Products are Two Generations Behind and Point Solutions vs. Suites and Composition. Of course, the challenge is deciding what you really want from your LMS today. The reality for today in most cases is to try to keep solutions relatively simple and hence keeping these requirements to a minimum.  However, I am very curious what other people are doing around all of this today.  Please chime in. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

I received an inquiry from a reader and I'm hoping that people can chime in on their thoughts. It relates to my post about eLearning Costs, which bases cost estimates on seat time of the eLearning course. So, the basic question is: We current provide a two day (16 hour) classroom training course for our employees. We are planning to prepare an e-learning course based on this classroom course. How should we estimate the e-learning course duration for this lesson? What are the important criteria in estimating eLearning duration when its based on a classroom course? Conversion Estimation Some resources on the conversion of Instructor-Led Training (ILT) to eLearning / Web-Based Training (WBT) - found through eLearning Learning using Convert ILT as the starting point: In What Training Costs Part I: Converting Content from ILT to WBT, they discuss compression of ILT when its converted to eLearning: Compression ratio: What would the length of the course be if it were online vs. classroom based? There's been a lot of research on this, and answers vary anywhere from 20% to 80% of the original length, but there's general agreement that an average compression ratio is typically about 50%, or a four hour course in the classroom should take the student 2 hours to complete online. In Costs, Donald Clark talks about seat time during conversion: Seat time is the time spent by the learner in a learning environment. For many types of content, elearning clearly offers an advantage. The research generally shows that there is at least a 50% reduction in seat time when a course is converted from classroom learning to elearning. Brandon Hall reports it is a 2:1 ratio. "Brandon Hall, editor and publisher of the Multimedia & Internet Training Newsletter, cites an overall 50 percent reduction in seat time required for a student to learn the same content using online training as compared to in a classroom (Puget Sound Business Journal)." Of course, a lot of this has to with the type of content. For example, we normally read at least twice as fast as compared to someone speaking. Thus such courses as compliance training offers a seat time advantage due to rather than having an instructor do all the talking, we can now just read it. However, if we are practicing a new skill, then there is normally no real time advantage as we need the same amount of time to practice in an elearning environment as we do in a classroom. And Donald makes a good point about the fact that it takes more time when you are listening to audio as compared to reading (or skimming). The 50% compression ratio is similar to what I've heard, but in almost every case there are a whole lot of factors the come into play. In Case Study: Converting an Existing Course to E-Learning, they detail a series of factors. Quite a good article when you are thinking about this conversion. If there is an existing ILT course, how complete is it? Are there any hands-on labs in the ILT course? Will these need to be converted? Is it feasible to do so? Is the person doing the conversion already familiar with the ILT course? Is the person doing the conversion already familiar with the product or service being taught? Will subject matter experts (SMEs) be available for consultation as needed? Will the person doing the conversion be dedicated to this project exclusively? How many people will be working on the conversion team? How much animation is required? Is the scope of the conversion effort clearly defined? What is the approval process? Who will sign off on the project? How will the finished product be implemented within the organization? Does the organization use a learning management system (LMS)? If so, will this product be required to interface with that LMS? How will learning be measured? Is the person doing the conversion familiar with the e-learning software? Does the person doing the conversion have prior experience with similar projects? What factors do you consider? Do you think rules of thumb are okay to use? Cost Comparison The other question the reader asked is about calculating the value of doing the conversion: For example, the current ILT course takes 2 days (16 hours). There are 10,000 employees who will take the training. Travel is not as much the issue as it is time away from the job and trainer costs. How do we go about calculating the possible return of delivering this as eLearning instead of ILT? I'd recommend using some of the resources from a fairly old post ROI and Metrics in eLearning such as: Cost Comparison: Instructor-Led Vs. E-Learning Assessing the ROI of training Comparison of Web-based and Face-to-Face Training Concerning Patient Education Within a Hospital System They look at a whole series of cost comparison factors and the last of these compares outcomes and costs in a research study. Quite good. Again, I'd welcome pointers on this topic. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

View and download the webinar slides.   Access the webinar recording. Additional resources and links: • eBook: Employee Training - Why Short Video Gets Big Results • White Paper: The Terrible Too’s of Training • Research: Department of Education - Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning • Infographic :  Using Video to Improve Employee Training and Development 8 Tips for Getting Started: Commit to video - just do it Supplement existing content Pick an area where you can make a big splash Find someone to become your VIDEO instructional design expert (it’s not a "long throw") Get the right tools based upon WHAT YOU NEED!!!!! Camera Sound Editing Make sure you know how you will deliver the video Don’t try to build everything! Have fun, and learn from the mistakes you WILL make (BTW - hint - save the out takes and bloopers - there are a ton of fun to watch later!!!!) Looking for online training for creating videos? 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! --> -->

Just a quick note that I will be up in Vancouver for E-LEARN 2009 - World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare & Higher Education. If you are attending and see this post, please drop me a note. It's always good to connect with people face-to-face at events. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

We've put up a preliminary schedule for LearnTrends 2009. You can find the conference description, preliminary schedule and session descriptions at: LearnTrends 2009 Conference Agenda Topics and Speakers include: Introduction: Convergence in Learning - George Siemens, Tony Karrer & Jay Cross The Immernet Singularity - Tony O'Driscoll Extending Learning to the Edges of Organizations - Charles Jennings & Andy McGovern - Thomson Reuters Reinventing Organizational Learning - Clark Quinn & Jay Cross Enterprise 2.0, Convergence, & Innovation - Deb Schultz & Jerry Michalski Building a Social Learning Environment - Jane Hart Breaking Down Walls - Laura Overton Convergent Learning and Web Squared - Jon, Jay, Clark, Charles, Jane, Harold Merging Information, Learning and Social Media - Christy Confetti Higgins - Sun Microlearning - Janet Clarey Personal Knowledge Management - Harold Jarche Challenge of Convergence - Pam Borios - Skillsoft - Books 24x7 Tools for Diverse Communities at Xerox Global- Jack Merklein & John Smith - Xerox eLearning Outside the Training Box - John Smith & Nancy White Register Now - Its Free - To register, you must first register on the LearnTrends community and then register on the Conference Event Page. Innovation Awards - The conference will also include the LearnTrends Innovation Awards 2009. Please see that post for details. Win the Twitter Content - And don't forget that you have until tomorrow to help promote the conference and win a free copy of Nancy and John's book. Contest - Win a Free Copy of Digital Habitats via LearnTrends 2009. Please help promote the conference and maybe you'll get a great book as a result. I think this is going to be a really great online conference and discussion. One of the things we are doing this year is asking speakers to keep their presentations to 25-30 minutes so that we have lots of times to have discussions. I'm particularly looking forward to discussions around: How information services and enterprise 2.0 are intersecting with Learning / eLearning? Where does social really fit? Are social features really heading in the right direction or do we need to be thinking about stitching things together? How are people thinking about structuring organizations with all of the stuff going on? How and where do networks and communities fit in? How the heck am I supposed to come up with an eLearning strategy when there's so much change going on? One thing I should remind people is that a big part of the genesis of this conference was George, Jay and myself lamenting that while we go to conferences all the time, the presentations and discussions were most often aimed at broader audiences and more introductory topics. The purpose of this discussion is to dive into meatier topics that the three of us are interested in exploring. If you are a beginner, this may be a bit of a fire hose. If you've been in the industry for a while, but are grappling with some of the questions I've listed above, then please join us in the discussion. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

I've been asked numerous times over the past couple of years by various types of people and companies a very similar question: I plan to or have been conducting and charging for training workshops for clients. I'd like to creating this as self-paced eLearning possibly with other capabilities as well. And I want to charge for this. How can I do that? Two years ago, after quite a bit of discussion with most people who had this general question, I would figure out that it was going to be relatively easy for them to figure out how to author the eLearning courses, but it was going to be a harder decision on how to get that posted somewhere and available to their existing or new clients. I was just asked the question again the other day. It's a company that has been offering 3-day workshops and now they want to put some portion of that content online. Ideally, they would offer it both publicly for fee and as well to particular clients. While there are a lot of different Learning Management Systems with very different features, the requirements in this situation are a bit different. So here are some of the requirements I see for this customer that are a bit different from what you would find in a normal corporate LMS RFP. To me this is a new kind of system. I'm temporarily calling this a Rapid Learning Management System. It's hosted. It's easy to use. It's a bit like rapid eLearning authoring tools, but aimed at the learning management side of this equation. If you know the right term for this, please let me know. White Label For their existing customers, they should be able to point them to a system that looks just like their own site. Company Clients / Groups of Learners Many of their customers (companies) come in with several learners. They need to be able to have these learners grouped together and provide reporting over those learners. The company will have a single administrative contact. The system should look and act like an individual LMS for that administrator. Also, if they make changes to the LMS overall, the company should inherit those changes. Marketplace for Content While they are going to need to take the lead on driving traffic to their courses, the system should allow for individuals and companies to find and sign up for their content. My impression though is that despite the claims that the marketplace will help you get new customers, you should plan to do the work needed to get people there. Thus, you probably should be thinking about all the normal internet marketing approaches to driving people to sign up. And once they get to your landing page, it should be easy to get them across to the marketplace and have it transact with them. Instructor, Virtual Classroom and Social Learning Support In some cases, all that is needed is for the self-paced eLearning to be hosted, but in this case, they also still want to be able to interact with the learners. Instructors will still be there for the companies. And there should be some basic capabilities for asking questions, getting answers. Possibly some forums. In this case, it's limited, but I've run into situations where the plan was for 8 hours of self-paced online and then 1 day of online virtual classroom. Authoring Support or SCORM? A lot of the systems on the market seem to start with some kind of basic rapid authoring tool. I personally believe that it would be better for these systems to accept SCORM content from a few of the top authoring tools. Of course, that implies additional cost. However, if you are really authoring several hours of content and are going to take this seriously as a business, it would seem like that should be a good investment. Or maybe you just use an open-source or free. But I'd rather not have to learn all the quirks of one of these platforms. And I'd want my content to be transportable in case the platform goes away. Other Requirements? What am I missing? What other requirements are important in this situation? Systems? I'm currently pointing people to the following rapid learning management systems. I'm not claiming these address all of the above requirements. Rather that they generally are a hosted LMS solution that roughly corresponds to most of the requirements: Coggno LearnHub Litmos Odijoo Learn.com Personal Edition Articulate Online CourseMill CourseMax Xerceo TrainingAtom Geo On-Demand Upside Learning Upside LMS UltralearnTOPYXSclipoCoursePark What other systems should be on the list? eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

In 1996, Bill Gates published an article titled "Content is King."  In the article, Gates predicts that, "Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting."   These days, it’s not difficult to see how accurate of a prediction that was.  Everything you do on a daily basis, whether you are posting and reading on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social platforms, listening to music on Pandora or Spotify, watching video on YouTube and Netflix or reading, sharing and discussing news, trends and current events on sites like Huffington Post, Reddit or Buzzfeed, it’s driven by content.      According to research by DOMO in 2014 , each minute of the day there are over 4,000,000 Google searches performed, 72 hours of video uploaded to YouTube, 2,460,000 pieces of content shared on Facebook, 277,000 tweets and 204,000,000 emails sent.   In the article, Gates goes on to assert that "One of the exciting things about the Internet is that anyone with a PC and a modem can publish whatever content they can create."   As a Manager, Training professional or Business Owner interested in the success of your employees and the message they receive, let that sink in for a moment.  If anyone can post anything they can create, who is responsible for making sure what they create is both current and accurate?  Do you or your Customers have the time to curate content?   I’ve seen many training initiatives fail or be delayed in the "find or create the resources" stage, and failing to meet a training need can have huge organizational costs.    According to a McKinsey report , employees spend 1.8 hours every day—9.3 hours per week, on average—searching and gathering information to do their job effectively.   The Cost of Content Clutter noted that "in the past 12 months, content searches cost companies $14,252 per worker and 494 hours per worker."   A simple Google search on "How to be a good Manager" returns about 325,000,000 results.   That’s where BizLibrary comes in, we help organizations decrease the time spent by employees searching for knowledge by taking the time to curate for you.  Our library contains thousands of course titles covering a wide range of topics, we give our Clients and Partners the ability to offer already vetted content from trusted experts.  We have sought out and sourced our Producer Partners based on the quality of their content, and the needs of our Clients and Partners.  We are continually analyzing our library to identify gaps, or areas of opportunity to add new courses or Producer Parrtners.  If we have a hard time finding high quality content, our BizLibrary Productions Team will create it.  We constantly ask for course ratings and feedback, placing lower rated courses in a queue for review and possible retirement.    By providing the most up to date and updated course library in the market, Bizlibrary helps our Customer and Partners to spend less time looking for and creating content, and more time delivering training and coaching.  To learn more about how to help your Clients decide if our Off the Shelf Library is the right fit for them, download our recent eBook titled "Got Content?" here .  It shares ideas on deciding what course topics to build vs buy or borrow, as well as how to effectively select and use an Off the Shelf Library.   Based on the research above, if we can provide an employee relevant and timely materials just 1 out of 20 times (5% of the time), we can save our Customers $712.60 per employee annually.   Make it a successful month! Tom

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I saw an interesting post by Mark Oehlert "Learning 2.0" and why that name suddenly is torquing me off...  Mark's main complaint and one that I've seen voiced before is that people are not really learning differently: I really don't believe that humans are learning differently - meaning, I think we are constituting memories, adapting behavior, practicing new skills - those activities that typically make up learning from the human standpoint - in much the same way as we have for hundreds if not thousands of years. I'm talking about our internal processes. This is pretty much what was discussed in New Way of Learning and the general answer was that it's doubtful that there's really a new way of learning, but there certainly are many related metacognitive tools and methods that have changed and that we need to adapt. Still, I believe the crux of Mark's concern and where the disagreement comes … So there is no "Learning 2.0" from the learners' view - there could well be "Instruction 2.0" or "Teaching 2.0" but think about what is really different there - those last two (and you could throw in Government 2.0, Education 2.0) address organizations and not learners and this gets to my second bothersome point about "Learning 2.0." Let's put the burden on us and not on the learner. That's exactly it.  We aren't really talking about the learning itself, but rather the way in which we support learning within an organization.  What is the role of the Learning Professional?  And I would claim that there's a fairly substantial change when you go from eLearning 1.0 to eLearning 2.0 solutions. The reason you can't call it "Instruction 2.0" or "Teaching 2.0" is that the very point of eLearning 2.0 is that it's learner driven.  We are no longer in charge.  We take a supportive role.  We create an environment.  We foster.  We coach. To do this, it requires a considerably different mindset.  It makes sense for us to discuss this as 2.0 just to indicate that there's this substantial shift. Certainly this has been debated quite a bit (see Is eLearning 2.0 Meaningful? - You Vote and 2.0 and Interesting Times).  But I think the discussion is over.  We've come to accept that we'll use the 2.0 moniker. Mark - how about if we agree that if your Oregon State Beavers go down to defeat this weekend, we'll just agree that it's okay to use the terms Learning 2.0 and eLearning 2.0? eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

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Some great responses to this month's big question New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills.  I'm learning a lot from the posts.  A few random reactions and a few of the nuggets I've pulled out from the discussion. Caveats to Multitasking is Generally Bad for Work and Learning See my post on Multitasking for a summary of this.  Or better, take a look at Ken Allan - Binge Thinking.   Or Clive Shepherd's How should presenters address multitasking? simple statement: Multitasking is an illusion - we are simply not capable of doing it. But some caveats to this general rule. Multitasking Doodling and Notetaking are good. Binge Thinking I have learnt to take notes while giving nearly full attention to a presentation. It’s one multitasking practice that I’m good at. Better Presentations = Less Multitasking A log of the responses point out that a distracted audience is first a symptom of the presenter's ability to engage the audience.  Kristine Howard October Big Question If you are going to present online or in person, do what it takes to do it well. Clive Shepherd - How should presenters address multitasking? The very best presenters will always hold attention. Presenters tackling issues which are highly relevant to the participants will always hold attention. Be Aware of What the Audience / Learner is Doing Multitasking learners? Opportunity, not threat I may very well be back channelling, bookmarking, googling, or even writing notes in my blog a a draft. I like learning through dialogue. I enjoy the conversation around what that sage on the stage is talking about.  My "multitasking" devices are a way to have that without being disruptive, so I’m not convinced they are a bad thing, just a reflective tool. [but] If a presentation is not engaging me, I will multitask in a less presenter pleasing manner, and by that I mean I may do some admin, catch up on what’s been going on. Claudia Escribano: Presentations Re-Imagined Why do people multi-task? They’re distracted by other obligations. They’re bored. They’re sharing your presentation with their network. They feel they learn better when they’re flitting between several activities. Which several of these lead into the following. Plan Better and Communicate Expectation with the Audience I think Max Bezzina What presenters could do when the audience multi-tasks says it well: Embrace the fact that people will be tempted to multi-task. If this is an issue for you and/or for the success of the presentation, tell them about it in the beginning of the presentation. Kristine Howard October Big Question has some great specific suggestions: If you can’t handle the constant laptop action while you are speaking, say so.  Don’t dictate, but negotiate a reasonable solution with your audience of adults. If the backchannel doesn’t bother you as long as it stays in the back—for instance, you’d love a transcript for the evaluation aspect but can’t be involved with it while you are presenting-say so.  Suggest a hashtag for tweets right at the beginning and then move on and let it take care of itself.  Ask for a show of hands whether anyone is going to publicly share a summary or comprehensive notes via a blog (just like you share whether you will be providing copies of your materials).  Rani Gill: Social norms, expectations, attention, a game?  also has some great suggestions: Establish a new norm in your learning environment - via ground rules or other means. Discuss and create the norm up front. Discuss how the backchannel can be used. What appropriate to say and not. Expect the back-channel conversation - bring it to to the foreground occasionally during the presentation or have someone moderating it and bring it up. Give the audience the #hashtag so you can let them know that you  know and so that you can follow. Claudia Escribano in Presentations Re-Imagined really provides an interesting way to handle this including asking people to volunteer to be distracted.  Interesting thought.  See her post for more detail than I'm providing.  But I really like the thought and a good way to help establish the norm along the lines of Rani's post. Tell participants upfront that your presentation is a little different from what they may be used to. It’s not just you talking to them; it’s a total participatory event in which everyone plays a role. Then present the roles and ask them to identify what role they’d like to play: Listeners Sharers Note-Takers Questioners Activity Leaders Distracted People You could ask for a show of hands for each role. Or you could set aside parts of the room for each role and have people select their role as they come in and sit down. This idea is somewhat echoed by Geoff Cain  You are still thinking of this as a problem instead of an opportunity - you have to learn how to harness the Google jockeys and tweeters. Clayn suggests: Each class period I randomly select a student to be the back channel moderator for that day. I see the moderator as filling the same role as an assistant sitting on the phone during an auction. They act as a proxy, voicing the bids of individuals over the phone. The back channel moderator will strive to respond to comments made, if they can, or voice the question -when appropriate - for general class consumption. Not only does this free me from trying to do this myself, it forces students into a more active role in the classroom. Great idea to assign moderator to someone else during the session.  This is maybe a role to add to the list the Claudia gives.  And directly addresses the concern raised in Multitasking learners? Opportunity, not threat I have presented online without a moderator before, and after a reasonable amount of experience, still find it hard to listen and read a backchannel, or talk and read a backchannel. Which is how I feel.  In fact, that's often my recommendation to anyone presenting at an online event.  Of course, I'm moderating in most of those cases for people.  When I myself am presenting, I know to ignore the back channel for periods of time and then tune back in.  But having assigned a moderator, I can quickly ask them for help with what I should address. Disrespectful? My general sense is that people are split on whether "bad" multitasking is disrespectful.  Multitasking learners? Opportunity, not threat I’ve heard many trainers complain online that it’s disrespectful to them when people multitask. I counter that it’s disrespectful to learners to present something that does not meet their needs, not wonder why they are not paying attention, then get offended when they don’t listen.  If people aren’t paying attention, or multitasking in a bad way, it shows you that something isn’t working, and if handled well, can perhaps highlight some areas for improvement, whether they be with you, the content, the venue etc.  It may also highlight that sometimes life just takes over and it’s got nothing to do with you as a presenter. Clive Shepherd - How should presenters address multitasking? I don’t mind this as long as they are polite about it: show some interest when the presenter starts up; look up and smile once in a while; try not to look as if the presenter has somehow intruded on your personal office space. Personally, if I’m paid to speak, I’ll put up with a lack of politeness; if I’m not, I’m quite prepared to walk off. Life’s too short. What I recently saw was the audience being much more upset than the presenters about backchannel discussions that are straying being rude.  I prefer an active audience myself.  Of course, there are boundaries such as being offensive to the presenter in any backchannel. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.