Just having a great product is not enough. Many people forget that exceptional customer support is one of the most important parts of an organization’s ongoing success. Why? It’s most often the only contact a customer has with your company. Receiving the help they need (while interacting with awesome people) encourages customers to stick around. Further, it reinforces the lifetime value of your products and increases customer loyalty. Why does it matter? We’ve had continuous, award-winning growth over the past 10 years. That’s because we love to delight our customers with excellent products and exceptional support. We hold ourselves accountable with a running tab of how our customers rate our support for SCORM Cloud and SCORM Engine. All 2517 tickets that have been opened this year are followed up with a satisfaction survey that is posted around the office and on the website. That’s why we get really excited when the Delight-o-Meter has 100 smiling Jenas in a row: What qualifies as exceptional? We looked at the global benchmark analytics from Zendesk, the help desk tool we use. The average global satisfaction rate for all Zendesk users is 83 percent. But, average is not exceptional, so we try to shoot higher. Here’s a quick look at where we stack up next to the industries in which we operate:So how do we keep our numbers close to 100 percent? 1. Giving the right help: We shoot to give customers the best answer, not just the fastest one. And when we can’t help them, at the very least, we provide a path forward. 2. Being real: "We’re two dudes in an office. You can call us on the phone, you can see our photos on the website—you can find us. We’re accessible and we want to help. People often call us and are surprised: ‘Oh, there really is a Joe?’" -Ryan Donnelly, half of the Donnelly Support Team It’s okay to want people to like you A previous boss used to tell me "people don’t have to like you, as long as they respect you." Good advice. But wouldn’t you rather have customers who respect AND like your company? A delighted customer is a heck of a lot easier to work with than one who hates your guts. So why not shoot for both? Continue to celebrate in the delight of your customers—it pays off. This is a repost from the Rustici Software Blog. The post Measure your success by the delight of your customers appeared first on SCORM - .

A few months ago, we sent out a survey to ask customers to tell us more about how they use SCORM Cloud and what other features they’d like to see. One request we heard from the survey and other conversations with Cloud customers is the ability to set an expiration date for an Invitation or a Dispatch. Well, the wait is over! We just updated SCORM Cloud so now you can set up expiration dates for any invites or dispatches. Why is this so cool? Using invitations to connect users to your courses from a link or email? Now you can set up how long they can access that course, which helps you control your costs and enforce due dates. When you create your invitations, simply add an expiration date. And if you already have invitations created, you can now add expiration dates to those existing invites. If you’re using Dispatch, you care about controlling access to your content, which might mean how many people can take your course or how long they have access to that course. Now you can set that up on the front end when creating a Dispatch so access is automatically disabled on a specific date. You can even go back to Dispatches you’ve already created and set that expiration date. No more managing this manually! Click here to get step by step instructions to get started. Still have questions? Just drop us a line and we’ll help you out. The post SCORM Cloud Feature Update - Expiration Dates Now Available! appeared first on SCORM - .

  On August 13th, 2015, we launched a heavily revised version of tincanapi.com. Andrew Downes has been working away, as he does, creating new content. Rather than direct it all at the blog, though, he’s been rethinking and restructuring the core site and sharing his insights for first-timers, learning designers, learning product vendors, and organizations. There are countless other updates laid out below. Please spend some time with them. Many readers of the site, though, will likely notice a significant change to our handling of the name… tincanapi.com. Years ago, Mike shared our perspective on the name, that we were going to call it Tin Can API. For some, this has been a contentious issue. With the new site, we’ve made the site behave as we have been personally for a long time. We call it whatever you call it. On the site, you’ll notice a toggle in the upper left. If you prefer to call it Tin Can, do so. If you prefer xAPI, that’s great too. Whether you visit tincanapi.com or experienceapi.com, the site will present everything to you using your prefered name. It comes down to this: arguing about an API’s name simply isn’t productive. We have far more important things to accomplish together. So please, enjoy the new content. Go build a brilliant activity provider. Make some statements. Or ask us for help if you need it.     Here are the new sections of the site: Understand   The existing Tin Can Explained page gives a really helpful introduction to Tin Can if you’ve never heard of it.  We’ve brought this section up to date a little and added some pages around the different components of the new enterprise learning ecosystem that Tin Can enables. We’ve also added pages targeted specifically at organizations, learning product vendors and vendors of products outside L&D. Get Started   By now, if you haven’t heard of Tin Can and got a basic understanding, you’ve probably been living on mars. These days, the question we get asked most isn’t "what’s Tin Can?" but "how do I get started?" If that’s your question, then good news - we’ve created a new section just for you! The get startedsection includes pages targeted at product vendors, content authors and organizations. It includes guides to help you see Tin Can in action, get a Learning Record Store (LRS) and run a pilot project in your organization. There’s a collection of pages to help you think about moving on from SCORM, too. Design   We already had a bunch of resources for developers, but not much really aimed at learning designers. We’ve added a page outlining the impact of Tin Can on learning design, including reflections on a handful of learning models and theories in the light of Tin Can. If you’re thinking more at the strategy level, we’ve got a page on incorporating Tin Can into your learning strategy, too. At a practical level, there’s a guide on statement design, an introduction to recipes for learning designers, and an assignment for you to try out what you learn from the new pages we’ve written. Developers   The developers section was already crammed full of resources. We’ve tidied these up to make them easier to find and created an interactive statement explorer page to help you understand the structure of the statement. The statement generator we created a few years ago was due for an update and ADL recently published a new more comprehensive statement generator. We don’t believe in reinventing the wheel, so we’ve taken the ADL tool, made it orange and included it on the site. To help you put all these resources into practice, we’ve created a series of challenges for developers to try out writing code for Tin Can. Webinars   The previous webinar list contained embedded YouTube videos for all our webinars. We’ve got so many webinar recordings now that it was getting hard to find webinars on specific topics so we’ve created a new categorized webinar list. Each of the webinars is now on its own page, making it easier to share the recording with other people. The post We call it, "I call it" appeared first on SCORM - .

Update for 12.14.2015:  We are continuing to observe the situation, but there has been little change thus far - confusion still reigns.  The Court of Justice of the EU has given EU and US authorities until 31 January to reach a new agreement.  If an accord is not reached by that time, regulators will begin to enforce the ruling.  We await with interest the outcome of the negotiations, and are holding further action in abeyance until the legal situation is more clear.  In particular, we are looking for a signal from the large players in the cloud-storage marketplace, such as Dropbox and Box.net, as they are perhaps most affected by the ruling, and their actions will likely set the tone for the industry as a whole.   There has been much concern of late regarding the Court of Justice of the European Union’s declaration that the US-EU Safe Harbor framework is invalid.  The implications for data protection are significant, and Rustici Software is fully committed to ensuring that we are able to protect your privacy and security and to fully meet our commitments in this matter. The situation is still fluid, and we await further information from the European Commission and related authorities.  There are indications from the EC and US authorities that they wish to complete a new framework as soon as possible.  The US Department of Commerce has indicated that it will continue to administer the Safe Harbor program in the interim. Until the authorities reach a new agreement, two alternatives are available:  EU Model Contract Clauses and Binding Corporate Rules (BCRs).  Because of the significant administrative burdens and lengthy approval process of BCRs, many companies have elected to implement Model Contract Clauses in the interim. Rustici Software currently uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) for all data transfers between the EU and US that are affected by the recent ruling.  AWS released a Customer Update on October 9th where they announced that they have fully implemented Model Contract Clauses: Today, we’d like to confirm for customers and partners that they can continue to use AWS to transfer their customer content from the EEA to the US, without altering workloads, and in compliance with EU law. This is possible because AWS has already obtained approval from EU data protection authorities (known as the Article 29 Working Party) of the AWS Data Processing Addendum and Model Clauses to enable transfer of personal data outside Europe, including to the US with our EU-approved Data Processing Addendum and Model Clauses. AWS customers can continue to run their global operations using AWS in full compliance with the EU Data Protection Directive (Directive 95/46/EC). The AWS Data Processing Addendum is available to all AWS customers who are processing personal data whether they are established in Europe or a global company operating in the EEA. For additional information, please visit AWS EU Data Protection FAQ. The full text of the AWS advisory is available here. AWS’ Data Protection whitepaper further describes the effect of the Model Contract Clauses: On March 6, 2015, the AWS data processing addendum, including the Model Clauses, was approved by the group of EU data protection authorities known as the Article 29 Working Party. This approval means that any AWS customer who requires the Model Clauses can now rely on the AWS data processing addendum as providing sufficient contractual commitments to enable international data flows in accordance with the Directive. For more detail on the approval from the Article 29 Working Party, please visit the Luxembourg Data Protection Authority webpage here: http://www.cnpd.public.lu/en/actualites/international/2015/03/AWS/index.html. It appears that AWS’ implementation of Model Contract Clauses will allow our EU-based clients that utilize our Cloud Services to continue to comply with all relevant laws and regulations.  However, we are currently making a closer examination of these matters to ensure that we are correctly protecting our EU clients’ interests and fully complying with all applicable regulations. We will update this page and our privacy policy as developments warrant.  If you have any questions or concerns, please contact us via your normal support channel, or send an email directly to our privacy team at safeharbor@scorm.com. Warm Regards, Your Friends at Rustici Software   The post Regarding The US-EU Safe Harbor Framework appeared first on SCORM - .

"When we were looking out for partners to validate content created with Adobe Captivate, Rustici Software was the automatic choice. With the SCORM Cloud now integrated within Adobe Captivate 9, our users can now validate their eLearning content easily" -Akshay Bharadwaj -Senior Product Manager - Adobe Captivate A lot goes into building an elearning course. From subject matter expertise to instructional design and more, creating quality content is hard. And it gets more complicated when you consider how your content will behave in the LMS that ultimately delivers it to your learners. Testing how content will behave in an LMS before you hand it off to your client can help identify unexpected behaviors and allows you to correct them before those issues are out in the wild. We see about 70,000 courses uploaded to SCORM Cloud each month so authors can make sure that what they created actually behaves as they expect in the SCORM player. That’s why we’re super excited about a recent collaboration with Adobe that integrates SCORM Cloud directly with Adobe Captivate 9 for testing. Now you can directly preview courses you build in Adobe Captivate 9 on SCORM Cloud to see how it behaves within an LMS player, without the hassle of uploading the content to your LMS for testing. With just one click, you can automagically see your content play in SCORM Cloud. No more downloading/ uploading/overwriting/versioning steps. One click handles all of that and gives you immediate insight into how your course will play in an LMS. "When Adobe first approached us about connecting Captivate 9 to SCORM Cloud for testing, we were really impressed. Helping their users streamline the testing portion of content development is so important, and building it into the authoring tool eliminates a lot of extra steps for their customers. We’ve had a long history of working together to help solve the complexities of implementing e-learning standards, and this collaboration is a great reflection of that partnership." -Tim Martin -President, Rustici Software To see how it works, check out this walk through. Pretty cool huh? The post Adobe Captivate 9 + Cloud - One click testing is here! appeared first on SCORM - .

Today, I want to share a piece of news that’s really exciting for us. As of this morning, Rustici Software has been acquired by Learning Technologies Group plc (LTG), a publicly listed learning technologies agency made up of specialist digital learning businesses. As a part of LTG, we’ll have the opportunity to work with the other Group companies in creating the next generation of technically-focused learning solutions. LTG has a great deal of learning expertise and serves organizations worldwide. LTG’s portfolio includes LEO, a pioneering learning technologies firm, the multi-device authoring tool gomo learning, games with purpose company Preloaded, and Eukleia, an e-learning provider to the financial services sector. As part of LTG, we’ll continue offering exactly the same services we do today to an ever larger group — not only will we provide our world-class e-learning standards support to LTG companies and their customers but as part of the Group, we’ll also have the platform to reach new global audiences. For our Rustici Software customers, the story is simple. The very same people will be providing to you the very same services in the same way. Our ability to serve our customers in the way we always have is something we feel really strongly about. We’re excited to have the opportunity to work with the fine folks at LTG, and to continue to serve the e-learning industry in an even bigger way than before. We’re also excited because we’re spinning off Watershed at the very same time. Watershed will continue to push forward with their exploration of learning analytics and LRSs, and has also received a significant investment from LTG as part of Watershed’s Series A funding round. Mike and I, as CEO of Watershed and CEO of Rustici Software respectively, are both excited about where the two companies are headed. If you have any questions or need more specific information regarding the acquisition, please let us know. Any inquiries or requests for additional documentation should be sent to info@scorm.com. Tim   The post Big news from Rustici Software appeared first on SCORM - .

Welcome to week one of the post-acquisition Rustici Software world. I just thought I’d take a moment here to discuss one of the reasons we agreed to sell Rustici Software to LTG, because it’s not all about the money. Mike and I were seeking investment funding for Watershed, but we really weren’t on the lookout for anything related to Rustici Software. It was a profitable business, I know very well how to run it, and we have several sets of work that give us cause for optimism. LTG, however, saw the value in both Watershed from an investment point of view and Rustici Software from a market and profitability point of view. After LTG’s first visit, Mike and I asked ourselves two questions. Did we believe that we would be able to maintain our strange and highly-valued culture through an acquisition? Having a place we want to come to work has always been a fundamental requirement for us. Did we believe that we would be able to serve our customers in the way we always had? Throughout the negotiations, due diligence, and these two long days as an LTG company we’ve consistently believed that we could do both of those things and still do. LTG is not an LMS provider like some of our prior suitors have been. We always used to worry that an acquisition of that sort might include aggressive interactions with our customers. With LTG, we’re going to continue to be agnostic, supportive of the standards, and generally the same company we always have been. We’re excited about it, and excited about continuing to support our customers and the industry in general in exactly the same way. The post More of the same appeared first on SCORM - .

Congratulations! You got that promotion you’ve been waiting for. You are a first-time manager! My guess is that you earned your promotion by being a high achiever—and that’s fabulous. Keep in mind, though, that the skills that helped you succeed as an individual contributor are not necessarily the same ones you will need to achieve success as a manager. That’s why I’m so excited about our First-time Manager program, a new training program I’m working on with Linda Miller and Scott Blanchard that will help new managers master the skills they need to make it through this major transition. In our research, we have found that first-time managers must deal with three new realities. The first new reality: First-time managers must shift from being responsible only for their own work to managing the work of others, as well. As a manager, they need to work with their staff to set performance goals and then manage that performance along the way. This can be challenging when dealing with someone who is underperforming. The second new reality: It can be emotionally challenging to manage a group of former peers who are now direct reports. Some new managers report suddenly being unfollowed on social media or not invited to lunches or other group activities. This can make a new manager feel as if they are alone in their new endeavor. The third new reality: Managers have a greater level of impact than non-managers. Not only are they responsible for helping their own team succeed, they now play a role in the overall success of the organization. They must manage new relationships, both with their people and with other leaders in the company. And they now serve two groups—their direct reports as well as their own leader. If this all sounds pretty daunting, it doesn’t have to be. Learning how to communicate effectively will set first-time managers up for success. I believe that leading is something you do with people, not to them. So knowing how to hold conversations that strengthen relationships and build trust will get your management career off to a great start. Our new program focuses on four critical conversations new managers need to master: Goal Setting, Praising, Redirecting, and Wrapping Up. In the next few weeks, I’ll go into detail about how and why to hold these conversations and I’ll also show you four skills that will further improve the quality of your communication with others. You’ll learn how to Listen to Learn, Inquire for Insight, Tell Your Truth, and Express Confidence in each interaction. These tips will improve your relationships with your team, your colleagues, and your leaders. In the meantime, celebrate your success in your new role—and be open to learning how you can make a positive and fulfilling transition to being a first-time manager!

Rarely have we gotten the responses from our audience than we did last month, in our January (New Years) newsletter, titled Re-New U: Bring Back Your Energy. Thanks to all for sharing our posts and spreading the word. The only person who can make your work and family life better is you. We challenged our readers to rank the 13 statements you'll see in the chart above. 13 is an unhappy number, and these are unhappy statements. The participants in the survey have confirmed that work is not a great place to be.I have had the privilege this month to develop a proposal for a new kind of leadership- real, in the trench, and action oriented- that honors human dignity. If you are a leader, the current workplace challenges how leadership is practiced. Here's an example: I love the Steven Covey Four Quadrants (see great interpretation by Chis Peterman) but most leaders think that they can't get the three hours it takes to do this simple prioritization with their teams. In the constant multi- tasking and chaos, going through the motions takes priority over reflection, strategy and growth.This month we're going to focus on how to practice powerful loving- to honor Valentine's Day- leadership in the real world. Let's get rid of the guilt of how we wish we could practice leadership to create lean and flexible approaches for in- the-moment leadership. Academic leadership knowledge is great, but how are you going to change the game by practicing leadership in a new way to mitigate the troubles listed? If it's to be, it's up to me... and you.I've grouped the statements with similar ratings, starting with the least true and ending with the most true. Your story may be different, we all know we are unique, and benefit from looking at average responses because there's a very good chance some of that is true for us.Help me with this list of real leadership in the real world. For our contest this month, please send your innovative ideas for growing leadership in the moment to me at info@russellmartin.com, and we'll share them next month. Together, we can bring back leadership to bring back our teams.

Piggybacking on last week’s discussion of digital literacy, I’m going to discuss digital natives…a topic somewhat inspired by the ‘free wifi’ at a resort my friends and I stayed at several years go. Digital Natives Marc Prensky originally coined the term Digital Natives when looking for a term for a new generation of students: the first generation of students to grow up with digital technology. My generation, Gen Y - commonly referred to as Millenials, grew up with the emergence of digital technology. We were there for enormous CRT monitors, 14.4k dial-up modems, shouting at our parents for picking up the telephone when we’re trying to use the Internet, and have experienced many of the technological hiccups that have helped shape digital technology today. Today, this group of digital natives seem to innately understand how to use technology. Which brings me back to my Mexican resort experience in 2013 - the resort claimed to have ‘free wifi’ in the main lobby, but neither myself nor three of my other millennial pals, who work with technology every single day, could figure out how to get connected to this elusive wifi. Meanwhile, children between the ages of 2 and 8 surrounded us, as if we had entered some digital playground, successfully connected to the Internet and doing more than the least of which we wanted to do…I just wanted to check my damn email! Why Do I Need to Know This?! Understanding Digital Natives is important! Why? Because as Learning and Development professionals, we need to better understand how to effectively develop training for our target audiences. This is a fact that is important for anyone working in Education. In my day-to-day, I come across individuals who are very out of touch with how their students are learning, and refuse to adapt their traditional methods of instruction (e.g. stand up lectures/chalk and talk) to address the needs of these individuals. I do see movement to adapting these teaching methods, but there’s still a great amount of resistance and frustration. Ultimately, it’s important to understand that digital natives seem to be more comfortable when working in the digital realm than they do in more traditional contexts. While this doesn’t mean that we need to trash traditional methods entirely, it certainly does mean that we need to make certain adaptations. When you consider digital natives in tandem with online learning, making these adaptations may also stand to increase overall accessibility to high-quality education, so while digital natives may view these educational means as an environment in which they can thrive and are eager to enrol in, we will inadvertently address accessibility issues for other generations! Resources: Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky Born Digital Book Chapters from Harvard.edu Dawn of the Digital Natives by S. Johnson

The Personal Learning Environment Can the environment you're learning in effect your learning? There is a lot of science out there claiming it makes a big difference. Granted, most of the research is based on K-12 students. But as training professionals do we take advantage of this knowledge? Should we include a best odors, sounds, and imagery section to instructor's guides? How about colors and fashion? Could what an instructor is wearing be as important as well crafted assessments? All of these questions may have you chuckling, or rolling your eyes, but if the science is legit why ignore any factor that could improve learning? Smellearning? Since industries are good at creating new words for their communities, I'd like to propose smellearning. The science tells us that smell has a powerful impact on memory and recall. Wouldn't we want to take advantage of that in our designs of instruction? Since I've not seen much of it in adult learning theories, I'll assume no. But let's just pretend the answer is yes. What would that look like? For me electro-mechanical smells trigger all sorts of memories that have proven useful in troubleshooting problems. I grew up in a family with lots of old Volkswagens and you could learn a lot about how those cars were running by their smell. I've also heard a lot about realtors baking fresh cookies in the homes they are trying to sell. They want the experience of walking around the house to feel like you're walking around your own "home". They want you to feel good. Musicalearning? Music can create all sorts of feelings. Do you have music playing while you work or study? According to Accelerated Learning's research, slow Baroque music increases concentration. The Barzak Institute also uses slow and fast Baroque era music to hold attention. What? Who knew? Get to iTunes and find your favorite Baroque jams when you're having trouble concentrating. And maybe you could have it playing quietly in the background of your classroom experiences as well. Colorning? What's you're favorite color? What color best stimulates the brain for learning? Mistupid.com has some simple explanations about color. And according to the site, Orange has the characterize halfway between red and yellow making it an ideal color for optimizing learning. It's not my favorite color, but I'll certainly think about it the next time I'm planning a learning environment. The site also says that for optimal learning choose yellow, light orange, beige, or off-white. Choose your colors wisely because some will also influence aggressive behavior. I don't know how legit the science is around any of this, but that's not the point of this post. My point is that there are a lot of people thinking about many many different elements that can/might influence learning. It would be unwise attempting to apply them all at once, but just knowing about them is a great place to start. And what we do know is that impacting our learners emotionally has a significant positive effect on memory. And all three of these stimuli impact emotions. The most interesting part is that the emotion does not need to be positive for the effect to work. Being scared, angry, sad, is equally impactful as positive happy feelings. But of course it all depends on what you're objective is during the instruction and the outcome you are hoping to achieve. I'm no expert on this but I find it fascinating. Let me know what color, music, or smell impacts you the most. Have you ever purposely used them in your instructional designs?     The post 3 New Factors to Consider in Designing Learning Environments appeared first on Litmos.

Most of us have been in that social situation where a couple gets in a disagreement; the "Bickersons" are oblivious to the awkwardness their argument is causing among those around them. If you’re the onlooker in that situation, a vortex opening in the middle of the room and sucking you up would be a welcome opportunity. What if that happened in your office, but the "Bickersons" were a physician and a clinical staff member? Your patients are likely hoping for a vortex. Many healthcare organizations are tossing around the term patient engagement—it’s very 2016. Or as I like to say, "The consumer formerly known as the patient." Most individuals are now shopping for healthcare in the same way they do nonessential items; the physician-centered model will no longer work in this landscape. So you want to engage your patients and you require your staff to put patient engagement at the forefront, right? Many insiders believe this is the key to reimbursement and return customers. I think patient engagement really starts with staff engagement. Extensive research shows that employees that feel valued and recognized work smarter and are willing to go that extra mile. Attitude is contagious, especially negative attitude. A recent article in Physicians Practice listed six keys to motivating medical practice staff. They were: Cross-train Encourage and fund offsite training Praise publicly, correct privately (Bickersons, this is for you!) Hire slowly, fire quickly Take some time to get to know your staff and their jobs. I have seen physicians belittle clinical staff in public and I have seen clinical staff treat certified nursing assistants (CNA’s) with disdain. However, this entire team has one common link: the patient. Patients may be sick, but most certainly aren’t blind. When there’s clearly a disconnection within the team, what sort of confidence can a patient have in them? I have an amazing friend, a plastic surgeon, who specializes in reconstruction for breast cancer patients. Oftentimes the people in his office are very sick and the atmosphere should be dismal. However, the opposite is true. You hear patients laughing. I see staff hugging people as they leave. They offer personal well wishes to family members, and people often leave with a happy, "See you soon!" Wait, what? It starts behind the curtain! My friend is passionate about his work, he is very selective about who he hires and he has surrounded himself with amazing people. What’s astounding is how they treat one another and the minuscule percentage of turnover he’s seen the last five years, despite the added complexities of ACA and ICD-10. The opposite has happened, actually. Several nurses and counselors have moved from other areas of the health system into his office. My friend really knows his staff. He studied to become a minister so he could marry one of his nurses and her fiancé. He’s won a variety of awards for patient care and his discoveries in medicine, but he always turns the focus away from himself and shines the spotlight on his staff. Although at times I know he gets frustrated with certain situations, he never airs those grievances publicly. We’re on the board of a nonprofit together (he’s actually the founder). When we suggest using him as our face for marketing, he always refuses because he doesn’t want the focus to be on him, but the women that need our services and the volunteers that provide the support. Many of our volunteers are current or former patients, who are involved with our cause because they love him, want to support him, and genuinely like being around him and his staff. The stories always end the same, "I got involved because I just love him!" His staff adores him, he adores them, and their patients—sometimes critically ill—leave his office smiling. His practice is flourishing, which is sad since many patients are there because of breast cancer. But they are also there because amidst a dark cloud, my friend and his staff can cause a smile, even on the darkest day. The post Patient Engagement Starts with Staff Engagement appeared first on Litmos.

Elearning company Sponge UK has won an award in recognition of the learning and development it provides for its own employees.The Plymouth-based provider of custom-made elearning came top in the category of Outstanding Commitment to Training for a medium-size business at the Excellence in Business Training Awards 2016, hosted by Cornwall College Business.The award judges were impressed by the company’s creative approach to staff training which includes the creation of an internal ‘Sponge University’ to help employees develop key skills and achieve their potential.Louise Pasterfield, Managing Director, Sponge UK, said:"As a company in the learning business it means a great deal to be recognised for the training we offer our own team. We’re committed to building an organisation where people can thrive and where everyone is constantly learning and developing their skills. As our teams continue to grow and push the limit of what is possible, we are able to offer our clients new and innovative solutions that are at the forefront of elearning." Sponge UK has grown rapidly in the past four years and provides internal and external training for its 60-strong workforce to help them develop as the company continues to expand.The informal and formal learning opportunities include business mentoring, leadership training, graduate development and social learning.As part of ‘Sponge University’ each department in the business has created a learning pathway made up of different sessions covering key aspects of the elearning industry.Sponge UK was able to demonstrate the positive impact training is having on the organisation including supporting business expansion, boosting innovation, maintaining the highest standards of customer service and helping to attract and retain talent.The Excellence in Business Training Awards is the South West of England’s premier award scheme for celebrating success in the training provided by the region’s businesses.The awards were presented at a gala ceremony at The Atlantic Hotel, Newquay on Friday, January 29, 2016.Sponge UK was recently named one of England’s 50 most creative companies and is on the Sunday Times list of the 100 best small companies to work for.The post Excellence in Business Training Award for Sponge UK appeared first on Sponge UK.

Pretty much anyone can present information, but an honestly good eLearning course designer knows how to make that information stick with learners even when that audience isn’t interested. Because that’s the nature of an eLearning course: sometimes your audience is enthralled with the subject and sometimes they’re just being pushed to learn because of a job or class. It should be your goal to make content memorable no matter your audience’s interest level.   One of the best ways to do this is to incorporate engaging and unique characters in your courses. A learner might not remember every piece of content you present to them, but they will remember an aqua aardvark appropriately named ADDIE. While that might be too cartoonish or "out there" for many courses, I think you can see the point of how using a character gives your audience something to visualize and hold onto in the sea of new information they are being immersed in.

Welcome to week one of the post-acquisition Rustici Software world. I just thought I’d take a moment here to discuss one of the reasons we agreed to sell Rustici Software to LTG, because it’s not all about the money. Mike and I were seeking investment funding for Watershed, but we really weren’t on the lookout for anything related to Rustici Software. It was a profitable business, I know very well how to run it, and we have several sets of work that give us cause for optimism. LTG, however, saw the value in both Watershed from an investment point of view and Rustici Software from a market and profitability point of view. After LTG’s first visit, Mike and I asked ourselves two questions. Did we believe that we would be able to maintain our strange and highly-valued culture through an acquisition? Having a place we want to come to work has always been a fundamental requirement for us. Did we believe that we would be able to serve our customers in the way we always had? Throughout the negotiations, due diligence, and these two long days as an LTG company we’ve consistently believed that we could do both of those things and still do. LTG is not an LMS provider like some of our prior suitors have been. We always used to worry that an acquisition of that sort might include aggressive interactions with our customers. With LTG, we’re going to continue to be agnostic, supportive of the standards, and generally the same company we always have been. We’re excited about it, and excited about continuing to support our customers and the industry in general in exactly the same way. The post More of the same appeared first on SCORM - .

You would think that more consideration would be given to mobile learning since most people carry one or more mobile devices. However, the reality is that mobile learning is usually an afterthought when publishing an online course. Increase the learner’s experience by considering strengths and weaknesses of mobile devices during the design phase. For additional ways to improve your mobile courses, read this post by TalentLMS 8 Ways to Enhance Your Mobile Learning Design.

Both in the education environment and the corporate environment, multitasking has been considered to be an efficient way to prove your own personal worth. After all, what leader would not value someone who could take on many tasks at the same time, all with specific deadlines to be met and performance goals to be achieved? A person showing this skillset was highly valued. This valued skillset from the the industrial economy allowed for creative divisions of labour.But then, the world changed!With the development of the world wide web and the advancement of technology came the exponential acceleration of the development of knowledge across the many disciplines. The idea of one person being the "fountain of all knowledge" quickly became an anachronism in age of exponential growth of information and the fact that access to such information became more and more instantaneous making it available "now".Credit: Industry Tap-David Russell Shilling (April 2013)    No more is this more evident than in the journalism industry where news that once took weeks to reach others on the other side of the world could now be accessed as it is happening.  Credit: www.dtspoint.com Multitasking based upon neurocognitive research has been shown to be a myth."The more divided your mind is among a number of tasks the more these tasks are performed with increasing mediocrity."Credit: www. stressfreenyc.wordpress.com (Scott Adams)As a result of the growing awareness of the inadequacy of multitasking, societies responded within the academic world by promoting specialization as the path to follow in tackling the various problems of society. Streaming learners into the created specialties of the various disciplines became the focus of education systems but this is not without problems. Even though collaboration within a specialty would occur, the idea of collaboration across the disciplines was still foreign to many practitioners. This brings us to a great problem which is:"Complex real world problems require collaboration across disciplines in order to come up with real world solutions." We are still trying to attack 21st century and beyond problems with approaches that create "silos of knowledge and skillsets" that have no useful interchange between them.  As a result, what we are faced with is the dilemma of "six blind men trying to describe an elephant".  Each discipline attempts to find a solution to a real world problem using their specific perspective and perseveres in the task believing that at some point they will arrive at the solution. This has been the "perpetual promise of science". However, there is the following nagging question they need to ask:" Could we have found a solution to a real world problem sooner, if we had collaborated with other sciences whose unique perspective could have given us a clearer picture of the problem and a more ready supply of potential solutions? "Some disciplines are just now starting to realize the benefit of collaborating with knowledge and skill set creators outside their discipline. As an example, using robotics in the service of surgical practices combines the ideas and skillsets of Engineering and Medicine. What can the science of Nanotechnology offer to the medical specialty of Oncology?One of the great barriers that needs to be overcome is what I would term "intellectual protectionism" in which the first priority is "to protect our turf from the barbarians at the gate".So, how do we overcome these barriers? It starts with the realization that we are challenged to put aside "professional glory seeking" in order to use our skillsets and knowledge for the greater good of humanity as a whole. Developing respectful acknowledgement of the skillsets and knowledge of other disciplines is the first step to opening the eyes of the six blind men.Next.....Cross Disciplinary Collaboration --Part of a New World Order

If you’re new to the Downright Sneaky Tricks series for Lectora®, be sure to catch up on the previous posts: Part 1: How to Build a Backdoor in Your Course Part 2: Create a "Hidden Entrance" to devMode Part 3: Add a devMode Indicator                                                                                                                                                           If you’ve played video games, you may be familiar with the concept of Invulnerable Mode (a setting which unlocks advanced features like special weapons and abilities and even invulnerability by granting the user access to a master control panel). Developers use this master control panel to make it easy for them to test their games without the inconvenience of dying or having to locate hidden weapons. It can be useful for testing to give yourself special powers, so that’s what we’re going to do in THIS tutorial. We are going to focus on 2 particular superpowers… The power to teleport anywhere (in your course) The power to KNOW ALL and SEE ALL (of the answers on the quiz) Best of all, you won’t have to go through the typical methods of getting super-powers… scientific experiments gone wrong, getting bitten by irradiated spiders, getting doused in chemicals, and so on. Ready? The power to teleport anywhere (in your course) This sounds impressive, but you already know how to do this… you will simply create a Table of Contents that connects to every page in the course. It will be hidden by default and only viewable in devMode. How to add a devMenu On the top level of your course, go to the Insert ribbon and click Table of Contents to add a Table of Contents item to your course. On the Properties ribbon, click Type and select Drop down list. Reposition the drop down list where you want it to be in the location and stacking order of the page. On the Properties ribbon, rename it devMenu and select Initially hidden and Always on Top. In the Properties ribbon, add the following action: Trigger: onPageShow Action: show Target: THIS OBJECT Condition: if devMode is equal to 1 So when you load a page, IF you’re in devMode, the devMenu will appear. If want it to appear the instant you turn on devMode, then you need to add ONE more action to your devEntrance button. Select the devEntrance button and add the following action: Trigger: Mouse Click Action: show Target: devMenu Condition: if devMode is equal to 1 Else Action: Hide devMenu Again, this action needs to occur AFTER devMode toggle. In essence, we activate the devMenu exactly like our devMode indicator: when you click the dev button, it turns on or off, and once it’s on, it stays on until you turn it off. The power to know all and see all (of the answers to quiz questions) When you are testing an online quiz with multiple questions, it can take time remembering all of the correct answers. Even if it only slows you down a second or two, it still takes time. But what if you could quickly see the answer? Better yet, if you need your SME to review your quiz to see if you have the correct answers coded, it can be much faster for them to see it onscreen than to read the feedback form at the end of the quiz. This magic trick is simple: you just need to provide a visual indicator that identifies the correct answer(s) to the question. These indicators are hidden by default, but devMode causes them to appear! I prefer to use bright orange arrows as my indicators, though some questions like matching or drag and drop require me to get a little more creative. The principle remains… the visual answer indicators are hidden by default and only show up in devMode. How to add a magic answer key For the purpose of this exercise, I will use a multiple response question with 2 correct answers as my example. Up to now, everything we have done with devMode has been inherited throughout the course. With the answer key, the answers will change on every question page, so this process requires a little more manual work. Go to your first quiz page with a question and add visual indicator(s) that identify to the correct answer(s). Optional: Add Transitions In and Out as desired. (I like to use a float right and fade out.) For example, add 2 orange right facing arrows. In the Insert ribbon, click Group to add a new group. Why are we adding a group? Some questions may have multiple visual indicators. Instead of having to show them each one by one, if you put them in a group, you only need to show the group. Rename the group answers, make it Initially Hidden, and move the visual indicators into the group. For example, move the 2 orange arrows into the group. Finally, we need a way to trigger these answers to appear. At the page level, add a new action: Name: Show ans if Action: Show Target: answers Condition: If devMode is equal to 1. Else Action: No Action In English, what we have programmed is as follows: "When this Page loads, show the answers group IF devMode is turned on. Otherwise, do nothing." Copy the group and action to additional pages as necessary Although you will have to manually add the visual indicators and the page action to every page where you want answers to appear, you can simply copy and paste. Since the page action refers to the answers group, you can add items to the group or take them away without changing the action. Copy and paste the show ans if action and answer group to additional pages as necessary. Two small points to note While the answer key can be marvelous, there are 2 things to keep in mind: Since the answers appear on PAGE LOAD, they won’t turn on immediately when you activate devMode. They turn on AFTER devMode is turned on and you move to a new page. Since you are indicating the correct answer manually, it’s up to you to make sure that it is the ACTUAL correct answer and that it matches the correct answer coded into the question. Go ahead and add answer indicators to your questions and see how quickly you can fly through your quiz! Tune in next time when we make our secret entrance a little more secret. Download the Lectora and Lectora Online files for this course in the Trivantis® Community. John Mortenson is the Online Learning Manager for The Fresh Market. He has been developing online courses for over 10 years and is a member of the Lectora Advisory Board. He is also an Adobe Creative Suite Guru and cartoonist. You can contact him on LinkedIn and Twitter. Previous Tutorial The post Downright Sneaky Lectora Tricks Part 4: Unlocking the Master Control Panel appeared first on .

In this article I will share 6 key benefits that blended learning can offer your corporate training. Key Benefits Blended Learning Can Offer Corporate Training  "To blend, or not to blend?" - is this your question? Or, perhaps, you ask it this way, "what training strategy is the most effective for our business needs?" Whichever way […] The post 6 Key Blended Learning Benefits For Corporate Training appeared first on PulseLearning.

This is the first post in a new series from EdTechTeam that is designed to help anyone get started with anything. I also hope that these posts might also serve as a refresher for those who might not have used a tool in some time. As we’re well known for our work in the Google Apps for Education space, we’ll be focusing initial efforts there. Other topics will find their way into the series in due time. I would like to point out that while we personally prefer to focus our efforts on classroom pedagogy and transformational teaching and learning, we acknowledge any change effort requires a starting point. If you’re reading this, and you’re just getting started with instructional technology, I welcome you. Under the Hood: Google Docs Revision HistoryOne of the best features of Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and Forms is the Revision History feature. This feature allows the editors and viewers to see the full history of changes made to a file. View this larger hereAs an educator, the revision history is invaluable for several reasons:No more unrecoverable mistakes How many times have you accidentally deleted an entire page of text by moving too quickly? I have. In fact, I have done it several times. Having access to the revision history means I can quickly restore the doc to a prior state. Students can too…Managing group projects more effectively When students are working on a group project, you can quickly use the revision history to see who has contributed content and edits to any given piece of text or presentation. I have used this as an opportunity to head off problems before the team gets off the rails. It takes no time to determine that a student has not been participating and I can have a chat with him to get him contributing to the effort. Understanding work habits On individual and group assignments, I have used the information from the revision history of a document to better understand the work habits of my students. Unsurprisingly, I found that many of my students tended to work late at night--especially those in middle school and high school. However, deeper investigation led me to discover that some of them didn’t have a choice and were working late at night because they had to care for siblings after they got out of school. This was why they were so tired when they came into class. Armed with this information, I was forced to rethink how I ran my classes in order to not put them to sleep. That’s how I found myself experimenting with Project Based Learning.What other ways are you using the revision history feature? Be sure to share in the comments below.

We are excited to feature Benson Kwok, an Instructional Technology Coordinator at Glendale Unified School District, in California and a Microsoft Innovative Educator! Benson’s day job has him working closely with the IT department to meet technology instructional goals and oversees its implementation for a culturally diverse population comprised of 31 Schools, over 2,620 employees and 27,000 students in grades Kindergarten through 12. Benson will be joining NCCE community at this years conference in Seattle! Name: Benson Kwok Location: Los Angeles, California Current job(s): Instructional Technology Coordinator, Glendale Unified School District Current computer: Surface Pro 3 Current mobile device(s): Samsung S6 Edge, iPhone 6 One word that best describes how you teach or work: Activator What apps/software/tools can you not live without? Number one on my list is definitely OneNote. It keeps me organized and allows me to collaborate via digital notebooks with my colleagues.  I save time by not having to search through my entire cloud storage to retrieve a single item. All the files that I use most often are easily accessible and organized in a way that make sense. I use the OneNote and the OneNote app to manage travel, district business, staff meetings and professional development without needing to be connected in order to be productive. Paired with OneNote Class and Staff Notebooks, OneNote is a must have for all educators as it cultivates collaboration! My other favorite apps are Sunrise Calendar for all my appointments, Office Lens as a pocket scanner, Flipboard and the ESPN app for all my news. Other than your phone and computer, what gadget can you not live without? Microsoft Band 2 - It tracks my runs, bike rides and other physical activities. My favorite feature is its ability to download an entire workout plan. It then guides you through the exercise sessions. I also enjoy my Kindle Fire for reading and media. What browser do you use regularly? I like  Microsoft Edge -  Its simple, clean and fast.  I especially enjoy the reading view and being able to ink directly on websites then sharing those notes. What is your workspace/classroom like? I prefer not to sit at a desk all day. I often make site visits and  utilize my motorized stand up/sit down desk. My office has room to comfortably fit 6 people for collaboration. What is your favorite avenue to connect with social media? Twitter is a such a great platform for communication and learning from educators. It is simple, effective and I like being able to connect with like-minded people. I enjoy being a part of a network and I’m able to gain and share resources I want, when I want it.  @bensonk49 When you are not living the glamorous work life, what do you like to do in your spare time for fun? I enjoy being outdoors and being active. My favorite activities are playing ice hockey, bike riding and hiking with my puppy, Hanna. As a tech-savvy teacher, what everyday thing do you feel you excel with/at versus other teachers/administrators/mentors? I feel like my confidence empowers people and my presence reassures them that they are ready and capable of tackling assignments and playing key positions on a team. I think of myself as a human spark plug, inspiring and energizing colleagues or students to dedicate themselves to a task. I can typically stir people’s enthusiasm with my cheerful exuberance for life and share my joy in ways that energize those around me. What are you currently reading? I am currently reading Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchmen, the prequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. I also have George R.R. Martin A Storm of Swords, book number three in the Game of Thrones series on Audio. What fantastic tech-savvy educator would you like to refer to us? Jennifer Mitchell - Campus Instructional Technology Specialist at Lamar CISD, Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert - From Houston, Texas:  Twitter: @jenemitchell Any parting thoughts you would like to share with our readers? If you can think it, you can make it happen. Be inspired by the future and what it could be and strive to create the experiences you desire. Spend time creating innovative ideas about what will be possible in the months, years, or decades to come. Join Benson at these sessions at NCCE 2016! Blended Learning with Office 365 Build A Collaborative Classroom And Increase Productivity With OneNote Flip Your Classroom With Office Mix 10 FREE Microsoft Tools To Energize Your Classroom!   The post Meet a Tech Savvy Teacher: Benson Kwok appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

In tribal organizations, influence often comes through kinship. It still does with certain royal families. In institutions, power is exerted through the hierarchy. It is positional. Even today, in a market-dominated society, many people are their institutional job title, and feel naked without it. But those who exercise power through markets can often throw off their job titles and not worry about their formal qualifications, as long as they deliver the goods (and services). [more on TIMN] Source: adapting to perpetual beta As we shift to a network-dominated society, we do not lose tribal, institutional, and market organizational forms. However, their relationships between each other will change. A person with strong network influence, with perhaps millions of followers on social media, can exert power through reputation, while still remaining inside an institution. But the power relationship inside that institution will have changed.  Bonnie Stewart alluded to this last night during her session at Mount Allison University on digital identify in academic scholarship. Bonnie’s presentation on orality and literacy in scholarship particularly looks at Twitter and how it is a written (print) medium, but works in an oral fashion. Bonnie calls this new space the intersection between "speech-based expectations" and "print-based interpretations" [see slides 41-44]. Image: Bonnie Stewart Marshall McLuhan was correct it seems, in that "At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential." On social media, especially Twitter and other short forms of posting, the written word gets pushed to its limit and reverses to a new form of orality. This shift in communication is of importance to all of us. Politicians need to understand it in order to connect with the citizenry. Our new Prime Minister is experimenting with different forms of communication even though I am sure he knows it is ripe for potential mishaps. Educators have to immerse themselves in social media in order to teach about them. Bonnie gave the example of Jim Groom and his domain of one’s own initiative where students are encouraged to claim their space online. Business executives have to understand this shift in communications, so they do not treat text-based social media like print media. Even well thought out ‘campaigns’ can get co-opted, as Coca Cola discovered. Social media are new languages and require mastery. Those who do not master them risk sounding like toddlers, or worse, villains who have offended some part of society. The medium is the message: we all need to learn how to use the medium, or our messages will be lost.

I want to give adjunct faculty a voice and make that connection with the university." As Dr. Stephani Cuddie leads the FacultyCare initiative in the College of Adult and Professional Studies, she couples an empathetic...Continue Reading »

The IWU learning management system, LearningStudio, is an organic driver of digital learning for thousands of adult learners.  With major updates scheduled several times a year, it is vitally important to apprise our faculty community as...Continue Reading »