by Voice of America University of the People is a university that has no tuition costs. The university’s classes and teaching materials are all free online. Also, all of the teachers are volunteers. Federal laws in the U.S. do not prevent undocumented immigrants from going to college. But laws do ban undocumented immigrants from receiving government financial aid. The Pew Research Center is an organization that studies social issues around the world. The organization recently reported there were 11.3 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S. in 2014. Of those, 49 percent were from Mexico. Many undocumented immigrants come to the U.S. with little money to pay for things like higher education. Currently, the University of the People only offers degrees in computer science and business administration. Though tuition is free, the university does require students to pay a $50 application fee. Also, the university requires students to pay a $100 test fee when they complete a class. http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/online-university-offers-poor-a-chance/3088042.html Share on Facebook

by Star Daily Standard Times A pair of researchers looking into whether Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are helping to bridge the disparity gap in education access in the U.S. has found that those who take the courses tend to be from wealthier neighborhoods. In their paper published in the journal Science, John Hansen, with Harvard University and Justin Reich, with MIT describe their research efforts and why they came to believe that MOOCs are not the remedy to educational disparity that many had hoped. Access to a high quality is not guaranteed in the U.S. People who live in tend to live in less well funded schools with lower success rates. Over the years some have espoused technological advances as the key to leveling the playing field—some believed radio could change things by offering educational programming, others believed television would help, offering even more programming such as that provided by PBS. http://www.stardailystandard.com/science/research-exhibits-large-open-on-line-programs-used-principally-by-wealthier-individuals/33377/ Share on Facebook

by Ariel Diaz, EdSurge Making the jump to more affordable, online courseware is the logical next step to cut costs, and many learning platforms and digital content providers are stepping up to help. Even the government is in support of digital, open textbooks, with members of Congress recently proposing the Affordable College Textbook Act and the U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen campaign. But despite available resources and growing support, digital textbooks are still met with doubt and resistance sparked by some key—and not so unfounded—objections. No stranger to having to set the digital versus print textbook debate straight, I’ve pulled together a list of common objections to sort out what is, in fact, true and what is completely false. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-12-05-facing-the-facts-four-common-objections-to-digital-textbooks Share on Facebook

As mentioned in ‘the facts about yourself’, "your best childhood memory is all the fun of roaming around and playing outdoors for hours." Are there any game elements of your childhood you have incorporated in your eLearning products? I would say that what resonates from childhood memories of play is simply the pure fun of games and the fact that we could stay immersed in them for long periods of time. For sure, I am a goal-oriented person who likes having that metric to hit so my tendency with eLearning solutions I’ve personally developed has always focused on that. I preferred thinking about activities people could do within the eLearning course and hated the text/next formats so common to early renditions of eLearning. I liked to incorporate aesthetic and game elements even before I created actual eLearning games. My roots are in instructor-led training and I developed lots of games and simulations to incorporate into workshop-style events because I felt people benefited more from doing than from merely listening. Those tendencies definitely stem from my childhood preferences for game play and my clear non-enjoyment of sitting and listening to a classroom teacher. Would you describe yourself as a "Knowledge Guru", considering your long experience in the area of education and your innovating project ideas?  I prefer to think of myself as simply constantly curious. Flat out, I love to learn - at least when I’m driving the learning and not stuck in the lectures that pained me so badly when I was a kid. My weak spot in instructional design tends to be forgetting that not everyone loves to learn. The majority of us aren’t very good learners at all, which makes solid instructional design more essential, not less. What exactly is Bottom-Line Performance; Results. Too often, training programs are designed and implemented with no one asking the hard question, "What business results is this initiative supposed to produce?" If you can’t answer that question, you’re going to put together a learning "solution" that doesn’t solve anything meaningful. Sadly, I’ve gotten blank stares from stakeholders more than once when I pose that question. I have to offer examples of what I mean by a "business result," (e.g. increased revenue, decreased employee turnover, faster ramp-up of a new-hire, which results in quicker productivity gains, etc.). They then tell me that they don’t have any way of measuring these results - they don’t know current state so they can’t compare their end result to it. Tell us about your «creativity child», the social game called «A Paycheck Away». What was its intention? Is there another similar project coming up? A Paycheck Away is a game about homelessness. The intention of the game was to raise awareness of the issue in a different way - to help people recognize that homelessness is OUR problem, not just the problem of the homeless individual. It costs a community a ton of money, and it costs society at large hugely as well. The game is a vehicle for talking about tough issues and formulating ideas at a community level. We created the game at no charge and featured it at a huge local festival called Spirit and Place. Dayspring now has a license to use the game in its own awareness efforts. They are preparing to do a major event in Indianapolis featuring the game. It’s a Game for Change that I want to make a big difference. I do want to do more with it - I’d love to see it being used on a national scale in various organizations - schools, churches, police departments, state legislatures, social agencies, etc. to help people grasp that telling people to "work harder" doesn’t solve the problem. We’ve sold numerous copies of the game; all the proceeds go to…. Dayspring Center. What advice would you give to those who are just getting started with designing a learning game? Keep it simple and laser the focus. The biggest mistake I see is that people want to introduce too many game elements or mechanics into their games to try to make it more fun. The problem with this is that learning the rules of a game takes brain power. The more brain power spent trying to understand the game play, the less brain power available to learn whatever it is you are trying to teach people. The more content you try to include in the game, the less effective it becomes as well. Figure out the ONE THING you really want people to be able to do and make a game about that ONE THING… not about everything. As I presume, a learning based game keeps the user motivated and engaged for a significant amount of time.  However, do you believe that it keeps the learner’ s attention long enough to allow for knowledge to be internalized and remembered? Obviously it is going to depend on how well the game is designed and how well feedback loops are factored into the game. The power of a game to change behavior comes in the feedback loop and the game loop. (Think of a game loop as everything you can do on a single turn. You then repeat the sequence of steps on a subsequent turn.) A poorly designed game will not keep people engaged. Keep in mind, though, that engagement is only part of people learning. I can be highly engaged in an activity - and learn absolutely nothing valuable from it. Learning design and game design must be done in parallel. I see people get way too focused on designing an engaging game and lose most of the focus on what the game is supposed to help people learn. How would you describe your experience with the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course)? What kind of advantages and what weaknesses did you observe? I love them, but I don’t think they are suited to a lot of learners. Learners all perceive that they want control of their learning, but most of us are poor learners and we require more oversight and guidance through the learning than a MOOC gives. The advantage of the MOOC, in my opinion, is its flexibility and the "chunking" of the content. I can plug earphones into my iPhone and listen to a 15-minute lecture while I walk the dog. I love that. I can also cherry pick the modules I want to take - and ignore what I don’t need. The disadvantage is that the accountability for completing them is pretty low, and if you can’t learn from a lecture, you are toast. Having said all this, I think if we could somehow tweak the model so we created smaller learning communities around them (5-10 people), they could have far more power. Describe Sharon Boller in ten years from now. I see myself pursuing things that feed my soul but don’t require so much time and energy. I hope it involves something like championing a game for change, such as A Paycheck Away, and showing people how to integrate games into larger discussions and efforts to effect positive change in our communities. In a future world, do you believe that traditional learning will be totally replaced by eLearning? How do you see such a prospect? I do not. I actually think our pendulum is swinging more appropriately to the blend. Look at gaming. There is a huge, huge resurgence in the board game and card game. GenCon, which is held in Indianapolis, attracted over 50,000 people to this year’s 4-day convention that is all about board games and card games - not online games. In our office, the games millenials love the most are board games where they interact directly with their friends. People remain hungry for relationships and connections - and they learn the most from those interactions, not from an eLearning course. Elearning will be a firm part of our future, but it will not be a 100% replacement, nor should it be. My husband joked long ago when AOL came out with Instant Message that he was going to wait several years and then write a best seller on an innovative new way of communicating. He was going to call it, "Talking Face-to-Face." Even in a global, telecomputing world, we still need the ability to interact face-to-face. The post Interview with Sharon Boller appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

What would be an elevator pitch for someone who does not know about your product? How does it differentiate from other Learning Management Systems? We are a technology focused company with an established line of learning management tools that can cover a variety of customer needs. We build products to solve training problems of growing companies. Our portfolio includes eFront, an award winning LMS for enterprises and TalentLMS, a lean, cloud LMS for everyone that needs a really fast and simple way to train online. We are also working on an exciting new mobile product that combines aspects of microlearning, infographics and gamification. I think that our biggest differentiation factor is the fact that we are a technology driven company. It is engineers that take the important product decisions and this is a source of constant innovation. Why are you passionate about this product? Learning is expensive, takes a long time and the results can vary. E-learning has been trying for years now to complement the way we learn to make it more effective and measurable. We are a part of this grand scale revolution on the way we learn that can have earth shaking effects in the way we live. The LMS is a piece of the puzzle at the moment but it is OUR piece, and we want to take care of it as good as possible. In your Linkedin account you mention that you are competent in dealing with difficult problems. What sort of problems do usually come up in your everyday business-life? Could you please tell us about an important issue you encountered recently? Each and every day has challenges, things I have not encounter (or imagined) before. It looks normal to me but I guess it is not for most people. Unfortunately, not all challenges are made equally - having to deal with a bad-tempered customer or a malfunctioned server is not the same with designing the gamification layer of eFront. Right now my biggest concern is to manage my time and that of the team to remain productive while the company grows. Unfortunately, it is not a core engineering problem but it is important and difficult nonetheless. Do you believe such problems that you deal within your e-learning framework apply also to a variety of learning environments? Learning and e-learning are different sides of the same coin. Still, it would be simplistic to consider e-learning the same as learning. There are a number of fundamental differences on the approach, tools and dynamics. Still, a good teacher is usually a good instructor for online courses as well. Transferring a learning process to the internet is tricky. The most common scenario we encounter is when someone tries to transfer a traditional learning process as-is to the internet. This mapping, although possible, is not the one with the best outcome. On the contrary, one needs to thing out of the box taken into account the benefits and the shortcomings of the electronic medium. At the end of the day though, core objectives of learning like how to motivate participation, engagement and thirst for learning are the same. What are the most common project challenges when implementing eFront for enterprises and how are they usually overcome? Bigger customers have unique needs and require special attention. It is common to provide a considerable amount of customization effort to meet the needs of such clients. Understanding the real needs of the customer and pricing them accordingly is usually one of my biggest problems as an estimation error can have serious repercussions; and usually we need to provide a pricing and a time table early in the process where not all the details are yet revealed. The only way I found to overcome it is by a divide-and-conquer approach, where bigger problems become a series of smaller and easier to tackle tasks. Where do you see eFront in 3 years from now? Are there any developments you are considering? As a company we have a very active development schedule. We are releasing eFrontPro this autumn. eFrontPro combines the depth of eFront with a new fluid interface, revamped reporting and support for blended learning. At the same time, it maintains a familiar tone. Regarding our cloud solution, TalentLMS, we are integrating Gamification characteristics by the end of this year. We are also heavily working on Snappico, our new mobile learning application. Altogether, I believe that the company and our product portfolio will be much different 3 years from now. We are transforming from a strictly LMS provider to a broader e-learning company. What does it take to create a successful e-learning system? Dedication, persistence, skills, a good team, luck and some sense of humor. This is not only for e-learning but can be applied on almost everything. What is most rewarding about what you do? I consider what we build as my children and is certainly satisfactory to watch them grow and be useful for others. Also, we have the pleasure to communicate with people all over the world and it is not uncommon to receive emails from places you have not even heard off. Internet is a wonderful thing and I am happy to be involved in this type of revolution. Communicating with different people can give you a sense of meaning and a better life perspective. What’s a common misconception people have about what you do and about what eFront brings to the world? Many people commonly consider eFront a strictly open-source solution for small scale implementations. Still, we have used eFront to support large and demanding customers with over 1M of users. It is hard to convince people that a software that costs a few thousands can be equal or better than something that costs millions. It is crazy but it happens often in software. If you were interviewing someone for E-Learning Developer position, what traits would you look for? No matter the position we are looking for generalists - people that can adapt to new conditions. We are also looking for efficient people - that rare breed that can get things done. Finally, personality is a very important metric as well. If you are positive, happy people it shows on your work. One can see really important names among your costumers (Fujitsu, Kalsec, Karachaganak, Engel, Autodesk, Panasonic etc). What kind of requirements / liabilities imply such collaborations? As I already mentioned, bigger customers have unique needs and require more attention. For example, bigger customers require phone or priority support. Also the sale process takes usually longer and is very competitive. Size also brings bureaucracy. As a small company we value efficiency, but in bigger companies what often rules is the "mighty" Process. At the end of the day though you have to deal with a few people in a daily basis, no matter the size of the organization. How familiar are Greek people to e-learning? Not very much. The Greek e-learning market is small. The European learning market is small. We have been used to travel small distances and we value face-to-face communication too much. That practical difference with countries like Australia, Canada and United States prohibits the growth rates of eLearning in our continent. Still, I see this as an intermediate stage that eventually, will lead to higher growth rates for e-learning in Europe. Describe Athanasios Papagelis in ten years from now. That is a tough one. I guess that 10 years from now I would prefer to be in a situation to share my experiences and knowledge to help other people succeed. This means though that in the mid time I will be universally considered successful - not really there yet. In a future world, do you believe that traditional learning will be totally replaced by e-learning? How do you see such a prospect? In 20 years from now a lot more learning will happen with electronic means. Teachers will still be around to teach us; but I am not so sure if they will still exist 200 years from now. No matter what, the need for training and education will keep increasing as our societies become more information driven; and I do not see an end to that. The post Interview with Athanasios Papagelis appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

In the «Entrepreneurs’» interview by Mondadori you are described as "A Revolutionary Entrepreneur beyond today’s boundaries". What is it that makes a "revolutionary" nowadays? In my humble POV, these days trying to do a good job is revolutionary. The key-factor is not to do business in order to acquire money and power, but give back to the community and create value for the future. This is how you can bring real revolution to your business. How has the picture of enterprises changed since the founding of Mailforyou.com in 1999? Would you say that things were "easier" back then? Well, things are always easier when you are 25! It’s a fact that more people are joining the technological movement now than back in 2000. And now, there is less money but more people involved in the industry of enterprises. I presume that there is a chance of more companies dealing with failure but eventually  there will be more knowledge and experience gained and this will not disappear. Were there any «mentors» along your way? What or who inspired you to do what you are doing? Actually, I prefer to use the term «teacher» instead of «mentor». My very first teacher was my father, to whom I owe a lot. Then, there was another person along my way who taught me to see the world as an interconnected place, as a network. «Big» men take big risks. What was the biggest risk you ever took? I risk failing every single morning I wake up. What does «Docebo» mean? «Docebo» is a Latin word which means "I will teach". Our intention was to connect to our 2000 year old Italian history but we did not want to use an Italian word because our company is international. How does Docebo differentiate itself in the eLearning market? Is there an exclusive benefit your software gives to your customers? The first one would be our pricing approach. Once you buy the software, you can go live in 5 minutes. This is a totally different procedure than the ones used by other market vendors, which require a standard negotiation on behalf of the user. Moreover, it’s the Amazon revolution on the Cloud solution that we are trying to replicate on the eLearning market. Another thing that makes Docebo stand out is the slick Italian design put into the eLearning platform’s UI. And design does matter. How has social media affected eLearning? The real contribution of social media is that it has transformed informal training to formal learning. It’s one of the elements that make the whole eLearning market revolutionary. Are there any certain types of learners who are "unsuitable" for eLearning? In the B2B sector there’s a minimum size for a company to adopt eLearning. Delivering eLearning to a company requires a certain commitment in terms of the number of employees involved, because the software, the content and the procedure of delivering the content demand dedicated resources. Companies below 500 employees usually deal with many issues because they don’t have the necessary resources to handle eLearning project management. What do you see as a future challenge in the area of eLearning? Are you eager to confront it? ELearning is going beyond formal training and there are many competitors right now. My intuition tells me that we will see a lot of acquisitions and failures in the next few years. Perhaps we will see a new technology that redefines MOOCs and LMSs. Hopefully I will be the inventor of that technology! One can see really important names among your customers (Mediaset, the Sky television group, Accenture, Volksbank, AON etc.). What kinds of requirements / responsibilities do such collaborations imply? When a customer decides to switch from a legacy LMS to a smart Cloud LMS he’s usually a smart customer who understands the benefits and limits of SaaS. In our company there is a huge technical and sales team as well as a consulting department, because the human touch is an integral part of the process, even in SaaS. As an active start-up supporter, from which entrepreneurship field do you observe that most profitable ideas derive? I would say from B2B. There is nothing more profitable than making products and selling them to companies. You are a huge fan of the Roman Empire. What inspires you the most in that period of history and why? The most inspiring and at the same time interesting thing for me is the way that the Roman Empire failed. There could be several causes of failure in this case: a human mistake, the Empire itself, a different tactical approach, or human greed. The key is to know and recognize all the elements that could cause a failure. You refer to military strategy as one of your greatest interests. What related skills do you use when «you are doing business»? I’m actually a fan of geopolitical strategy, not military strategy per se. Everything is interconnected. All incidents and events are connected and there is a reason lying behind everything. For example, you can decode a complex reality by looking at the connection. We are living in the age of "complexity". Understanding the bonds - or connections - themselves can lead to the best solution. In a future world, do you believe that traditional learning will be totally replaced by eLearning? How do you see such a prospect? In a complex world, technology does not change the "previous technology". Nowadays, eLearning is on top of traditional learning. Maybe in the future there will be another layer on top of eLearning. But at the end of the day, nothing will substitute anything else; we will just add elements of complexity. The post Interview with Claudio Erba appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

How would you describe your role in «Quinnovation»? How has it been evolved from the beginning until today? Quinnovation is the vehicle I use for consulting. I became a consultant in 2001, and it went from a euphemism for unemployed to a way of life in 2002. I (re)branded as Quinnovation with the launch of my first book, Engaging Learning: Designing eLearning Simulation Games. The role has changed largely as the ways in which I consult have changed, from designing solutions to assisting organizations to put together strategies that help them transition to ways of working that are more aligned with how we think, work, and learn. Would you describe yourself as a «guru» of innovating Learning Technology and Development? That’s not something you should say about yourself; it’s for others to determine. I am passionate about and committed to trying to deliver on the promise of technology to support our goals to learn and perform. I continue to explore advances in learning and technology to see what new opportunities emerge. I might use the term gadfly, or instigator, or provocateur (or something less politic ;). You are engaged in finding solutions for businesses. How difficult is to determine which solution is suitable for a business? It depends, of course, on the problem. You don’t want to force a solution on a business; you need to match the solution to the issue. Some problems are obvious, others are complex or subtle, and some are wicked-hard. The trick is to have a rich suite of models in your pocket to draw upon at appropriate times. I’ve the benefit (and curse) of a lateral mind, so I tend to come up with unforeseen solutions (hence Quinnovation), but at core it’s about deep analysis, grounded frameworks, systematic creativity (note: this is not an oxymoron), and iteration. How does a company become "smarter" through the change of its strategy? The way an organization does get smarter is to look at where it is at, where it could be, and creating a strategy that takes them in a positive direction. In particular, a useful approach is avoiding ‘best practices’, and going to best principles: finding why things work and figuring out how to map those onto your context.  The way to do it is in consonance with what’s known about how people think, work, and learn. What is the first data you ask from a business wanting to introduce mobile learning to their organization, in order to outline the right action plan for them? The first thing is to find out what issues are driving them. You need to ask where they are, and where they need to go. Mobile isn’t a graft-on, it’s a fundamental part of organizational and L&D strategy, and consequently has to align with what the organization has to achieve. The first question is "what problems are you trying to solve by going mobile?" What challenges can a business expect to encounter when trying to implement eLearning? What can it do to address those challenges? The first problem an organization can expect is outdated ideas of what constitutes learning. Too many people equate learning with ‘school’, and consequently are quite comfortable believing learning consists of information dump and knowledge test. They can add quizzes to documents, or replicate the classroom online, both likely to their detriment. To truly leverage eLearning, organizations are going to have to recognize that the goal is performance, not learning, and broaden the suite of solutions they can apply. Do you identify eLearning as the modern solution to the problem of the degradation of traditional education? Absolutely not. Our problem is that we are not recognizing what really constitutes learning, and consequently we too often use technology in ways that replicate our existing approaches, and therefore are doomed to fail. eLearning has now been shown to trump traditional face to face instruction, but as the lead author on the report suggested, the reason was the chance to rethink the pedagogy, not the medium itself. eLearning is a tool, but if it’s not driven by an awareness of what makes a valuable curriculum, and an enlightened pedagogy, it is merely a tool for the perpetuation of the status quo (or worse). What exactly do you mean by the term «learnlets», which features as the name of your blog? Here’s what I say on the blog itself: "Many years ago now, in the early days of the internet, I responded to a request for predictions about the future of computing, and I wrote (and I paraphrase, I can’t find it now) ‘in the future there will be lots of little interactive and engaging applications that will teach you anything you need to know, including how to make little interactive and engaging applications’. The requester liked my suggestion, and it was included in the published collection (now if I could only remember who, where, and when). Those little interactive and engaging applications are learnlets." The Learnlets blog itself consists of my learnings about learning. You are an author of several books and manuals about training and eLearning. What is the first advice you would give to someone who is now exploring the world of eLearning? To be clear, I’ve four books on using technology to facilitate performance & development. My first advice is to make sure you understand learning. Have I mentioned that eLearning is meaningless without the learning part? The technology will change, but our ‘wetware’ will not.  We need to truly understand how our brains work, and align technology with it. In your comments to your latest book, "Revolutionize Learning and Development" you quote "Don’t let learning and development myths derail you". Could you name some common myths of today? Let’s start with learning styles. The problem is that there are essentially no valid instruments to assess how people learn, and the research shows that attempts to adapt learning to styles has had no impact. Design for how people learn best! Generational differences and ‘digital natives’ are two related others. Again, the research shows no validity. It’s really bigotry by age; treat people by what they know and care about, not their years on the planet. Will Thalheimer has resoundingly decimated the myth of Dale’s Cone (e.g. you learn so much by listening, so much by seeing, etc.). And much of the so-called ‘brain science’ is making inappropriate inferences. You have to be wary of appealingly simple panaceas, and be professional about learning design. In your notes you often mention the word «design». What is the role and significance of it in Clark Quinn’s mind? Herb Simon said "The proper study of mankind is the science of design", and that resonates with me. The point is that the human advantage is the ability to change the environment to suit us, rather than the other way around. My focus is on how we use technology to augment our ability to learn and perform, but to do so we have to understand design processes. And the same biases our cognitive architecture introduces in our ability to accomplish our goals also holds true in our ability to design. So we have to look at what’s known about how to design just as we have to look at what’s known about how to learn and how to do. You are an avid researcher, believer and innovator of projects related to mobile learning. How does it connect to eLearning? Where do you see the difference between those two? Digital technology has been the perfect complement to our brains: it does well what we don’t, and vice versa. It’s a form of cognitive augmentation. What mobile brings is the ability to have that augmentation wherever and whenever we are, which is huge, but there’s even more. It also brings the ability to do things because of where and when we are, and this contextualization is a valuable new opportunity. eLearning truly should be about more than courses, with performance support and social & informal learning as well, and mobile brings that capability.  Moreover, since mobile (specifically the phone form factor, not the tablet) is not well suited to courses, mLearning focuses on the other things, which L&D doesn’t typically take advantage of. In this way, mobile can be a catalyst for change in L&D, as well as personal and organizational effectiveness. Technology is highly featured among your interests. How has it affected the world of eLearning during the last decade? The sad fact is that the advances seen in technology in other areas are slow to be picked up in learning applications. While there are amazing capabilities on tap - content engineering, semantics, sensors, analytics, wearables, and more - we’re not seeing it being applied to organizational learning in meaningful ways. Much of what we’re seeing are the same tired models with new window dressing. The frustration over this led to the Serious eLearning Manifesto with my colleagues Michael Allen, Julie Dirksen, and Will Thalheimer. In the Manifesto we are trying to point back to the learning part of eLearning. Which will be the technological picture of eLearning in the following years? Do you see a huge change coming? The opportunities are huge. Personalization, contextualization, augmented reality, the list of game-changing opportunities is phenomenal. But the more mundane advances still need to be seen. We need a broader use of technology overall to support organizational needs. I argue we need a revolution in our focus to include performance support and social & informal learning. We need a richer foundation of more modular content tagged so that we can pull up relevant elements by description, not hard wired. We need design in ways that are device independent. Ultimately, we want a performance ecosystem where the tools are ‘to hand’ around our needs and tasks. Name one thing you could not do without for a whole day. Air. How do you imagine Clark Quinn in a decade from now? I hope that I will have continued to track new technology developments, infer their learning affordances, and assisted organizations in systematically using them in more effective ways. I will be thrilled if it’s included meeting new people, seeing new places, and led to valuable outcomes. The post Interview with Clark Quinn appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

In a constantly changing world, how important is to cooperate with the right team of public relations advisors? Probably not at all - unless, that is, you want your brand to be recognized, your business goals to be achieved and your organization to be successful. What kind of exclusivity does your PR Agency offer its costumers? What kind would you want?  It’s precisely because we’ve specialized in helping companies in the online learning technologies sector that we’ve developed a relevant, up-to-date worldwide media contact list that’s second to none. We couldn’t have done that if we hadn’t been working for a number of clients from the same sector over many years. So, in this sense, companies come to us because we’re not exclusive. Nonetheless, over the years, some potential clients have been fearful that, because we work with other companies in their industry, we’ll pass their confidential information to competitors. It’s an outrageously ridiculous idea. For one thing, that’d be the easiest way to lose all our clients and never get any more. Moreover, we have other - far better - things to do with our time and energies. We can only influence the relevant media around the world because we’re known to represent only leading companies in the sector. So the only - and best - exclusivity we can offer is that we’ll ensure that there are never any client conflicts of interest in a PR sense and we’ll always do our very best to promote any and every client. Which is the most common mistake that most PR agencies make and how is it likely to endanger the consumer’ s profile? I couldn’t possibly comment on other PR agencies’ activities - after all, I have no first-hand knowledge of how they operate. However, in terms of providing PR activities for the online learning technologies world, it’s important to remember that it’s a niche area within the business-to-business (B2B) sector. The chances of the national media picking up your company’s story are extremely remote - although we’ve managed to arrange this occasionally for some clients over the years. The way to be successful, that is, to build a presence in the B2B media, is to engage in proactive PR activities - led by issuing news stories via press releases, blog posts and so on and then supporting these via social media activities (principally via Twitter and LinkedIn). Only once you’ve established your brand within the industry, can you expect to indulge in reactive PR (such as responding to media requests for interviews, comments and so on). Adopting this PR strategy presupposes you have something worthwhile to say - and it’s vital that you say it well. That’s where top class PR professional help can bring substantial benefits and add value. Furthermore, this help should also be able to guarantee that what you have to say gets seen and heard. Of course, like anything of value, top class professional PR help that’s attuned to the online learning technologies sector - both nationally and internationally - doesn’t come cheap. Nonetheless, the experience of a great many companies you’ve never heard of indicates that not doing PR or adopting a DIY approach ‘because it’s cheaper’ is, ultimately, detrimental to business success. The latest research on the European online learning technologies industry, published a few months ago by market analysts Learning Light, shows - among many other things - that there are some 671 producers of e-learning materials and systems in France; 532 in the UK; 328 in Germany, 300 in Poland and so on. My guess is that you’d find it hard to name even ten per cent of the producers in your country - and that suggests that, generally, professional PR isn’t high on e-learning vendors’ priorities. They could well be making a mistake - but at least that makes it easier for us to promote our clients. For some further thoughts and suggestions on ‘doing PR’, you could visit the ‘Free PR advice’ section of the Bob Little Press & PR website. In your website you mention that «the truth is the main acknowledgement in the cooperations you have done so far». Have you ever rejected a consumer or has a consumer ever rejected you because you were being honest when judging his project? I imagine you’re referring to our strapline: ‘we tell the truth as you would want it told’. People who tell lies about their product or service (and we’ve all met them - and not just in the online learning technologies world) may appear to succeed. But they only succeed in the short term and, besides that, they have to continue to live with themselves and their consciences. Telling the truth is a far better policy - and professional PR should help you tell that truth in the most advantageous way. Over the last 25 years, we’ve refused to work with some potential clients; we’ve been delighted not to have been selected by others and, although it’s temporarily reduced cash flow, we’ve been secretly happy to lose a few clients. However, overall, we’ve been delighted to work with the vast majority of our clients - including all our current ones. How has the Social Media affected the reality of public relations? As we say on our website, ‘social media and social networking has transformed the potential for PR to help your business - especially since your competition won’t be using it to best advantage.’ Until the advent of social media, you were at the mercy of editorial whims, policies and strategies, along with physical space constraints in publications. Moreover, it could take up to four months to see whether a particular story had made it into print and, thus, the public domain. Nowadays - thanks to social media - you can guarantee to get your client’s story to relevant readers around the world within some 48 hours, while the story still has ‘immediacy’ and relevance. You appear as an avid user of the Social Media while you are mostly keen on Τwitter. Speaking of your own activity, as a user, what kind of tweets draw the most attention and which ones do they prove to be the less interesting? Tweets about lists. Everyone loves lists - and the more subjective the list, the better. Huge debate - on Twitter, LinkedIn groups and so on - takes place in January each year with the publication of the lists of the ‘Movers and Shakers’ in corporate learning technologies. What’s the most important tip that should be followed by a corporate page on Facebook? Save your energies for other forms of social media - unless you’re in the business-to-consumer (B2C) market (when Facebook users are your potential customers). It’s largely a waste of time using corporate Facebook to boost sales in an online learning technologies (B2B) environment. Of course, this might change. You can never tell with social media. It’s such a young area of marketing science. Among your many activities, you’ve written an e-book for eLearning (Perspectives on Learning Technologies). Would you like to tell us more about it? Yes, thank you. Please buy it! I need the money - and Amazon takes over half of the purchase price. So please try to buy at least two copies! Perspectives on Learning Technologies (ASIN: B00A9K1VVS; available from Amazon) contains over 200 pages of observations on issues in learning technologies, principally for learning & development professionals. It distills the wisdom - along with a touch of wit - gathered from some 20 years of discussion and discovery within the learning technologies industry, particularly as it relates to the corporate learning world. The book sets out a wealth of views, often corroborated by rigorous research. These can be used as shortcuts to help you in the planning, practice and politics of ‘learning and development’ (L&D) in your organization. Or they can be used as seeds and short cuts for your own thoughts and theories - so you can achieve more with less in a shorter time and all the other things that L&D professionals are supposed to do. The key to the book is that while times change; technologies change, and learning technologies change, people remain human. So those whose job involves identifying the need for; designing; developing; introducing, and popularizing ‘learning’ within their organizations face the same issues that they’ve always faced - even if the advent of ‘learning technologies’ now mean that there are more learning delivery mechanisms to choose from than there used to be. L&D professionals face the same challenges that L&D professionals have always faced. But, these days, they have so many options and (technology-based) tools in their armory that these challenges can seem harder and the dangers of making a mistake appear to be greater than they used to be. This book contains some insights into these challenges. Terms such as eBook and eLearning are gaining ground in our everyday life. Do you believe that the prefix ‘e-‘ has mastered over conventional forms of reading and learning? I make a living using words - which is a great privilege. I’m someone who follows linguistic fashion, not someone who forges it. For at least the last 15 years, people have been saying that the ‘e’ prefix is irrelevant and should be dropped. Yet there’s a difference between an ‘e-book’ and a ‘book’. Until there isn’t a distinction to be made between these things, there’s a need for these two terms to co-exist. On the other hand, there’s a case to be made for dropping the ‘e’ in e-learning, since we don’t make any other distinction with how learning is achieved. In normal conversation, we don’t talk about ‘book learning’ or ‘classroom-delivered learning’. Only learning professionals make these distinctions. When they have no more use for these distinctions, including ‘e-learning’, these terms will die and we’ll be left with ‘learning’. So, if learning professionals don’t like the term ‘e-learning’, the answer lies in their own hands - or mouths. Is there another idea for a book related to education through eLearning that you have in progress? What topics would it contain? I’m open to suggestions. However my book on the history of Pendley Manor was published in July last year and the soft-back version had to be reprinted in September. It’s proved more popular than Perspectives on Learning Technologies. So another learning technologies book isn’t at the top of my current priorities. How do you see the future of eLearning in the next decade? People will always need to learn things and they’ll always need other people to teach them. The advent of the web has made learning materials more widely available than ever before but the basics about learning and imparting learning haven’t changed - nor will they. It’s just that, through the application of technology, you can now use more ways to impart that learning. We know the rules about learning; about how best to teach people, and about how - and why - people learn best. We’ve got the wisdom, and the examples, of the giants of the education profession over the last 2,500 years to delve into - from Socrates to contemporary educationalists. To use a simile first employed by Bernard of Chartres in the 12th century and most famously used by the scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, in a letter he wrote in 1676, we’re like dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. The idea is that we can see more and further than our predecessors could - not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we’re borne aloft on their gigantic stature and can build on their pioneering work. Yet there’s no guarantee that each new generation of learning developers understands the lessons of the past. We’re still not sure how to make the most effective use of the resources we have - the delivery technologies, the content management and learning management systems, as well as the learning content itself. And, while it’s marvelous that technology is advancing, this continued advancement seems to raise still more questions for us. So, if we’re standing on the shoulders of giants, we appear to be doing so while looking at an extremely foggy landscape. Of course, we can dimly discern some current trends and extrapolate them. A report, called ‘A Review of the e-learning markets of the UK, EU and China 2014’ and published a few months ago by the UK-based market analyst, Learning Light, sets out the size and state of the online learning technologies markets in 20 European countries, including the UK. It also examines the Chinese market for online learning technologies, since this is thought to be a major growth area for all forms of online learning. The trends that the report identifies include that, becoming ‘mainstream’ within learning and development are: Gamification - including serious games, Multi-device learning - that’s mobile learning, responsive web design and learning apps, as well as HTML5, ‘Bring your own device’ (BYOD), Virtual classrooms, Cloud-based learning, Learning content management systems (LCMS), such as those offered by Xyleme and eXact learning solutions, Social learning and curation. The Learning Light Report suggests watching out for the growth of: Adaptive learning platforms, Learning-as-a-Service (LaaS), Increasingly smart assessment, Reconfigurable learning via reusable and interchangeable ‘gadgets’, ‘Build your own content’ (BYOC), Massive open online courses (MOOCs) and vocational open online courses (VOOCs), Analytics and learning record stores (LRS), The increasing influence of ‘big data’ and Tin Can Experience API (xAPI) As more ‘millennials’ - that is, people born into the current technological age - enter the workplace, a greater proportion of learning materials are likely to be delivered online, especially via mobile devices. In today’s increasingly fast-paced commercial world, this helps to meet the need for ‘just-in-time’, ‘just-enough’ and ‘just-right-first-time’ learning wherever the learners are, whenever they need this learning and however they want to access the learning materials. In the private sector, as worldwide and local competition increases, greater demands will be placed on learning delivery technologies to help workers and their employers maintain their competitive advantages. In the public sector, these learning delivery technologies will be called upon to help workers provide ever greater value for money to all stakeholders, including taxpayers as well as customers. The academic world has the greatest potential problem with the introduction of new learning delivery technologies - especially MOOCs at the moment - because it can’t yet see how to reconcile the greater availability of, and access to, learning materials with the need to protect both its intellectual property and its income from this. Speaking as a «Word Master», what title would you use to describe the developments in the field of eLearning since the beginning of the new millennium? Leading edge developments in all areas of the corporate online learning technologies field over the last 15 years have been amazing, impressive and exciting. Unfortunately, from a learning purist’s point of view, there’s still a large amount of e-learning in general circulation which is ‘e-learning 1.0’: boring, page-turning, content-heavy with little engaging interaction for learners. Moreover, some 80 per cent of all commercial e-learning is focused on compliance-related and regulatory topics. People have to complete this learning because their job and career depend on it. This means that, in many ways, e-learning is now a vital part of business life. Yet, because of this, issues such as learner motivation and engagement through the e-learning materials, along with interactivity and exploration empowering learning, fly out of the window. So, while the leading edge of the e-learning world is making some impressive and exciting strides, relatively few learners are experiencing it. Your resume is impressive. Writer, speaker, singer, editor, blogger, tweeter and adviser on corporate communications, along with corporate reputation and crisis management. Which one, between those do you distinguish as your top achievement to date? I’m glad you think it’s impressive. Anyone would think I did PR for a living! Deciding on my ‘top achievement’ is really difficult - not least because it depends on what criteria you use. Overall, I suppose I get the greatest ‘buzz’ from seeing my name in publications - which means that they’re publishing what I write. Among your many occupations, one can see a remarkable career as an opera singer in the UK. Is there another special occupation that we don’t know about Bob Little? Yes. For many years I’ve been an ordained lay minister within Baptist Union of Great Britain - part of the Free Church branch of the Christian Church. How do you imagine yourself in 5 years from now? Semi-retired, enthusiastically taking on the projects and clients that appeal to me - and still being excited by developments in the online learning technologies sector. The post Interview with Bob Little appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

Only a few days ago, you launched the "More Than Blended Learning", a whole new way of designing learning interventions. How would you describe this new invention of yours in a few words? It is hard for me to think of More Than Blended Learning as a new invention, because I have been working on these ideas for ten years, since the publication of The Blended Learning Cookbook. The new book describes an approach to the design of workplace learning interventions that draws on the experience of talking with hundreds of learning professionals over the past ten years. What is the most revolutionary fact you introduce in your new book, "More Than Blended Learning", a culmination of ten years of work? The book broadens the way we look at blended learning, particularly when it comes to designing end-to-end solutions that deliver in terms of performance. It may not be a ‘fact’ but perhaps the most notable take-away from the book is PIAF, an acronym that stands for Preparation, Input, Application and Follow-up. PIAF provides a structure for blends that deliver end-to-end solutions. What does "Blended Learning" really mean in 2015? What is it that is actually blended? For most people, blending is probably just a mix of delivery channels, i.e. face-to-face and online. However, I never found this to be enough to describe what makes for great blends. In the book we talk about four ways to blend: (1) in terms of the social contexts in which people learn (on the own, on-to-one, in small groups and in wider communities); (2) in terms of the learning strategy (exposition, instruction, guided discovery, exploration); in terms of the communication mode (synchronous and asynchronous); as well as delivery channel (face-to-face, offline media, online media). Is Blended Learning a more effective solution of (just) eLearning and why? Blended learning is a completely separate concept from e-learning. The word e-learning describes the use of a single delivery channel (computers and networks) to facilitate learning. A blended solution does not have to make any use of technology (although this is unlikely in 2015). It could use nothing but technology. The key to a blend is that it incorporates highly contrasting methods and/or media. What is the most "refreshing" fact about the "More Than Blended Learning" approach? What "more" does it bring to the up-to-date Blended Learning strategies? The most important element in the approach is that methods are chosen before media. The choice of methods is what makes a solution effective or not, not the decision about media. All the research tells us that there is very little difference in effectiveness between learning media. What makes the difference is the choice of methods, in particular the social contexts and strategies that I talked about earlier. What technology does is introduce efficiencies (scalability, accessibility, time and cost), but never at the expense of quality. The More Than Blended Learning structure is based on Preparation, Input, Application and Follow-up. To your experience, which is the most difficult part and why? Difficult question. All are important yet Preparation, Application and Follow-up are often ignored. What is difficult is a shift of mind-set from believing that the task is accomplished when the Input has been provided, to believing that what really matters is what happens on the job. What challenges do you anticipate in the implementation of your new approach? How would you address those? There are many challenges. The first and most important of these is the up-skilling that is needed among learning professionals so that they stop being order takers and become trusted professionals who really know how to design. The next challenge is to engage with all the key stakeholders - managers, learners and others - so they understand what learning solutions are going to look like and why, and how this impacts upon them. Having worked with numerous organizations across the world, what are the most common weaknesses you have met in their offerings? The first really common problem I have encountered is over-emphasis on providing knowledge. These days, people mainly need access to good quality information - they don’t need to know all this stuff. Another really common problem is providing nowhere near enough support to learners as they practise new skills. Often they get one practice and are then sent on their way. What forms of evaluation do (or will) you use in order to determine the effectiveness of More than Blended Learning on a business model? The only evaluation that really matters is whether a blended solution satisfies the underlying need. We hope the More Than approach will make that more likely. We’re not expecting organisations to follow the approach religiously but we hope it will influence key decisions. How difficult is the integration of new learning technologies into the services of an organization? What determines the difficulties in the process? It is proving to be a slow and difficult process to integrate learning technologies but much has been achieved by now (after all, we’ve been doing this for 35 years now). The biggest hold-up is the lack of skill and confidence among learning professionals themselves - learners are not really an obstacle. What are the most common points in the use of new Learning technologies that might cause some resistance or push back while using them? People will be frustrated if learning technology is applied where it is really not appropriate. There are situations in which face-to-face communication is still vital. Learners will justifiably also be annoyed of they are confronted with endless slides full of bullet pointed abstractions. People want stories, challenges, practical tips, not theory. In your opinion, what are the biggest gaps between what people should be doing and what they are actually doing, in terms of learning strategies? There are lots of gaps. We are over-emphasising courses and not putting enough effort into providing great resources. We also need to make sure that employees are properly supported by their managers, their peers and coaches when they are learning on the job. You are widely acknowledged as one of the UK’s foremost experts in workplace learning and development, with hundreds of published articles to your name. What do you see on the frontier for learning and development? Is there a "trend" you recognise as the next big thing in the following years? The technology is there with cheap, powerful mobile devices and adequate bandwidth to do whatever we want. What matters now is how we use these. The trend, I believe, is towards providing the same type of learning experience at work as people have in their personal lives. In terms of media, video will dominate. How much do you believe Blended Learning will vary, given the rapidly growing social media environment? It will vary to the extent that organisation’s feel ready to incorporate social learning into their blends. There’s nothing in the More Than approach that dictates what methods or media you use. Social learning will, and already is, undoubtedly enrich many blended solutions. In a future world, do you believe that traditional learning will be totally replaced by eLearning/Blended Learning? How do you see such a prospect? I cannot answer that question because e-learning and blended learning are totally different things, but let me take them in turn. E-learning will never totally replace other options because there are many situations in which computers cannot deliver what is required. And not every solution will be blended either. Some are so small in scale that blending would be over the top. And much learning takes place outside the context of solutions that anyone sits down and designs. How do you imagine yourself in 20 years from now? Still very interested in refining and improving my ideas based on evolving technologies and social changes. However, my work-life balance will be very much focused on the latter. The post Interview with Clive Shepherd appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

How would you define the role of an eLearning Instructional designer in the modern era of education? Everywhere you turn these days, eLearning is there. Whether it is an online program offered through a University, a Kahn Academy video, an online cooking classes, a K-12 curriculum, or corporate training, technology is there to support the learning process. Whether you call yourself an eLearning Instructional Designer or just an Instructional Designer, you’ve got to consider technology-based solutions as part of the mix. So I’d say the role of an eLearning Instructional Designer is pretty essential to any organization’s educational strategy. We’ve got a lot of job security! What are the most common mistakes made in the process of drawing up a training plan?  Too many corporate training plans go for event-based learning with a focus on completion rates. Will sitting in a class for two days really teach you what you need to know to succeed at your job? What if, instead, we went au natural? That is, following the natural ways in which people actually learn in the real world? What kinds of assets can we create - content, tools, apps, connections - that will help people learn and perform at their best and as quickly as possible? How can we combine eLearning assets with real world coaching and peer connections? Humans learn by doing. How can we design resources that will fit into that flow and not disrupt it, but actually enhance the experience? You have been a succesful instructional designer, writer, project manager, and a multimedia producer. How did you manage to combine all these roles and specialties? In that list, I see quite a few different skills - some I am better at than others. When I first got started, all of those tasks were part of the job I was hired to do as a "Junior Instructional Designer". The instructional designers in my company were the project managers. And the writers. And the multi-media producers. I got to direct video shoots, create project plans, write scripts, QA, the works. And this is not all that different from many organizations who have one person who does it all: the one-stop-shop of eLearning fame. As I have, well, grown and matured, I have learned that some skills I do better than others. I am super fortunate at Kineo to have dedicated project managers who run our projects like professionals. It has made me realize how little I actually knew about project management before. In the current demanding environment, do you believe that the successful combination of many different specialties outperforms the specialization in one field? I do think the eLearning field is unique. Those who perform best as eLearning designers and specialists have broad understanding of some really divergent areas: they understand learning and pedagogy, they have creative inclinations and can write or do amazing visual design, they understand technology, and they have the skills to act like consultants to their organizations and to run their projects like, well, projects. It is really a T-shaped skills model. You need to have broad skills and understanding (the top of the T), with potentially one area of deep expertise (the vertical bar of the T). Depending on your organization and who else you have on your team, you may have a broader focus or have more specialization. At Kineo, we hire specialists in instructional design, writing, graphics, development, consulting. That is why clients hire us. And across the team, we have it all. Smaller organizations have to put more eggs in one basket, so you may have individuals who don’t have quite the depth in each area. Could you describe your business profile in the company? As the VP of Learning Design for Kineo US, I oversee our team of instructional designers and content writers. I review design documents, check out scripts, provide coaching and line manager support. I do lead design for a lot of client work, which includes a little bit of everything. I learn about new technologies and think about ways to make what we do even better. I write articles and books and speak at conferences and get to schmooze a lot in the name of work. I love my job. You are referred as «An e-learning veteran». Which would you recognise as your greatest achievements in your brilliant, long career? My greatest achievements? There are a few. I’m really proud that I’ve been a part of the birth and growth of the Kineo US team for these past almost six years. It’s truly humbling and amazing to see what we’ve grown into. Our main US office just burst its seams in Chicago and we’ve had to move into new space. In those six years, I’ve been so fortunate to work with some amazing clients and to collaborate on some great programs. It actually takes my breath away when I consider the number of projects and programs we’ve produced. And then of course, there’s the book thing. I wrote The Accidental Instructional Designer: Learning Design for the Digital Age during the late night hours after work and after my kids were in bed. It is really an homage to the leadership and tutelage I have received from my Kineo colleagues, and from all of the mentors I have learned from through the years via social media. I am proud of the book and really happy to hear from people who have gotten a lot out of it. You can order a copy of the Accidental Instructional Designer at the ATD Press page - along with a free book group discussion guide! - or on Amazon. How has the field of eLearning changed in the last 15 years?  I will broaden the view a little bit and go back 19 years. I started in the field in 1996—before it was called eLearning. We created CBTs on CD-ROMS with lots of video. Everything was custom built from scratch. Along the way, the technology started to change. Tools like DreamWeaver and Director appeared, making development a little more efficient and raising production values. We dreamed of having tools and templates that would automate some of the process. Prices were high. In 1996 dollars, clients were paying $40,000 for one hour of eLearning. Not even factoring in inflation, that would be high by today’s standards. Today’s rapid tools have changed the game for better or for worse, allowing pretty much anyone and their brother to create so-called eLearning. Price points have come way down and today’s organizations want to pay as little as they possibly can for eLearning. Along with that, we’ve got the mobile revolution and technology in almost everyone’s hands to serve up content. My kids all know how to search for how-to videos on YouTube from their laptops, their iPads, their iPods. Today, eLearning is everywhere. It is in the air. When I explain what I do for work to people these days, I don’t get the same blank stares I used to. Most people have some point of reference when it comes to eLearning -either because their kids use it in school, because they used BlackBoard in college, or because their companies require them to take it. Why would someone choose to attend a program (Bachelor, or Master) through eLearning? My answer is probably something along the lines of "why wouldn’t you?" As a working mom, if I were going for a master’s degree I would definitely be looking at online programs. I do not have time to commute to a campus; I would not want to miss dinner time with the kids; I would want to fit my studies into my own schedule. On the other hand, as I consider the educational options my kids will have, I am not sure what I would recommend. So much of the college experience -at least for me- was the social life: getting out on my own, living in my own place, running my own life. But with college costs skyrocketing, online undergraduate degrees look more and more appealing. Maybe it is going to be a hybrid approach that wins. I was recently reading about The Minerva Project, higher education with a Silicon Valley mindset that combines the best of both online and social college experiences. New models are already emerging. What has been the impact of the social media on your career?  I was really fortunate to get involved in blogging and Twitter in the earlier days, when the online eLearning community was forming. Without realizing what I was doing, I started building my own brand. I made some life-changing and lasting connections with people who continue to influence my work and who I now consider friends. Work is not just work for me. It is fun. I still blog on a fairly regular basis at Learning Visions. I also write for the Kineo blog. What is the most important fact you have learned through eLearning? My experience of eLearning is mostly through the lens of the producer and not the student. I have created WAY MORE eLearning programs than I have taken. And throughout the process of creating all those programs, I have learned so very much. What I love about my work is the sheer variety of it all. I can work one day on a program about digital marketing and the next day on global climate science. Through every project, I get a different insight and view into a different slice of life. It’s like reading a great book every day. Which kind of challenges are coming next for eLearning? What will it take for it to dominate in the global market?  The challenges for eLearning…as if it’s an actual being with thought and will. I like that. That said, the challenges for people who think about and deal with eLearning are that the expectations are high. People will expect to have technology-based learning options and they will expect those offerings to be of high quality. And it is not just about creating courses. We need to drop the term eLearning and instead talk about the ways people learn and how technology can best be used to support that. People roll their eyes at lousy eLearning. One of the most popular posts I’ve written was called "Why No One Cares About Your Lousy eLearning." People recognize that it’s out there and want to stop the madness. Lousy eLearning needs to become a thing of the past. Creating quality solutions that help people and solve the problems people have—that is the real challenge for everyone. Technology is ubiquitous. And technology as a part of how people learn and work -well, that is ubiquitous too. So let’s get on with it. How do you see yourself in ten years from now? Is there an optimum level you want to reach in your career?  My career evolves as I go. I might write another book. I would like to branch out into some new areas within the industry, because I have got to keep learning new things or I will get all boring and dull. The road opens up in unexpected ways. I want to stay challenged, do good work, and enjoy the people along on this journey with me. The post Interview with Cammy Bean appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

How would you introduce yourself to someone for the first time? I try to avoid industry-specific jargon in social settings. The quick answer is something like "I manage a group of professionals who are experts at creating training programs that can change the way people work or think. I have a home office and love the work-life balance this situation offers." If someone is interested in learning more, I then get more specific about SweetRush and my recent projects, as well as my role in coaching other instructional designers on how to come up with fresh ideas and push their course designs further. Who is SweetRush and what do they offer? That is a big question. Of course we are learning and development professionals, but the roots of the SweetRush concept—and really, I think, the key to our success— is our culture, and how we treat one other and our clients. I am really proud of SweetRush and have never before worked at a company like this. I really believe everyone at SweetRush feels this way. We are definitely different, and the Marketing team has jumped on that, often promoting that we are "different, in a good way," which again comes down to our culture. We rarely have a person leave the company, and we have strong, articulated values of respect and caring, which manifests in how we work with one other as teammates, and how we work with our clients and partners. What perhaps makes this more interesting is that we are completely virtual and have been so since 2009. We have teammates all over the world, including a large team in Costa Rica. Functionally speaking, we help organizations improve the performance of their employees by imparting knowledge and skills and, ultimately, changing their behavior. I always look for IDs that have an orientation toward analysis and are skilled at getting to the heart of the business drivers and what is important to learners. From that starting point, we can design learning solutions and communications that meet our clients’ objectives. What type of qualities do you personally look for in an instructional designer? There are several fundamentals that come to mind: Solid ID chops with creative flair. I look for individuals who know the science behind instructional design and learner engagement. However, it goes beyond only the academic, and, interestingly, we rarely engage an ID with only an academic background. The ID must be comfortable working in gray areas and breaking some of the rules to truly engage the learner. Consulting skills. Sophisticated IDs today have to grapple with complex business challenges, and being able to do so increases their value. IDs cannot go into their respective man caves/woman caves and produce some fantastic solution. Projects require a lot of collaboration and consulting with clients to gather information, determine needs, etc. Clients know their content, but are often not trained in learning or instructional design. This is where we come in! The ID is the "broker," translating client ideas into concrete deliverables. Self-motivation with unwavering follow-through. IDs must "walk the talk," take tremendous personal ownership, and have the ability to work independently. They must conceptualize a solution that can then be taken to the broader project group for expansion through collaboration. What are the components of a successful, large team of instructional designers? Creating an effective team starts at the individual level. I look for individuals that exhibit the qualities listed above. To build the team, especially in a virtual environment, we offer extensive onboarding and coaching, have regular in-house continuing education webinars, and leverage Google technology, such as Google Groups, to communicate consistently. I think that each member of the team also knows that my door is always open if they need to just chat or to truly vent in complete confidence. At SweetRush, we have a cohesive team of dedicated people who work hard and are passionate about their work. However, we know also how to have fun, and strive for a healthy work-life balance. As part of the company culture, we regularly share good news, stories, and achievements, professionally and personally, through companywide e-mail blasts. They happen often, and are encouraged and celebrated. What are the key elements to the design and development of an excellent learning experience? First, you need to create an emotional connection with the learner. Be sure to address the what’ s in it for me (WIIFM) factor, which can range from external to intrinsic: job competence, workplace safety, a fun and engaging experience, company culture, healthy competition with others, awards and accolades, etc. We must realize that intrinsic motivators do help training stick while also recognizing that some learners only want to learn the basics to keep their job and get paid. This just makes the ID’s job a challenge! I would love to infuse more humor and/or campy themes into the courses, and clients are asking for this approach more and more. When it comes to the actual design, beyond using solid instructional design principles, you should know the tools in your toolbox and their limits—then push that limit! Visualize your designs in your mind’s eye and play with them. Never put too much content on a page. Also, use your words to paint pictures. For example, get away from just asking those standard multiple-choice questions. They remind me too much of those nerve-wracking tests from junior high school that required a No. 2 pencil! Write a scenario or tell a little story, and then present a series of good-better-best options with supporting feedback. These improvements and strategies elevate a course from good to engaging and memorable. SweetRush’s lead IDs and I spend time coaching IDs on a regular basis to increase the "dazzle factor" in our courses. Which are the high-end e-learning and blended solutions you offer to a prospective client? SweetRush learning solutions are typically blended, and we really excel in the intersection of business driver analysis and instructional, visual, and technical creativity, such as gamification, simulation, and mobile application. We assist with implementation, delivery, and evaluation, and establish long-term working relationships with our clients, including Bridgestone, Petco, and many others. Tell us about your new e-book. What’s the story behind its creation? Over the years, I’ve provided a lot of coaching to the internal team through continuing education webinars. I have also written articles for a few years for sweetrush.com and other websites, like eLearning Industry. After chatting with a colleague, I realized most of the content aligned into a series of major topics and had an organic sequence. It took some legwork, rewrites, and new material to pull it all together into one cohesive unit. The "Which Type of Rock Star ID Are You?" infographic is my favorite part of the book. It truly created itself! A colleague mentioned the different "archetypes" of IDs, and, in a flash, the book’s rock-star theme with four of the six types popped in my head. I wish every great idea came this easy… ha ha. Would you consider the book of greater value to an amateur or a professional designer? Whether this is your first rodeo, or you have been in the business for a while and are looking to add to your skills, I hope both junior and seasoned IDs will find a pearl or two in the book. There are tips and strategies for developing your career, from how to land gigs to keep your skills fresh. Because e-learning has become so prevalent over the last 10 years, the focus has a definite e-learning and freelancer tilt. IDs need to be chameleons and are continuously brought in to solve problems using myriad theories and practices. This is what I’ve done for many years. As such, the book reflects a lot of my experiences, and I am hopeful it will be of value to others. Is there another book in the works? Yes, there are several. After working through the entire process—from soup to nuts—I have so many new ideas. There is a certainly part two of this book in the works, where I will expand on some of the same concepts. For example, I address successful interaction between IDs and other team members, such as those in creative design and development. This really is a fascinating dynamic and one that has changed a lot recently. IDs now have to think creatively and work in tandem with visual designers when conceptualizing solutions, particularly with newer options such as gamification. Also, I am collaborating with a colleague regarding the ins and outs of creating systems training. It includes both strategic and tactical considerations. So many people (IDs and otherwise) blog and write other content they are passionate about. I totally support and encourage everyone in delivering their own unique messages to the world. Cobble together your blogs and raw content, play with them a bit, and create your own e-book. I can attest that it is satisfying to see your thoughts compiled and available for others to read and, hopefully, gain value from. Today, there is zero barriers to entry for getting your message out there. Anyone can self-publish through Amazon. Seize the opportunity! What makes How to Be a Rock Star Instructional Designer different from the others? Perhaps most important is that I am not a blogger or influencer first, but rather a hands-on instructional designer who works in the real world every day. So, my intention was to paint the picture of the everyday challenges IDs face and offer their practical solutions. I wanted to move away from theories, and provide small, practical steps on how to improve your design or freelance business. I also intentionally made the tone conversational so readers could easily resonate with its concepts. I received a fantastic compliment from a member of the SweetRush ID team who has partnered with me on several projects over the years. While reading the book, she felt like she was having one of our usual planning or brainstorming sessions where she walked away with several concrete, actionable steps. She said that she could literally hear us having a conversation. Yes! I am so happy that my thoughts, guidance, and intentions translated into its pages. What do you think is required reading for every instructional designer? Instructional designers can find inspiration everywhere. I cannot go through the day without other people’s fantastic ideas bombarding me: I like how that icon was used in that (print) article. Rather clever use of a whiteboard animation in that commercial. That stock photo really set the tone for the piece. Then again, I do have those "what were they thinking?" moments, and they are equally important. I also draw inspiration, ideas, and themes from books and movies in popular culture. Since most people in Western culture are already familiar with these stories, it’s an emotional hook that is low-hanging fruit, as addressed earlier. Being a child of the 70s, long before we could watch anything streaming on-demand, we read our favorite books from the library over and over. It was a BIG deal when we actually went to the movies, and we remembered so many details. Together with the heroes and heroines, we engaged in awesome adventures, flew over fantasy landscapes, and met bizarre creatures from a time and place very different from ours. I could clearly go on and on with my trip down memory lane. My main point is that we absorbed everything like sponges: we put ourselves into the stories and our imaginations were on fire. When coming up with a theme or concept for a course or a game, I find myself shifting through my file cabinet of themes and ideas, most of which were inspired by those I encountered when I was quite young. I think those of us who gravitated to the world of instructional design are observers by nature, so we build on this personality orientation. Where do you see the SweetRush ID team five years from now? As we’ve matured over the years, the work we’ve taken on has become more complex, and more and more our IDs need to be consultants—really able to analyze, look at root causes, and then embrace all the new tools driven by technology. I see growth continuing as we blend the instructional world with the creative and engineering worlds, and I am sure SweetRush will continue to stay on the cutting edge of technology as our IDs partner with members of our engineering and technology team. I wish could we create full-on 3D, interactive, immersive simulations on-demand, like on the Star Trek holodeck, but I think that is more than five years away! The IDs and other professionals we embrace will be active in continuing their own education—learning more about employing creative design, effectively using gaming elements in courses, leveraging social media, etc. Outside of our day-to-day work, I see further promotion of SweetRush’s Good Things Initiative. At SweetRush, we believe that the way we treat one another and our planet is a reflection of our values of caring, commitment, and fostering good things. The Good Things Initiative is an open initiative in which we find ways to practice those values, both inside and outside of SweetRush. I have several projects going where I volunteer my time to those in need here in Los Angeles as well as back in the Midwest where I was raised. Everyone I work with regularly gives back freely within their respective communities. One of my favorite projects sponsored by SweetRush was when several of our team members came together to improve a schoolyard for underprivileged children in Costa Rica. Our artists collaborated on a beautiful mural that is sure to bring joy to the kids for years to come. It was a direct, local, impactful event that everyone felt good about. In general, I am excited to see what the next five years of growth will bring, both at SweetRush and in the industry at large. Learning professionals have the tools and knowledge to affect behavior, and we have an enormous opportunity to impact business at every level, from profitability to productivity. But, we also can make a tremendous impact on society by furthering sustainability, diversity, equality, and other socially good initiatives. If we put our hearts and minds into this work, we can all make a difference. The post Interview with Catherine Davis appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

Following your 20 year experience in the field of education and development, what do you perceive as the secret element for a successful team? The most successful teams I’ve been a part of have had an open, collaborative construct, and are focused on transparency and teamwork. The other element that drives a highly productive team is smallness. Small teams with a clear focus and enough autonomy to make decisions in a timely manner are key. The secret sauce, however, is ensuring everyone has clear directives and can execute on their own as well as in concert with each other. We all need to have personal goals to attain, as well as a common understanding of the overall vision for the team. What are the responsibilities of a Learning Strategist? As you know, our industry has undergone quite a large transformation over the past few years. I’ve been fortunate to be involved in this business for quite some time, so I often take a "long view" of the learning industry. Having said that, I do see that there is more of a focus from the business to view learning as a valued partner in driving the overall strategy, and an expectation that evidence of either the success or failure of that strategy will be visible based on our ability to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of our interventions. In the past, most organizations that created a learning function were larger enterprises - usually with sales of $100 million or more, per se, but now you see companies of every size placing an increased value on learning as a separate function capable of driving awareness, customer adoption, and even marketing. In that vein, it’s critically important for a learning strategist to take both a strategic vision and a tactical focus to deliver real, measurable business value. Probably the most important function in any learning business today is the ability to gather, analyze and interpret the data available through the various channels of delivery they engage in - so much of this "deep data" available because of technologies such as Google Analytics. You’ll see much more emphasis on data analysis competencies in high-functioning learning organizations as we move forward. Could you describe your design philosophy in a few words? Simply, "innovative, yet actionable" is my basic approach to learning experience design. Engaging audiences across multiple dimensions: intellectual, emotional, psychological, and at times physical is necessary to craft an authentic learning opportunity that’s meaningful and, hopefully, will lead to increased retention and improved performance. I also think it’s important to keep a razor-sharp focus on simplicity. The biggest challenge you have as a designer is to achieve credibility. Learners in this age have high expectations when entering a content experience - they expect it to be intuitive, bend to their needs, be individualized and provide a quickly discernible "return on their time investment". I would say right now, being an effective instructional designer is not an easy job! What would you advise an 18-year-old who is now entering the market and want to deal professionally with eLearning? I think it’s important to learn the fundamentals: focus on the psychology of how people learn, get a deep understanding of what motivates people to acquire knowledge, and, naturally, become fluent in the behaviors people exhibit when learning something new. Added to that is learning technology. It’s almost impossible to enter our field without becoming knowledgeable about how learning is delivered, and more and more it’s delivered with technology. A healthy understanding of present-day tech as well as keeping constant awareness of emerging tech is key. Identifying trends and being able to sniff out the ones that will stick from the ones that will quickly fade is important as well. At the end of the day, you want to stay focused on how to deliver the most value for the business you support, so being flexible and nimble is important, because technology is moving at a very fast pace. Just ask the folks who spent a lot of time and energy on Second Life and Virtual Reality. How can eLearning drive the sales of a company on the rise? Learning is a critical element across several dimensions, but two key ones are product knowledge and customer service. Having employees that are both knowledgeable about what your business does combined with the ability to provide top customer service is a must. Today, customers are savvier and smarter in a lot of ways. Many conduct a lot of research before deciding to engage with your company. And of course, we all know the power of social media in researching a company and responding to how you were treated by the company. A high-functioning company must have a well-trained staff. Without it, you’re doomed. A good case in point is a software provider I worked with a few years ago - they combined their sales, marketing and learning functions to provide a comprehensive customer experience from awareness to adoption to integration of the service. Although it was a very small company (less than 60 employees) with only 300-400 customers, they were early adopters in understanding that learning plays just as important a role in customer satisfaction and sales as any other function. What is the competency level of the participants you train? Does it rise up over the years? This varies. Typically a learning function has to "deal" with what the business brings them in regards to capability. I’ve advocated for years that learning functions should be more aligned with talent acquisition and talent management. It’s really critical on the acquisition front, though. If your focus is employee training, you need to be able to allocate resources, budget and strategy toward ensuring the business has the talent to appropriately execute on the strategy. You see this alignment more and more in European companies. American companies have been slow to foster a deeper collaboration between talent acquisition and learning, but it’s critical not only with "knowledge workers" but also with other types of workers. In many cases the only human interaction a customer has with a company is via hourly workers who are more and more part-time, lower-wage folks. Gaining a deep understanding of what motivates workers across all levels is fundamental to ensuring a good outcome for the business. You also specialize in game based learning. How important are games in the learning procedure? Early in my career, I met up and began working with Thiagi. He showed me the power of game mechanics and the value of fostering a more fun learning environment. He was a pioneer in the construction of more empathic, hyper-individualized learning. It has taken years for the business to see the value in integrating game mechanics into not only learning, but also the way we work in general. My basic philosophy revolves around ensuring the learning environment is conducive for integrating games; a cultural "fit" for games; and that there’s the potential for a measurable return on value. As we move to less formal learning interventions and more informal ones, I rely on game mechanics to help engage and motivate learners to participate. The reality is designing a learning game that will result in "real impact" is not easy. There’s a delicate balance between "too much game" or "too much learning", so you have to be very careful. I would argue that it’s impossible to design a good learning game if you’re not a gamer yourself. You have to understand the basic components of play and what mechanics will result in engagement and measurable outcomes. And if anyone tells you they’re "cheaper to create" than other types of learning, I would say turn and run fast. With anything, the more "cinematic" your design becomes, the more expensive it is to create. Period. How has the social media changed the way we deal with eLearning? In some ways the advent of social media has democratized learning and created a multi-channel dialogue between learners, designers, and others that want to be engaged in helping each other. The tools that have come about since the rise of the Internet have completely revolutionized how interact with each other. However, I’m a bit more skeptical with the idea of the "wisdom of the crowd". I firmly believe there are levels of expertise and there are, indeed, best practices for many things that are best modeled from expert to novice and all levels in between. I’ve studied Alex Rodriguez’s hitting form for years, and view him as an "expert" with a "best practice" in baseball. He’s a natural - but novice’s can learn from how he does what he does. In learning, there is still nothing better than receiving coaching from an expert. So, I think the "crowd" brings imminent value to the discussion, but expertise still matters much more. And social media has been an integral utility in exposing more expertise to those of us that crave it. What are the principals of an effective collaborative learning environment in terms of design? In my opinion, there are four behaviors you want to strive for when crafting a collaborative learning environment: attention, motivation, participation, and retention. You’ll do this by creating a learning ecosystem built on mutual trust and engagement, understanding and flexibility, and through the encouragement of shared experiences. What does it take for a company to implement and integrate emerging technologies? A lot of it determines on a company’s size and its overall goals. I think every learning function needs a healthy "R&D" department, but it’s also important to deliver a consistent learning experience. Anyone in our field today should be focused on a "mobile first, cloud first" strategy as our workforces become untethered. If you’re not already thinking this way, you’re behind. Even if you’re not delivering mobile, you need to be thinking about it, because in the next 5 years more people will be typing on glass than keyboards. Do you think eLearning will gradually replace the traditional method of teaching? Well, it’s called the "Socratic Method" for a reason, right? J. I’m a technologist that firmly believes in integrating appropriate technology at the appropriate time, but for humans, there’s nothing better than learning from other humans face to face. That will never change. I’m not a big advocate for the idea of the "flipped classroom", but I think it’s incumbent upon us to try new ways to engage with each other in learning. Learning is the most basic human trait, and we will always be looking for ways to more deeply connect with each other in how we learn. How do you imagine yourself in 20 years from now? Retired! And living in Key West, reclining on the beach reading the New York Times! The post Interview with Brandon Carson appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

If you were to classify the industry you are currently a part of, what would you identify this industry as? I see this industry as one that has an increasing and critical role to play in improving performance across local, national and international workforces. Its focus is not on learning but on performance. Its increasingly critical role is due to the fact that the intangible value of organizations is almost universally increasing, and most of that intangible value is constituted by the capability of workforces. In 1975 more than 80% of the value of the S&P 500 was tangible. By 2009 that had flipped - more than 80% was intangible. The role of our industry is to support this important element of our organizations perform to their highest ability. In your 70:20:10 model, you suggest that, in real life, 70% of what people learn comes from experience & practice, another 20% comes through other people and conversations and only a 10% of learning occurs formally. Which do you consider the most "trustworthy" or "valid" kind of learning - experiential, social or workplace learning? Research suggests that learning which occurs closer to the point of use has greater impact. A study from the Corporate Executive Board into the value of on-the-job learning found that workplace learning led to a 300% increase in employee performance over formal training only, and that employees who engaged in ‘high exposure’ to on-the-job learning (11 or more on-the-job learning activities during the past month) were 262% more engaged with their work and workplace. Despite this, it’s important to understand that all three types of learning and development have their place. It’s all about the right type of development for any specific context. An associated point here - it’s important to understand that the ‘numbers’ in the 70:20:10 model are not set in stone. They will vary with the type of working environment - in highly regulated environments more time and effort is spent on the ‘10’. In highly innovative working environments more time and effort is likely to be spent on the ‘20’ and ‘70’. What made you overcome the conventional and also traditional wisdom which implies that formal education (such as schools, universities etc) is one of the most significant factors in someone’ s job competency? Looking at it from a personal point-of-view, like the majority of people when I reflected on the most impactful learning experiences I’d had in my life I concluded that the vast majority occurred while I was attempting to complete a task rather than when I was sitting in a classroom or working through an eLearning module. Of course one or two inspiring teachers and professors have left their mark, but most of what I’ve learned - and I’m sure I’m not unique in this - has been through rich and challenging experiences, taking the opportunity to practice, building and using personal networks, and through personal reflection. Many people find it difficult to uncouple ‘learning’ from ‘schooling’. Learning is a continuous process. Schooling helps, of course, but the top brain surgeon or scientist or athlete didn’t rely on the formal instruction they received in school to reach the top. School may have given them a good start, but only a start. Formal training is often good to help people reach basic competency, but we should be looking beyond that. According to the analogy of 70:20:10, only the 10% of someone’ s learning skills can be actually measured, that of the formal education, due to an existing standard grading system. Don’t you believe that the experiential and social learning should also be evaluated in some way? I would challenge the idea that what we’re often doing in measuring formal education is actually measuring ‘learning’ at all! Most evaluation and measurement techniques approach the challenge from the ‘wrong end’. We generally assess knowledge acquisition and the ability to follow process. Is this ‘learning’? It isn’t unless you can determine whether the new knowledge leads to behavior change. Effective learning measurement needs to be focused on outputs. After all, ‘learning’ can only be measured in terms of a demonstration of behavior change. If behavior has changed and performance has improved then we can assume that learning has occurred.  The often used pre-test/post-test assessment is not measuring learning at all. It’s measuring short-term memory recall. On top of this I don’t subscribe to the belief that measuring social learning or experiential learning is any different to the effective measurement of formal education. If we’re measuring outputs, the methodology used to effect the behavior change is irrelevant from the measurement point-of-view. Could you give us a practical example of a learning strategy based on the 70:20:10 model? Many organizations around the world are using 70:20:10 as a reference model (not a rule) as a guide for transforming the way they build and execute their learning strategy. Implementation varies from one organization to another, but there are some basic principles that apply across the board. a) A 70:20:10 strategy will encompass ways of supporting learning and development as it’s happening in the daily workflow as well as providing away-from-work development opportunities. This may be through managers focusing on providing challenging jobs or tasks for their reports, supporting them to succeed in completing the jobs/tasks, and creating time for reflective practice to ensure that learning has occurred and that similar jobs/tasks will be done better next time. b) A 70:20:10 strategy will ensure it supports the ‘20’ (learning with and through others) by building peer and manager coaching cultures, improving open feedback on performance and personality strengths (the latter has been shown to have a more positive impact on performance), and providing opportunities for mentoring. It will provide encouragement to build strong and robust networks, and encouragement to use those networks to help get work done to a higher standard and more effectively (‘working smarter’). A practical example I can provide is a global company that has adopted a credo of ‘one learning a day’ underpinned by a 70:20!0 strategy. Led by the CEO, the company encourages every employee to spend a couple of minutes reflecting on the successes and challenges of each day’s work - and to capture what’s been learned. Employees are then encouraged to share their learning with their teams and others using social media tools and in other ways. This is a simple thing to do, and other organizations have adopted similar approaches - Qualcomm’s 52-weeks storytelling initiative is an example. When it’s embedded in a wider 70:20:10 strategy of creating a culture of continuous development it’s more likely to be sustainable. Does somebody ever become willing to manage his own learning? Many people are delighted to take control of their own learning so long as they have the support of their manager and organization to do so. There is an argument that the only manager of learning is the person in whose head the learning is occurring. Marc Rosenberg has made the point that Learning Management Systems are misnamed. At worst they are course vending machines. One of the challenges Learning Professionals have to face is that their traditional role of ‘deliverers’ of learning is, in the main, no longer a role that is needed. The 2014 ‘Learning in the Workplace’ survey by my colleague Jane Hart found that only 16% of respondents described company training or eLearning as essential, while 80% rated Google as very important/essential for learning. So people are already taking responsibility for managing their own learning. In your blog, you quote George Bernard Shaw, according to whom, "Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything". In what way do you believe people should change their minds in order to be trained to learn more effectively? Changing minds, or mindsets, is a critical part of developing a culture of continuous learning. The 70:20:10 approach is built on extending learning and improving performance, so it requires what Prof. Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset and I call a development mindset in order to succeed. Mindset change is required for improved learning. Of course, we all have multiple mindsets, but Dweck’s research has shown that people with growth mindsets believe that intelligence can be developed and that success comes through effort and practice. Growth mindset people also capitalize on mistakes and confront deficiencies. Those with fixed mindsets believe talent is ‘fixed’ and tend to have static capabilities.  They also hide their mistakes. Since 70:20:10 model is based on observations that high performing individuals and organizations build most of their capability by learning within the workflow, how would your rank the importance of eLearning today? eLearning has evolved as a relatively new channel for ‘delivering’ formal learning. Of course it provides greater reach and, in many cases, is much more efficient at disseminating information and building knowledge than face-to-face teaching (although the latter is a better vehicle for supporting culture change and helping to embed common values). When used well, eLearning can provide fast and effective means to help develop skills. However, it needs to be linked to experiential learning to have impact. A very good example of the effective use of eLearning in a 70:20:10 context is in Coca-Cola Enterprises in Germany. Coca-Cola Enterprises wanted to develop their sales force beyond a ‘handy delivery service’ and get them to take on a more consultative role with customers. They initially migrated their sales training from classroom to eLearning. They then took the ‘inventive step’ by repurposing the eLearning programs into small modules that could be used in group-based learning sessions facilitated by line leaders/managers. So their eLearning is used as trigger material to support group discussion and collaborative learning. You have been the "Chief Learning Officer at Reuters and Thomson Reuters with responsibility for the learning strategy for 55,000 employees across the globe". How do you manage to monitor so many individualized expectations and needs? Is there a "secret" in the success of a learning strategy? I think that the key is for L&D leaders to provide a robust framework that focusses both top-down and bottom-up. It’s impossible for them to meet all needs.  In fact it’s stupid to try. Most of the learning and development occurs as part of the workflow, so the ‘top-down’ element is enrolling and enabling managers and team leaders to best support the development needs of the people reporting to them. The most important part of a people manager’s job is the development of their people.  It’s been shown time and time again that those managers who are focused on, and effective in, the development of their reports have people and teams that out-perform others by a significant margin (one study showed a 25% raised performance and 39% increase in engagement in people reporting to managers who effectively supported their development). The ‘bottom-up’ support often requires technology - to extend the provision of learning opportunities - but also often needs a culture change to one where individuals take responsibility for their own development. Of course the CLO and others responsible for supporting workforce development need to do their jobs, but when it comes down to it, it’s a joint effort - individual desire to develop, active manager support for development, and organizational infrastructure and tools that make development both easier and more enjoyable. How much has your own, formal education contributed to being a successful professional? My formal education laid the ground for my professional career, as it does for most people. A high-performing airline pilot or lawyer needs the grounding of formal education, but you wouldn’t to be their first passenger or client! I’m an example of the usefulness of formal meta-learning rather than detailed knowledge acquisition. My three formal university degrees are in very diverse subjects - natural sciences, chemical engineering, and adult education. The undergraduate and post-graduate sciences degrees taught me something about logical analysis and research methodologies. My post-graduate studies and research in adult education allowed me to dive deeper into the how and when learning occurs. Formal education serves as a ‘passage of rights’ more than any other purpose. The best learning opportunities I have ever had have occurred as part of my professional work. How much more about learning strategies in general remains to be discovered? I think we have a long way to go in terms of evolving learning strategies that are fit-for-purpose in the rapidly-changing world in which we live. The rise and rise of the Internet and, particularly, social media, have put a whole new complexion on the way we work and the way we interact with others - whether they are our colleagues or customers/clients. In turn, there are opportunities opening up for new approaches to individual, team and organizational development. There are many changes that we all know about - the shortening cycles and increases in pressure to innovate, the increasing speed of carrying out business, the need to shorten time to competence/capability and others. As time passes there is no doubt that we will need to continually adjust and refine our learn strategies to meet evolving situations. What are you currently working on? Currently I’m helping a number of organizations evolve and embed their 70:20:10 strategies and ‘bring them to life’ in a practical way.  I’ve also just finished writing a book - a large one - titled "70:20:10 and Beyond" together with two Dutch colleagues. We expect the English version to be published later this year. I also spend quite a lot of time with speaking engagements around the world. What do your current interests include? My prime professional interest is being part of the significant change that is occurring in the way L&D professionals help their people to learn and develop. There are huge opportunities for improvement by embracing new technologies, new approaches, and looking at new areas where development opportunities exist beyond the classroom and structured learning event. There is no doubt that the general view of HR and L&D has changed over the past two decades. I recall a conversation when launching the world’s first pure online MBA in 1994 (I was a business school professor at the time). A senior HR professional told me at the time that this was ‘just a passing phase’ and the use of technology would never replace traditional face-to-face MBA programs. In retrospect, I believe that HR professional was wrong. The post Interview with Charles Jennings appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

In one of the latest articles on your blog, you refer to eLearning through game-based learning. In your perception, what are the benefits of this method? I’m an advocate of game-based learning because I think it has much to offer workplace L&D in terms of motivation and engagement - especially when motivation and engagement are lacking. But games are more than "fun". They can be authentic representations of real life, so that the learner can develop their capabilities in a safe environment. Alternatively, while the game itself may be arbitrary, the experience of playing it is real; and that can surface themes such as leadership and collaboration. What is the most effective game in terms of being able to bring the best educational outcome? If the game is intended to mimic real life, then dispense with anything inauthentic. The most obvious examples of this are points and badges - if the learner won’t achieve these on the job, then I question whether they should be a part of the game. One of my favourite examples of a well-designed game is Lifesaver by the Resuscitation Council in the UK. This game has a believable story, it’s engaging, and it actually feels real. There are no points or badges; rather, the learner’s decisions drive the outcomes. Importantly, Lifesaver taps into the learner’s intrinsic motivation. Before I played this game, I intuitively understood the benefits of first aid. Having played the game, however, my appreciation skyrocketed and it motivated me to brush up my DR ABC. I can see how a well-designed game such as this one could be used to improve compliance training. Everyone knows that we should maintain a safe working environment, protect our customers’ privacy etc… but a well-designed game that immerses the learner in the situation might just be the approach we need to transform boring and onerous "must do" training into engaging "want to do" learning that has impact. Which blogs within your field of interest do you distinguish and choose for your information about new developments? Wow, there are so many. If you look at my blogroll, you’ll see well over 100 names there - and they’re just the ones I try to read regularly. I tend to favour bloggers who work out loud. Concepts and ideas are important, but I also want to find out what people have done - and how it went. I’m always appreciative of those generous bloggers who are brave enough to share their outcomes with us, even went it didn’t go so well. I also think it’s important to source a cross-section of bloggers across industries and locations. For example, I make a point of learning from other eLearning professionals in the Asia-Pacific region, because I see this part of the world as the next big stage for growth and innovation. What is the current situation of eLearning in Australia in terms of popularity and implementation? We have the full spectrum here, from head-in-the-sand ostriches who wish it would all go away, to sophisticated professionals doing cutting-edge work with emerging technologies. Of course, most of us are somewhere in between. In very general terms, most of the big organisations here have Learning Management Systems that host eLearning content. Some sectors such as financial services are heavily regulated, so these systems are very popular for distributing and tracking compliance training. However I’m also seeing a shift away from formal eLearning to more self-directed eLearning, in particular by making better use of the corporate intranet and by experimenting with social learning. I say "experimenting" because while the will is there in our profession to encourage peer-to-peer learning, many of us are struggling to make it work on a sustainable basis. I would also put mobile into this category; the will is there, but we’re still finding our way with it. Why is eLearning so prevalent in Australia? eLearning has a rich history in this young country. For example, back in 1951, the School of the Air was launched to teach children in remote communities across the outback over two-way radio. For a long time, the vast distances and our isolation have been important drivers in our use of technology. Besides our geography, however, Australians are an innovative bunch. If we’re not inventing it, we’re early adopters. Almost everyone owns a smartphone, the majority of us are on social media, and it’s no surprise to us that we’re the world-leading downloaders of pirated Game of Thrones episodes! The Australian psyche is to "give it a go", so it’s only natural for us to embrace eLearning. What are the top eLearning conferences in Australia? We host quite a range of eLearning conferences here, or broader education conferences with an eLearning twist. EduTECH is the largest education conference in the southern hemisphere, held every year in Brisbane. CeBIT hosts its Asia-Pacific event in Sydney, and the recently launched Learning@Work conference is popular. I also like the Learning Assembly because it’s case-study driven. Then of course we have the national conference of the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD), which I’m pleased to see is covering more eLearning topics year on year. How has the huge growth of the Internet and the simultaneous burgeoning of social media, changed the map of the eLearning? When I first stumbled into the education sector, the extent of our use of technology was sticking a CD-ROM in the back of a textbook. The growth of the Internet changed all that by suddenly giving us access to the whole world; and conversely it gave the whole world access to our content. Suddenly we were building websites and quizzes and plugins for Virtual Learning Environments. The nature of education changed. Then somehow our profession fell into the trap of online courses. The term "eLearning" became synonymous with the LMS. But the burgeoning of social media moved the goal posts again. Not only has it given learners a means of connecting to others and learning from them, but also they have the means of publishing their own thoughts and insights and contributing to the conversation. So the Internet and social media have empowered learners like never before. Now that the world is at their fingertips, the self-driven individual is no longer beholden to a single source of authority. The map of eLearning is becoming increasingly informal and social. And when we lay mobile technology over that, we also see it becoming increasingly contextualized. What advice would you give someone who wanted to become an eLearning professional? Assuming a grounding in learning theory and instructional design (which I think are vital), my Number 1 piece of advice is to try new things. Implement new ideas, play with new tools, blend the media. If it doesn’t work, change it or abandon it; but if it does work, scale it up. And keep trying new things! I also advise learning from others. Not only by reading their blogs (which is important), but also by attending conferences, going to local meetups, and participating in virtual communities such as #lrnchat on Twitter. Of course, this means giving something back too. Whether you write a blog or run a YouTube channel or whatever, share something useful with your peers. This will raise your profile, reinforce your identity as an eLearning specialist, and you’ll learn so much more from your peers’ feedback. In your blog you mention that "I’m looking forward to 2015 as a time for exploring, building, experimenting, discovering, and learning". What kind of steps are you planing on making in order to achieve these goals? I’m a qualified scientist, and so I’ve decided to treat eLearning like a science. Scientists don’t categorize empirical evidence as a success or failure. They don’t view the outcome of an experiment as good or bad, right or wrong. It just is. By exploring, building, experimenting, discovering, and learning through this scientific lens, I’ll reduce my fear of failure. I also want to work out loud more. The way I see it, if my peers don’t know what I’m doing or what I’m trying to do, they won’t know how to help. How do you see the future of eLearning in the next decade? I see eLearning becoming more informal, social and mobile. I see technology not only as a means of education, but also of performance support; meaning it will become much more of an on-the-job and just-in-time proposition. I see the role of eLearning becoming more about helping people do what they need to do, when they need to do it, rather than sheep-dipping them just in case. I also see emerging technologies finally breaking into mainstream use. For example, augmented reality is becoming easier for us to use via apps like Aurasma, while virtual reality is becoming a tantalizing prospect through wearables such as HoloLens and Oculus Rift.  However, if these new techs don’t pass what I call the Average Joe imperative, whereby regular folk like you and me can use them for both consumption and production of eLearning, then we’ll be having this same conversation in 10 years’ time. In a future world, do you believe that traditional learning will be totally replaced by eLearning? Absolutely not. I’m quite different from other eLearning specialists in that I love face-to-face training. I believe it offers advantages that just can’t be replicated by technology, no matter how hard we try. So I think that "traditional learning" will remain. Having said that, I think that its proportion of the total L&D portfolio will inevitably decline. As eLearning obviates the need for rooms and trainers and travel and time out of the business, traditional classroom-based training will eventually be replaced with alternatives. This isn’t just a financial decision; often it makes sense pedagogically too. It’s also important to recognise that eLearning is changing the nature of traditional learning. These days, training is supported by technology around the program to provide a more comprehensive learning experience; while in-class too, technology is being used to improve engagement and (dare I suggest) effectiveness. How do you imagine Ryan Tracey in 20 years from now? Ha ha! I seriously have no idea. I love what I do, and I’m concentrating on that for now. In the future, I hope I’m still doing something that helps people. The post Interview with Ryan Tracey appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

What are the secrets of your successful eLearning Coach site? It depends what you mean by success. If you consider success as the ability to connect with people and provide value to their work lives, then the secret is love. Loving the readers, loving our field, and loving the learners who benefit when we are successful. I’ve written over 250 articles on the theelearningcoach.com since 2009. How has Online Learning evolved over the last decade? I think online learning is slowly becoming more aligned with what learners need and how people really learn. For example, over the past decade it has become well accepted that people learn informally, socially and from repeated interventions, practice and opportunities. Our field has evolved due to improvements in research and technology. Learning solutions like performance support, microlearning, blended learning, content portals and social media for learning are a result of these newer realizations. What facts do you consider as "revolutionary" in this field now? In addition to what I mentioned in the previous answer, I think it’s revolutionary to look at problems and solutions with a wide lens. To understand that training is not necessarily the solution to every problem. That’s why I believe it’s important for people in our industry to understand related fields, such as user experience, interactive design, visual design and user interface design. We might find revolutionary answers in those domains. Do you commonly use social media in your personal learning process? Yes, I have a robust personal learning environment based on social media, using Twitter (@elearningcoach), Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, RSS blog feeds, and the like. Most people in our field clearly love learning and I’m no different. So I use my social network to discover the most interesting articles, conversations and tools related to our own and other industries. I really can’t imagine life without it. It makes you feel connected to humanity and up-to-date. You probably deal with numerous eLearning professionals in your work. What are the most common mistakes you observe? First of all, I think eLearning professionals are getting more effective all the time. There are some very positive signs out there when you listen to the buzz. But of course, as an industry, we have knowledge gaps that need closing. We could become more informed about design thinking and about how to get learners involved in the design process. We could also go deeper into instructional science and cognitive psychology so that our decisions and choices are always based on how people learn. I also think there’s a knowledge gap when it comes to understanding visual design and how to create aesthetically appealing materials. I wrote Visual Design Solutions to help close that gap. What are the most important 4-5 tips someone needs to know in order to achieve a better educational outcome? That’s a tough question, but I’ll take a stab at it. Here’s my list of how to achieve better educational outcomes. Think of yourself as a problem solver in addition to a learning experience designer. Think broadly and consider solutions that don’t involve courses. When designing formal learning, spend time with the audience to understand what they need and align it with what the organization needs. Make it super relevant. During design, keep in mind that people can only process 3-4 bits of information at one time. Avoid overwhelming people with a firehouse of information. Less is more. You mention your goal is to "fill the world with well-organized and comprehensible products that connect with the audience." Which would you define as the most important product element in order to achieve a successful so-called "connection"? If you look at our deliverables as products, I’d say one of the most important elements is visual design and the resulting aesthetic. This can have a significant impact on learner motivation, how well the content is understood and how much information is retained. With my art education background, I’m biased in that direction so I see things through that lens. You have published a mobile reference app for Instructional Designers. What does this learning tool include and how does it work? You’re talking about my Instructional Design Guru app. It’s a resource for instructional design students and practitioners. The app defines many of the specialized terms and concepts one comes across in the industry. I imagined a potential user sitting at a meeting or hearing a lecture or reading an article and quickly being able to look up the meaning of a term or concept. I wished I had a reference app, so I created one. Could you share with us some facts about your book «Visual Lanquage for Designers»? Which has been the strongest motivation for its creation? Visual Language for Designers presents visual design strategies that are based on cognitive psychology to help people create graphics that can be understood. The motivation to write it was to spread the word that design should be based on cognitive science to be most effective. Although I wrote this book for a wide audience, I was thinking about instructional designers much of the time. Is there another book in the works? Yes, I recently published Visual Design Solutions: Principles and Creative Inspiration for Learning Professionals. I wrote this book specifically for people who work in the field of learning. It teaches visual design skills in the context of designing eLearning and slides and presents new ideas for fresh designs. What exactly is Visual Design Solutions and what should a professional expect to find in it? Visual Design Solutions is my new book that teaches learning professionals how to create visually effective and aesthetically pleasing instructional materials. Many designers and developers feel challenged when it comes to visual design. The goal of the book is to present easy ways for practitioners to improve their skills. An equally important goals is to offer creative inspiration. The book covers the foundation principles of visual design as well as ways to add visual excitement to eLearning and training slides. I’ve included lots of graphic examples too. Some of the topics I cover are how to: select and enhance images, lay out a slide, choose a palette, select and mix fonts, direct the learner’s eyes, transform bullet points to images, make numbers interesting, tell a visual story, and a lot more.  What need of yours triggered the creation of the book? You don’t need to draw well to be able to design well, but most people don’t realize this. Design and art are two different crafts. Anyone can learn and apply the foundation principles of visual design to make their work more effective and appealing. I wanted to share this knowledge with practitioners in our industry. Also, I have degrees in Art Education and Instructional Design and Technology. So I enjoy combining my knowledge of both fields. I find there is a strong synergy there. What kind of innovation does your book bring to the field of Learning Design? Research of the past few decades has shown that aesthetics, or the appreciation of beauty, affects how people respond emotionally to a product. We choose a mobile phone or a favorite website partly based on the beauty of its design. But people in our industry don’t realize that this same response to design also affects the motivation and interest of learners. It impacts the effectiveness of learning too. My book presents principles and techniques for making instructional materials aesthetically pleasing and engaging. This is an innovative way to think about learning experience design. How has the specific area of Visual Design changed over the past decade? Visual design trends are always evolving, even if they harken back to previous times. But in the past few decades, visual design has been influenced by the requirements of technological innovation. For example, the flat design and minimalist design trends meet the needs of lower bandwidth mobile users. The interesting thing, however, is that many underlying principles of design, such as the use of white space, establishing a visual hierarchy and creating a unified design, are consistently applicable to all types of design. That’s because those principles meet the requirements of the human brain. What sort of everyday life experiences give you inspiration to write? When I teach visual design workshops and when I see examples of online learning, it often seems that people are designing randomly or in a haphazard way, rather than intentionally. These types of experiences motivated me to write Visual Design Solutions. I’m also fascinated with the intersection of cognitive science and visual design, so doing research in this area is very intellectually satisfying. Writing is another way to think.  What is the most enjoyable part of writing a book? As every author will say, writing a book is very hard. If you have full-time work, you have to get up very early or stay up very late and put in the hours of organizing, researching, writing and editing. In this case, I had to create and select around 140 example images too. On the other hand, it is also very fulfilling to know that what I write might contribute to making the lives of learning designers and developers easier and that their instructional materials will be more effective. Everyone benefits—both designers and  learners. Who did you choose to read it first, and why? How encouraging was the first informal feedback? Prior to publishing, the first people I got informal feedback from were people from the intended audience, practitioners in our industry. These were the beta readers. The beta readers did a great job of giving me helpful feedback and I feel indebted to them. I had my publisher send them a book when it was published, as my way of saying thank you. The post Interview with Connie Malamed appeared first on eLearning Interviews Magazine.

What do folks in education mean when they refer to ‘accessibility’? Well, in the online learning context, it really means allowing all learners, across all browsers and devices, access to all course content in an equitable manner. Learning should not be impeded by inaccessible course content.  In this context, accessibility does not necessarily mean increasing access to course content for individuals with disabilities. Of course, this is always a concern, but the perspective should change to just ensure course content is inclusive of all learners, not just those individuals with self-reported disabilities. Sure, you should be conscious of ADA/508 compliance issues and include transcripts to all video or audio elements, use ALT tags for your imagery, and ensure your course materials are formatted in a way that can easily be processed by assistive technologies, but you should also look at accessibility from the broader lens of usability. Is your course functional? Is it mobile responsive? Are all applications used within your course accessible to all learners? A lot of course content developers or Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) simply don’t think of these elements when developing the content, but it’s important, prior to launch, to review your course as a whole from an accessibility and usability perspective. Content should be chunked into smaller portions to avoid cognitive overload, it should be presented in a logical format, it should be presented using various formats (e.g. text/audio/video) alongside relevant transcripts, the course navigation should be straight forward and/or explained at the beginning of the course, formatting should be consistent, and your assessment strategies should be varied. Resources: Web Accessibility for Online Learning by CANnect Improve Accessibility in Tomorrow’s Online Courses by Leveraging Yesterday’s Techniques by Emily A. Moore

CSU LPS Faculty PanelThursday, December 10th, 20153pm PT/ 6pm ETRegister here (it's free).Panelists:Carolyn Gibbs (CSU Sacramento)Jackson Wilson (CSU San Francisco)Paul Boyd-Batstone (CSU Long Beach)Jaime Hannans (CSU Channel Islands)Ben Seipel (CSU Chico)This Thursday, December 10th, 2015 at 3pm PT/ 6pm ET, I will be moderating a 90-minute online panel that will include five faculty representing five of the 23 California State University (CSU) campuses. The panel is one link in a rich, semester-long series of events, blog posts, and sharing of resources organized by the CSU Learning Platforms and Services (LPS) Taskforce (click here to view all of these goodies, included archives of past live events).The diverse CSU system has a system-wide contract with Blackboard, which has provided CSU campuses the option to adopt Blackboard via a more seamless process and at a lower cost. This contract is coming to an end and, as a result, the LPS Taskforce is organizing opportunities to review the state of LMSs inside and outside the CSU (click here to view the complete purpose of the LPS Taskforce). This review process is the precursor to a statewide RFP for a CSU LMS contract, in which campuses will, again, have the option to participate or adopt a different LMS (or suite of tools) that fits their unique needs.  Currently, 11 CSU campuses have a campus-wide license for Blackboard, 20 use Moodle, and the others use Canvas or D2L/BrightSpace (of course, this does not account for the pockets of faculty who use a different LMS or suite of tools than the majority of their campus peers). Click here to see a complete breakdown of LMS use across the CSU.When I was invited to moderate an "LMS" panel for CSU faculty, I took time to think through my own experiences teaching with LMSs; which led to reflections about using web-based tools to cultivate visual, active-learning spaces; as well as my recent experiences providing professional development and support for online and blended faculty. These reflections helped me to realize how important it was going to be to design the panel as a conversation about teaching and learning with technology, as opposed to a conversation about using an LMS. The LMS as "walled garden."As we know, the "state of the LMS" in higher education has changed dramatically in the past several years. Edtech discourse around the LMS has recently included more conversations questioning the value of having students learn inside a "walled garden," when they are expected to thrive personally and professional in the open web. This trend is also influenced by the increase of easy-to-use, free to low-cost technologies in recent years. This gradual shift from the LMS as "the" place for organizing content, communicating with students, and facilitating learning (particularly for blended and online classes) to the LMS as one of many important nodes in a "learning ecosystem" of educational technologies used by faculty to design learning environments brings opportunities and challenges for higher education organizations. The tools in this ecosystem is referred to in the CSU as Learning Platforms and Services (LPS) (Click here for more discussion about LMS and LPS.)The LMS as part of a learning ecosystem.As more faculty have begun experimenting with and adopting additional tools to supplement (or replace) their use of the LMS, the traditional institutional goal of identifying a single, enterprise-wide technology solution for an entire campus is being rethought in some contexts. As such, institutions need new, sustainable strategies for supporting a technology ecosystem and preparing a mostly part-time higher education faculty to effectively navigate this landscape and design meaningful, accessible learning experiences.  These are some of the themes that have been conveyed through the experts (and follow-up conversations within the webinars) who have presented in the LPS series (Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein, Chris Vento, Sasha Thackaberry, Patrick Masson, and CSU students). I hope you'll join us for the panel on Thursday! I'm hoping to generate rich, thick data through open-ended questions that do not fixate on the LMS, but instead probe for themes in the experiences of faculty. We'll be using the webinar version of ZOOM for the panel.  Please register in advance and bring your own questions for the participants. Register here (it's free).LMS graphics by Mindwires, CC-BY.

Keeping learners motivated throughout an eLearning course is a challenge for even the most seasoned designers. Not only is it difficult to hook and keep learners engaged offline, but asynchronous training invites an even larger set of challenges. There is no way to read visual cues if students are bored or for an instructor to redirect training if there are questions. Online courses also provide an anonymity that prevents some learners from even participating at all.

How versatile can a training management system really be? This 10 part series looks at the varied ways a course management system can be utilised. The third in the series, this blog focuses on how Citizens Advice used training management software to run their Annual General Meeting.  

Tata Interactive Systems and Zurich Insurance have won the coveted Brandon Hall Group Silver Award for excellence in the Best Advance in Technology for their corporate social game app - Zurich QuizWiz. This solution also won the Silver at E-Learning Awards 2015. "We are delighted to receive this for our cloud-based Social Gamification Solution, says Rati Menon, Managing Director, Tata Interactive Systems, AG. We have been well recognized for our excellence in creating Game-based learning, so our goal was to create a tool that allows our customers to easily get started with social gaming. QuizWiz is a complete social gamification platform that allows any organization to set up a social game for its users through an app available for both the Android and iOS platforms. Zurich Insurance wanted to increase awareness and knowledge about important topics among its international workforce. Based on user feedback, the company wanted to implement an informal training strategy that reflected the current learning values of employees in the organization - learning needed to be bite-sized with a fun & engaging element and also leverage the BYOD policies in the organization. In line with this need, TIS used their QuizBiz App framework to develop the Zurich QuizWiz app that leverages existing trends like playing social games, mobile and analytics to deliver informal learning in an innovative, fun manner.    "We are very grateful to Zurich for having the faith in our solution and partnering with us. Their business perspectives and the learnings from the implementation helped us tailor the solution and make it an even better fit for any corporate environment," cites Rati.  Innovative use of the peer-to-peer challenges and leaderboards keeps people engaged whereas the performance metrics gathered allow insights into the knowledge gaps that exist among the target audience. "This way of learning is very suitable for companies targeting product training, implementing change processes, launching a corporate initiative, raising awareness, increasing knowledge and creating excitement," adds Rati.    

We are excited to feature Kristina Wambold, a digital learning coach for ESD 112 in Vancouver, Washington and Google for Education Trainer!  She will be joining forces with the NCCE Tech-Savvy Teachers to present the NCCE Summit, featuring Google for Education, in February at the NCCE conference in Seattle! We caught up with Kristina recently to find out more about how she uses technology for enlightenment and organization in her busy training schedule! Name: Kristina Wambold Location: Vancouver, Washington Current job(s): Digital Learning Coach for ESD 112, Google for Education Trainer Current computer: MacBook Air, DELL Current mobile device(s): Samsung S5, iPad Air, CTL Chromebook One word that best describes how you teach or work: Connected What apps/software/tools can you not live without? In my current role as a Digital Learning Coach working with several districts, using multiple devices, I could not survive without Google Drive! Google Drive allows me to switch between devices and school district accounts with ease. Anywhere, Everywhere, Anytime with Google Drive. Another must have is Snagit by TechSmith. Snagit allows me to create quick and easy training screencasts that I share with my teachers and students. Snagit also allows me to create annotated screenshots for step-by-step directions. [Editor’s Note: Snagit is the preferred screencasting and screenshot tool by the Tech-Savvy Teachers!  Best money you will ever spend.] What is your favorite organizational tip, app or advice? Google Now? Google Wow! Staying organized with email can be tricky—You open an email to read, yet you don’t have time to address it right away; since it’s read you forget to reply. That is until I started using flags within email. Now when I open an email that I don’t have time to address, I flag it so that I don’t forget to reply later. Scheduling life can be trick when you’re a working parent but with the help of layered Google Calendars I am able to make life work. On my cellphone I layer over 20 calendars to ensure I’m always where I need to be when I need to be. Calendars alone is amazing but add Google Now into the mix and your phone will become your new life secretary. What is your browser of Choice? Chrome! If you had $1,000 to spend on classroom tools and wanted to make the greatest impact on student learning, how would you spend it? The greatest impact on student learning comes from students that are active and engaged, thus I’d spend $1000 on devices in the hands of students. This would include Chromebooks and cameras—not necessarily one-to-one but enough to allow students the tools needed to create. What is your favorite avenue to connect with social media? Social Media has become my PLN connecting me with some many fabulous educators from around the world. As a Google Trainer I use Google+ to flip professional development and connect with educators using GAFE. If I have a Google related questions Google+ is my first stop. As a tech-savvy teacher, what everyday thing do you feel you excel with/at versus other teachers/administrators/mentors? One of my strengths that enables me to work with some many different people is my ability to build relationships. Through these relationships I’m able to encourage risk taking in the classroom. What is the best teaching advice you have received? The best advice I’ve ever received as an educator is to find balance between your classroom and personal life. As a passionate educator, it is easy to get wrapped up in grading papers, lesson planning, students and committees. Too often family, hobbies and health can take a back burner to the classroom. Without a balanced life we can become overstressed resulting in not being our personal best at either side of life. Although I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a pro at balance—it is my goal. What is your workspace/classroom like? I have a cubical at ESD 112 that I visit a few times a month. The rest of my time is spent in classrooms around the region. Cubical (Left) & the Mobile Office Join Kristina, the Tech-Savvy Teachers and other great speakers and trainers at the NCCE Summit featuring Google for Education, presented by the Digital Bug and NCCE Tech-Savvy Teachers! The post Meet a Tech-Savvy Teacher: Kristina Wambold appeared first on NCCE's Tech-Savvy Teacher Blog.

Dublin, Ireland December 7th 2015 - LearnUpon, the world’s fastest growing learning management system, has won a prestigious Excellence in Technology Award for 2015 from Brandon Hall Group. LearnUpon was honored with a Silver Award in the Best Advance in Learning Management Technology category. Although the Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards program is in its 22nd year, LearnUpon has won in its first year of entry. The program is widely considered the most distinguished in the eLearning industry, described as equivalent to the Academy Awards by Learning and Development professionals.   Entries for the 2015 awards were evaluated by a panel of Brandon Hall executive leadership and senior analysts, and independent industry experts. Winners were selected based on the design of the eLearning solution, the functionality, usability and innovation of the learning management system, and measurable benefits demonstrated by the LMS provider. LearnUpon is delighted that Brandon Hall‘s rigorous judging process has recognized the innovation and benefits its learning management system delivers to more than 450 customers worldwide.   The Brandon Hall Excellence Awards recognize the best organizations that have successfully deployed programs, strategies, systems, and tools that achieve measurable results in eLearning. The program attracts entrants from leading international corporations and solution providers with innovative, cutting-edge technologies, products and services.   Commenting on the announcement, Rachel Cooke, Chief Operating Officer at Brandon Hall Group, said Our award winners are the most visionary and innovative developers of HCM technology solutions that move organizations forward in serving employees, customers and investors.   Mike Cooke, Chief Executive Office at Brandon Hall Group, said I think everyone can learn from the achievements of our award recipients. These award-winning solutions were closely evaluated by our judges for not only their innovation, but the real results they brought to the organizations. That is what makes our technology awards program special - connecting creativity and innovation to direct business results.   LearnUpon’s CEO Brendan Noud, said The whole team at LearnUpon is delighted to have been honored at the recent Brandon Hall Excellence in Technology Awards. Our Silver Award for Best Advance in Learning Management Technology recognizes the impact LearnUpon’s LMS has had on the market since our launch three years ago. Our focus on constantly improving our platform with new feature releases every couple of weeks and providing exceptional customer support are key factors in LearnUpon’s rapidly growing reputation. We won’t be resting on our laurels, however. Our customers can look forward to lots of exciting new features in 2016.   Recipients of the Excellence Awards will be honored with a ceremony and gala on January 28, 2016 at Brandon Hall’s HCM Excellence Conference in Florida.   For more information about LearnUpon’s cloud-based learning management system, visit learnupon.com or email hello@learnupon.com. The post LearnUpon’s learning management system wins Brandon Hall award appeared first on LearnUpon.

We’re wrapping up 2015 with a trip to Maryland. You’ll find us at Booth #710 at the 2015 ASAE Technology Conference & Expo. This year the event celebrates its 10th anniversary! We officially launched our learning management system for Associations back in July. Since then more than 20 Associations and Professional Bodies have chosen LearnUpon to create, manage and deliver continuing education to their members.   You’ll find Brendan, Caoimhín and Phily at Booth #710 in the Gaylord Convention Center from 11:45 am to 2pm on Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th of December. They’ll happily take you through the feature set we’ve built to meet the specific learning management needs of Associations and Professional Bodies. We’ll also be running a competition to win a brand new iPad Air. All you have to do is test your knowledge!   We’ll have exhibited at six conferences this year, in London, Orlando, Detroit, Vegas and Maryland. We love stepping away from our desks for a few days to attend events like ASAE Technology. We get the opportunity to meet our customers and get invaluable feedback on our LMS platform from attendees, and bring all of the knowledge we gain back to the office.   So if you’re attending ASAE Technology next week be sure to stop by Booth #710 to say hello and get a demo of the best LMS for Associations and Professional Bodies. The post LearnUpon exhibiting at ASAE Technology 2015 appeared first on LearnUpon.

Converting learning from paper to digital Not just rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic: From guest writer: Judy Bloxham. I have recently created a set of induction modules for a geographically, distributed company. The material to be covered was written up and delivered face to face as an initial trial which worked well, but the geography […]