It is coming up to that time of year when it is prime opportunity to evaluate the results of the previous and plan for the next. One key part of this evaluation is reviewing your current business processes and in particular the software and systems in place to support them. Are you using the best option for your business or are you in need of a system revamp? There are many tell-tale signs that it is time to replace your current software.  

There’s a lot of work involved in marketing and selling online courses. You can’t just launch a course and expect people to find it. You need to optimize it for search engines, create content that attracts traffic, maybe run some ads, or try any number of marketing strategies. The big problem is getting people to your site. There are millions of sites out there and your audience - the people who need to buy your course - are on many of those sites. You need to convince them to leave those sites and come to yours to buy your course. But what if there was a way they could buy it right from those sites? What if, instead of seeing your ad or link and then maybe clicking through, they saw your course right there and bought it? Wouldn’t it be awesome if that could happen? Well, that’s why we created the Sales Widget! Read on to see how this works. What Is a Sales Widget? Sales widgets are a great way to promote and sell your online courses on another website. With no design or technical experience required, sales widgets enable you to create a button or card that’s completely customized to your brand, and easily embed it on a third-party site; be it your blog, a forum, or any other channel on which you have an audience! In fact, there’s a sales widget on this blog! If you look at the sidebar on the right, you’ll see a widget for a a course on ‘Getting started with Thinkific’. The course is hosted on another site, but we’re able to display it here with the Sales Widget. And, you can enroll in it right now without leaving this page. That’s the beauty of it! For step-by-step instructions on creating a sales widget, head to our knowledge base. How to Use It Ok, now that you know how to create a Sales Widget, the big question is: How do you get it on another site? You can’t just ask the New York Times to add your widget to their site. That’s never going to happen. But there are better ways to go about getting your widget out there. Add it to your other sitesIf you’ve got a separate blog, or other websites with similar audiences as your online course, instead of redirecting traffic with a link, you can use the Sales Widget.For example, just like we’ve done for this blog’s sidebar, you can also add your course to your blog. If your blog attracts a lot of traffic, they’ll see the widget and some might just buy the course right there. You can even write targeted blog posts and embed it in the post. Ask your friends or affiliatesIf you don’t have any other sites or blogs, you can ask your network. The entrepreneurship community is filled with people who love helping each other out. You can reach out to people who know and support you and ask them to add your widget to their site, if your audiences align.In fact, some of your biggest supporters are your students, the ones who’ve already bought your course. If your course helped them, they’ll be more than willing to help promote you by displaying your widget on their sites. Finally, you can reach out to your affiliate network to add your widget to their sites. Guest postYou probably already know that guest posts are a great way to get your brand out there and perhaps get a link back. Well, if you’ve built up a good relationship with the editor of a blog you guest post on, you can try to squeeze in a widget or two in your guest posts, as long as it’s pertinent to the topic. After all, you don’t want to come off as spammy. Buy ad spaceIf you run display ads on other sites, you can possibly get your widget in the ad space, instead of using a banner. This will work if you’re paying by time or impressions. The advantage here is that your display ad is just an extra step between potential customers and your course. If people are clicking on your display ads, then using a widget instead will get them to checkout faster. Post it to forums and submission sitesThere are lots of niche forums and sites where you can submit your content or courses. Some even allow you to add HTML, which is what you’ll need to post your widget there. If you’re a regular contributor to any of these sites, you could potentially promote your courses there with widgets. Again, don’t be spammy about it. Make sure it’s relevant to the discussion and that you’re known in the community. Innovate! These 5 ideas should be a great place to start, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more ways to sell your online courses with the Sales Widget. Every instance where you’re trying to get people to leave one site and come to yours is an opportunity to use your widget. The Sales Widget is available to you if you already use Thinkific. And if not, what are you waiting for? Thinkific is the best platform for creating and selling online courses. Start for free and access the Sales Widget now. We’d love to hear your ideas if you’re using your Sales Widget in other places! Leave a comment below! The post Sell More Online Courses with Sales Widgets appeared first on Thinkific.

Our Top 10 eLearning Visual Design Tricks If you’re an eLearning designer who believe that visuals play a secondary role in learning materials, you’re making a huge mistake. Visual design affects the course’s usability and increases learning benefits for users. The right visual design can guide learner attention, provide a hierarchy for information, and help learners in […] The post 10 eLearning Visual Design Tricks appeared first on PulseLearning.

SMART Majority and LearnUpon are two young eLearning companies that have grown rapidly since they were founded three years ago. That growth isn’t a coincidence. As one of LearnUpon’s first customers, a strong partnership has helped the companies to thrive in their respective markets. SMART Majority was established with the ambition to improve the way that online learning and development is delivered. Its co-founders aimed to leverage the potential of technology to deliver a learning experience superior to any then on the market. Driven by the goal of acquiring hundreds of thousands of learners, SMART Majority needed an online learning platform that would help them reach their ambitious targets. Here’s how they did it.   About Smart Majority SMART Majority is an eLearning provider that delivers courses that cover a broad range of topics, spanning Event Management, Leadership and Management, Design, and many more. The company’s founder and CEO, Camelia Symes, believed that leveraging recent developments in eLearning technology could deliver an unbeatable competitive advantage. Symes saw that most eLearning providers had yet to adopt tools designed to deliver the best possible learning experience. The company’s as yet tiny team began a search for an online learning platform that would support students to complete courses and acquire qualifications in the most efficient way possible.   What business challenge did you need a learning platform to address? We always knew that the selection of the right LMS was crucial. We founded SMART Majority with the ambition of radically improving on the offerings of eLearning competitors. At the time, most learning and training providers lagged behind recent developments in eLearning technology. Many providers did nothing more than deliver courses in a basic PDF format. We knew we could deliver a far more engaging eLearning experience to students. And because we chose eLearning technology as our key differentiator, the selection of a learning platform that could deliver on that vision was crucial. We’d set extremely ambitious targets. We needed an LMS that would fit us at the start and also scale to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of learners we wanted to reach in the first five years.   Why did you choose LearnUpon? We considered quite a few online learning platforms first. But something about LearnUpon stood out from the beginning. We liked what we read about support and functionality on the website, so we took a demo to see how the learning management system worked. The demo was detailed enough to work like a consultation. We could see that the learning platform looked like a good fit at that point. The features looked impressive but appeared easy to navigate. We still needed to test the online learning platform, so we followed up the demo with a 30-day free trial. The free trial confirmed our decision. As soon as we started using LearnUpon, we knew it was just as simple to navigate as it appeared. We found it really easy to understand as admins. We could manage all of the features without any training. Even the least technical member of the team could set up courses immediately. Because we found it so easy to use, we believed our students would too. At that point, we knew we could deliver the improved learner experience we had imagined. The support we received during our free trial also influenced our decision-making. We were a very small team and needed to minimize costs to guarantee a return. We didn’t have an in-house IT department to manage a long integration period or deal with technical issues and glitches. The free trial proved we wouldn’t need one. We could count on LearnUpon’s free 24/7 support. If we had questions, we called them. That was a big selling point. We knew LearnUpon’s support team would be there to help us with a system we didn’t yet know.   How has LearnUpon helped with your business challenge? We always felt like we were working as a team with LearnUpon. Our main question was: can we grow with you? LearnUpon’s pricing model helped make scaling painless and profitable. Pricing has been clear and upfront throughout our years as a customer. There are no hidden costs. There are no nasty surprises. It’s one of the most competitive prices on the market. That helped us to grow as a business. Like LearnUpon, we’ve grown quickly in the three years since we signed up. We’re a team of ten in the office now. Worldwide, we work with another 45 freelancers. Our learner base has grown dramatically. We started with 100 users. We now have over 100,000 registered users, with 60,000 learners active currently. LearnUpon played an instrumental role in helping us to reach that figure. They supported us throughout the journey.   Would you recommend LearnUpon over other Learning Management Systems? Absolutely, it’s been fantastic. Businesses need a system that’s reliable. We recently integrated with the API of a big marketing software company and we’ve had so many challenges. We’ve missed the confidence excellent support allows you to develop. LearnUpon’s support team is so responsive. That’s where Brendan and Des really nailed it. If there’s an issue, it gets handled. That gave us the confidence we needed to grow to those impressive numbers. We tested other online learning platforms at the beginning. LearnUpon won in the three categories that mattered most to us: support, ease-of-use for admins and learners, and cost. Overall it’s been a joy and a pleasure. LearnUpon was the best choice we could have made.   See what LearnUpon can do for you. Sign up for a free 30 day trial. The post How a learning platform helped Smart Majority gain 100,000 users appeared first on LearnUpon.

Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds. "Mastery is not referred to the use of any tool. It is a state of the person. And then it permeates the use of *any* tool." - Stelio Verzera How You Record Ideas May Impact Creativity, via @madelynblair "As one of our architect users put it in an interview we conducted recently on the value of drawing in the digital age, "When you build a lot of buildings, and you go and visit them, you always think back on that first sketch. Those first few sketches are where the big idea came through." We found over and over that the act of using sketching as "conversational as opposed to representational," in the words of another architect, was the key to discovery—when the act of drawing is a means to an end, not the end in and of itself. Through sketching, you locate the idea. Uninhibited sketching is Beethoven’s long walk." Bad Managers Talk, Good Managers Write, via @africadean "Written communication to engineering is superior [to verbal communication] because it is more consistent across an entire product team, it is more lasting, it raises accountability." - Ben Horowitz "There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking." - Jeff Bezos "Reports are more a medium of self-discipline than a way to communicate information." - Andy Grove "I find that you can tell a lot more about a person’s personality from a few paragraphs of their writing than from a lengthy verbal interview" - Phil Libin At last, Cluetrain’s time has come, by @dsearls "We can help companies (and ourselves) a lot more if we have standard ways to connect with sales, service and product and service development functions — and they with us. Then "Markets are conversations" will finally mean what it’s failed to mean for the last sixteen years." Peter Senge: 5 Disciplines of a Learning Organization, by @tnvora Image: Tanmay Vora

It seems like an obvious point to make, but why bother putting your employees through training if they don’t learn anything or develop new skills? This is something a staggering amount of businesses forget, as their priorities lie elsewhere. Seeing as a great deal of time, effort, and resources go into most training programs, the vast majority of businesses will want to make sure that the learning materials cover essential topics relating to the job in question. This is fair enough, but you can’t assume employees will automatically learn and remember what is placed in front of them. For this to happen, you need to continually examine and assess each member of staff to discover whether training has had a positive impact on their learning and development. Thankfully, an increasing number of businesses are starting to recognise this fact and are allocating their training budgets accordingly.   Investing in training Following on from the financial crisis, global economies have been progressively improving, which is good news for corporate training. Not only are businesses investing in learning strategies, technologies, and content, they also expect this trend to continue. Furthermore, assessment tools, learning management systems, and mobile technologies are also being given greater precedence than before. This is based on responses from members of the Chief Learning Officer Business Intelligence Board and their annual investment choices, which provides insight into the industry’s most popular technologies and service areas as well as what spending will change between 2015 and 2016. After a period of decline, Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) reported that budgets have increased for the third year in a row, with 60 per cent revealing their investments in training are higher than 2014. The rate of these rises is quite staggering too, as CLOs say their budgets have increased by almost 20 per cent. The forecast for next year looks rosy as well, with more than 60 per cent of CLOs expecting their budgets to increase. So, does this investment positivity mean that more money will be given to training assessments rather than the learning materials themselves?   Training spend priorities Despite bigger budgets, CLOs remain careful and considerate when it comes to spending and are driven by areas that can provide visible results. For example, more than half of all CLOs expect spending to increase for technology, strategy, and content libraries. This is not a surprise though, as the previous two years have witnessed a similar pattern, promoting strong links between learning and business targets in order to increase the influence of spending and delivery. However, in terms of the technologies receiving investment, CLOs are focusing on assessment tools and learning management systems. While these technologies cover a broad range of capabilities, organisations are seeking out ways to better evaluate training and promote high performance. As opposed to a simple test or examination after training has finished, which doesn’t help with employee engagement and retention levels, CLOs are beginning to realise that performance support technologies provide a better insight into the effectiveness of learning as it takes place. For instance, on-the-job assistance is now being recognised as an inexpensive way to increase capability in a workforce with expanding responsibilities. Along with assessment tools and learning management systems, content libraries are also a growing concern, with a focus on leadership development. This is because retiring leaders will soon be replaced by the next generation of executives. Providing these mid- and senior-level staff with access to content libraries as well as mentoring and job rotations has been proven to boost retention rates and can help businesses ensure talent is available when needed.   The growing significance of content and technology From their responses, it is clear that CLOs believe blended content, e-learning, executive development and perhaps above all else, assessment technologies are the future of corporate training. Furthermore, instructor-led training continues to decline as well. CLOs now acknowledge that from a learner’s perspective, informal training techniques are much more appealing and effective. Combined with the fact that e-learning is generally much cheaper to implement than traditional training and investment in this area will surely rise even more. Content libraries are shifting away from specific skills for specific roles and more towards areas that help run the organisation too. All of this is a possibility thanks to technology, which continues to be the major source of efficiency gains throughout the enterprise. But how do CLOs know that their investments are delivering such rich rewards? Because of assessment and evaluations tools, which is now top priority. By combining learning management with assessment and evaluation technologies, CLOs have a powerful tool that helps to deliver hugely beneficial training programs. While technology spending will continue to support organisational requirements, the macro trend toward increased assessment and learning analysis suggest a greater focus on making sure learning content is targeted and relevant to the individual. Or in other words, guaranteeing that training achieves its intended objectives, which businesses often lose touch of.   The future of training In years gone by, CLOs could only dream of implementing highly advanced training technology. But now, it is a distinct possibility and something that deserves to be given the lead, as technology can deliver immeasurable benefits in terms of learning and assessment. As a result, CLOs are hungry for more technologies that can improve the learning and assessment experience, such as spaced repetition. With strong scientific validity and tools to increase the effect of training on knowledge and performance, it seems like only a matter of time before this tops the priority list too. But for the time being at least, CLOs remain focused on measuring and managing high-quality learning experiences in order to successfully deliver enterprise objectives and values. With higher budgets and more investment opportunities, CLOs are able to give assessment tools and learning management systems the attention they deserve. Share this post with your own audience

As we begin to look towards the end of what has been a fantastic 2015, we’re thinking past the turkey, sherry and presents and into early 2016, when we will be unveiling gomo’s latest innovation. Last year at the Learning Technologies exhibition and conference we announced the gomo learning suite, and we’re excited to say there’s something secret up our sleeves for this year’s show, too. Along with getting busy ahead of Learning Technologies, we have a few online events happening in tandem through January and February keeping you up to speed with the latest thinking from gomo. Whether content delivery and course uptake is a current bugbear or there’s a drive for more mobile content in your organisation, we’ve got you covered with fresh ideas for the year ahead, all of which can be accessed from the comfort of your desk. Designing learning for a mobile workforce - January 14th A look at the why, what and how of mobile for learning, plus mobile learning design that will help you create the best mobile learning going. The gomo team will also look at integrating mobile learning alongside existing training and how device experiences can be fully tracked with xAPI analytics. Getting content into the hands of learners - January 28th Possibly a rather ideal follow-up to our webinar on designing mobile learning, this webinar will be focused around the all important aspect of learning distribution. After all, if it’s difficult for learners to find what they need, or they simply aren’t aware of what’s available to them, you may as well not bother creating learning. In this webinar, we take a look at how learning content can be distributed in new and innovative ways to ensure you can keep learners in the loop in 2016. Key trends for 2016 - February 11th Keeping our ear to the ground during Learning Technologies 2016, we’re running an online event to look at the key themes from the show and take a look at what this could mean for us in the year ahead. Ideal for those who couldn’t make it to the show or those who could and want to unravel it a little further, this is a great opportunity to think about the direction the industry is headed. The post New year, new you - upskill with gomo webinars appeared first on gomo Learning.

The lovely folks at Packt Publishing are placing all ebooks on sale for 5 dollars! What a steal! If you’d like to purchase my ebook, Articulate Storyline Essentials, at this special price, please click through the banner below. Happy Holidays!

Whiteboard Wednesday is another video experiment. The first few will be a little rough, but I'd love to get your feedback. Over the last 20 years I've noticed a trending complexity in the conversations around L&D and the work training professionals do. I've seen the industry as a whole move from Training and Development, to Learning and Development, to Talent Development. I've seen our focus move from training to elearning, then  just learning, and now performance. All are valuable and necessary functions. But sometimes I get the feeling that we've lost our focus on the businesses we serve. I hope this Whiteboard Wednesday video will get you thinking about your role in the business you support. And question the work you are doing. Are you doing what YOU want to be doing? Or are you doing what the business expects you to be doing? Are you providing business value, or mired in instructional design process? The post Whiteboard Wednesday 001 - Back to Basics appeared first on Litmos.

Do you make teaching part of your learning strategy? Probably not. It might be on HR's list of things employees at higher levels should do.  But I'm not sure we take teaching into consideration as part of a learning strategy. The typical instructional design process separates these roles into subject matter experts and learners. It's an efficient use of resources supporting a very process driven environment, but it doesn't look at the entire picture of learning. Learning is a Process Learning is a long term process. We create training events often with the expectation that significant learning will occur immediately. Learning doesn't work that way. The statistic most often reported is that on average your learners will retain only 10% of the content covered in your training event. That's a not a very good ROI in any business. So why do we settle for it? There are many answers to this question. All having more to do with business issues than learning issues. But let's hold that thought for a moment and just focus on teaching as a learning tool. Teaching as a Tool for Learning Instructional designers talk a lot about "engaging the learner". I can't think of anyone more engaged in the content than the instructor, can you? Could you design a course curriculum that includes teaching as part of the assessment? Sure you could. Maybe some of you do. There is a sense of accountability placed on instructors that is not placed on students. It's that accountability to teach that creates the demand to learn. Everyone should be expected to know their area of work well enough to teach it. And no, I don't believe you need to reach expert status before taking on the role of teacher or mentor. You can either wait until someone perfects something before "allowing" them to teach. Or you could make them teach in order to speed their journey towards mastery. At a very high level within academia you may see this occurring. But what might this look like in a corporate setting? Teaching Looks Different Today In a 21st century business this does not look like a teacher in front of a classroom. Instead its asking the learner/teacher to create digital learning content. It doesn't need to be the same for everyone. Let them choose. One may create a powerpoint. Another may record herself actually doing some aspect of the job. Another might write a story about someone who failed at doing the job. It doesn't really matter what type of digital content they create. Just that they created something that can be shared and discussed. Imagine how fast your library of learning content would grow. Okay so you may not think it's worth the effort, time, resources. You may think that your employees need to just get to work as soon as possible. The firehose of information is good enough to get by on. And workers can't be bothered by silly projects. You may be right. And perhaps todays' workforce is not ready for that challenge. But I know the incoming generation of employees will enter your business with an arsenal of digital content creation tools and the skills to use them. They are not afraid to snap a quick picture and share it. They are not afraid of video-chatting from their mobile device. They are more than capable of recording video as easily as you and I whip up emails. It's a different breed of employee coming your way. Why not take advantage of what they have to offer? Embracing Employee Content Creators This is a strategy that takes advantage of the natural changes occurring in your business. Whether you leverage your employees' skills or not is a decision you need to make. If you insist on being the gatekeeper to all training and corporate knowledge, you will fail. There is too much for your limited resources to manage. While you struggle to manage the incoming requests, your frustrated stake holders and employees will begin to take matters into their own hands. This trend has already begun in the form of small teams "going rogue" and purchasing lightweight, easy to use, flexible, learning management systems. It's just easier than wrestling with the bureaucracy of a big corporate enterprise training division of HR and their cumbersome systems. It's time to rethink how content gets created. Training departments need to loosen their grip on the training content creation processes. Since employees are getting more and more comfortable creating their own content we should find the opportunities instead of fearing the results. Making teaching part of your learning strategy is only one suggestion. It might work better in some areas of your business than others. It's up to you to figure out what works and what doesn't. You need to be okay with some early failures too. But know that you will find the right mix and once again be able to handle the multitude of training requests, and add value to the business. The post Why Teaching Might Be a Successful Part of Corporate Training Strategy appeared first on Litmos.

Elearning Superstars is a curated list of inspiring elearning examples, published every Tuesday. Subscribe to get weekly updates via email. Bottom-Line Performance: Knowledge Guru is an award-winning game-based learning platform that uses learning science Why we like it: Good example of game engine that can be branded and adapted easily. Utilizes workplace scenarios into all the topics in the game to make it relevant and engaging. The game reinforces concepts covered in the employee handbook and by a manager. Achievement badges and leaderboards help promote a sense of connection and camaraderie (as well as motivation). Uses iterative questions and spaced repetition to reinforce key learning objectives. Updates are easy to manage when job titles, tools and policies change. Visit elearning: BLP’s Knowledge Guru OPITO: An introduction to the oil and gas industry Why we like it: Launched during the UK’s National Skill Week, this program focusses on developing skills in new entrants to the industry. Structured into six modules, the course takes uses through the whole oil and gas story from the creation of hydrocarbons to techniques for their extraction, including consideration of legal and contract issues as well as international trading in oil and gas. Uses a clear appealing visual style with graphic illustrations. Visit elearning: OPITO’s introduction to oil and gas Utility Warehouse: An interactive and media-rich new starter training program (built with Elucidat) Why we like it: A great example of strong visual design with bold contemporary contrasting colours. Good proximity of content and use of contrast to help chunk the material. Clean and clear templated approach with clean layouts and consistent use of styles, alignment and interactions. Great use of video on response layers in interactive question screens helps situate the learner into the heart of the business and introduce real colleagues. Visit elearning: Utility Warehouse’s new starter training program The post Elearning inspiration: BLP’s Knowledge Guru; OPITO; Utility Warehouse appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Mid 2014 we decided to help improve our diet, and the variety of food we eat, that we would have a new rule for home cooked meals — each dinner meal had to be different. It wasn’t necessarily the easiest of rules but was achievable using weekly meal plans combined with a good selection of cookbooks. Most content I prefer to read online but when it comes to cooking I prefer to grab a cookbook from my bookshelf. Considering cookbooks are always in the Weekly top 10 best sellers at my local bookstores — I’m obviously not the only cookbook lover!  So I thought I would share my current favorite cookbooks in 2015 that have helped make me a better cook! What’s for Dinner and ‘Good Food. Good Life‘ by Curtis Stone Curtis Stone’s ‘What’s for Dinner‘ and ‘Good Food. Good Life‘ are my favorite cookbooks. When we implemented the new rule of every dinner meal had to be different Curtis’s ‘What’s for Dinner‘ was the first cookbook I started with.  I’ve cooked more recipes from his cookbooks than any other cookbook as his recipes always work out well. ‘Good Food. Good Life‘ is Curtis’s latest book published in March, 2015. ‘What’s for Dinner‘ and ‘Good Food. Good Life‘ take a slightly different approach to the recipes.  ‘Good Food. Good Life‘ is packed with hidden gems that I didn’t initially appreciate because I’m a visual learner and not all recipes include photos.  ‘What’s for Dinner‘ was an excellent starting place for improving meals and ‘Good Food. Good Life‘ has been great for expanding cooking techniques. I track recipes cooked using a Google Sheet.  You can check out the Curtis recipes I’ve cooked in the embedded Google Sheets below (color coding means Red = loved, Orange = liked, Blue - Did not like). You can check out Curtis’s recipes on his website, Coles Recipes and cooking or watch his recipe videos on YouTube. Everyday Super Food by Jamie Oliver I brought Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food to work on eating healthier breakfasts.  Breakfast should make up 1/4 to 1/3 of our daily calorie intake — but most adults eat less than 265 calories and don’t eat a balanced breakfast.  My breakfasts were unbalanced and too low in calories. Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food is packed full of great healthy, balanced and delicious recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks while providing good tips on health and nutrition. I’ve learnt from our rule that every dinner meal had to be different that palate is very individual and you don’t know what you do or don’t like until you’ve tried it.  My husband and oldest son’s dislike of pumpkin and sweet potato is a classic example of this (how can any one really hate pumpkin and sweet potato?).  So my approach with Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food breakfasts has been to work through the recipes to work out what I do like and then adapt the recipes if I don’t like the taste but like the recipe concept. Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food is the cookbook I’ve written the most notes in!  I’ve enjoyed working out how to adapt the recipes I like the concept of as much as cooking the recipes I liked.  My favorites are Awesome Granola Dust, Pretty Fruit Posts and I love Earl Grey Banana Bread (I freeze the Banana Bread in slices and eat it as a snack).  I haven’t found any recipe of Bircher muesli I like but have found some great baked oatmeal recipes. I enjoy watching Jamie’s Everyday Super Food TV series because the show provides extra information or tips that you don’t necessarily appreciate in the book.   You can check out recipes from the book here. Of the other Jamie Oliver books I own my next favorite one is Cook with Jamie. Notes on Eggy Bread recipe for a healthier version of French Toast The Food Lab:  Better Home Cooking through Science by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Food Lab is my cookbook for reading!  It’s the cookbook I read to learn more about the science that underpins cooking (which appeals to me with my science background).  I love how he explains that apprentice chefs in restaurants learn from the chef but don’t question what they learn while at home we learn from our family and cookbooks but never challenge the fundamentals. As you read through The Food Lab you realize how many of these fundamentals aren’t logical and don’t improve your cooking. In terms of the recipes - they are more American style cooking which I enjoy being an Australian.  American style cooking is less common here in Australia. My only wish is I would have liked a metric version of the book. The Food Lab also helped me organize my kitchen better.  Simple things like placing commonly used utensils in utensil holders close to the areas where I use them, using a Amco 2-in-1 Lemon & Lime Squeezer (for quickly squeezing lemon juice) and buying a good mandoline (I went with a Borner Mandoline because I’m accident prone) have made a difference. And I’m now able to cook the perfect poach egg thanks to being introduced to Heston Blumenthal’s method of poaching eggs. Matt Preston’s 100 Best Recipes Matt Preston’s books are my cookbooks I use for reading and for cooking.  Matt is a well known Australian food writer and MasterChef Australia Judge.  I love how he shares information on the history of different well known recipes and the inspirations behind his recipes. Of the Matt Preston books I own 100 Best Recipes is my favorite.   Favorite recipes include ‘Lasagne that’s well worth the work’ and ‘That ex-girlfriend’s potato salad’.  My lasagne is based on Matt’s recipe using techniques I’ve learnt from Jamie Oliver’s Foodtube ‘How to cook classic lasagne’ video.  I cook half the quantity suggested in Matt’s recipe which is enough to feed us for two nights (family of four). What Else? My choices aren’t necessarily classic cookbooks.  But as a home cook, with discerning critics, my choices need to be based on cookbooks that provide recipes that are practical, work well and taste nice. I’m always searching for new recipes or techniques to try.  Let me know in the comments below if you have any recipes or cookbooks I should check out.

eLearning is a disruptive technology, changing the way people acquire education. From online schools to on-the-job training, learning via electronic means is becoming the norm. With this in mind, realize that even though you may have highly valuable information to share with learners, your competition is growing each day. Use this guide to help you ensure that your eLearning courses stand out from the crowd of ever-evolving electronic learning opportunities.

Bernadette Parry is the Client Support Coordinator at eWorks. Her role involves juggling all sorts of client-focused tasks including start-up TrainingVC training, advanced Moodle training and support desk services. Have you ever thought about using Moodle’s Progress Bar block to keep an eye on how your learners are progressing through their courses? Bernadette tells us how to do […]

We’re not being dramatic when we say there is a leadership crisis today. The crisis is real. So real, in fact, that the World Economic Forum lists it as the third most important issue on its agenda. And employees are less likely to trust their management when leadership skills are lacking.  Leadership isn’t born. It’s a group of skill sets that can be taught and learned. But if leadership training and development takes place in a traditional classroom setting, it is likely to be ineffective. Leadership skills include (but are far from limited to) vision, communication, empowerment, effective risk assessment and management, conflict resolution and organization. And each leader combines those skill sets in ways that are unique to each and every demand on each and every individual faced with the challenges of leadership. And those challenges are unique to every circumstance faced by every organization. Each of those aspects of leadership can be presented as a nugget, or set of nuggets of training and development. Which means that we can create eLearning modules to train and develop leaders in your organization. In this blog, we invite you to consider: Is your leadership training and development program real and relevant to the life of your organization, and the lives of your employees and customers? Insights and concepts are nice. Theories of leadership abound. Seriously. Google "leadership" and you can read all about it. But actually rolling up your sleeves and leading is a completely different world altogether. Practical leadership training and development cannot happen when it’s confined to textbooks, lectures and classrooms. And you can’t just unleash a bunch of people on the world with just the hope that their leadership training was adequate. It’s likely that some will step up and succeed. It’s also likely that many will fail as leaders, with devastating consequences: for the individual, for the people they lead, and possibly even for the organization. Want an effective solution (and please pardon us for the shameless plug)? Here it is: eLearning. How? Read on. Knowledge, by itself, does not make a good leader. Ask yourself the question, would you board an airplane if you were aware that the person in the cockpit knows the principle of flight backwards and forwards, but has never touched the throttle of an aircraft? A physicist can tell you about the theories of aerodynamics, but there’s a reason why there are physicists and people who pilot planes. The same is true of leadership. Simply knowing about leadership and actually leading are about as different from each other as "lightning" and "lightning bug." Thinking that vast amounts of leadership knowledge will turn someone into a successful leader is akin to saying that living in a garage will turn someone into a Buick. Theories and insights about Leadership are just theories and insights. Real leadership happens in practice. Leadership involves practical application of the knowledge in real-life. Enter eLearning. eLearning takes the learner out of the classroom and puts them into the pilot’s seat, so to speak. With the power of eLearning, leaders-to-be encounter real-life situations that occur in the day-to-day activities of your organization. This makes the training both relevant and real. Relevance vs. theory eLearning allows learners to learn skill sets. For instance, leaders-in-training learn about creating and managing relationships and interactions. They then actually and actively engage in the practice of the theory. eLearning’s use of video simulations and scenarios — based in the reality of your organization’s day-to-day life — empowers the leadership training and development, which is both immersive and safe. And it prepares your learners for actual encounters with customers, clients, colleagues, and co-workers. Real-life application allows for creativity and innovation One of the wonderful things about eLearning is that it creates a space for leaders and learners to play the game of "what if…" With traditional, exclusively instructor-led training models of the past, the flow of information typically followed the "we’ve always/never done it this way" pathway. Creativity and innovation had to fight for survival, often getting stifled in the process. The low-risk environment presented by eLearning lends itself to discovery, especially in the face of real-life challenges. Leaders-in-training are free to apply the principles and values of the organization to those challenges while creating or devising innovative solutions to existing problems. To reiterate: there’s all sorts of stuff out there about Leadership. Lots of quotes, how-to’s and how-not-to’s. But your organization doesn’t live in Theory-land. It exists in the real world. And eLearning can, and will, bridge the gap between knowing about leadership, and being a leader. Teaser: look for our next blog on social learning. You won’t want to miss finding out about how eLearning enhances learning by tapping into one of the things that human beings naturally do best: we share. This article was first published on elearningindustry.com The post eLearning in Leadership Training and Development: Reality and Relevance appeared first on KMI Learning.

As we continue down this path, one should not underestimate the very positive impact that these collaborative networks will have on the business culture.Big data that is shared within the Global Learning Portal opens doors of opportunity in the digital economy that can have a multiplier effect on the ROI of businesses aligned under a common vision. It is no secret that knowledge is the new currency of the 21st century but the trick is harnessing it at just the right time with an eye on the future and not looking back! Referring back to the Global Learning Portal shown above, one should notice that there is a collaborative connection between the Cross Disciplinary Research and Mentor Network and the Global Higher Education and Teacher Mentoring Network. The obvious question that needs to be asked is:"Why is a collaborative connection between these two networks necessary and what is its function?"Educating the EducatorCross disciplinary research is vital to the training or mentoring of new educators because for business organizations this will have a "domino effect". If you accept the idea that cross disciplinary learning is an essential mindset to solving real world problems then it is necessary that research in this area  give direction to "educating the educator". The "domino effect" occurs when you consider that how you train educators ultimately defines how they educate students. How they educate students defines what skillsets students enter the business organization with as well as how leadership within business organizations will be defined in the future.Credit: www.e-stranged.comUnder the present compartmentalization mindset that exists in higher education in many educational institutions, the approach to real world problem solving brings us back to the famous fable of six blind men trying to describe an elephant. This mindset does not bode well for businesses hoping to make innovation a systemic mindset and a natural way of doing business within their organizations. Real world problems in  the 21st century are more complex than in the past precisely because our world has become so connected. Effective collaboration across disciplines is an essential in this age.The tools of the industrial economy no longer fit the realities of a digital global economy.Solutions?? Coming back to the collaborative connection, in return the data collected from the experience of mentoring educators and in turn the educators' practical experience in modelling this mindset to learners in the online E-Learning portal, we are helped in two ways:From the data, new directions in research can be explored and pursued in regards to cross disciplinary learning keeping in mind that the new paradigm for research means that it needs to be ongoing, agile and adaptive, andFrom the data, we can discern areas of conflict and thus refine our pedagogical approaches.The mentoring of new educators and those who are transitioning from the industrial model mindset to the cross disciplinary mindset needs to be an ongoing collaborative relationship.Benefits to Business OrganizationsOne very important benefit is that such a process will make handling disruptive change and transitioning easier. Businesses can be exposed to the benefits of "reverse mentoring" in which new employees who are entering with valuable skillsets in tune with 21st century realities can mentor staff who are already established within the business organization and engage employees in an effective learning relationship that will further business interests.Next... Final benefits of the Global Higher Learning and Teacher Mentoring Network

Ready to trade in your cubicle for the freedom of freelancing? Not so fast! First you need to figure out your budget. Let’s talk about what you’re going to bill—also known as your rate. Factors to consider when setting your rate: Your budget Your skill level Your available time Carol Tice of Make a Living Writing advocates that "freelancers aim to make $100 an hour in order to build a sustainable business." Sound like a crazy number? Perhaps at first glance, but think about all the things your company used to pay for that you’ll be paying for now. It’s suddenly your responsibility to pay for all 100% of your health care, your laptop, your license of Lectora® eLearning authoring software, your daily morning cup—or cups—of coffee, and so many other things. Tice’s estimate of $100 an hour is just that—an estimate. Maybe you live in New York, Zurich, or Tokyo—all cities that Swiss bank UBS ranked in the top ten most expensive cities in a 2015 report. If you live in one of those cities, your Minimum Acceptable Rate (MAR) is going to have to be higher than someone who lives in Mumbai or Damascus, both of which are among the most affordable cities as ranked by the Economist’s World Cost of Living Index. So, how do you calculate your Minimum Acceptable Rate (MAR)? Tom Ewer of Leaving Work Behind suggests this rough calculation: ( (personal overheads + business overheads) / hours worked ) + tax Personal overheads include things like your rent, groceries, utilities, etc. Business overheads include equipment, software, and other things your employer would normally supply. Keep in mind that this is a very rough calculation and is designed to give you an idea of how much you need to earn to survive, not necessarily to turn a great profit. Journalist and freelancer Katherine Reynolds Lewis put together a calculation that projects what you would need to bill to earn a salary comparable to corporate life, but warns that this "salary" you’re making as a freelancer will need to stretch farther, for all the reasons we’ve already outlined. Should you bill by the hour? Forbes finance writer Laura Shin says, "If you can, it’s always best to charge a flat fee. If you charge hourly, you have to spend that precious time to earn more money, and you’ll actually make less money, the more efficiently you work. It’s better to project roughly how long a given project will take you and set your rate from there." Ewer agrees and says, "Charging by the hour is one of the worst mistakes a freelancer can make… Given that you only have a certain number of hours available in the day, you are essentially capping your maximum earning potential." Clients don’t need to know how long a project will take you to complete. It’s important to sell the value of your work and the quality of the product they will be receiving, not just how long it took you to create it. Having a portfolio to show the quality of work you do will go a long way to helping convince clients your rate is worth it. If you don’t have a portfolio yet, the new Trivantis® Community semi-monthly contests are a great way to get started. The post How to Set Your eLearning Freelancing Rate appeared first on .

  Previously, we saw what a smart school is and it’s impact on Education, not only do these schools employ smart school softwares and technology but also provide the right learning environment for the modern student. Smart Schools are tasked with being up to date with the latest teaching practices and education administration processes so as to understand their students’ needs. There are many schools that are adapting and could be classified as a smart school; but a very few of them are actually in sync with what the next step for a smart school could be.   To integrate different sections of their diversified operations into a single, cohesive and easy-to-use system, many schools are now looking towards ERP software (www.fedena.com), Enterprise Resource Planning software. The main objective of these measures are to streamline the management processes and reduce operational costs. It is very well known that ERP systems are a part and parcel of any automation and smart industry; in this case, it only makes sense for smart schools to enter into purchasing the right ERP.   The Smart School Trend   Technology has invaded schools with a storm since the advent of the internet and the mobile phone. Smart schools have high quality audiovisuals in classrooms, location tracking of school buses, student tracking from the time of their admissions, automated timetable allotments and loads of other such optimizations. With ERP, the functions across the enterprise get integrated into a single system that supports the smart school’s finances, human resources, student service transactions and processes. These ERP solutions offer the advantage of being integrated with each other and being capable of tracking many things at the same time. For instance, when data is changed in one area, information automatically changes in all the related areas and functions. When ERP is being implemented, it can also lead to the redesigning of the standard systems according to the global best practices.   Challenges faced by Smart Schools   The challenges that smart schools face in implementing any software/technology are often related to technical and budget related issues. At times, the staff in the institution is not fully trained in the use of the smart school software being implemented. Also, the decision makers at the institutions want to have a clear view of how the software can help in reducing the cost of managing/running the institution. But the process of installing any smart school technology is never quick and easy, and the experience of implementation and installation is always different for every smart school. Although technologies like Youtube, Skype, & tablets are all easy technologies to implement in smart schools but are a little heavy on the infrastructure side of things. Smart school softwares like Skype, Youtube etc require the school to have a high speed broadband internet connection to actually allow the students to have the experience these technologies claim to provide; while tablets are an expensive affair in general. The Government has helped with the implementations of smart school softwares by initiating Digital India and other similar campaigns.   ERP the King of smart school softwares   Among all these various smart school softwares, the ERP still remains the most important as it is the only software which provides the platform for a school to integrate almost everything from operations to financial management to student tracking. Slowly but steadily, every school is realizing the potential of school ERPs and are making the change to a system that best suits them. Making ERP the king of smart school softwares. The post ERP the King of Smart School Software. appeared first on Fedena Blog.

Each December, I am asked the same question over and over: why should I buy my nerdy tech-savvy friend, spouse, co-worker, boss, etc.? It is an excellent question, however, there may not be a good, single answer since technology is so personal!  Just last week I was asked by a parent of a college-aged son what cell phone they might consider picking up for their child for Christmas and unfortunately the best I could do was offer a less-than-helpful "it depends!" However, there is one stocking stuffer that I would very much recommend for any tech-savvy person: the excellent Belkin SurgePlus Mini Travel Surge Protector! Power is one of the most critical needs of a technophile.  As our bags and pockets fill up with gadgets and devices that run on power, we have a greater need than ever to pick up extra juice on the go.  If you have ever been to a conference, professional development workshop or meeting, this need is complicated by fact that not only are you carrying around 2+ devices that require power, so does everyone else in your meeting!  Outlets are at a premium and are quickly filled by others. The Belkin is an excellent device device because it combines a surge protector with three outlets and two USB ports.  With this single device, you can easily turn one outlet into three (allowing you to share with others!) while creating two mobile device power ports without the need of carrying  separate USB charger ports.  I now have a few of these devices: one in my daily carry bag, one in my travel suitcase and one on the office. At just $16.99 from Amazon, this is a great stocking stuffer, small gift or even office white elephant gift! And don’t take my word for it!  A recent reader poll at Lifehacker named the SurgePlus the best portable power strip, beating all other competitors combined! Pro tip: Amazon does offer an older version of this item for less, just $10.99, however, the USB ports offer less juice meaning a slower charge on your phone or tablet.  Spend the extra six bucks… it is well worth it! What is your favorite tech-savvy stocking suffer for your tech-minded friends and family?  Comment below or give us a shout-out on Twitter! Belkin SurgePlus 3-Outlet Mini Travel Swivel Charger Surge Protector with Dual USB Ports from Amazon The post A tech-savvy stocking stuffer: Belkin’s SurgePlus Travel Surge Protector appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

My mum organises a group for local artists in her village. It’s a friendly, well-established and tightly knit group, mostly made up of older people in their sixties and seventies. Members meet weekly and pay a small contribution to cover the costs of room rental and the life model’s fees, but expenses are kept low so that even those on the most modest incomes can afford to attend. It’s a brilliant example of the sort of vibrant self-organised informal learning that John Denham envisaged when he was Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and that David Cameron spoke of with notable warmth shortly before assuming office. Over the past few months, however, my mum’s group has been obliged to change location repeatedly, as a succession of community venues have closed down. The Conservative club where they met for many years has been sold to pub chain Wetherspoons. The British Legion club they moved to next was, within a few months, pulled down to build a large private house. For a while they met in a room above a pub, before incurring the wrath of a prudish and ill-tempered landlord who threw them out without notice. They are currently meeting in a portacabin in a train station car park; the only affordable venue they have been able to find. It’s a story that will, I suspect, be familiar to informal learners around the country, as important community resources, such as public libraries, adult education centres and voluntary sector providers close down, squeezed out by the ongoing withdrawal of local government funding. Safe, affordable (public and private) spaces in which people can come together, to learn or share an interest, or just to get out of the house - where, in short, they can be more than just individuals - are in increasingly short supply. The disappearance of the ring-fenced community learning budget - so passionately defended for so many years but now quietly subsumed within a larger adult education budget - is likely to mean a further squeeze on less formal kinds of provision. This is a largely unnoticed but extremely costly loss. These critical resources, while scarcely visible to some (for the most part, we pass them by without noticing they are there or having the vaguest idea what goes on inside), are, nevertheless, of life-saving and life-changing importance to others. The government, in shrugging off yet another ‘unintended consequence’ of its programme of public sector cuts, looks likely to bequeath to coming generations a legacy far more poisonous than the fondly invoked ‘mess’ it says it ‘inherited’. It will leave behind a severely diminished and dysfunctional civil society. At the same time, more formal opportunities for adults to come together and learn have been disappearing at an unprecedented rate, to the point of near extinction. More than two million adult learning places in further education have disappeared since 2003; 1.3 million of them since 2010, according to Skills Funding Agency figures. This year alone, the adult skills budget has been cut by 28 per cent (in this context, the chancellor’s announcement of cash-terms protection for non-apprenticeship adult skills funding looks like a bit of a fig leaf). Part-time mature student numbers in higher education have fallen by more than 40 per cent since loans were introduced for part-time students and fees escalated, while the Open University has seen student numbers drop by 30 per cent. In an ageing society, where people are living and working longer, where changing technology demands more and more of us as learners, where people’s separateness and isolation threatens the cohesion of communities, it is surely not unreasonable to expect government to do more - something - to arrest this decline. Yet, as the recent higher education Green Paper demonstrated, ministers remain fixated on the idea of initial - rather than lifelong - education and particularly the gilded path through A-levels to university. Part-time higher education, so plainly in need of intervention, was scarcely mentioned. The attitude of ministers to further education has also been disgracefully complacent. The Public Accounts Committee chair Meg Hillier noted today that the government has been ‘desperately slow off the mark’ in responding the ‘looming crisis’ in FE and urged it to ‘act now to ensure FE is put on a stable financial footing’. Britain has a proud tradition of second-chance learning, community self-help, workers’ education and university lifelong learning (though the latter was decimated by Labour’s daft ELQ rule, which withdrew funding for students studying at a level equivalent to or below their highest existing qualification). Most UK governments, for most of the twentieth century, broadly supported and recognised the value of adult education, though with varying degrees of enthusiasm and understanding. The growing focus on courses with a direct pay-off in terms of employment or employability from the early years of this century saw a sharp narrowing of opportunity, both in terms of learner numbers and the richness of the adult education offer. We have now reached a point where publicly supported adult education could soon be a thing of the past, at a time when, you might think, it is more necessary, relevant and important than ever, given the social and economic challenges we face. Its decline has coincided with an explosion of interest in MOOCs, yet this development, while holding out many exciting possibilities, should not be thought of as a replacement for face-to-face or group-based learning. In an ideal world, it should complement it. Place matters to learning, and so does community. I was struck by how impoverished the language we use to talk about adult education in the UK has become when I read the European Association for the Education of Adults’ Manifesto for Adult Learning in the 21st Century. Adult education, it says, can change lives and transform society, making a significant contribution to a range of important policy agendas, including the promotion of active citizenship, the development of key life skills crucial to mental health and wellbeing, and the creation of a more socially cohesive, fairer and more equal society capable of dealing with demographic change and migration. It also notes the role adult education has to play in delivering economic growth, employment and innovation, and in promoting environmental sustainability. The breadth of ambition reflected in these aims echoes Jacques Delors’ ‘four pillars of lifelong learning’: ‘learning to know’, ‘learning to do’, ‘learning to be’ and ‘learning to live together’. As Alan Tuckett suggested in his recent inaugural lecture as Professor of Education at the University of Wolverhampton, we are guilty of stressing the first two of these pillars - which concern the development of knowledge and skills - to the almost complete exclusion of the last two, learning for personal development, which is now largely the preserve of the better off, and learning for social cohesion and active democratic participation, which is now almost completely neglected in policy and funding terms. It is through these latter kinds of learning that we become more civil and decent, healthier and happier, and develop the attitudes and values that support the growth of a more democratic, socially cohesive society. Adult education should be seen not just as a means of producing a job-ready, compliant workforce, but as a crucial policy tool in promoting democracy and social inclusion. It is critical, of course, that people have a good initial education and develop skills that enable them to make a living and contribute to the economy. But we also need education that is both genuinely lifelong and supportive of people’s desire to lead fulfilling lives as part of strong, thriving communities. This has long been part of the adult education tradition in the UK. One of the strongest of the movement’s threads has been that of its social relevance, the idea that adult education can make society fairer and more equal, cohesive and democratic. In pursuit of that aim, adult educators have created spaces for people to come together not only to make sense of their own lives and problems but also society’s; spaces in which people can engage in democracy, politics and citizenship in a way that is surely more meaningful than the prevailing model in which people attempt to direct their concerns to distant politicians who largely ignore them and, for the most part, don’t understand them. As Hannah Arendt argued, education is the point at which ‘we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it’. The safe space it provides to question and dissent, to challenge and, just as importantly, be challenged, is absolutely critical, both to democracy and to community, which is why such spaces should be open, to everyone, whatever their age or stage of education. The more isolated we become, the more fissures and fault lines arise in society, the more challenged we are to change and do things differently, the more important, I think, such spaces become. As generations of educators have realised, change is only possible if people are engaged, informed, cooperative and willing and able to contribute, when they have, in Arendt’s terms, ‘assumed responsibility’. No-one, of course, expects government to pay for everybody’s post-compulsory education, at every level; the creation of a lifelong learning society has to be a cooperative endeavour in which everyone is involved and contributes fairly. But it is clear that we need more from government, including recognition of the wider value of adult education, a strategy for its long-term survival and a more generous basic settlement to help secure the future of both formal and informal types of adult learning, for everyone, and not just those who can afford the fees. A joined-up national policy for adult education, drawing on the wide body of existing research into its multi-layered and far-reaching benefits and acknowledging the importance of place, community and informality in learning, would be a useful start. That research demonstrates, among other things, that our politicians’ ambitions for education are just not bold enough, and that their thinking is simply not brave or coherent enough; not if we are to address the very real challenges we are faced with.

As another year draws to a close, The Educational Technology team would like to reflect on their work this year and if they’ve been good enough, they would like a stocking full of shiny technology…. This year we managed to get out blog on to the The Top 50 Must Read IT Blogs in Higher Ed; we launched our Lens On… Higher Ed. Technology series of posts, presented on Learning Analytics, started to develop a community space for sharing creative skills, played our own Hunger Games with #EDU130 and whilst all that happened, we upgraded our VLE. And so the tech… Topping Adel’s list this year and very much the topic of the moment is the Star Wars inspired BB-8 Sphero; an orange sized sphere that rolls around under the command of your Android phone. On that note, to make up the package she would also the Google Pixel C, which looks like a relatively affordable alternative to the Apple and Microsoft offerings in the ‘Pro’ tablet arena. Amy’s christmas quest is to update the home theatre experience for super fast broadband by replace the creaking iMac with a new MacMini or something like a chromecast (a popular gift from last year’s santa list). If you have the hardware already, Kodi.TV is a worthy environment for the Home Theatre PC. Mark would like the gesture based input offered by the Myo to control the new Micro-Brewery offering from Pico. Waving at a device to set in motion the creation of craft beer, is in his opinion the pinnacle of the Internet Of Things. Oliver would like a Standuino 3π2, to add to his smorgasbord of noise making machines. We hope you’ll see that we really have been awfully good technologists again this year, so if you could see your way to leaving this stuff under our LED christmas tree, we’d be most appreciative. All the very best for the season to one and all! Team ET

…keep them safe. By guest writer Anita Holt. On Christmas morning, in many houses in the UK, excited young people will open their shiny new internet-enabled devices. By late afternoon, many social media sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, SnapChat, Pinterest (hopefully not Tinder), will have a whole new set of users. Parents everywhere feeling […]

For well over a decade the Sharable Content Object Reference Model, or SCORM as it’s affectionately known, has been the standard for tracking eLearning. SCORM is established and trusted but limited, which has given rise to a new standard, Experience API or Tin Can API (The name depends on who you ask, but refers to the same thing). While very similar in function, it is important to note that Tin Can API is not SCORM with a new name, nor is Tin Can simply an upgrade. Tin Can API changes the fundamental way in which learning data is recorded, stored, and used. However, before we talk about what makes Tin Can different from SCORM, let’s quickly recap what we these standards are. SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is a set of technical specifications and guidelines designed to create a standard for which course creators and learning management systems can communicate. SCORM reports Meta level data about track completion, time, pass/fail, and a single score. To learn more feel free to read the overview (http://adlnet.gov/adl-research/scorm/) by SCORM’s creator Advanced Distribution Learning. Experience API/Tin Can API is a set of guidelines for a system which generates an activity statement for learning. The statement is written in format and can be applied to any type of learning, such as "I read InfoPro’s description on xAPI". The statements are stored in a Learning Record Store (LRS) which is interoperable and can share that information with a Learning Management System (LMS), another LRS, or a third party reporting system. ADL provides an overview (http://adlnet.gov/adl-research/performance-tracking-analysis/experience-api/) as well as background and technical specifications. Now, both Tin Can and SCORM are methods for recording data but Tin Can differs greatly in 4 areas. 1. Data Collection: Type and Method Tin Can collects the same information as SCORM, and then so much more. SCORM was designed to communicate only metadata about if the course was opened, if it was finished, and a single test score. Tin Can collects this data as well as any other piece of information desired. Tin Can is capable of this not because it’s an upgraded SCORM but because Tin Can’s activity statement system a completely different method of recording learning information. 2. Learning Record Stores Coupled with the Activity statement methodology of recording learning, where Tin Can sends the information greatly differs from SCORM. Instead of sending collected information straight to an LMS as SCORM does, Tin Can sends information to a Learning Record Store (LRS), a database of activity statements. That information then can be shared with an LMS for integration much the same as SCORM, or sent to another LRS to share worker information across organizations, or with a third party analysis tool. This fundamental shift in where the information is stored makes a huge difference and frees the learning information for new uses. 3. Interoperability Another major distinction between SCORM and Tin Can is their ability to work in various capacities. SCORM was developed with the intent of Web Based Training , in a controlled environment, and because of this struggles to work with mobile learning and new technologies. Today’s learning world involves desktops, tablets, phones, simulators and more, each running their own operating system. The interoperability of Tin Can is completely different from SCORM because Tin Can is system agnostic. It doesn’t matter what the system, Tin Can simply records an activity statement and sends it to an LRS. 4. On the Job Learning, and other informal learning Finally, the fundamental shift in how Tin Can records learning opens up a new possibility of recording on the job and informal training. SCORM reports if a learner takes an online course assigned by a LMS , limiting the system to formal Web based training, whereas Tin Can records any type of activity statement. Attending a lecture, writing a grant proposal, reading a business book, and any other learning action can be added to the learning record store producing a complete picture of learning; formal, on the job, and from peers. Tin Can is more than SCORM’s update, it is a paradigm shift in learning management unlocking the possibility to harness data. Instead of trying to make decisions based upon only a couple data points, Tin Can empowers well informed decision making, and that, is why Tin Can is so much more than a new SCORM. About the author:Marketing Coordinator for the US, Robert focuses on exploring and creating impactful material. He has a passion for researching and sharing L&D topics, with a particular interest in learning strategy, mobile technology and anything innovative that changes the way we think about learning. The post 4 Reasons Tin Can API (xAPI) Is NOT Just a New Version of SCORM appeared first on .

Executive Presence by Sylvia Ann Hewlett is a guide for leaders seeking to achieve the top level of success in their respective fields. While actual talent, training, and proven abilities are important factors in whether someone is successful or not, there are also some intangible qualities that all people who have achieved success have managed to perfect. These qualities are just as essential to master, yet many people are oblivious to their importance. Executive presence (EP) is the unknown quality that some people appear to have and others do not. Luckily, most of the elements of EP can be learned. The three main pillars of executive presence are: Gravitas: All aspects of a person’s behavior. Leaders with strong gravitas exude confidence, decisiveness, integrity, emotional intelligence, reputation, and vision. Communication: How a person talks, including formal presentation skills. Top communication traits include superior speaking skills, the ability to command a room, forcefulness, the ability to read people, a sense of humor, and body language. Appearance: How a person looks. It is important for leaders to be well groomed, be physically fit, and wear simple, stylish clothing. To learn more, please visit http://www.bizsum.com