We are pleased to announce that we have received national certification as a Women’s Business Enterprise by the Center for Empowerment and Economic Development (CEED), a regional certifying partner of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). WBENC’s national standard of certification involved a meticulous process including an in-depth review of the business and site inspection. The certification process is designed to confirm the business is at least 51% owned, operated and controlled by a woman or women. The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council is the nation’s largest third party certifier of businesses owned and operated by women in the United States. It’s a resource for the more than 700 US companies and government agencies that rely on WBENC’s certification as an integral part of their supplier diversity programs. By including women-owned businesses among their vendors, corporations, and government agencies demonstrate their commitment to fostering diversity and the continued development of their supplier/vendor diversity programs. Find out more here: http://www.wbenc.org/Certification/Certification-Process/

I was recently asked me about my recommendations for conducting effective online conferences (virtual conference).  They had attended the LearnTrends free online conference.  This conference has been run for a few years now and is tentatively scheduled for November 15-17 this year. This is my attempt to collect some of what we’ve learned over the years doing those conferences.  There’s some good information back in Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences, Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee, Online Conference Formats, and Conference Preparation. Assign people into roles.  For us we have someone who is an overall producer (actually there are three of us, but we split it well), session moderator, recording engineer, speaker prep person.  Technical Issues.  Prepare for technical issues and decide what you will do about them.  We’ve used Elluminate as our webinar system.  It has issues with firewalls.  So, we ask everyone to test until they find a location where they can connect.  This means that some people need to attend from home.  Communicate all of the details in great detail.  No matter how much you feel its obvious what to do, there will be confusion.  This is especially true with information like testing the virtual meeting software, getting into sessions, protocols during sessions, time zones, etc. Closely related to the above, make sure you have a well known way/place to submit questions and some assigned to answer these. Make it obvious where to access to resources from speakers.  For us, we create a discussion topic associate with the session and attach files or content into that. Session timing and design is difficult online.  Most presenters are not used to designing for online, so it’s important to help them plan their sessions to be effective.  You definitely need interaction and time for Q&A.  Some of the best sessions have very effective means of capturing the wisdom of the attendees.  Even the length of sessions is challenging.  Long sessions can try to get too much content in and often lose steam before Q&A.  Short sessions often means really superficial.  This is where a good prep person along with a good moderator can really help. Open discussions have worked, but they are risky.  I often find they meander too much for me.  Of course, I generally am more comfortable with directed Learning Goals.  Certainly, if you are going to try it have a great moderator and interesting audience. Getting participation outside of the sessions is challenging.  People don’t read things, or enter discussions ahead of the sessions.  No matter how hard we’ve tried, it’s VERY difficult to get an audience to do anything ahead of when the sessions start.  And it’s even difficult to get them to engage through discussion forums outside of the sessions.  It’s best to design things where the discussion forums are an added bonus and have some set questions to spark discussion.  But don’t count on that much participation. Make sure you have breaks between blocks of sessions.  The conference staff needs it, but so do the attendees, even if you think they will pick and choose sessions. For us, defining the times for sessions is difficult.  There’s no way to choose time slots where it’s not an ungodly hour in some part of the world.  Not sure we’ve ever figured out an answer. Text Chat works great during sessions as a Back Channel.  Encourage it and make sure the moderator and/or presenter weave it into the session - see Presentation Backchannel Multitasking.  Also, make sure that the presenter is not distracted by chat.  I always encourage speakers to ignore it and I’ll (as the moderator) let them know when there’s something I’d like them to discuss.  And I’m not a big fan of using multiple back channel tools that effectively split the discussion.  Just keep it in the webinar tool. Inject fun into the event. Nancy White jumped in to lead a round of Pecha Kucha using slides she had never seen before. The spontaneity and spirit of fun raised energy levels. Need fun stuff sprinkled throughout.  Moderators can help this greatly. Speakers on a common topic should get to know one another and swap ideas on their approach in advance of the session. Pictures of speakers make the event more real. Have pictures on session descriptions and on the first slide of each speaker. Thanks to Scott Skibell, we recorded the sessions directly off the web, i.e., outside of Elluminate and he produced great recordings.  This helps a lot. We’ve tried a few different ice breakers.  Interaction to learn the webinar tool is always a good idea.  Sometimes a kind of introduction to break the ice with audio can be good.  Especially if you want audio input.  Many people freely text chat, but don’t like to speak online. Be careful with screen sharing and video.  They require so much bandwidth that they often make the presentation not work for lots of attendees.  Much better to use screen shots. Some people take online commitments lightly. Several presenters never showed up. Some volunteer moderators disappeared when we tried to pin down times for them to cover. Online conferences have the advantage of being able to have introductory and truly advanced topics that will appeal to a narrow audience. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Worldwide PC shipments saw their biggest drop in nearly two years. The post The Death of the PC Has Not Been Greatly Exaggerated appeared first on WIRED.

The stores are full of back-to-school wares and in some states, the kids are already hitting the books. It’s a great time to buckle down and make sure you’re on target for what you need to do between now and the end of the year. So how’s business? Is the organization on track to meet all of its top strategic goals? Have those goals been communicated well throughout the organization? How are people trained and supported to meet those goals? Are your employee development efforts aligned closely with the organization’s strategic priorities? Are you having a hard time answering any of these questions? Read on. Over the next few months, we’ll be exploring the critical alignment of training & employee development activities with the organization’s strategic priorities. We’ll look at strategic assessments, strategic planning for learning, pragmatic and creative development approaches, and the Competence/Confidence matrix. For now, we’ll start looking where many organizations find skill gaps: the first 24 months of employment, the last 24 months on the job, and all throughout the sales channel. First 24 months: First impressions last, right? First learnings last, too. Effective employee onboarding helps employees hit the ground running, resulting in stronger performance, less costly mistakes and longer retention. Most new employees leave in the first six months to a year of being employed. It costs as much as 150% of a departing employee’s salary to replace them (taking into account lost productivity, recruiting fees, retraining, and other outlays). Do the math. Once you’ve found those great employees, you’ve got to keep them - and onboarding is the first step. You know you have an onboarding problem if: You have high turnover in the first 12 months on the job New hires are slow to reach full productivity You can’t fill your open postings with qualified candidates Last 24 months:  Chew on this one: 30 - 40% of healthcare workers are expected to retire in the next 10 years.  Now imagine of all the training & development you’ve invested in those employees … and imagine it walking right out your door. How do you capture that precious experience and share it with the next generation of employees? How do you avoid constantly reinventing the wheel? We call this "offboarding." You know you have an offboarding problem if: Your experienced employees have a wealth of knowledge that is gained over time You have high turnover or expect to have high turnover through layoffs, retirements, and natural attrition You have no way of capturing and then retrieving the experience of your departing employees Training through the Channel: When dealers or brokers - even your own retail operations — are selling your products and services, how can you be sure they really get the message?  One of our clients sells a substantial portion of their product through a dealership network. We worked together to create a curriculum, support materials, and an incentive program to be rolled out across North America. One dealer’s employee sold two units the same day she took the training - when she’d never sold a single one before! You know you have a channel education problem if: Sales people can’t effectively identify customer problems, or the solutions that your product or service provides You’re losing market share despite your product’s superiority Your sales team or store managers are not trainers (or could be spending their time more effectively) Interested in finding out more? On September 6th Megan will lead an interactive Take Your Learning Strategy Back to School session at the Ann Arbor ASTD (non-members welcome) click here for more info. Can’t wait? Click here to request a consultation.  

I wanted to follow-up 19 Tips for Effective Online Conferences with some additional resources that relate to this topic.  I primarily used the eLearning Learning and Communities and Networks sites and used Conference, Online Facilitation of Conferences, Online Interaction in Conferences, Moderating Online Interaction, and others.   28 Web Conference Training Tips- eLearning Weekly, July 10, 2009 Learning to use web conferencing technology is pretty easy, but there is a lot more to training via web conference than just putting on a headset, dialing up an audio-conferencing bridge, and logging onto the application. When developing PowerPoint slides to use in web conference training follow these guidelines: Simplify content. How to plan and run a good web conference- Influence, May 7, 2009 While the technology is getting better and better ( here's a good list of options ), putting on a good web conference still requires some preparation and practice. Encourage people to participate during the conference and identify the ways in which you want your meeting participants to engage with you. Below are some helpful tips. Community Roles: Manager, Moderator, and Administrator, January 8, 2008 was asked an interesting question last week about the best ways to divide the community manager role into separate manager, moderator, and administrator roles. In most cases, and in my case, the community manager also performs the moderation functions. Moderation would be a small part of several people’s jobs. Moderation types- Made by Many, February 4, 2009 Whenever companies want to publish user generated content (UGC) they need to look into moderation, which usually consists of the following three types: Pre-moderation: Some sites operate on the principle that every piece of UGC should be moderated before it’s displayed on the website. Community Roles: Manager, Moderator, and Administrator, January 8, 2008 was asked an interesting question last week about the best ways to divide the community manager role into separate manager, moderator, and administrator roles. In most cases, and in my case, the community manager also performs the moderation functions. Moderation would be a small part of several people’s jobs. Moderating for development- I collaborate, e-collaborate, we collaborate, July 15, 2008 It’s a process of several months which started in May and includes two live conferences (in a cinema, close to Ede), papers written by specialists on development issues and an online discussion via the website [link]. The names of these people came from the participants list of the conferences. It’s a guess why. Ed Mitchell: What are facilitation and moderation, February 17, 2008 What are facilitation and moderation February 15, 2008 - 1:55 pm A quick addendum about facilitation and moderation on online spaces before a longer post about strategy. Are they facilitating, moderating, re-purposing, or nothing at all? Moderation: Is the coalface end end of the model. Gilbane Group Blog: More on "engage and collaborate" vs. "command and control"-  April 1, 2007 Gilbane Group Blog Gilbane Group analysts, consultants and contributors on Content and Web technologies & trends Open to the community and moderated Home Archives XML Blog Search Blog Globalization Blog News Conferences gilbane.com Sign In Search More on "engage and collaborate" vs. research last week, Niall Cook comments: You ask: ".what Backchannel Resources- Full Circle, September 11, 2009 back channel facilitation in online groups where you make a decision to address issues privately and not "in front&# of the whole group. Conference Back Channel. Raising the bar at online events. Clay Shirkey on back channels at conferences. Jon Garfunkle on the backchannel at conferences (from a blog post comment). Raising the Bar on Online Event Practices- Full Circle, August 11, 2009 Alan Levine wrote a deliciously provocative post on last month that I’ve been meaning to comment upon, Five Ways to Run a Deadly Online Seminar. It has been a while since I wrote about synchronous online facilitation is a focused way.  inside the online meeting room). World Cafe’s online ? Spot on, CogDog! Improving Conferences - Ideas & the Year Round Conference- Engaged Learning, February 6, 2009 WH Says: "…Open up the pool of presenters beyond the same 10-20 names I see at every e-learning conference… More voices would be a good thing and shows strength (and depth) in our industry.&#. Maybe Brent Schlenker, Heidi Fisk, someone at ASTD or other conferences can tell us the # of RFPs vs. into the conference.  Liveblogging an Online Conference- Experiencing eLearning, April 17, 2008 Wendy Wickham asked a good question in the comments on TCC08: Second Life: Teaching Tips from the Virtual Frontier: Christy - are you using 2 computers (one for blogging, one for the conference), or just one? How are you finding the experience of liveblogging an online conference? am using two computers. It does feel a little intense. How to Run a Conference That Makes Us Say "WOW!"- Engaged Learning, June 22, 2010 Attending conferences is always a mixed bag.  conference , my favorite part was talking to others about each others’ issues, concerns, questions.  conference Barcamp e2.0 conference keynote session  .  . Photo on Flickr by Lars Plougmann. We LOVE the other attendees and the idea we get from each other.  More of you. Online Facilitation, Twitter, Backchannel and Keynotes- Full Circle, February 24, 2010 The topic was "Online Facilitation: 14 years on. My topic was about my past experience with online facilitation and where I thought it was headed. The conference started with an amazing "Light Night Learning Live&# biting and sharp comedy set up by Jared Stein and Marc Hugentobler. First: Reflection. Perfect timing. You do whaaat? A glimpse behind the scenes of technical moderation- eModeration, June 10, 2010 For anyone who believes that a moderator spends his or her time deleting rude words from forums and hitting 'reject' on naughty video submissions (although we do this also), I wanted to give a quick glimpse into the nitty-gritty involved in eModeration's most complex project for a mobile phone provider client. Warning: this gets technical. How to Develop Robust Moderation Methodology- Community Guy, March 23, 2010 Moderation, at its core is about ensuring that published content on a particular site, typically submitted by the site’s users themselves, meets the terms of the site’s Terms of Service (ToS). The problem with approaching the moderation task as an analog, queue-clearing activity is that it simply doesn’t scale. 4. Moderation and safety- FreshNetworks, June 6, 2009 Why moderate? 8220;Why moderate?&# Moderators] help and assist new members by welcoming them into the community.&#. Moderation is essential to a clean, healthy, vibrant community. good moderator has a light touch, barely noticeable, and a well-moderated community is spam-free, troll-resilient and buzzing. How to Moderate Teens and Tweens- eModeration, June 26, 2009 We're really pleased to anounce that we've published a new whitepaper; the second in our series on Teens and Tweens, called 'How to Moderate Teens and Tweens'. Moderation has a role in helping to guide them as well as keeping them safe.". Tags: teens child safety moderation In this latest publication. References on Lurking | Full Circle Associates- Full Circle, March 28, 2010 First, is an old discussion summary from the Online Facilitation list from 2003, compiled by Chris Lang which still has value to me. I’ve written about it here on the blog quite often over the years!) It is more generalized reciprocity. Download file. Finally, some fine blog posts on lurking by friends and colleagues. link] Is your event worth the price of the ticket?- Social Reporter, March 15, 2009 The other day I was discussing social reporting and other online activities for a £300-ticket, two-day event with the organiser, and he said: "Next year we are going to have to make it free&#. And in future they’ll have to blend online and offline activities. Limited interaction conference. Problems if not! Conference Balance- eLearning Technology, June 6, 2008 Just read a great post by Clive Shepherd - Cutting the Pie - where he discusses what the appropriate balance is at conferences. As you know creating Better Conferences is something that very much interests me. Check out that post, the poll results and the discussion for lots of ideas on how to make conferences better. Rethinking the Conference Structure - Time to Step it UP- Engaged Learning, February 3, 2009 Mark Oehlert attended TechKnowledge ‘09 and his thoughts were very similarly to mine: Conferences need to be updated. 8220;Social media should be the default and should kick in as soon as I register and continue past the conference.&#. I will be MUCH less likely to come to your conference.  Ohhhhhh yes.  Yes, Mark, it is. Online Conference Formats- eLearning Technology, April 23, 2009 Also, if you are interested in future conferences, please go sign up on the Learn Trends Ning Group. We've just seen an interesting experience with Jay Cross having pulled together a 24 hour, worldwide discussion on the future of learning at Learn Trends. You can find some of the recordings here. On Tuesday morning, we had 125 listening in. Rethinking conferences- Informal Learning, February 17, 2009 When I signed up for Spaces for Interaction: An Online Conversation about Improving the Traditional Conference , I didn’t appreciate how timely the topic would become. Conferences have traditionally provided foundation knowledge for instructional designers, trainers, CLOs, and others in the field. Is it a Conference? Twitter Conference Ideas- eLearning Technology, January 30, 2009 Twitter has become a pretty great tool to help with socializing at conferences. There is also an interesting effect that people who are not attending still hear quite a bit about the conference and have some level of tangential participation. We also encouraged everyone to put in the hashtag. What do I need to cover by what point. Better Conferences- eLearning Technology, June 18, 2007 believe we can build better conferences. And, I need you to help by doing one or more of the following: provide a response to the poll below (won't show in an RSS feed - sorry) provide suggestions for what you'd like to see in future conferences (add comment). because most conferences have these same problems. distributed. Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences- eLearning Technology, October 28, 2008 Lisa Neal asked a great question in a comment on Learn Trends 2008 - Free Online Conference : What do you see as the main differences between in person and online conferences? Now, don't get me wrong, I still very much like to do in-person conferences. It's hard to get all the way to an in-person conference. Social Conference Tools - Expect Poor Results- eLearning Technology, April 23, 2008 I saw a post by David Warlick - Reaching Out With Your Conference where he suggests that conference organizers should: Consider a social network for your conference. Although I remain skeptical about social networks, social networking is essential, and a few conferences have made brilliant use of them. It's rare. What Exactly IS a Conference?- aLearning, March 2, 2010 What’s the intention of having the conference? Jeff Hurt, over at Midcourse Corrections, has a great post about opening and keynote speakers, and it made me think about conferences in general… …and about my own situation. So what’s the purpose of the conference? Is it an educational event? Meeting? I Have Seen the Future of Conferences...and it is 3D!- Kapp Notes, March 15, 2010 Terrence Linden discussing the new Second Life browser at VWBPE conference. If you missed the Virtual Worlds' Best Practices in Education Conference , you missed not only a great conference with really good content and presentations, you missed a glimpse into the future of conferences. Check out her entire presentation. Conference Networking Tools - Do They Work?- eLearning Technology, May 18, 2007 You may have seen them before and will likely remember their scatter plot: There are other applications aimed at helping you to network at conferences: CMC Central - Tradeshow Appointments , Eveni Meeting Matching ExpoMATCH , eXtreme Networking , Introplus , Leverage Software , NetworkingMatch , and PowerMingle.com. Or maybe it's me. Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee - eLearning Technology, September 14, 2006 As way of introduction to this topic, let me start with a typical scenario that you will recognize if you've ever attended a professional conference. The conference organizer has put signs in the middle of each table with a topic. What are other activities at the conference where I can talk to people? So what LMS are you using? Conference Preparation- eLearning Technology, March 14, 2007 As I'm thinking about going to the eLearningGuild Annual Gathering in Boston next month and ASTD in Atlanta in June, I went back to look at some notes I had created before around getting ready for conferences. link] I also ran across this good post: Conference Survival Guide for the Web Worker with some good suggestions Conference Wiki Examples- eLearning Technology, November 25, 2008 Someone asked me for an example of a conference using a Wiki both for organizers during planning, evaluating proposed sessions, etc. can say that this made pulling things together for the conference significantly easier. and for attendees with session pages, participant lists, that kind of stuff. It was more aimed at the attendee side. Conference Session Breakout- eLearning Technology, December 18, 2007 Uh oh, I just saw a post by Donald Clark slamming the use of small group breakouts during conference sessions. Update: 12/19/2007. There has been great discussion in the comments. wanted to provide a bit more context for this. The session will be workforce learning professionals (an ASTD audience). Original post. Uh oh. Now I'm worried. Prepare for a Conference- eLearning Technology, January 12, 2009 Heading into ASTD TechKnowledge , there's a particularly timely podcast that I just did for Tom Crawford of VizThink on the topic of: How to be an Insanely Great Conference Attendee If you follow the link you can get to the podcast. There will be more information coming around the use of Twitter at the conference. The Rise of Webinars, Virtual Conferences, and Twitter Chats- Element K Blog, May 8, 2009 Conferences are still being held in the Learning and Development industry as in past years, and generally they have the same level of quality presentations, hallway discussions, vendor demos, and much more. An example of the latter would be the "online forums" that the eLearning Guild does each month. Online Communites are Changing my World- Daretoshare, June 26, 2010 Here are four examples of how online communities have changed my world: I was organizing a conference in London UK for a client.  The first time we met in person was at the conference.  Should online communities have a better reputation?  Should Should you join and participate in one more online community?  Twittering at Conferences- Learning with e's, May 7, 2009 I really missed the Edumedia Conference in Salzburg this year. have pleasant memories of last year's conference and the beautiful city of Salzburg. Here's the conclusion in full: Microblogging at conferences seems to be an additional way of discussing presented topics and exchanging additional information. Ebner, M., Beham, G. How to Get the Most Out of a Conference- eLearning Weekly, May 7, 2009 Conferences have been on my mind quite a bit lately. So you can see why I was pleasantly surprised today when I ran across an excellent blog post on how to get the most out of a conference. Here’s a summary of his suggestions: Choose your conference wisely. Conference Survival Guide for the Web Worker. Layered communications will change online communities- FreshNetworks, April 14, 2009 Time for a prediction: layered communications - a mixing of text, speech and video - will become a key issue for online communities in 2010 and beyond. . Two things this week got me thinking about the place for layered communications in online communities and social networks.  eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

When was the last time you checked in with a SME for a course after it has gone live?  Can you even find the SME for all your courses? Believe it or not, you’re not the only one who has a tough time tracking down your SMEs.  It happens all the time in all sorts of organizations. You’ve both done a ton of work to get a project off the ground and running, and as soon as things go live, it’s easy to go your separate ways.  But this is one of the most critical points in your project’s implementation: the evaluation.  (Remember the "E" in ADDIE?)  And the "E" means more than just checking to see if learners actually learned the content. Your SME will be a key point person in the process of evaluating your content over time and deciding when to make updates. Here are four tips you can use to connect with your SMEs and keep your course material up to date. Plan for content sustainability before the course launches. What can you do before the project ends to keep in touch? Decide in advance when to re-evaluate the course.  This may depend on how fast you expect the content to change, and what other activities may be in process (like budgeting cycles, product cycles, etc.). Build SME interaction or question-gathering into the course.  It may be as simple as the ability for users to email questions, or a focus group among learners.  Ready for the really cutting edge stuff?  Host a social learning platform where discussions about the content take place and include the SME in the conversation. Include the SME in the learner evaluation process.  Here are some important things to address as you both sit down after the "go live": Share evaluation feedback and updates from actual learners.  What trends do you see among the feedback?  Do you see any common threads in the comments or questions? Look at the numbers.  Have enrollment rates gone up?  Are more people completing the training compared to before?  Have more people passed the training? Are people finishing the course? Measure workplace performance.  Are people more knowledgeable about the task at hand?  Is there a noticeable improvement in workplace performance? Review learners’ satisfaction.  What have they said about the training?  What do your Level 1 evaluations say? Invite your SMEs to continue their teaching informally. Ask the SME to speak at conferences, training sessions, and events where learners will be gathered. Include articles and blog posts from SMEs in your communications with learners. Include the SMEs in the online social learning space, where they can provide expertise and insights to the learner community. Take the lead yourself - and ask!  When it comes to content in any training program, evaluation is a continuous cycle.  New technology or processes emerge, organizations evolve, and what used to be up-to-date information gets stale.  It’s important to sit down with SMEs to look at what content may need to be updated as time passes.  Here are some questions to ask to help you decide what actions to take: What is currently right and/or wrong about the content? Is it necessary for content to be updated? Is new, updated material available? To make this process easy, we’ve created a simple template to help you record these answers.  Download the file, schedule a coffee meeting with your SME and get updating! Content Update Template (Word document)

This is stupid but struck me funny.  I did a search for rapid eLearning and the following is a screen shot showing the results with arrows added for one that I really don’t understand. There have to be all sorts of great jokes about what this implies about Rapid eLearning, Articulate, etc.  By the way, I had logged out at the time.  It’s NOT because of personalized search. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Ed Skrein, who plays Ajax in the upcoming 'Deadpool' movie, says Ridley Scott's classic was a big influence on the film's style. The post The New Deadpool Movie Will Look Like Blade Runner appeared first on WIRED.

The TorranceLearning Download is coming up on Friday, November 16, 2012! If you haven’t attended The Download before, here’s what it’s all about: We run several really short, concurrent discussions on a wide range of topics, all related to learning and development. You choose what you want to see, wander about as you wish. Did you notice that?  They’re called "discussions" not "sessions" — and that’s on purpose. While the person facilitating certainly has something to share, the Q&A goes in all directions. Many of the sessions don’t even use PowerPoint or demos (egad!). Got something to share?  We still have a few spots open for discussions, and we’d love to hear about your approach, your ideas, even your book. But … you don’t even have to be the expert to facilitate a session. Bring some ideas, bring some questions, and get ready for a lively discussion. (Honestly, it’s just as much fun and people really do learn from a peer-to-peer discussion.) We ask everyone who joins us for a Download to come with the same spirit of giving and paying it forward. We’re excited to see you there!

I was asked about approaches for eLearning for Sales People.  I’ve had quite a bit of experience with this and actually one of my very first projects was creating a pretty incredible eLearning solutions for Lexus sales people.  Of course, it’s such a big topic that I decided to cheat and quickly point the person to eLearning Learning and particular to eLearning Sales, eLearning Sales Metrics, Sales eLearning Case Studies, and Sales Performance Support. Instructional and Performance Strategies for Sales eLearning Learning Theory 101 for Sales and Marketing Professionals (Part 1)- Business Casual, October 13, 2008 When consulting with sales and marketing professionals who work for companies that create training products and programs, I try not to be a "training purist" when discussion goes to "positioning" their product for the market. Specifically, the web. In Part 2, I'll list some of the levels within one of the learning types. Learning Theory 101 for Sales and Marketing Professionals (Part 2)- Business Casual, October 18, 2008 Learning Theory 101 For Sales and Marketing Professionals (Part 3-Last)- Business Casual, October 24, 2008 eLearning Development: Instructional Design Lessons from a Sales Trainer- Upside Learning Blog, July 11, 2009 That’s because I’ve been in training this week; and would you believe it was Retail Sales training. What’s an instructional designer doing attending sales training? We’ve been tasked with converting their Retail Sales Training seminar into an eLearning package. Yes, I know haven’t posted anything interesting last few days. Data Driven- eLearning Technology, December 10, 2008 Will the retail sales training change behavior in ways that improve customer satisfaction? Understanding this model is important in order to be able to apply it within different situations in order to help drive behavior change that ultimately leads to improvement in metrics. Most action plans last four to six weeks. A Formula for Storytelling in eLearning- Integrated Learnings, April 6, 2010 When a client asked our team to develop a sales skills enhancement course, we opted to base the training on the methods of the most successful sales person in the department. By Shelley A. Gable. One of the things I love about instructional design is that it engages me both analytically and creatively. Illustrate a concept. Learning Performance Business Talent Focus- eLearning Technology, July 15, 2009 Performance - Responsible for ensuring that behavior change occurs in a way that improves performance. All things being equal (which they never are), I'm guessing my focus is more a business and performance focus. Certainly Work Literacy has a learning and performance focus and is a passion of mine. Does this ring true? Work Context: The New Classroom- Living in Learning, March 22, 2010 Fifteen of those years were spent living out of a suitcase as a roving sale trainer and then as a manager. It was shocking to me because I had convinced myself - after more frequent flyer miles and Marriott points than a human could use - that I had the sales training gig figured out. And I did. As oddly as it may sound.I Harvesting Learning’s Fruit: A Downstream Training Investment- Living in Learning, September 4, 2009 Learners, managers, training staff, and SMEs all have a vested interest in what happens after training with respect to reinforcing learning through coaching, knowledge sharing, and in the case of sales people - boasting and bragging. Yes, I was in sales for many years and know what to expect. Refer to Figure 3.0 Figure 3.0. The Business Case for Social Learning- Daretoshare, April 13, 2009 Job losses, combined with cutbacks in workforce development investments, mean that many companies are less able to serve customers, make sales or generate innovations than they were just a few months ago. The Business Case for Social Learning. In effect, their capabilities are in recession. Creating scenarios for learning - a four-step guide- Bottom-Line Performance, May 27, 2009 If you are creating a sales training course, for example, your challenge might be the need to increase sales in a territory. The first course was designed to teach new sales reps basic electrical terminology. Tom Kuhler and his "Rapid e-learning&# blog once again bats 1000 by sharing tips for creating e-learning scenarios. Technical Approaches and Case Studies for Sales eLearning Sales Team Portal for Content and Expert Access- eLearning Technology, October 12, 2009 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. Their large sales team sells a diverse and complex set of products and services to multiple markets. Do you have a case study for me? learning. Shift in eLearning from Pure Courseware towards Reference Hybrids- eLearning Technology, May 25, 2006 sales. Most of the content is presented as static web pages that tell how to perform particular tasks, but some of the pages contain embedded Captivate movies to demonstrate or simulate use of the system. Just when you've made the transition from the prior generation of CBT authoring tools (e.g., It is asynchronous. Using the iPad in Sales Training: Case Study by Lora Davis- Learning Solutions Magazine, July 19, 2010 instruction, one sales training team has already been successful in using Apple’s new device in blended. While many e-Learning producers are struggling to understand how the iPad may be useful in online. instruction in the classroom. Here’s their story. Case studies of corporate (social) learning- March 12, 2010 The Business Case for Social Learning , Accenture, Point of View, April 2009 Sun Learning eXchange " When the company�s sales division reduced training hours and budget, Sun Learning Services (SLS) needed to get strategic. Here are some examples of social learning in organisations. Im looking for the Why? and How?] 10 Strategies for Integrating Learning and Work (part 1)- Gram Consulting, June 15, 2009 The goal of learning in the workplace is performance-individual and organizational.  If we’ve learned nothing else in recent years, we’ve learned that improving performance through learning is more effective the more it is integrated with real work.  Build a performance support system. Understand the job. The Future of the Training Department- Learning and Working on the Web, October 21, 2009 NCR delivered the first sales training. You’re going to shift the focus to creativity, innovation, and helping people perform better, faster, cheaper. Tags: Informal Learning Performance Improvement The latter 20th Century was the golden era of the training department. People had vocations, not jobs. The U.S. ASTD is born. Bridging the Performance Gap: Training is Just Part of the Solution- Performance Punctuated, July 1, 2010 If, on the other hand, you are changing your sales model, a pretty important and difficult change, you need a change management strategy and plan. Therefore, there always has to be some reinforcement and feedback to truly affect performance. Tags: Performance Improvement Talent Management Organizational Learning by Reni Gorman. Social Learning at Sun- Learning in a Sandbox, June 5, 2009 As a result of that they couldn’t provide the training hours needed to meet the training needs of the sales people. Secondly, sales people needed to have access to the right tools and information needed to close their deals in the field. informal learning??). A Pharmaceutical Leveraging Web 2.0 --In a Big Way- Kapp Notes, November 17, 2008 site containing information on mechanisms of action, employee and project profiles and Pfizer products and other information useful to researchers and sales personnel within Pfizer. If you think Web 2.0 can't be used in your company because of legal or regulatory concerns, think about this. Pfizerpedia is resource-sharing Web 2.0 tags: web_2.0 Sun Microsystems Uses Open Source and Enterprise Social Software to Build YouTube-Like Portal for Social Learning- Learning on the Leading Edge, March 19, 2009 eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Want to see the cast of the new Paul Feig 'Ghostbusters' movie in full costume? Here you go! The post The Women of SNL Are Officially Here To Bust Some Ghosts appeared first on WIRED.

We tried something new at our semi-annual Download conference  in November, and it was quite a hit. We called them Flash Projects (think of this as the conference version of a flash mob, not HTML5’s nemesis) and it offered a way of working together and creating something for others within the confines of a conference setting.  It turned out to be fun and productive, and gave teams a chance to get to know each other in a way they wouldn’t have during a regular discussion session. Here’s what we did. During each concurrent session time slot, we offered a Flash Project topic. We chose topics where some best practices exist, where the core problems around them haven’t been solved, and where there are multiple right answers. Our topics for this Download were: Learning Evaluation, Aligning with Core Values, Onboarding New Hires and "Pimp My LMS." You’ll notice that those topics are awfully broadly defined. That’s on purpose. Once they arrived in the room, each project team received three discussion questions for their topic to suggest different ways in which the team could pursue the topic. (We had a little fun with this, delivering the questions in a Mission Impossible themed envelope, then leaving the room.) Each team had just one flip chart page, and some markers - and no designated official facilitator. The directions were intentionally short — enough to keep the team on track, without stifling creativity. With 30 minutes to work, and an empty room to work in, the teams had a lot to accomplish. And accomplish they did. As can be expected, each team worked differently. One team even drew a tree as an organizing theme for their response. Complete strangers came together and pooled their knowledge. At the end of 30 minutes, they hung their poster in the main conference room for all to see, and they presented their results at the end of the Download to the entire conference. Steve Gill even blogged about his Flash Project experience here. In upcoming blog posts, we’ll share what the teams came up with. For now, here’s what we learned about this type of exercise: Choose topics that are interesting & meaty topics. Interesting topics will draw people to the session. (10% of the Download attendees participated in a Flash Project.) Meaty topics still have unanswered questions worth working on. Keep the directions sparse. Provide only as much guidance as you need to keep the groups on track, without bogging them down with a lot of rules. It’s likely they’ll break them anyway, or waste time debating them. Keep the sessions short. Half an hour seemed to be plenty of time, particularly because we didn’t expect anyone to come with material prepared. A short time period is easy to risk on a new experience. Don’t do too many of them. It’s an interesting way to engage and learn, but you know what they say about too much of a good thing. Let the group self-manage. You don’t have to assign a leader for the group. The type of person who chooses a session like this is likely to be someone willing to step up and participate, if not take charge. Our groups tended to self-correct when they got off topic, and the uncomfortable periods in the beginning when no one knew how to dive in were very short. Keep the reporting out time short. Groups should report out their best results, not all the discussion it took to get there. This was an experiment for us, and it worked out really well. We’ll continue to have Flash Projects at the Download - join in even if you’re just interested in the experience of it.  

With Art Santa Fe this weekend, check out a handy guide to a jewel of the Southwest. The post Santa Fe: Land of Burritos and George R. R. Martin appeared first on WIRED.

At our November Download conference  we asked the roughly 60 learning & development professionals who joined us about their challenges at work, their plans for the coming year, and their feelings on the job. Despite the grey fall weather in November, the slow economic recovery in Michigan, and the looming deadline to avoid the fiscal cliff (because no article these days is complete without a reference to the US politico-economic situation), learning & development professionals turn out to be a pretty cheerful group. When asked about their feelings over the last month at work, twice as many people in the learning business responded "Energized!" as "Overwhelmed!" A relatively small handful replied "Frustrated" and only one admitted to being "Bored."   Now, this was an energized group to begin with. The event itself was upbeat, required a lot of physical movement, offered good food, and encouraged a lot of conversation. We laughed, talked, met new people, saw old friends and basically had all the elements of a good party, minus the rock band. Our question specifically asked about the previous month, though, so the feel-good atmosphere of the Download event shouldn’t play too much in the results. That got us to thinking about 3 characteristics of energized people at work: They bring their own personal energy. Life is what you make of it. Your temperament, personal habits and how you cope with stress all contribute to your personal energy at work and throughout your life. Perhaps learning professionals happen to be a particularly well-rested, well-hydrated, fit, mildly caffeinated bunch. Or perhaps people like that self-select to come to our events. Either way, I’m sure glad to be surrounded by people with that kind of positive personal energy. They work for organizations with enlightened cultures. It’s probably not a big leap of logic to find energized people thriving at organizations with positive work cultures. Here at TorranceLearning, we’re raving fans of the Small Giants Community. The Small Giants Community is full of "companies who define success by not only their bottom line, but by their contributions to their community, dedication to great customer service and the creation and preservation of workplace cultures of excellence," and we happen to think that’s pretty energizing. At least it’s working for us. They are doing work that excites them. The most joyful times in life are when we’re doing things that make us happy. For example, this week we were doing some learning design work with a client. We’re coming up with a completely new solution - we’re breaking new ground. It’s a super fit for the client’s situation and I don’t think anyone else is doing it this way yet. I can’t wait to share the resulting model with the world. And I am completely energized. Of course, the group of people we asked is nothing at all like a random sample. Our Download conference attracts a mixture of corporate and higher-ed folks focused on on-the-job training for adults. It may be that their organizations value learning and professional development enough to allow them to carve out 4 ½ hours on a Friday afternoon for a fun, informal and fast-paced learning exchange. And I’m glad they did.   Megan Torrance is founder and CEO of TorranceLearning, which designs and develops custom technology-based learning solutions, and a Trustee at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. Follow Megan and TorranceLearning on Facebook or Linked In.

This is fourth post in a series on Text-to-Speech (TTS) for eLearning written by Dr. Joel Harband and edited by me (which turns out to be a great way to learn).  The other posts are: Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality, Digital Signal Processor and Text-to-Speech, and Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course.   If this topic is of interest, then also check out the Big Question this month: Voice Over in eLearning. In this post we’ll discuss some really useful stuff, text-to-speech tools that are integrated with an authoring solution.  These products promise to automate the process of adding audio to eLearning thereby streamlining and accelerating the production of eLearning courses. We’ll look at: Adobe Captivate 4, 5 (with TTS narration feature) Tuval Software Industries Speech-Over Professional (for PowerPoint) Requirements for a TTS Product First, let's set down the requirements that eLearning professionals would expect from a production TTS tool and see how these two products fulfill them. The first requirement is obvious: TTS voices with audio distribution license, which are of acceptable quality for eLearning applications, should be provided. As we mentioned in the first post, the TTS voice is a major advance in audio technology but it needs a host of minor innovations to make it usable and efficient, which lead to the further requirements: TTS operations should be integrated with an authoring tool so that it is easy to add voice content to a visual presentation and have it spoken when individual slides are displayed, or spoken in synch with screen object animations such as successive bullets appearing. Sound file operations should be transparent to the user. Subtitles should be automatically created from the input text, formatted and coordinated with the speaking voice. Subtitles are important both for accessibility requirements and to enhance understanding of the voice content. Easy to update and change the voice content and subtitles to keep presentations up-to-date. This is important for retaining the value of the presentation. Easy to modulate the voice. Voice modulation adds clarity and realism by introducing silent delays, word emphasis and speed and pitch changes that can make a monotonous voice come alive. Voice modulation is achieved by introducing modulation instructions (tags) into the text flow. The tool must make this very easy and intuitive. We'll discuss this point in the next post. Support for correctly pronouncing highly technical words or company slogans or expressions. Background music. Adding suitable background music can support and enliven the TTS voices. Let's look at how the tools stand up to requirements 2-4. Captivate Captivate 4 introduced a TTS feature for adding slide narration and had NeoSpeech’s Paul and Kate voices built-in. Captivate 5 added several Loquendo voices as well as access to any voices that are installed on the computer. Adding voice content Captivate lets you enter narration text for TTS voices through its slide notes pane. Each line of notes is entered and stored separately. Any note line can be associated with a TTS voice and a narration sound file generated from it. Multiple note lines on the slide can be associated with different TTS voices and the narration sound files generated will play in sequence when the slide is displayed. In case you need to coordinate the voice sound with screen animation, a time-line editor is provided. Subtitles Captivate lets you create and display subtitles (closed captions) from the same notes text lines you used for the TTS narration. You need to manually synch the duration of the subtitles display with the voice sound. Long subtitles would need to be broken up manually and entered as separate note lines. Changing voice content To make changes in the voice content, change the notes text lines and regenerate the sound files. If the sound length changes, you will need to re-synch the voice, the subtitles, and the screen animation. Example The screen shot below shows a Captivate slide with three lines of note text. Each line has been used to produce narration using TTS and to produce a closed caption subtitle (1st and 2nd check boxes respectively), that is, three separate sound files play with subtitles as this slide is displayed. The lower text animation box is the screen title that appears in synch with the second sound file. The timing was determined by the time-line editor and set manually. The screen shot below shows the Speech Management panel. It shows how each note line can be associated with a different voice to produce a separate sound file. The screen shot below shows the Closed Captioning panel, which lets you use time-line editing to synch the duration of the closed captions (subtitles) with the speaking voices, as indicated. This time-line editor was also used to determine the start time, 8.6 secs, for the screen title animation. In summary, it is possible to use Captivate to achieve a combination of multiple screen animations, TTS sounds, and subtitles on a slide, with a process of manual synchronization using time-line editing. Speech-Over Professional Tuval Software's Speech-Over Professional 4 works with Microsoft PowerPoint as an add-in. PowerPoint is the most popular tool for producing e-learning presentations, either by itself or together with other e-learning tools. Speech-Over comes bundled with NeoSpeech Paul and Acapela Heather or with NeoSpeech Paul and Kate and will recognize any voice installed on the computer. Speech-Over is well-integrated with PowerPoint and creates, combines and synchronizes voice media effects, subtitle effects and screen object animation effects by working directly with PowerPoint APIs. Synchronization is automatic; time-line editing is not required. Adding voice content The narration text for the TTS voices is input directly through a dialog box within PowerPoint. The text can be spoken when individual slides are displayed or spoken in synch with screen object animations like successive bullets. Speech-Over adds the screen object animations, if none have been defined. TTS voices are selected by a pre-defined voice scheme so there is no need to choose the TTS voice for each text input. Speech-Over creates slide notes from the TTS text. Subtitles Speech-Over automatically produces subtitle effects from the input text, formats and synchronizes them with the speaking voice. Long subtitles are automatically broken up and displayed in succession. Changing voice content The text content is edited through the same type of dialog by which it was entered. Alternatively, you can edit all text on a slide on a single dialog. The sound media effect, subtitle effect and animation effect are all regenerated and automatically synchronized without any need for time-line editing. You can also re-order narration clips and copy and paste them between screen objects. Example Let’s see how the same example is done using Speech-Over without any time-line synchronization. The screen show below shows how the first text line is entered in the dialog. The screen background was selected previously so that a "slide" narration clip is created which will play when the slide is displayed. The Acapela Heather voice is used. The third text line is entered in the same way. The screen shot below shows how the second text line is entered in the dialog. This time the screen title was selected previously so that the sound file will automatically play when the screen title animates, - where the title animation effect is added by Speech-Over. The Paul voice is used for this text. The screen shot below shows some useful Speech-Over dialogs: the Slide Clip Content Editor, which lets you edit the text content of all narration clips on the slide, and the Clip Organizer, which displays narration clips as rows. The row order is the clip playing order, which can be easily changed by the up/down arrows. All changes are automatically re-synched. In summary, it is possible to use Speech-Over to achieve a combination of multiple screen animations, TTS sounds, and subtitles on a slide, with automatic synchronization. Summary Both Captivate and Speech-Over fulfill the requirements 2-4. For the examples given, Speech-Over is more efficient, especially for updates and maintenance, because it synchronizes voices, subtitles and screen object animations without time-line editing and automatically subdivides subtitles. For the simple case of one text line for a static slide, where no synchronization or subtitle division is required, the two tools would be similarly effective for these requirements. In the next post we'll discuss the requirements of voice modulation and pronunciation for these products. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Hall H got a special treat in today's Walking Dead panel, and here it is. The post The Walking Dead Season 6 Trailer Is Live From Comic-Con appeared first on WIRED.

At our November Download, we asked about everyone’s plans for 2013. In short: more of everything! Let’s take a deeper look at the results of our completely non-scientific sample. More mobile learning.  More than half the respondents will be doing more mobile learning in 2013. Combine all the buzz these days about mobile with the fact that less than 2% of all formal learning hours are available via mobile technologies (according to the ASTD State of the Industry report), and this seems right on track.  We’ve been asking our clients for years if they see a need for mobile access to the learning we’re developing with them. Big and small clients alike, most didn’t have the imperative to do so. In 2012, a small handful took the plunge into mobile. It’s only January 2013, and we’re already having conversations about mobile learning with two clients. Mobile is here to stay, at least among our group. No one reports that they plan to be doing less mobile learning in 2013. Those organizations that are doing something in this space don’t plan to turn back. To the organizations that don’t have any plans for mobile learning in 2013, we say, "Don’t despair!" Followed by a strong, "Don’t do it if you don’t have the business case for it!" For all the hype being made by those out in front of the curve, mobile is still in its infancy. Watch and learn, and you’ll be far more prepared when your time comes.  We’re working on ways for our clients to take simple, inexpensive baby steps into mobile learning - stay tuned for more on that. More online social learning. Almost everyone in our group is planning to do more or the same amount of online social learning in 2013. If you’re looking for a trend to follow, online social learning is a good one: there are existing, open platforms out there (think Facebook and LinkedIn) that don’t cost any hard dollars to get started. Your intranet probably comes with built-in discussion boards you can leverage for learning. If the experiment bombs, at least it wasn’t an expensive one. Note that we asked about online social learning. We also find in our work that the "regular" kind of social learning in the tangible world — learning from your peers, coaching, mentoring, buddy systems, networking, conferences, action learning teams and the like - is still alive and well. More elearning. From the looks of things, elearning isn’t going to be losing any ground to mobile or social learning in 2013. All but two of the organizations in our sample are planning on doing more or the same amount of self-paced elearning this year. It’ll be really interesting to see how this matches up with ASTD’s figures for 2012 and 2013 when they come out, since the State of the Industry report  showed a net decline in self-paced elearning from 2010 to 2011, despite an overall increase in technology-based learning. (They included instructor-led online, remote satellite-based ILT, DVDs and CD-ROMs, mobile learning and audio CDs in their technology-based learning figure.) And with respect to elearning and learning budgets in general, it’d be foolish to separate our results from the general economic recovery, slow as it may be. The last few years of belt-tightening and risk-averse decision-making have certainly had their impact on higher ticket items like elearning in smaller and mid-sized organizations. Larger organizations, perhaps, see an obvious and quick return on elearning given the number of learners they can reach with a single effort. More instructor-led training. ILT is here to stay. Remember the hype 20 years ago? Elearning (back then we called it computer-based training) would mean the end of ILT. Wrong! Trainers are using more remote and online technologies, but even good old instructor-led classroom training accounts for nearly 60% of all formal learning hours delivered in ASTD’s report. Among our group, everyone will be doing some ILT in 2013, although a very small group will be doing less of it than last year. More webinars. Airfares are headed (slightly) higher in 2013. Corporate travel is expected to decline. If you’re doing more ILT in a distributed organization, then it means you’re probably hosting more live training online. We like to distinguish between live web-based training with opportunities for interactivity and exploration from those horrid 55 minute slide shows with 5 minutes of Q&A at the end (that is, if you haven’t Alt+Tab-bed away to something more interesting like watching paint dry).  The Elearning Guild even offers two-day online conferences with multiple concurrent sessions and no name-tag-on-a-lanyard necessary. That’s an awful lot of "more." More mobile, more social, more elearning, more ILT, more webinars. We’ve already established that this group is a pretty optimistic bunch, and our Download is an uplifting kind of experience. Is this just a lot of wishful thinking on their part? We don’t think so. Combine an economic recovery with increased expectations of employees for performance … and we think we’ll see an increased investment in developing and transforming the workforce in 2013. Onward and upward!

Some challenging questions are being raised in this month’s Big Question - Voice Over in eLearning.  Some of the key questions: Given the range of solutions for voice-over from text-to-speech, home-grown human voice-over, professional voice-over: how do you decide what's right for your course? How do you justify the budget and how does that factor into your choice of solution? Are there places where text-to-speech makes sense? This post is part of the series on Text-to-Speech (TTS) for eLearning written by Dr. Joel Harband and edited by me.  The other posts are: Text-to-Speech Overview and NLP Quality, Digital Signal Processor and Text-to-Speech, Using Text-to-Speech in an eLearning Course, and Text-to-Speech eLearning Tools - Integrated Products.   We attacked these questions a little differently than the big question.  We particularly focused on: Why use Text to Speech (TTS)? Why not use human voice-over? Or just use text on the screen? How will the quality of the voice affect the quality of the learning? How will the students accept the voices? To best answer these questions, we asked professionals who have had actual experience in the field: people that have produced eLearning courses with text to speech tools (Speech-Over Professional) and have received feedback from learners. You can think of this as four case studies of Text-to-Speech.  The case studies come from: Case Study A. Company-wide training modules by an IT Process & Quality Manager at a Large Global Communications Corporation.  Case Study B. Global web training by a Systems Engineering Manager at a Large Product Corporation. Case Study C. Company-wide training modules by a Lead Courseware Developer at a Security Products Corporation. Case Study D. Support for live presentations by a Process Design Consultant. Why Use Text-to-Speech? There were a range of answers to the question: A. Our company has a prior background in TTS - our phones use TTS - and we've tried TTS before for training. This time it is succeeding because of the price, the voice quality, and the integration with PPT. I think it will only get better with time. The reasons we use TTS are three fold: * E-learning with voice-over is a preferred training approach within our company. This allows for people to take their training at their own pace; when and where they want to take it. Voice over is very helpful for our associates that English is not their first language. * Using human voices makes it more difficult to create and maintain the training. Only a few people have the quality voice with minimal accent to perform the recordings. This creates a resource constraint for the creation and maintenance of e-learning material. Usually, the e-learning was out-of-date with the subject of the training and quickly became obsolete.* Voice over, especially computer voice, has proven to be helpful to associates that English is not their first language. The computerized voice is more consistent in pronunciation and speaks at a more steady pace. Thus, allowing people to understand the material more easily. B. It offers a significant advantage over other methods of providing audio with PowerPoint. C. We were looking for something that provided us with a short production and turn-around time, that our small development team could do in-house. Something easy to edit and change on the fly, without having to send it out, or schedule lengthy voiceover work. These responses echo what we generally expect, Text-to-Speech offers a solution that is much faster to produce and 100x faster to modify as changes occur.  This means a faster time-to-market and lower cost than human narration.  There are obviously ways to keep human voice-over costs down by using in-house talent, but it still takes significantly more time.  And it’s especially true when changes occur. If you think about a simple spectrum of solutions: Text on Screen No Voice-Over Text-to-Speech Narration Human Narration In-House Human Narration Professional Lowest Cost Fastest     Highest Cost Slowest Certainly there’s a balance to be found.  We’ll consider other factors below. I thought the response from Case Study D was particularly interesting: D. Initially, I experimented with TTS as a way to add content to a presentation that I as a presenter could use to refresh myself before presenting. I found that the act of adding TTS made me aware of a number of design issues with the presentation. Then I thought: wouldn't this be great as a way for participants to refresh their knowledge after the training. One of the recommendations around the use of Text-to-Speech is that it’s used as part of any course that eventually will be recorded by Humans to prepare the script as part of authoring.  That way, you have a good idea what it will sound like once it’s recorded.  In this case, they were using Text-to-Speech to prepare themselves for a presentation.  But instead of recording themselves against the slides, they used TTS.  They could easily listen to their script.  That’s actually a fantastic idea.  And it led this person to eventually use the TTS as the basis of creating courses that could be used after the training sessions. Why didn't you use human voice-over? Obviously, cost and time are a major factor here.  But a lot of the specific reasons have more to do with a hassle factor of using voice talent.  Here were the responses: A. Mainly for updating where I don't have to look for the original voice talent who can now charge more. We don't have voice talent available internally. B. Publishing a straight recording keeps all of the errors of the subject matter expert, speaking too fast, low sound quality, running on or off topic. Maintaining the recorded voice requires an entire rerecording and production where TTS is much simpler. C. For our first project, we did use human voice-over as well as text. We found that the added production time, and having to schedule around voice over, plus re-doing entire segments for one small correction, to get the sound to match, was prohibitive both cost and time-wise. D. I don't have a particularly great voice for adding to the slide so that's a factor. But the other factor is that it's 100 times easier to change text than re-record speech. Even if I were to record speech I would first do a TTS and then only after I believed it to be final, might I record. Anyone who has used in-house or professional talent knows about the hassle factor of getting things done.  You often find yourself not doing retakes when something is wrong or there are changes just because it’s too much work.  Even when you do your own voice-over, there’s still more time involved.  So adding to the spectrum above: Text on Screen No Voice-Over Text-to-Speech Narration Human Narration In-House Human Narration Professional Lowest Cost Fastest Easy to Change Lowest Hassle     Highest Cost Slowest Hard to Change Biggest Hassle Why didn’t you just use Text on Screen? I think some of the other responses to the Big Question address this much better - why use voice-over at all?  But a couple of the reasons from these case studies have to do with providing support to ESL learners: B. We asked our students which helps them learn; subtitles only or subtitles with speech. They agreed that subtitles with speech are better. English as second language students even said it helped them learn English. C. Since our training modules are used world-wide, in English, we wanted voice as well as text (all our training modules have both). Many foreign students have much better vocal/listening comprehension vs. just reading comprehension, if English is not their first language, so having voice as well as text was important to us. I would highly recommend looking at some of the specific answers to Voice Over in eLearning that talk to issues of when to use voice-over in eLearning.  For example: Learning environment - some environments audio is not good.  In other cases, it’s great to have audio to add engagement. To support graphics or animations on screen - large amounts of text would be distracting. I will caution you that some of the responses suggest that Voice-Over roughly equates to slower learning with no improved effect; and limits your cultural appeal. There’s also some suggestion that the script should be available with a mute button to be read by learners who prefer that modality.  I would claim this would definitely argue for Text-to-Speech. Others argue that to capture emotion and to engage, voice-over is very important. So, my spectrum table becomes woefully inadequate to capture all of this. Anyone want to take a shot? Concerns About Quality? In each case, there was concern about quality, but the result was good enough, especially with caveats to be used.  I think the responses speak (pardon the pun) for themselves. A. For many English speaking associates, the computerized voice can be very boring and mundane. When we researched TTS about 5 years ago the higher quality voices were too expensive. Today, those same voices are much less expensive and have broken that barrier of being too "computerish". Training the voices is an important issue. The support provided by Speech-Over for modulation and pronunciation is good. B. We were concerned that it would be too mechanized sounding. It turned out not to be and was well accepted by students. C. Yes, we were concerned that the slight robotic cadence might detract from the training, just because it does not come out completely natural all the time. The Paul voice is very good, but still recognizable as mechanical. To counter this, we put a statement up front in our training introduction about the narration being computer generated, so an awareness and expectation of this is set with the students before they even begin the training. With this disclaimer in place, we have had no complaints at all about the "voice" in the presentations, and our technical training modules using this TTS have been successfully taken by hundreds of students world-wide as part of their technical service training with us. As we worked with the TTS, we quickly developed a style of writing the scripts that really worked well with TTS, and minimizes the difference between using a computer generated voice, vs. human voice-over. In fact, we received complaints about our first human voice-over training for a few pronunciation gaffs, and some pacing issues, where we have received none at all on our subsequent TTS developed training modules. D. The voice quality is extremely important. As soon as people hear what sounds like a robot voice they tend to immediately believe the presentation to be cheap like the voice. So voice quality is the key. The current voices although very good are more monotonous than a human voice. I know that there are some tools for changing Paul's voice, for example, but I haven't tried them. Results?  Acceptance by Students? Again, the responses are somewhat self-evident: A. Yes. The TTS technology coupled with the software allowed us to create e-learning material in about half the time as human voice over. The maintenance of the e-learning material takes 75% less time than maintaining material with human voice over. This allows us to create and maintain material much faster with less resources and without needing specialized resources that have voices specialized for recording. We have produced courses for 6000 people in the company and we are getting good feedback: 80% are satisfied, 10% love it and 10% feel offended. My conclusion is that the voices are "good enough" for training applications. B. Yes. It actually helped us reduce the length of training by having the subject matter experts edit their transcripts and eliminate extra unnecessary speech. C. Yes and more. The ease of converting the text to voice, coupled with the ability to go back and instantly change / edit / correct narration on a single slide, and have it exactly match the voice, volume, timber, etc. of every other slide, recorded days or weeks or months earlier is invaluable. Short technical/repair training modules that took us a month or more to develop and schedule voice-over and re-voice-over to correct and edit, now literally take us just days to develop start to finish, right on the desktop. Acceptance by the students has been 100%. All the students taking our TTS based training are required to pass a Certification test after they complete those training modules. Our first-time pass rates are identical for our earlier human voice-over training, vs. our current TTS based training - so if outcomes are the measure, for us, there is no difference between the two as far as their functional performance, and the Return On Investment is much higher for us with the TTS. In surveying students who completed our TTS based training, they all said the same thing, that at first it was a bit different, being computer generated narration, but after they were into the training their ear became tuned to the voice, and it really wasn't any different than listening to someone talk who had a particular regional or foreign accent to their speech. The comment about learners getting used to the voice is interesting.  I think putting a caveat up front and then learners getting used to the voice is an important take-away. Summary Obviously, there are complex questions around the use of voice-over at all.  These are hard to capture in the simple kind of spectrum table that I attempted above.  Some specific things that jump out at me: The TTS voice quality was acceptable for eLearning applications and did not detract from learning effectiveness. High Emotion - Clearly if you have sensitive material with high emotion, likely using actual voices (key executives or employees) might be best.  Professional talent can also help with this.  Text-to-speech accelerates development time vs. human voice-over.  And maintaining the voice is possible. Much of the comparison of Text-to-speech vs. Human narration focuses on the hassle factor more than cost. Text-to-speech makes it easy to keep the material up-to-date and accurate vs human recordings that can become obsolete and would need to be re-recorded. Caveat Text-to-Speech - Put a note up front so that learners are more open to the voice. Use Text-to-Speech to prepare your scripts If you expect change, don’t use human narration I welcome your thoughts and comments. eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

Not-so-serious gaming: How an old-fashioned game and some new-fangled software might change the way you embed interactivity in eLearning. By Alison Hass and Matthew Kliewer Articulate released Storyline in May, 2012. Storyline has features that allow for greater flexibility in the presentation of content, sequence of screens, and learner interactivity than Articulate Presenter. We explored Storyline’s functionality by using it to create a game of chance. Specifically, we took advantage of Storyline’s triggers, variables, branching, drag and drop, and the ability to incorporate JavaScript.   Click to play Farkle! Farkle is a dice-based game with almost as many variations as there are players in the world. Its beauty lies in the seeming paradox between the simplicity of its rules and the complexity of the players’ decisions. With virtually every turn, players are faced with the age-old conundrum, elegantly summarized by The Clash, "Should I stay or should I go?" They must decide whether to keep the points they have accrued or risk it all in the hopes of earning more. The equipment is commonplace - six dice, paper and pencil. The play is easy enough - a player rolls six dice and chooses which dice to keep and which to roll again. The scoring is addictive - earning 1,000 points or more in one turn keeps you coming back. The old, the young, and the in-between can all play and can play with equal odds of success against one another. It was the perfect little game for us to explore Storyline. We utilized several features in Storyline to build Farkle - branching, triggers, variables, JavaScript, object states, slide layers, animation, video, and audio. The complexity increased as the build progressed, and resulted in a deceptively simple game. But the basic techniques required to build it can easily be applied to many types of learning experiences. Applications in instructional design & course building Learner motivation: Learners who are given options are likely to be more engaged with the content and likely to spend more time exploring it. All the branching, triggers, and variables offer an opportunity for learners to interact with the content and/or affect the presentation of the course. In the case of Farkle, several around the office played it as a 1-player game and then immediately played it as a 2-player game, playing both the 1st and 2nd player roles. The versions aren’t different in content, but having been presented with a choice, players wanted to explore both options. The result - they spent twice as long on the game. Increased playing time with a dice game isn’t especially important, but getting learners to double their time in a training module could improve its efficacy. Content retention and application: Learner motivation is closely related to content retention - more engagement and time spent in a course means more opportunity for absorption of material. Additionally, learners who interact with content and are then given feedback have the opportunity to process information in more than one way. Rather than simply listening and viewing, they are manipulating and applying. The goal is to help the learner conceive of the skill, concept, or information in as many ways as possible; Storyline makes it (relatively) easy to accomplish this. Self-directed learning and non-linear courses: Self-directed learning is advantageous for learners because they can focus their time and energy on the content most critical to them. Allowing the learner greater flexibility in how he/she accesses the course content also makes it more likely those learners will use the course as a resource even after training, which adds value to the course.  That being said, it is also still possible to restrict a user’s movement throughout a course in Storyline, so you can require them to view certain slides before continuing. Farkle is non-linear in that a player can choose the number of players at the very beginning. It is a simple example of branching, but it shows how easy it can be to set a choice with different outcomes. Scenario-based learning: This game doesn’t have a premise, but it does put the player in control of the situation and responsible for making decisions. Farkle is pretty low-stakes decision-making, but one could easily imagine increasing the pressure to learn by telling the learner a story and some background information and then asking the learner to make decisions that will affect the outcome. (For those who want to make the experience even more immersive, Storyline’s flexibility in slotting in video could also come in handy here.) The learner internalizes the content through trial, feedback, and re-trial. Learners can explore the outcomes of poor or incorrect decisions in the safety of an eLearning course. In fact, sometimes the learner gains more understanding from the wrong choice than from choosing the correct (safe) option. In Farkle, players can play. With each round, their understanding of the risks versus the benefits is refined. Even young players or those unfamiliar with calculating probability quickly learn that it’s riskier to roll with only one die left rather than several, though either could have positive or negative consequences. Players are given immediate feedback which they can file away for future reference. The next time they are faced with a similar situation, they will likely make their decision based on the previous outcome. Feedback is critical to successful scenario-based learning. In Storyline, you use triggers to provide feedback. It works with a simple "If (this happens) then (that happens)" foundation. The trigger wizard uses drop-down menus to help you program the response to triggers (a popup window, overlay, another slide, sound, even a video). You can further refine triggers with conditions that offer more control of how and when a response is triggered.   Categorizing content: Farkle had simple categorization (the player only had to sort valuable dice from worthless dice) but a more sophisticated use of this same principle makes a valuable learning interaction. Categorizing or sorting requires learners to process information in relationship to new or previous knowledge, which helps move the content from working memory to long-term memory. Using new software to create a playable (and fun!) experience is a helpful way to learn the interface and features of a program. In our case, we learned the functionality of Articulate’s Storyline, particularly its ability to increase learner interactivity through the branching, triggers, variables, and JavaScript options. In designing this game, we discovered how to use those Storyline capabilities to more easily create scenario-based learning, embed discovery learning, build categorization interactions, and design non-linear content presentation.

Reddit interim CEO Ellen Pao resigned today after facing an all-out revolt on the site in the wake of the firing of a popular employee. The post Ellen Pao Steps Down as CEO After Reddit Revolt appeared first on WIRED.

This month’s big question is Examples of Big Impact from Technology and I’ve taken it as an opportunity to go back and look at the elements of different projects that I’ve worked on over the years that have had a big impact.  In this post, I’m going to focus on a common model that has been part of several of the highest impact projects.  At it’s core, the model is pretty simple: Guide through setting meaningful personal goals Teach how you can hold yourself accountable to those goals Help the user set up social support Teach the social supporters how they can help hold the personal accountable Send lots of reminders to the individual and the supporters This approach has been used for loan officers, automotive sales, management development, retail store management, and in lots of other industries and jobs.  In fact, we’ve also used it as a means of some fairly generic goal setting processes.  As a side note, I believe that there’s a REALLY great business to be created around this.  Goal Setting and Making Plans There’s a lot of content that already exists around the basics of goal setting, i.e., SMART goals: Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Timely However, it’s far easier to teach someone about these than it is to help them create the goals themselves. And if you are asked to create eLearning around goal setting, PLEASE DON’T GIVE THEM A BLANK TEXT ENTRY FIELD.  I’ve seen that in courses and in design specs many times, and it’s a HORRIBLE IDEA.  Yes, I’m yelling - it’s really that bad.  Remember what it’s like when you set your own SMART goals.  It’s one thing when you provide a blank space to write your goals when you are in a classroom and there’s a teacher who can help you.  It’s quite something else when you are on a computer and you are likely not very good at this.  Actually, it’s rare to find people who really are good at setting SMART goals.  Setting SMART goals sounds so easy and takes real work. I would claim that this is a perfect situation for Performance Support. Walk them through the process Focus the question Provide prompts or ideas that can spark specific goals Show lots of examples both of goals and of plans to attach the goals Give them criteria to evaluate the goal and plan - have them rework needed items In my post Data Driven, we describe a use of this approach that helped retail store managers improve customer satisfaction.  Of course, improving customer satisfaction is a goal, but the system would drill down to specific issues such as knowledge of store layout.   We provide suggestions for particular interventions that have specific steps and particular associated goals.  In this case, the plan was as important as the goal. Accountability, Follow-up and Social Support Of course, what’s often much more important than setting goals and plans is having a game plan around accountability and follow-up.  Anyone who tries to lose weight, can tell you that it’s SO MUCH easier to talk about your goals and come up with specific plans than it is to follow-through on those plans.  There is a ton of material on how you can be better at holding yourself accountable to goals.  I roughly boil this down to: Establish importance Take responsibility Track progress Overcome obstacles Have reward / punishment system in place Reminders When you provide support for setting goals/plans, you need to be really careful to make sure that the person setting the goal actually believes in the importance of the goal and is taking responsibility for the goal/plan.  They can easily copy, paste and edit a goal/plan from one of the examples and have no real intent on implementing.  We always present why this is important and ask some questions around it.  One trick that we’ve used is to ask users to evaluate how likely they are to implement the plan.  If they don’t rate it really high, then go back to challenge the goal.  Tracking progress can be implemented in a very complex way or in a very simple way.  I’ve worked on systems with both.  In some cases, have specific days on a schedule, checking off completed items, providing ratings to evaluate progress, etc. all make sense.  In other cases, having a very simple daily/weekly check in with a standard question or two can be effective. When you do a check-in, there’s a great opportunity to provide support for overcoming obstacles.  I’ve see courses on goal setting that have lots of up-front content on overcoming obstacles (they also have blank boxes for inputting your goals).  The obvious place to put content around overcoming obstacles is when people run into obstacles.  For example, one model is that at each check-in, the user rates how well they’ve done on completing each goal.  If they rate themselves poorly, then the system can jump in and find out what the obstacles are that are preventing them from accomplishing the goal.  It can provide them some strategies.  It’s the learning opportunity that you look for.  And again, doing it as performance support makes a lot of sense. I’ve not done this as much, but having in a way for people to setup rewards and punishments for accomplishing their plans and goals is a great idea.  I’ll treat myself to a massage if I do X is a great thing to have as part of the system.  Or an account that goes up and down.  For most of the systems that I’ve worked on, the assumption is that both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards are tied to accomplishing the goals.  For example, the games that teach associates about product location in stores are fun and it’s rewarding to see the employee growth and certainly as it improves customer satisfaction, the store manager gets greater compensation and opportunities.  For automotive sales associates, the rewards were prizes, trips, etc.  And last, but certainly not least, definitely keep in mind the necessity of having lots of reminders.  Daily and weekly reminders are often really good and should have enough content to provide something of value.  Otherwise, it quickly becomes ignored. Actually, all of this can become ignored unless we step it up one more notch … Social Support I don’t know quite what to call it when you enlist other people to help hold someone accountable for goals and plans.  In some context, you might call this a support network.  I’ve seen accountability partners.  I’m going to call it "Social Support" and the people doing it "Social Supporters."  But if you know what I should call this please let me know. The idea here is pretty simple and has been used in lots of tough behavior change situations: drugs, alcohol, weight loss, etc.  Enlist other people to help hold yourself accountable. In corporate situations, the social supporters can be peers, colleagues or even your boss.  In the retail store manager example, district managers were a critical part of the system.  The retail store manager’s plan would be reviewed and approved by the district manager.  The district manager was responsible for checking in periodically and reviewing progress.  In other situations people have enlisted friends, family, etc. Most often they have some mutual interest in the outcome and willingness to accept responsibility to provide support. Of course, just like most people are not very good at setting SMART goals and coming up with associated plans, most people (including district managers) are not very good at helping to hold people accountable to their goals / plans. There’s a bit of training required to cover things like roles, alignment, how things work.  But the majority of the assistance for social supporters is best provided through performance support.  Send them periodic reminders that include specific performance suggestions based on the particular situation.  For example, "The person you are supporting just missed their check-in.  This might be a good time to jump remind them about the importance they’ve attached to the goal.  As an example - …"  In other words, here’s a template for a conversation (or email). Big Impact Certainly, it’s way easier to build some online training around all of this than to build a performance support solution that helps people set goals and plans, and setups up personal and social accountability.  So the question is whether it’s worth the effort. Well in looking at the situations where I’ve been personally involved in big impact, really moving the needle on factors like sales, customer satisfaction, loyalty - this kind of approach was commonly used.  In several of these projects, we measured participants vs. non-participants and the impact was staggering.  Of course, there’s always lots of question of the specifics - did non-participants care less? - but my strong belief and I believe it’s backed up by my experience is that this kind of approach has a BIG IMPACT. I would very much welcome thoughts around this.   More on this Topic EPSS and ePerformance E-Performance at Work: Self-Service Action and Development Planning Performance Support in 2015 eFollow-Up Performance Support Performance Support eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.

In the "what’s old is new all over again" category (no, I’m not talking about the disconcerting popularity of 80s "fashion") there’s a lot of talk these days about blended learning. In February, I presented at the ASTD TechKnowledge conference on new tools for Blended Learning and it turned out to be a standing-room-only session. New technology and media tools open up a whole new world of fun and useful affordances for curriculum planners and instructional designers. At the same time, creative uses of some "old media" (let’s call them "analog technologies") may carry even more weight in a curriculum. The more we move online, the more value we find in some of those tangible artifacts and face to face experiences. We’re sharing our tips for blended learning media options here. WARNING: Nerdy Instructional Design Content Ahead! As important as media selection is for an effective and engaging blended learning design, you can’t neglect the structure of the curriculum itself. In Josh Bersin’s 2004 The Blended Learning Book, he suggests two models for how blended learning takes place: flow and core + spoke. Bersin’s book was released in a pre-iPad, pre-YouTube, pre-MOOC world. The wide use of tablets has changed our view of how learning can be delivered and the types of support we can provide away from a desktop computer. In that light, I would suggest a third model is emerging today: a network approach. Here’s a summary of the three models. The flow model is a linear, more formal approach. The learner progresses stepwise through an ordered sequence of learning events, comprised of a variety of media each suited to the task. Learners start with step one, and when that’s complete they move to step two, and so on. It can be implemented all at once or designers can build out the sequence one step ahead of the learners. With the flow model, consistency of the experience can be achieved. It can result in meaningful cohort groups of learners because everyone has a set of shared and maybe even contemporaneous experiences. With the core + spoke model, learners all start with a common core learning event. However, that’s where the shared experience stops. Learners branch off in different directions to meet their own personal needs, some of which will be shared by others, but there’s no guarantee. The core + spoke model allows for the learning experience to be built out and evolve over time. It’s a more individual experience for the learners, and the common core provides the high level structure that guides the solo exploration that follows. At first glance, the network model looks similar to the core + spoke but it functions quite differently. With this model there are no core shared experiences, rather collaborative networks of people who are sharing their knowledge and also linking out to other experiences. Think of LinkedIn groups where professionals contribute to a conversation or topic and reference other knowledge sources such as books, articles, organizations, conferences, etc. While the network model lacks effective metrics to evaluate the experience of learners, the capability and vibrancy of the learning experience can be intense and fulfilling since it is driven and enriched by the learners themselves. This table shows a further exploration of the differences among blended learning models.

Finally! The post The Worst Thing About the iPhone Keyboard is No More appeared first on WIRED.

I was just asked about trends in open source for eLearning and particularly open source eLearning tools.  Probably one of the better sources on this is Jane Hart’s Instructional Tools Directory.  You can find a long list of tools broken into authoring tools, games/simulations, quiz/test tools, social media, delivery platforms, tracking and whether they support mobile.  In addition, she indicates if they are free or cost money - which is not quite the same thing as open source. Beyond that, probably the best thing to do is to use eLearning Learning to go through it’s open source eLearning and open source eLearning Tools.  Here’s some of what I pulled out.  Of course, I’d recommend skimming through eLearning Learning to find the latest and greatest. Open Source LMS Other Open Source LMS Solutions- eLearning 24-7, April 14, 2010 Open Source life, LMSs beyond Moodle- Learning Rocks, December 18, 2008 Open Source LMS- eLearning Technology, December 10, 2009 The Real Cost of a Free (Open Source) LMS!- Upside Learning Blog, April 29, 2010 The Corporate Moodle: A Tipping Point?- Learning Visions, June 26, 2009 Concerning Open Source, LMSs and SCORM: Correcting Some Common Misconceptions- The E-Learning Curve, October 19, 2009 Open Source LMS Comparison- The Learned Man, April 27, 2007 Open Source vs Commercial LMS- Learning Next, April 18, 2007 Sakai: Open Source … Open Minds by Larissa Biggers- Learning Solutions Magazine, December 13, 2009 SharePoint and the LMS - Time to Converge?- Learning on the Leading Edge, February 9, 2009 Harold Jarche » Open Source LMS- Learning and Working on the Web, June 25, 2006 Selecting an Open-Source Online Course Development and Delivery Platform- Tony Karrer delicious links, February 16, 2010 Have LMSs Jumped The Shark?- eLearning Weekly, March 20, 2009 OLAT: Swiss Quality Open Source LMS by Joël Fisler- Learning Solutions Magazine, February 24, 2010 The Right Way To Go About Open Source LMS- Upside Learning Blog, October 23, 2009 Moodle Mayhem- eLearning 24-7, April 14, 2010 Discovery Through eLearning: Moodle Goes Corporate: Leveraging Open Source - Michelle Moore- Discovery Through eLearning, April 16, 2008 Response to Donald Clark: Moodle: e-learning’s Frankenstein- Learning Conversations, March 8, 2010 More Than One LMS Option- aLearning, February 14, 2010 The Revolution is Coming: Consumer Tablets and E-Learning- eLearning 24-7, June 25, 2010 More LMS Options for Associations on a Budget- aLearning, April 25, 2010 Moodle Pros and Cons Update- eLearning Blender, June 1, 2010 Open source e-learning development tools 22: Xerte Rapid E-Learning Suite- The E-Learning Curve, December 17, 2009 LMS & LCMS Directory- eLearning 24-7, July 8, 2010 How Big is Moodle?- MinuteBio, June 12, 2009 Moodle Open Source life, LMSs beyond Moodle- Learning Rocks, December 18, 2008   Other Open Source LMS Solutions- eLearning 24-7, April 14, 2010 The Corporate Moodle: A Tipping Point?- Learning Visions, June 26, 2009 Yes, mobile moodle for iPhone is eminent, we will release open source code soon- Ignatia Webs, February 25, 2010 Open Source Authoring and Open Source eLearning Development Course Content Authoring Tools - Open Source (Free)- eLearning 24-7, June 7, 2010 CCK08 Free and reliable open source software for YOU and all of us- Ignatia Webs, September 22, 2008 Open Source E-Learning Development 5: Media Capture- The E-Learning Curve, October 14, 2009 e-Learning Authoring Tools Crash Course -- Follow Up- Learning Visions, November 4, 2009 Open Source E-Learning Development 7: Freemind- The E-Learning Curve, October 26, 2009 e-Learning Authoring Tools Crash Course -- Follow Up- Learning Visions, November 4, 2009 Free Quiz and Test Maker Tools Plus My Top 3- eLearning 24-7, September 14, 2010 Open Source E-Learning Development 20: Reusable E-Learning Object Authoring & Delivery Suite- The E-Learning Curve, December 10, 2009 RapideL-i- Clive on Learning, December 28, 2007 Free-to-use e-learning development 15: Wink Screen Capture Tool- The E-Learning Curve, November 23, 2009 Rapid Content Authoring Tools: Market, Mayhem and Reality- eLearning 24-7, August 19, 2010 Tim Wang's eLearning Blog - Great Open Source eLearning Project Links- Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development, May 2, 2007 Selecting an Open-Source Online Course Development and Delivery Platform, February 16, 2010 Flash development with open source tools- The Knowledge Supply Chain, September 14, 2009 Celtx a free and open source software for developing eLearning storyboards- Ignatia Webs, June 9, 2008 Xerte - Free eLearning Development Tool- Learning Journeys, October 28, 2008 Audacity - open source audio editing CCK08 Free and reliable open source software for YOU and all of us- Ignatia Webs, September 22, 2008 Course Content Authoring Tools - Open Source (Free)- eLearning 24-7, June 7, 2010 A few of my favorite things- Learning Next, June 14, 2008 Where are open source learning applications?- eLearning Technology, July 28, 2006 Scuttle - an open source social bookmarking tool Corporate Social Bookmarking Tools- eLearning Technology, May 21, 2008 Web 2.0 Applications in Learning- eLearning Technology, March 3, 2008 Ten tips for choosing & using social software- Learning Conversations, February 23, 2009 Enterprise 2.0- eLearning Weekly, August 1, 2009  MediaWiki and Twiki - Open Source Wikis Test LMS- eLearning Technology, September 10, 2008 10 Social Media Tools For Learning- The eLearning Coach, November 16, 2009 Web 2.0 Applications in Learning- eLearning Technology, March 3, 2008  Have LMSs Jumped The Shark?- eLearning Weekly, March 20, 2009 100+ More Wiki Tools and Resources, January 7, 2009 Joomla and Drupal - Open Source CMS Other Open Source LMS Solutions- eLearning 24-7, April 14, 2010 Open Source E-Learning Development 10: Joomla! CMS- The E-Learning Curve, November 3, 2009 Open Source E-Learning Development 9: Drupal CMS- The E-Learning Curve, November 2, 2009 The Corporate Moodle: A Tipping Point?- Learning Visions, June 26, 2009 Other Top Posts Around Open Source dimdim - World’s FREE Virtual Classroom (Open Source)!- ZaidLearn, December 26, 2007 Open Source Business Model- eLearning Technology, March 5, 2007 Open Source Web Conferencing Solutions - FREE- eLearning 24-7, July 27, 2010 A few of my favorite things- Learning Next, June 14, 2008 Open source instructional design- Clive on Learning, September 8, 2010 Open Source E-Learning Development 7: Freemind- The E-Learning Curve, October 26, 2009 To open source or not?- Learning Conversations, December 30, 2008 Why you should embrace open source- Informal Learning, February 14, 2009 Free, High Quality, Reusable Content- Daretoshare, August 22, 2009 eLearning Technology Subscribe to the Best of eLearning Learning for updates from this blog and other eLearning blogs.