Friday, June 20, 2014

Homework Time…CWCCM Task 7.3

As part of the ‘Web content maintenance and evaluation’ unit within the Certificate in Web Content Creation & Management(CWCCM) programme I am undertaking, I have been asked to ‘create a plan for evaluating the success of the Internet website on which I will be working.’ (i.e. this blog)

So without further ado, here is my plan:

My first measure of success will be whether I am personally gaining anything from the blogging experience. I have always maintained that my blog is first and foremost for me. A place to capture my reflections, shape my vision and generally ‘let off steam‘. If others gain something from reading my blog, then I am obviously really pleased, but is is not the primary focus of my blog.I find blogging to be something of a drain on that precious resource ‘time’. Perhaps this is because I am chose to undertake the CWCCM programme at the same time as a Rapid eLearning Development programme AND prepare for a session at Learning Technologies 2011 AND prepare for my first Pecha Kucha at the February eLearning Network event. So my second measure of success will be whether I am still ‘blogging’ in 6 months time. It is 11 months since my first blog post, so I am hoping that in itself suggests that blogging will be a permanent part of my CPD going forward, but who knows…..?Finally I would consider my blog a success if I were able to achieve the goal that I set myself in a previous piece of CWCCM homework which was to increase the average daily views of my blog from 10  to 15 per day by August 2011. Since that previous blog post my current average per day is standing at 21, so all I have to do is maintain that effort and I will have not only met, but exceeded that target!!!!!!!!!

Do you blog? If so, how do you measure the success of your blogging? Have I been too prescriptive or are my targets not SMART enough?

Why don’t you let me know in the comments box below?

Image source


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I’m hanging out…..

image

……fancy joining me?

I’ve been thinking about how I can maximise my use of G+ to add further value and I’ve come up with a plan.

From now on, whenever I publish a blog post that is likely to encourage some comments I’m going to suggest a Google Hangout a couple of days later to discuss it in more detail.

The Hangout will be 15 mins max and will take place over a lunchtime – sandwiches and nibbles are of course welcome!

My plan is to record the Hangout, post it to YouTube and then bring it back down to my blog to promote further discussion.

In fact, why am I waiting for my next blog post? If you’ve read my recent ‘Get your foot in the door’ series and have a comment to make, a question or perhaps want to suggest a ‘get your foot in the door’ app to others then why not log into G+ at 1230hrs on Monday 30th Jan 2012, track me down and join me whilst I ‘hang out’?

See you there?


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Thursday, June 19, 2014

“Are we there yet?” Determining eLearning Development Time

Published on June 3, 2013, 1:27 pm Written by Ben Saunders

Chevy Chase

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In the world of eLearning development, one of the single most elusive concepts to understand and work around, is the question of how long will the development of any given piece of content take. Developers struggle to quantify it and Clients, Stakeholders and SME’s struggle to understand and support it. In this post we will pull apart the development life cycle and see if we can start to piece together  a framework for how to better define your development time and also communicate that timeframe to your Clients/Colleagues/Stakeholders to make the journey a little smoother.

Many eLearning developers would be familiar with the concept of development or interactive levels, as a way of describing the overall complexity of course. These levels are usually described in an ascending scale of 1 to 3 or 4, with 1 being the most basic level of content based on interaction and 3 or 4 being the highest level.

It normally looks a little like this (I am using a three level system to simplify the image):

eLearning Levels of Interactivity

When using this model the idea is to ascertain the “level” of the content being built, then to multiply the time taken to develop and average screen at this level with the number of screens that are to be built.

This is all well and good but it does make a number of assumptions that can very easily and often do alter the parts of the development estimate equation.

Assumptions

The content levels are mutually exclusive. The biggest and most obvious issue with the content levels concept is that, even though in broad terms these provide a generic description of most content that gets built, the simple fact is that the line between levels is almost always blurred. You can build a course that contains 75% linear text based screens but for the remaining 25% you need to incorporate a large and complex simulation that requires branching logic normally siloed in level 3.The number of screens (or seat time) of the final piece is known from the start. This is the largest random element in determining your overall development timeframe. Purely because the content seems to always change with time. In all my years in the eLearning industry, I could count on both hands, possibly just one hand, the number of projects where the source information provided at the start of the project, the graphic look and feel and the requested interactive concepts have been exactly the same at the point of publishing the content. These changes are most often caused by external factors that are completely out of your control.You will be developing the content in a vacuum. When providing an estimate for development one of the first things forgotten is that we live in a dynamic and changing world/office. What is true today in terms of availability and capacity may well be completely out the window tomorrow, or even this afternoon.

In reading the above assumptions, there are a couple more than this but I am focusing on the ones I see as the biggest, you might notice one similarity. Each one of the above is directly affected by external factors that you will have little or no control over. As such it might seem that we will be defeated even before we get started but this is not the case, since once you understand these issues you can communicate them to your stakeholders and effective communication is the foundation for any successful development project scoping.

Communication

“Every content development project is unique and even though you may have been involved in such projects in the past and even though I may have been the developer for some or all of those projects, let’s take some time to review and discuss what it takes to build a piece of eLearning in general, then we will talk about this piece of content” – This, more or less, is my opening line at every content scoping meeting.

The details following this statement will vary depending on who I am addressing. If it is a group of people I have worked with before then I still cover all of the steps to development at a high level and where possible reference pieces we have built together to illustrate key points or concepts. However if there is anyone present who I do not know or who I have not worked with before I will go into each concept in detail. It’s through this process that you are able to introduce the above assumptions, not to get answers on the spot, but more to have the stakeholders recognise and accept that scoping of a piece of content is not an exact science and the best way to do this is by showing examples. If you can get permission off your clients to show their content or develop your own examples for each of the assumptions above then show these to your stakeholders along with an explanation of factors that affected that particular piece of contents’ development, you will give your stakeholders a tangible point of reference for the rest of the scoping exercise.

A couple more tips for effective communication before we move on. Firstly, you DO NOT have to be a great public speaker to be able to communicate effectively. The key word here is “effectively”. To achieve this effective communication you must:

Know your message – simple but often over looked, if you know what you are talking about then you can make other people understand tooProvide relevant examples of key points – the tell me/Show me principleWatch and listen to your audience – you can tell almost immediately if someone does not understand from their body language or expression. And you can confirm this by asking that person questions related to the concept.Elicit feedback – by directly questioning the understanding of people in the group (In a polite passive way of course) you will ensure that A) they are paying attention and B) they are grasping the concepts and consequences of the points you are outlining.

Breaking Down the Levels

Next we will tackle the central concept to the majority of content scoping, the levels of content and how they should be discussed and applied to the scoping of a new content build.

Using the concept of levels of content complexity, whether it’s three, four or seven levels, is an excellent way to describe the broad scope of what’s possible when building a piece of eLearning. However as mentioned earlier, it is often the case that lines between these levels become easily blurred as the types and numbers of interactions, graphic and media elements and navigation functions can vary across the course under development.

In this sense quoting the entire piece across only one level will give an unrealistic outcome. Similarly estimating the percentage of development at each level can also lead to unreliable timeframes as the mixture of interactivity is not always clear cut. For instance the on screen content may still be text and image based but the navigation could utilise intricate branching logic and navigation, so the screens may look like level 1 but behave like level 3.

The best method I have found for dealing with these inconsistencies is to use the levels only as an aid to understanding for the stakeholders but when It comes down to actually aligning the content with an estimate for development I use the scoping meeting to break down the whole piece into its component inclusions. In doing this you achieve a much more accurate view of what the build will look like and if you run through the inclusions with your stakeholders like a checklist, you are then able to advise them at each inclusion, which items will require more or less development time.

Continue to page 2. . .

About Ben Saunders:
For the past 10 years Ben has been immersed in the world of learning and communication (and training and development), from planning and design to build and implementation, from both the client and vendor perspectives. His experience bridges the gaps between business expectation, technology and learning theory, importantly this allows Ben to translate and articulate business needs into defined learner outcomes. He has experience with various LMS implementations including Moodle, Docebo, Plateau, SABA, DOTS as well as bespoke solutions. Ben is an Articulate Trainer/Developer with B Online Learning.

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Jumping on the bandwagon. My predictions for 2013…

broken-crystal-ball

As the end of a year approaches it’s time for the blogging fraternity to turn to the tried and tested ‘Top ‘this that and the other’ of 2012? and ‘My predictions for 2013? blog posts.

Far from me to turn down the opportunity to poke a little fun, here are my 2013 predictions / absolute cast iron guarantees…

My Twitter stream will continue to be bombarded with Instagrammed photos of hot beverages and food. Fortunately I use Tweetbot which allows me to permanently block hashtags. Unfortunately hardly anybody tags their #instagram photos.We will see a new word being made up within the L&D fraternity.Certain bloggers will still rant on about ‘killer apps / platform / piece of hardware. Why can’t things just be ‘good’, ‘effective’, ‘worth having’?Any podcast with ‘week’ or ‘weekly’ in the title is unlikely to ever be that, beyond its 5th episode.I will unsuccessfully use facts, data and research against gut feelings and anecdotes.2013 will be the year of mobile. Again.Apple will release an ever-so-slight modification of a product. Tech bloggers will work themselves up into a crotch-twitching, salivating frenzy reporting….. erm…. on the ever-so-slight modification.We’ll continue to have a L&D wide survey released approximately every 4 daysMany vendors will continue to ignore the native functionality of mobile devices whilst blowing their trumpets about how they are ‘leading’ in the mlearning world.A ‘free to use’ service will change its Terms and Conditions. Users will form baying mobs and burning torches will be seen.Certain ‘thought leaders’ in our field will use ever more bizarre diagrams to explore their concepts. It’s cos they’re clever see….

I’ll see you in 2013…

… no doubt saying ‘I told you so‘

;-)


View the original article here

It’s true, great minds must think alike…

….because earlier this week Lesley Price and I both tweeted about the same subject within an hour or so of each other. This was the thought that was running through my mind as I was driving home a few days ago, which I subsequently tweeted about…

Later on that evening Lesley tweeted this

This led to an exchange of tweets between us, which resulted in Lesley being kind enough to share an experience with me via this email.

  A couple of years ago… I fell down stairs and sprained my ankle really badly.  I had to be at a Technology Conference organised by Becta as I was facilitating a table…. Natalie, my daughter took time off work to drive me.  She sat on the table I was facilitating…. even although it was an educational technology conference and she was a primary school teacher, she had no idea of the language and jargon that was being used.  It was almost like the Emperors New Clothes and she was the child watching from the side lines.  She sat all morning and the first part of the afternoon taking it all in.  She then just said…. I have no idea what you are all talking about, what does Social Media mean?  I typed that into questions that were coming from the floor… Facilitator picked it up and came to talk to her.  She was youngest person in the room and just said… “now that I know what it means…I can tell you I use SoMe all the time…I just don’t see what all the fuss is about, that is my life!  Why all the discussion???  Why don’t you just get on with it??”I have just talked to her again about it this evening and she still remembers the occasion… and still does not understand the facination by oldies. SoMe is part of her life…. she is not into Twitter, doesn’t see value in it.  If you look at profile of average user of Twitter I can understand that.  She uses FB, FB chat, skype , skype chat and txt all the time.  Sometimes using more than one at once… makes for interesting conversations lol!!I am trying to persuade her to start blogging… she has wonderful ideas. Although she teaches reception she also runs Computer Club for Girls with Yr 6 girls.  When the Tsunami and Japanese earthquake story started breaking, she put BBC news on her interactive white board and had it running all day as her reception class were interested in the live commentry that was coming through and bombarded her with questions.  She doesn’t close down social networking when she is teaching, not that she spends any time on it, it just runs in the background, the kids are now used to ‘silly noises’ that come from her laptop and tell her she when she has a message!  So kids completely understand SoMe… just don’t call it that…. they see it as normal… why are the rest of us making such a fuss about it instead of getting on with it!!So my question to you ‘Dear Reader’ is are we right, or are we waaaay off the mark?Is the ‘social’ holding things up due to it’s ‘connotations’?Should we just be referring to media, learning, networks etc and work under the assumption (a dangerous thing I know) that the ‘social’ is inherrent.Why not let me know your thoughts in the comments box below?

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Book Review: The Checklist Manifesto

A few weeks ago I was reading this excellent post from Clark Quinn, when I noticed that he referenced the book ‘The Checklist Manifesto’ by Atul Gawande.

This was a book that I purchased (in paper format) and read 2-3 years ago, but must admit to it being ‘ahead of my time’ at the time in my career I read it. I did a bit of digging around to try and find it again, but was unable to do so, so repurchased it as a Kindle version.

What was immediately of interest to me was just how differently the book resonated with me in comparison with the first time I read it (I think the lesson here is to go back and revisit ‘things’, even ‘things’ that didn’t make sense/seem relevant/etc at the time). Concepts and examples that were lost on me a couple of years ago, all of a sudden started to make sense, to take shape, to add value! The book hadn’t changed – I had!

I could offer a lengthy review of the book, however that would seem like a waste of the functionality that the Kindle platform provides, so instead, here are my Kindle Highlights from the book, along with some additional notes that mirrored my thinking at the time of reading. (it appears that Amazon won’t allow you to see ‘just’ the notes for a specific book, so here’s a screenshot showing you where to click to see ‘some’ of  my notes (not sure why you can’t see them all?))

Screenshot showing my Amazon Kindle public notes

What I will say is that of you’re in an L&D role, this is a book that you need to read.

Maybe you’re new to the world of Performance support?

Perhaps you’re familiar with, maybe even practicing the concept?

It could be that you know it’s what you should be doing, but you need something to back that up, perhaps some evidence to convince others?

Whatever you’re doing, at whatever level – this book will have something in there for you.

So stop reading this and order this

Or if like like many, cash is tight at the moment, why not try tracking it down via your local library.

If you’d like to hear from Atul Gawande himself, with particular reference to ‘checklists’, then check this video out

He’s also published some fine examples of  checklists on this site.

Image source


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Top ten learning platform trends from 2013

The end of the calendar year is a great opportunity to reflect and take stock of some of the key trends in the learning platforms market that have stood out for me and the team at Epic over the past 12 months. Do these reflect your own views of the market? What was big for you last year? Let me know in the comments, it would be great to share thoughts and notes on what was a fast moving year!

It’s all about the customer, stupid. Everyone knows that, right? Well, I’ve learned a big lesson this year about customer service through the mistakes of others. I’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve picked up new customers who said their last supplier a) didn’t care about them, b) had poor quality of service, c) over-promised and could not deliver or d) behaved like lawyers and charged just to pick up a pen. I even had a new customer reveal that they threw one of our competitors out of an LMS procurement on ethical grounds because they were having a go at us! While it’s kind of nice knowing a competitor is so preoccupied with Epic that they focus on us in their sales presentations instead of on themselves, what is genuinely worrying is what appears to be a trend of falling standards in the industry. Of course, we sometimes make mistakes too, but I do think that our relentless focus on our customers keeps us ahead of the competition.

LMS vendors are continuing to improve usability following years of negative feedback from customers and analysts. Customers are increasingly taking the lead on this, insisting on good user experience in their solutions. This is easier with bespoke platforms which we design from the ground up; however when using an off-the-shelf LMS you are always a bit constrained by the product’s capabilities. But there’s no doubt that Open Source gives you extra flexibility here. Moodle HQ have formed a dedicated front-end team and we have seen a renewed focus on usability in M2.5 and 2.6 which is warmly welcomed. Some of my favourite moments this year have been getting involved in design workshops with students and stakeholders. This is basic stuff, but so often forgotten in technology projects.

This year, e-learning gained access to bigger-than-ever audiences through the rise of MOOCs. EdX, Coursera and co threatened to close the door on this large market to traditional LMS vendors, who have been scrabbling around to offer high-scale cloud services to support hundreds of thousands of learners. Canvas were very quick off the mark and Moodle got in on the action too with its own MOOC and formed the basis of a Finnish startup called Eliademy. At Epic, we delivered prototype public-facing platforms for several top global universities looking to get in on the action which will start to scale up in 2014. We also scaled Moodle higher than we’ve ever taken it before. After winning a major government LMS contract we got involved in some serious optimisation for a Moodle site which hosts half a million users and one thousand simultaneous logins without drawing breath, and we look forward to scaling our platforms even further next year.

It’s sometimes easy to forget that there is a world of traditional classroom training vendors out there who have chosen not to move into online training. 2013 saw a huge amount of activity in this space as many of these providers commissioned platform offerings for the first time. At the same time, smaller distance learning providers have been commissioning new platforms to scale up to larger audiences, and universities have commissioned public-facing platforms to build on their brands and sell short courses to the wider world. The huge publicity around MOOCs is responsible for this and providers can now see much bigger markets for their courses. There is a hunger for open source among these players as none of them want to be tied to the last century’s payment model of subscription based on user numbers, which most platform vendors still offer. Good payment gateways are vital to these customers, and we have been using Course Merchant or integrating with customers’ existing e-commerce systems. We didn’t especially plan for this sector in 2013 but have been completely led by our customers and have developed a strong offering over the course of the year that enables us to serve this market. This one looks set to grow and grow.

Moodle went fully mobile this year after a few years of tinkering around with mobile themes. The incredibly popular Bootstrap theme made it into Moodle core as the Clean theme, which is something I was pleased and proud to get involved in. So with the launch of Moodle 2.5, all of a sudden Moodle was responsive. This has been a big driver for site upgrades among our customers, maybe even more so than earlier versions going out of support. My book, Moodle for Mobile Learning, also made it onto the shelves around the same time, after spending many a long night taking screenshots of Bootstrapped Moodle, and then redoing them all after the Clean theme came out! Frustrating, but worth it. Mobile Moodle was a big part of our year in 2013, and is only going to get bigger.

A lot of our enterprise customers have been working on web design standards this year, updating their portfolios of websites and platforms with a consistent, modern look and feel. There has been a resurgence of interest in design patterns and UI Kits, providing a framework for a common look and feel across applications. It all makes for a common sense approach and maybe reflects the more frugal times we live in, as enterprises are continuing to move away from the installing new and vastly expensive, monolithic applications and are wisening up to using specialist software tools instead, connected together using web services and a common look and feel. We wrote about the rise of APIs and the death of monolithic bloatware last year and are pleased to see that companies are continuing in that direction. It’s a good, common sense approach to software implementation in the enterprise.

Talking of APIs, this one deserves its own mention. This time last year it was just a twinkle in the eye of the L&D community, the new buzzword. The standard was formalised in the spring, we took our Tin Can ideas to the LT13 expo, started discussions with prospective customers, blogged and presented on the subject far and wide, engaged the Open Source community on Moodle.org and hired the UK’s main Tin Can expert Andrew Downes. It paid off and we won a contract to build an LRS for a global retail customer using Tin Can to track detailed usage of an iPad native app, and a global hotel chain to track a variety of learning interactions from multiple systems into one place. Andrew had his Moodle Tin Can launcher accepted for inclusion on the Moodle.org plugins database. Tin Can has gone beyond talk and into reality at Epic. In 2014 we will bring you the case studies!

With the rise of the MOOC, education is becoming open, right? Not necessarily. Much of the content used in MOOCs sits behind a copyright wall and cannot be openly accessed or reused. After all, many MOOCs are just basically marketing exercises for top universities. It’s all about the brand and they protect their IP. Hence the Open in MOOC refers mainly to open registration, not open content. But some interesting work is afoot. Open Educational Resources are gaining in popularity in the education sector, and I’d love to see more of this in workplace learning. Sites like Saylor.org provide an outlet for OER. What is really exciting is course-building collaboration with sites like Coursefork, which is basically a Github for course authors. I’m looking forward to seeing much more of this in 2014.

My last two items are about how the market has changed Epic this year. Firstly, we listed! We used to be on AIM back in the 90s but the company got sold to some print publishers who took it private and almost killed the company. After a few years the business changed hands once more to its current owners who have got Epic back into rude health and at the top of its game again. Epic took a bit of flak last time round on AIM for sitting on a load of cash but not investing it. Not this time. Learning Technologies Group, the name of the holding company we have listed under, is well and truly on the acquisition trail, and 2014 looks set to be very lively.

From a small sideline four years ago, Epic’s platforms offering has been growing steadily and this year is the fastest growing area of the business. The growth over three years is astounding, to the point that we are now having to make some changes to the team structure in order that we can sustain this growth while continuing to deliver excellent customer service to Epic customers and the wider Learning Technologies Group. 2013 has been a really exciting year as we’ve built up the team and worked on some fantastic projects. We will be building on this in 2014 and already have several major projects to kick off in Q1. Thanks to our amazing team and customers for making 2013 a successful one.

Have a great Christmas and New Year, and we look forward to working with you in 2014!


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Custom Navigation: 3 Examples with Articulate Storyline

Published on May 6, 2013, 10:36 am Written by Ben Saunders

coffee

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In my post Custom Navigation: Set your imagination and your learners free! I discussed the capability of authoring tools, especially Articulate Storyline, to present a customised and engaging user interface that can both create a wow factor for the user and also maintain the benefits of rapid eLearning development.  I have put together three examples of a custom user interface in Articulate Storyline. Each of the three has a different look and feel and incorporates some of the considerations mentioned previously. Let’s look at each in turn and see what they contain and how they behave.

Freeform Navigation

Click to launch the course

Freeform navigation is where there is no “Navigation Bar”. The participant moves from screen to screen simply interacting with the on screen elements like roll over’s, and clickable items.

In my example “Coffee” the user moves around from screen to screen by clicking on hotspots, dragging and dropping items or clicking the on screen buttons. All of these functions are handled easily in Articulate Storyline by attaching a trigger to the objects or actions that jumps the user to the next required screen.

I have also included a fold out progress menu in the top left of the screen that shows the course topics and displays a tick next to any topics that have been visited by the user. This is achieved by using Layers for the menu, States that display the non-ticked and ticked boxes and variables that change the State from none ticked to ticked once a user has visited a topic screen.

Menu Bar with a Difference

Click to launch the course

In this piece I have used the standard placement of a bottom navigation bar, however instead of the usual Next and Back buttons, users access topics by clicking, dragging and dropping items. In this case slide wheels to a Viewmaster (remember these little gems?).  Once the topic is accessed, screen progress requires interaction with the same drop target. This pulls together the navigation into a continuous theme whilst the initial drag and drop gives a more tactile experience for the user.

Again, Articulate Storyline made this very easy to build using triggers, states and variables to control the actions (drag, drop and screen change), the visual concepts (changing states of objects to denote accessibility) and tracking to fire the visual state changes.

And in case anyone of the younger generations is viewing, the compass in the top right accesses a help screen to show the navigation, just in case Viewmasters are no longer an essential part of one’s developmental years.

More Bells and Whistles (whistles not included)

Click to launch course

The last piece I have built contains all Navigation, Menu, Help and Resource areas in a hidden, Smartphoneesque, panel. This panel is displayed permanently on the home screen but is hidden on the content screens until the end of that screens timeline is reached, at which time it slides in from the side. This allows me to use all of the available screen real estate to devote to the content and for the panel to only make it’s appearance when the user needs to interact with it.

Building this panel into the slide masters on Articulate Storyline also means that the development time, for a custom interface, is substantially reduced. It then becomes a fundamental piece of every screen, and all I had to do was adjust some of the triggers as I went through.

The piece also includes separate screens for Resources and Help that are accessible on all screens in the piece. This also returns you back to the screen you activated those features from so you don’t have to start topics again from the beginning. And of course, standard Articulate Storyline functions like layers, triggers and variables to control the action and on screen progression.

All three of these custom user interface examples took very little time to develop and they represent only the tip of the iceberg for custom interfaces where better graphics and the use of combinations of display and progression could be utilised to build some incredible learner experiences. But I hope at least that this has given you a little knowledge on what is a custom user interface, what you should think of at a basic level when planning to build one and some ideas that will get you thinking along different paths, rather than just Next and Back.

The rest is up to your imagination. 

About B Online Learning
B Online Learning are Certified Articulate Training Providers and also develop custom content and user interfaces using Articulate Storyline. For further information on our services please contact us articulate@bonlinelearning.com.au

About Ben Saunders:
For the past 10 years Ben has been immersed in the world of learning and communication (and training and development), from planning and design to build and implementation, from both the client and vendor perspectives. His experience bridges the gaps between business expectation, technology and learning theory, importantly this allows Ben to translate and articulate business needs into defined learner outcomes. He has experience with various LMS implementations including Moodle, Docebo, Plateau, SABA, DOTS as well as bespoke solutions. Ben is an Articulate Trainer/Developer with B Online Learning.

View the original article here

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

A word of warning, be careful…

… as to what media you use if you are ever asked to produce a festive tip for the eLearning networks 24 tips advent calendar

Why a warning?

Well, because you might just be asked to facilitate a session on it at a future eLN event!!

Joking aside, I was privileged to be asked by Rob Hubbbard to co-facilitate the recent eLN event How to produce rich media learning materials. This was something of a departure for an eLN event as it was planned to be very ‘hands on’, so it was great to be asked to be a part of it.

Each of the speakers had been asked to promote their individual topic areas for 20 minutes. Not to delve into the technicalities and intricacies of each method, but to prick the interest of the attendees so that would be sufficiently enthused prior to the practical session in the afternoon. (that was the plan!)

Here’s what the guys had to offer…

#eln

Exploring the elements of online communication – Clive Shepherd

Clive got us off to a great start by asking each table of delegates to consider a different media element; text, images, audio, animation, video and to suggest the pro’s and con’s of each. This was a fairly simple exercise, however he then asked us to consider which of the ‘other’ types of media would/wouldn’t work it and why. This stimulated a great deal of debate around the ‘mixing’ of media types.

Why not give this simple exercise a go yourself?

Writing for audio  – so that it works – Tony Frascina

Tony conducted a great interactive exercise which involved each us all reviewing a small number of simple slides containing text and an image. As each of these slides were playing there was an accompanying audio track. The content within that audio track varied slightly for each slide ranging from being very similar to incredibly in-depth.

Tony then asked us all to answer some paper based questions relating to the content that we had seen/read. I would like to say that I had taken a keener interest in this exercise as it would have been interesting to focus 100% on it, however as I was due to speak next I’m afraid that I was a little ‘distracted’!

UPDATE – Fortunately Stephanie Dedhar has done a great job of reviewing this session.

If a picture paints a 1000 words, how many does a moving, talking picture paint? – Craig Taylor

I was quite pleased that I was asked to speak on this subject as the very nature of screencasting meant that I could use screencasts themselves to deliver the content.

Simples!

I chose to use Prezi as the vehicle to deliver the material. I had used Prezi in the (distant) past and hadn’t been too enthralled by its functionality, but I was pleased to discover that they appear to have made several welcome updates to the service. I’m still hoping that they will figure out a way to have accompanying audio, in the same ilk of PowerPoint and Slideshare and that they can come up with a way to use a remote presenter, so that I am not tied to my laptop whilst presenting. It is that lack of audio track which persuaded me to record my session and release it in  a future blog post podcast.

Video editing - James Stoneley and Solomon Rogers

James and Solomon rounded the morning off with an overview of recording video and editing. The feeling from some people on my table and via the backchannel was that it would have been preferable to show examples of how video could be used for learning purposes with ‘lower end’ equipment i.e. Flip cameras/smartphones etc. From a personal perspective I was happy with what was delivered BUT I do have an understanding as to how video can be used in a learning context.

After lunch was the point at which the eLN entered new ground by providing an afternoon of experiential learning by allowing attendees to practice making screencasts and recording/editing videos. From the 2 groups that I worked with this ‘hands on’ approach was warmly received and provided a fantastic opportunity to apply the theory in the real world (isn’t this what we keep saying our learners should be doing?)

Bearing in mind that they only had 30 minutes to discuss the subject, download software, create the media, edit, publish and that the purpose wasn’t to create a ‘real-time’ screencast, here is a sample of what they produced:

All in all, a really useful event, the format of which I hope the eLN repeats in the future.

A big Thank You to Mark Jones for coming up with concept of this event and for facilitating the entire day.


View the original article here

Once bitten…

I’ve spent the last few nights putting together a few slides to underpin my session ‘Getting started with Learning Technologies’ at the Learning Technologies Conference 2011.

I was the using approach cited by Cliff Atkinson in his book Beyond Bullet Points, to develop a slide deck that uses full screen images to graphically underpin my story.

Whilst the sourcing of appropriate quality images took some time to locate, it took nowhere near as long as setting up the Auto-Tweet function which would allow me to autotweet during my session. So you can imagine the language in my office when I discovered that this presentation had ‘disappeared’ from my USB stick – and for those of you are thinking

“what’s the problem Craig, surely you had backed it up on your laptop or on Google Docs”

Erm… (embarrassed silence)… no I didn’t.

Like I say, once bitten…


View the original article here

Sudan Radio Service

As part of an effort to increase the participation of South Sudanese in the peace process and now the civic life of their new nation, the Sudan Radio Service provides access to balanced and useful information through radio-based education, news, and entertainment programs presented by local presenters in nine languages. Independent research found that Sudan Radio Service has approximately one million listeners.

Sudan Radio Service also builds the capacity of Sudanese journalists through its Certificate in Broadcast Journalism program and through on-the-job training.

Visit EDC’s International Development Division website for additional project information and resources.

Director: Kent Noel

Duration: 2003–2012

Funder: U.S. Agency for International Development


View the original article here

Informal Learning

Let me start off by saying that I do not consider myself an ‘academic’, I’m more than happy to dive into a book (fiction or non), but tend to stay away from L&D related books due to the authors assuming that everyone wants to wade through case-study after case-study (I don’t!).

My interest however, has been re-ignited after reading ‘Informal Learning’ by Jay Cross. This book succinctly put into context the spending/outcomes paradox that many organisations face (mine included) by presenting a simple 4-column bar graph showing that most organisations spend the majority of their money exactly where it is least effective. The use of simple analogies and wonderful diagrams really brought the subject of Informal Learning alive and has given me plenty of food for thought.


View the original article here

Have you ever struggled…

…… with a function in an IT application? Have you ever struggled to provide assistance to somebody else who was struggling with an IT application?

If the answer to either is “Yes”, then could I be cheeky enough to ask you to take part in this survey?

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/eLNscreencastsession

There are only 2 questions and I’m not looking for any lengthy responses, a couple or words or a sentence will be sufficient.

The results will be used as part of a workshop I am facilitating for the eLearning Network on the 08th April 2011 on the subject of screencasting.

All results will be shown in a future blog post.


View the original article here

My day playing at marketing at #AMC13

Earlier today I attended Another Marketing Conference in order to try and (as I said in this previous post) gain a different perspective on ‘changing behaviours’ from outside the L&D bubble that I’ve found myself living in.

Readers of my ‘Small Chunks‘ post will know that instead of trying to capture every piece of information that is conveyed during conference sessions I always try and identify ‘small chunks’ that I can take away and work on as opposed to HUGE strategic-thinking pieces.

09:30

You can’t have too much data! or can you?

Peter Waggett
Emerging Technology, IBM

Data is everywhere and it is now easy to capture information on our customers and prospects. Getting beyond the hype associated with Big Data requires understanding of the data and knowledge to turn it into something actionable. This talk will discuss the issues associated with the practical and responsible use of Big Data and detail future trends.

My takeaways from this session:

Peter told us the story of ‘Millenium Challenge‘, a US Military exercise in which the ‘friendly’ force mulled over its data for so long that the ‘opposing’ force just went ahead and ‘destroyed’ several key US assets. In other words, data analysis is all well and good, but without any ‘action/decision’, well…… it’s just…… data analysis! This is something that I’ll research further and if tenable, I’ll keep it up my sleeve should it ev er look like I’m in danger of being forced into ‘analysis paralysis’!

Peter talked us through the Jeopardy / Watson exercise (as he put it, Siri on steroids!). He reckons that in 5-6 years this level of semantic technology will be on the High Streets – another nail in the coffin for L&D or another wonderful opportunity?

10:00

What Nokia did next

Richard Murphy
Global Director of eCommerce, Nokia

For years Nokia was the most desirable brand when it came to mobile phones. However, the smartphone revolution shook things up.

Consumers have changed and so has marketing. The pace of change is accelerating, putting more pressure on organisations to embrace this new digital reality and transform the way they market. How Nokia embraced this new digital reality will offer comfort and inspiration to all of us trying to change our approaches and cultures.

My takeaways from this session:

Richard identified the physical commuting routes his bosses took into work and bought  the posters/advertising space along that route! The feedback from his bosses was great!

Whilst I have no need to go that far, I do think there is some value in locating a lot of my mandatory training campaign material within eyeshot of our Directors office door, not only to ‘big up’ what we’re doing, but more critically to encourage the cascade of the messages from Director level.

10:30

Seamless brand building

Julie Strawson
Director of Marketing, Monotype

A look at how technology can challenge your brand, why the process of branding is changing and how to deliver reliable on-brand experiences at every consumer touchpoint.

Julie will also reveal the results of a new piece of research into how publishing is changing and what’s on offer for advertisers across 100 leading consumer titles conducted by Brand Perfect, Monotype’s community for brands, designers and developers.

My takeaways from this session:

My upcoming mandatory training ‘revamp’ will adopt a campaign approach. Julie reminded us that we need to have a cohesive and seamless experience from one format to another. Many of the videos and animations from the campaign will reside inside our internal collaboration platform, which unfortunately (as it sits in the public domain) requires a login everytime you open the platform up. This isn’t much of a problem when ‘deskbound’ as the platform forms a part of many people’s workflows, it becomes a problem however when I start to encourage people to access the media from their mobile devices as I feel that asking people to ‘log in’ from their mobile device is only likely to create another barrier to the content.

To get around this problem, I plan to dual-host the videos within a Vimeo Pro account. This will allow mobile users to get access to the content quickly and seamlessly as advised by Julie.

11:45

It’s all about ME (Marketing Effectiveness)

Julie Roberts
Marketing Effectiveness Director, TMW

How do we measure our true success? How do we know if we are being effective? And how can we improve? Investing in ‘big data’ is pointless without a concrete effectiveness strategy. Julie will look at, with the increasing amounts of data available, how we should plan, do, check and (importantly) act in 2013.

My takeaways from this session:

I’ll be honest, this was my least enjoyable/useful session of the day which is a pity as this was the one I was hoping to get the most from due to the work I am doing at the moment.  There was a LOT of being talked at, poor slide design, lots of “I’m sure everybody is aware of xyz“, rushing through content etc

So I thought I’d try and glean something from this session….

5 basic questions for marketing

Research – conduct some! (online, panels, in-store)Hypothesise – ask bite-sized questions & build nimble analytical modelsSet parameters – use a simple allocation modelSpecialists – internally & externally, central co-ordinating role & clear RACIs

12:15

Mapping human behaviour with immersive experiences

Jon Dodd
Managing Director, Bunnyfoot

How do we develop products, services and websites that provide customers with a rich, immersive and satisfying experience? What are the little peculiar human behaviours that we need to be aware of and tap into?

My takeaways from this session:

Never consider going into neuroscience!!! Mind. Blown.

Read up on Norman’s 6 Design Principles

14:00

The hedgehog and the fox – and why the social sciences are plural for a reason

Rory Sutherland
Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK

Recent evidence suggests that our brains – and hence the way we make decisions – may be more variegated than we think – or than we want to believe. One of the implications is that single models of human behaviour may be woefully inadequate, or even misleading. We simply need to accept that a single toolbox may never work

My takeaways from this session:

All models are wrong; but some are useful – and some are dangerous!

Rory suggested

Anybody with a ‘number’, trumps anybody with an ‘abstract noun’ – I’ve had some recent successes when quoting/demonstrating Ebbinghuas’ Forgetting Curve. I’m going to make sure that I have more numbers in my back pocket.

Don’t get bogged down in the attitudinal aspect, make it easy for people change their behaviours and they will construct their own reasons for doing so.

Rory shared this video with us. I can’t for the life of me remember what the context was, but it’s funny so what the Hell!

14:30

Context and content: the two pillars of mobile marketing

Paul Berney
Chief Marketing Officer, Mobile Marketing Association

When it comes to mobile marketing it is vital that we understand how to deliver our content and the role that context plays in how that content is received.

Paul will talk about how the plethora of small screens is changing the way we need to think about our mobile strategies and whether or not we think that it really affects us.

My takeaways from this session:

Include a mobile call to action on my mandatory training campaign material that I can expect people to be accessing via mobile devices. As I’m planning on using Delivr.com to manage my mobile delivery I’ll be able to place the ‘call to action’ on the media landing page as opposed to having to place it on the poster (so can reduce environmental impact, printing costs etc)

I’d been planning to link out to videos / animations etc from physical posters/pop up banners etc, I’m still going to do this, however Paul provided an example of AR enabled sports tickets which has prompted me consider other options for linking the physical world with the online world.

Paul also shared this video with us, makes you think eh?

15:45

Predatory thinking

Dave Trott
Executive Creative Director, The Gate London

One of the most respected figures in advertising, Dave Trott, talks about the importance of the creative spark and how we need to manage our teams and our time to release a little bit more of that inner creative mischief.

My takeaways from this session:

Alas, by this point I had had to dash for my train to start any chance of getting home at a reasonable hour. This is a pity as the tweets that were coming out of Dave’s session suggested he was ‘plain speaking’ which would have made a nice change from one or two of the other speakers.

My overall observations of the day:

It was blatantly clear from every session that online/digital/mobile was a critical element of any behaviour changing marketing plan. Dare I say it, but the level and depth of conversation far exceeded the conversations that I see at most (not all) L&D conferences, a clear indication (I think) about how far behind we are in our thinking???

I have to admit that at times some of the conversation was above my head. I’m not saying this is a bad thing because let’s be honest I was ‘out of my usual comfort zone’ so I guess it’s to be expected, but it also served as a reminder to check the language and references that I use when speaking to people within my organisation around subjects that are within my comfort zone, but very possibly outside of theirs.

It was a welcome relief to hear that the general approach I’m taking with my organisations mandatory training in terms of creating a campaign around it, is broadly spot on. I strongly suspect that my attendance at this conference will help to tweak some of the ideas we are planning to ensure that they have the maximum chance of hitting home and changing behaviour.

Biggest non-surprise of the day was that there were no other Learning Professionals there (at least none that I could ascertain during the breaks and lunch), which is a real shame….. perhaps next year?


View the original article here

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Podcast #22: I have no idea where this podcast is heading…

Craig is joined by Zak Mensah for an impromptu chat about meeting people on Twitter, the similarities and differences between the education sector and corporates, the pros and cons of prefixing ‘learning’ with a range of letters, weelearning, ‘mobile’ and just about anything else that comes to mind!

Listening time: 31 mins

Subscribe to the podcast in mp3 format: I’ve no idea where this podcast is heading…

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

Music Source.


View the original article here

My day playing at marketing at #AMC13

Earlier today I attended Another Marketing Conference in order to try and (as I said in this previous post) gain a different perspective on ‘changing behaviours’ from outside the L&D bubble that I’ve found myself living in.

Readers of my ‘Small Chunks‘ post will know that instead of trying to capture every piece of information that is conveyed during conference sessions I always try and identify ‘small chunks’ that I can take away and work on as opposed to HUGE strategic-thinking pieces.

09:30

You can’t have too much data! or can you?

Peter Waggett
Emerging Technology, IBM

Data is everywhere and it is now easy to capture information on our customers and prospects. Getting beyond the hype associated with Big Data requires understanding of the data and knowledge to turn it into something actionable. This talk will discuss the issues associated with the practical and responsible use of Big Data and detail future trends.

My takeaways from this session:

Peter told us the story of ‘Millenium Challenge‘, a US Military exercise in which the ‘friendly’ force mulled over its data for so long that the ‘opposing’ force just went ahead and ‘destroyed’ several key US assets. In other words, data analysis is all well and good, but without any ‘action/decision’, well…… it’s just…… data analysis! This is something that I’ll research further and if tenable, I’ll keep it up my sleeve should it ev er look like I’m in danger of being forced into ‘analysis paralysis’!

Peter talked us through the Jeopardy / Watson exercise (as he put it, Siri on steroids!). He reckons that in 5-6 years this level of semantic technology will be on the High Streets – another nail in the coffin for L&D or another wonderful opportunity?

10:00

What Nokia did next

Richard Murphy
Global Director of eCommerce, Nokia

For years Nokia was the most desirable brand when it came to mobile phones. However, the smartphone revolution shook things up.

Consumers have changed and so has marketing. The pace of change is accelerating, putting more pressure on organisations to embrace this new digital reality and transform the way they market. How Nokia embraced this new digital reality will offer comfort and inspiration to all of us trying to change our approaches and cultures.

My takeaways from this session:

Richard identified the physical commuting routes his bosses took into work and bought  the posters/advertising space along that route! The feedback from his bosses was great!

Whilst I have no need to go that far, I do think there is some value in locating a lot of my mandatory training campaign material within eyeshot of our Directors office door, not only to ‘big up’ what we’re doing, but more critically to encourage the cascade of the messages from Director level.

10:30

Seamless brand building

Julie Strawson
Director of Marketing, Monotype

A look at how technology can challenge your brand, why the process of branding is changing and how to deliver reliable on-brand experiences at every consumer touchpoint.

Julie will also reveal the results of a new piece of research into how publishing is changing and what’s on offer for advertisers across 100 leading consumer titles conducted by Brand Perfect, Monotype’s community for brands, designers and developers.

My takeaways from this session:

My upcoming mandatory training ‘revamp’ will adopt a campaign approach. Julie reminded us that we need to have a cohesive and seamless experience from one format to another. Many of the videos and animations from the campaign will reside inside our internal collaboration platform, which unfortunately (as it sits in the public domain) requires a login everytime you open the platform up. This isn’t much of a problem when ‘deskbound’ as the platform forms a part of many people’s workflows, it becomes a problem however when I start to encourage people to access the media from their mobile devices as I feel that asking people to ‘log in’ from their mobile device is only likely to create another barrier to the content.

To get around this problem, I plan to dual-host the videos within a Vimeo Pro account. This will allow mobile users to get access to the content quickly and seamlessly as advised by Julie.

11:45

It’s all about ME (Marketing Effectiveness)

Julie Roberts
Marketing Effectiveness Director, TMW

How do we measure our true success? How do we know if we are being effective? And how can we improve? Investing in ‘big data’ is pointless without a concrete effectiveness strategy. Julie will look at, with the increasing amounts of data available, how we should plan, do, check and (importantly) act in 2013.

My takeaways from this session:

I’ll be honest, this was my least enjoyable/useful session of the day which is a pity as this was the one I was hoping to get the most from due to the work I am doing at the moment.  There was a LOT of being talked at, poor slide design, lots of “I’m sure everybody is aware of xyz“, rushing through content etc

So I thought I’d try and glean something from this session….

5 basic questions for marketing

Research – conduct some! (online, panels, in-store)Hypothesise – ask bite-sized questions & build nimble analytical modelsSet parameters – use a simple allocation modelSpecialists – internally & externally, central co-ordinating role & clear RACIs

12:15

Mapping human behaviour with immersive experiences

Jon Dodd
Managing Director, Bunnyfoot

How do we develop products, services and websites that provide customers with a rich, immersive and satisfying experience? What are the little peculiar human behaviours that we need to be aware of and tap into?

My takeaways from this session:

Never consider going into neuroscience!!! Mind. Blown.

Read up on Norman’s 6 Design Principles

14:00

The hedgehog and the fox – and why the social sciences are plural for a reason

Rory Sutherland
Vice Chairman, Ogilvy UK

Recent evidence suggests that our brains – and hence the way we make decisions – may be more variegated than we think – or than we want to believe. One of the implications is that single models of human behaviour may be woefully inadequate, or even misleading. We simply need to accept that a single toolbox may never work

My takeaways from this session:

All models are wrong; but some are useful – and some are dangerous!

Rory suggested

Anybody with a ‘number’, trumps anybody with an ‘abstract noun’ – I’ve had some recent successes when quoting/demonstrating Ebbinghuas’ Forgetting Curve. I’m going to make sure that I have more numbers in my back pocket.

Don’t get bogged down in the attitudinal aspect, make it easy for people change their behaviours and they will construct their own reasons for doing so.

Rory shared this video with us. I can’t for the life of me remember what the context was, but it’s funny so what the Hell!

14:30

Context and content: the two pillars of mobile marketing

Paul Berney
Chief Marketing Officer, Mobile Marketing Association

When it comes to mobile marketing it is vital that we understand how to deliver our content and the role that context plays in how that content is received.

Paul will talk about how the plethora of small screens is changing the way we need to think about our mobile strategies and whether or not we think that it really affects us.

My takeaways from this session:

Include a mobile call to action on my mandatory training campaign material that I can expect people to be accessing via mobile devices. As I’m planning on using Delivr.com to manage my mobile delivery I’ll be able to place the ‘call to action’ on the media landing page as opposed to having to place it on the poster (so can reduce environmental impact, printing costs etc)

I’d been planning to link out to videos / animations etc from physical posters/pop up banners etc, I’m still going to do this, however Paul provided an example of AR enabled sports tickets which has prompted me consider other options for linking the physical world with the online world.

Paul also shared this video with us, makes you think eh?

15:45

Predatory thinking

Dave Trott
Executive Creative Director, The Gate London

One of the most respected figures in advertising, Dave Trott, talks about the importance of the creative spark and how we need to manage our teams and our time to release a little bit more of that inner creative mischief.

My takeaways from this session:

Alas, by this point I had had to dash for my train to start any chance of getting home at a reasonable hour. This is a pity as the tweets that were coming out of Dave’s session suggested he was ‘plain speaking’ which would have made a nice change from one or two of the other speakers.

My overall observations of the day:

It was blatantly clear from every session that online/digital/mobile was a critical element of any behaviour changing marketing plan. Dare I say it, but the level and depth of conversation far exceeded the conversations that I see at most (not all) L&D conferences, a clear indication (I think) about how far behind we are in our thinking???

I have to admit that at times some of the conversation was above my head. I’m not saying this is a bad thing because let’s be honest I was ‘out of my usual comfort zone’ so I guess it’s to be expected, but it also served as a reminder to check the language and references that I use when speaking to people within my organisation around subjects that are within my comfort zone, but very possibly outside of theirs.

It was a welcome relief to hear that the general approach I’m taking with my organisations mandatory training in terms of creating a campaign around it, is broadly spot on. I strongly suspect that my attendance at this conference will help to tweak some of the ideas we are planning to ensure that they have the maximum chance of hitting home and changing behaviour.

Biggest non-surprise of the day was that there were no other Learning Professionals there (at least none that I could ascertain during the breaks and lunch), which is a real shame….. perhaps next year?


View the original article here

Tayloring It is open for business!

Over the past 18 months, I’ve had a number of conversations with various people from around our industry as well as outside of it on the subject of ‘going it alone‘, ‘setting up my own business‘, ‘escaping the rat race’ – whatever you want to call it!

First and foremost, I’ve always been flattered that these people have thought that I had ‘something’ that others would be willing to enter into a contract with me to obtain.

Secondly, I’ve always admitted to those people that I have a fear and a dread of leaving safe and secure roles to enter into what I perceive as a more risky world of the ‘self employed’.

However, I now realise that even full time employment in established organisations is still fraught with risks and that anybody – and I’m probably including you, Dear Reader – who doesn’t have a back-up plan or a safety net of some description is probably not doing themselves any favours.

That’s why I’ve decided to take Tayloring It to a slightly different place than I had originally intended when I first started blogging 3 years ago.

I’ve decided to start up my own small consultancy ‘Tayloring It’. Before you ask, “No“, I haven’t left my current role and nor is the writing on the wall - I’m probably happier in this role than I have been in any role since I left the Army in 2006. But that doesn’t mean I can’t start establishing contacts along with developing a portfolio of work and business accumen just in case my world looks different in 12, 24 or however many months in the future. Plus, I’m pretty sure I can help some people/organisations with what they’re trying to achieve too – without it interfering with my day job.

My plan is to offer down to Earth advice on the subject of Learning Technologies and their application in today’s work place.

This advice won’t be based on past glories from years ago or from being a member of elitist Industry ‘think tanks’ – No! – My consultancy will be based upon recent and current experience of deploying learning technologies and the associated aspects within conservative and risk averse industries such as the Nuclear, Rail and Financial sectors.

Recent experience within the eLearning vendor industry has also provided me with fantastic opportunity to become involved in a large number of industries, organisations and projects, the experience from which has only added to my own workplace experiences.

My website is currently being built by a fantastic supporter of my idea, Zak Mensah and will be launched in the next couple of weeks explaining how I might be able to help you out in more detail, but in the meantime here’s a short explanation which will no doubt feature on the website:

Tayloring It is a consultancy that works with individuals and organisations to practically apply technology as a solution to real-world challenges. It could be large scale projects or supporting everyday tasks, but our team has successfully created new approaches that maximise the use of technology while actually saving money/reducing spend. We enhance
communication, learning and performance in the workplace, focusing on outputs not inputs. There are no other services like ours.

Tayloring It aims to change the face of learning technology in practice, one solution at a time.

I’ll be attending both days of Learning Technologies Conference & Exhibition 2013 and will be armed with my rather natty business cards

Tayloring It business card Tayloring It business card

so if you’d like to find out more about what my plans are the future, why not track me down, have a chat and grab a business card?

Alternatively, if our paths don’t cross, my details are on the card above.


View the original article here

Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visual and audio.

If you’ve not already read my previous blog post ‘Getting Beyond Bullet Points (visuals only)’ then I’d strongly suggest having a read of it before you read any more of this post.

Why?

Well for 2 reasons really:

1. The earlier post will provide you with the context behind this post.
2. The purpose of this specific post is to act as a comparison to the first post in this series, hence the benefit of viewing the first one!

As you will have seen in the previous post, using the approach of images and single words in a presentation is certainly visually engaging, however where it falls down (as highlighted during my live session by Laura Dickson) is when the presenter/facilitator is no longer present to provide the narrative – the engaging presentation is now nothing more than a collection of images and out of context words.

Here are the same slides that were contained in the earlier post, but this time with the narrative.

Don’t forget, this is Part 2 in a series of posts surrounding my LSG11UK session.

Part 1 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visuals only

Part 2 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points with visual and audio

Part 3 – Bringing in the backchannel

Part 4 – The Learners Voice

Part 5 – Getting Beyond Bullet Points live recorded podcast

Part 6 – Tools and resources

Did you get anything from the Slideshare?

Why not let us know in the comments section?


View the original article here

A little help from my friends

A few months ago I wrote this blog post which centred around a learner could tell that they were at a ‘just in time training’ moment. I won’t reiterate the entire blog post here as you can always go back and read it here.

After writing that blog post I started to put together a mindmap with ideas as to some ‘triggers’ that could initiate ‘just in time’ support. I put a tweet out asking if anybody fancied collaborating on the map and unsurprisingly a number of people volunteered to contribute (don’t you just love the way these tool, foster and promote this type of one-click collaboration).

Unfortunately I then forgot all about the mindmap until Clarke Quinn‘s recent blog post, so Dear Reader here is the mindmap that a few of us collaborated on over the balmy Summer of 2011 (you may need to zoom in/out or expand to full screen to view properly).

I’ve also made the map a ‘wikimap’ which means that anybody can make additions to it (hint, hint)

What do you think?

Have we covered everything?

What have we missed out?

We’d appreciate your thoughts….


View the original article here

How do we know it’s time for ‘Just In Time’ training?

The YouTube vid below provides an example as to information being provided at point of ‘assumed need’ to a specified individual. For those of you who plan to dismiss the idea off the back of it being ‘just’ a sci-fi film, remember the virtual info screen that John Anderton (Tom Cruise)operates with his hands…….?

… Microsoft Kinect anybody

And now onto the context of this blog post. Sure, for many people it is fairly obvious when a moment of need has arisen because….. well…… they are in need!

They are at Point A, needing to get to Point C and don’t have the knowledge or skill to get them there. They realise this and seek some support to assist them – simples!

But what about when you don’t realise you are at Point A, or that you need to get to Point C, or perhaps more worryingly (and dangerously) ‘think’ you have the knowledge or skills to assist you, when in actual fact the knowledge or skills are wrong or outdated…… disaster looms….

So my question is:

What ‘triggers’ (other than the individual self-detecting a ‘just in time‘ need) are there/or can we create?

Here’s an example of what I mean:

Worker X has to pass from a potentially contaminated area to a clean area.In order to do this they have to pass through a room with a monitoring device to detect any contamination.On this particular occasion Worker X receives notification that their wife has gone into labour and rushes from the potentially contaminated area straight past the monitoring machine into the clean area…..!Now imagine if there was a proximity detector in that room that detected any movement from the potentially contaminated area and immediately played a short 30 second movie on a screen above the exit door reminding Worker X (and anybody else) of the need for and process of monitoring.

Just in time performance support despite the worker forgetting/realising the need/assuming they had the skill.

Do you have any auto-triggers in your workplace to deliver performance support at the time of need?

If so, what do you use?

How do you use it?

Can you think of any auto triggers, beyond proximity detection?

Get those thinking caps on folks and let us all know via the comments box below, come on you lurkers….. you know you want to….


View the original article here

From Compliance Course To Campaign, Part 1 – The Background

There’s been a great desk of chatter recently about compliance training. Actually, maybe it’s no more than usual, perhaps I’m just sensitive to it at the moment.

Why so?

Well because since the beginning of 2013 I have been working to revamp our mandatory compliance training offering from 2 perspectives

1. Is the content technically correct (fear naught Dear Reader, I’m passing the buck on this one to the SME)

2. Is the method and media we are using the most likely to positively effect behavioural change (this is where I swing into action!)

Our current mandatory training is offered via traditional ‘click-next, self-paced’ eLearning delivered via our LMS and covers the following subjects

Data Matters

Manual Handling

Display Screen Equipment (DSE) awareness

Risk Assessment

Health & Safety (H&S) Induction

Diversity (I’m still arguing the toss as to whether Diversity training is mandatory or not and I have some interesting researched kindly surfaced by Donald Clark that suggests even if it is, that it’s not proven to effect any positive change)

Financial Crime Prevention

Privacy and Confidentiality

Treating Customers Fairly (TCF)

My plan is to adopt a campaign not course approach for each of these subjects, which (in my head) seems a logical and effective thing to do, all I have to do is convince the compliance department….

…. and you know what….

I have!!!

Keep on reading this series of posts to discover how I managed to get the SMEs/sponsors buy in, ascertain what we wanted, engaged with suppliers and (in the fullness of time) the end result!


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Monday, June 16, 2014

Podcast #19: From NVQ to ITQ…

Craig chats with Di Dawson on the subject of gaining formal accreditation for learning programmes and in particular the offering of ITQs for Social Media, Mobile Learning and Accessible IT.

Download podcast in mp3 format: From NVQ to ITQ

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Shownotes

Want to find out more? Contact Di at di@didawson.co.uk

Music Source.


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Saturday, June 7, 2014

Design Considerations for Mobile Learning

Published on October 21, 2013, 10:30 am Written by Ben Saunders

mobile evolution

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There is no escaping it, the accepted method of accessing information and experiencing the “web” is increasingly via a mobile device.

Looking at the timeline for the rise of the mobile device against the rise of the internet, shows us that we are only at the tip of the mobile device iceberg.

It’s generally agreed that the internet was initiated back in 1960 with the electronic linking of Stanford and UCLA colleges in the US by APRANET. Over time the technology improved and with that the capability of the internet along with the initiation of the first graphics based browsers emerging in the early 90’s. As such the internet has been evolving and refined over the last 50 years and that evolution has been at an exponential rate. Mobile devices are still in their infancy with the mobile web only just starting in 2007, it’s virtually impossible to imagine where the capability of these devices will be in ten years, let alone 50.

However the general agreement is the same, mobile devices are the way of the future.

What then does this mean for eLearning content?

eLearning by its nature is training and development interactions that are provided over the internet.  If the dominant method of accessing the web is to be via mobile devices, then what does the eLearning industry need to do to ensure that it keeps pace and still offer learners with the best possible training and experience.

The development of content for mobile devices is underpinned by three main areas for consideration.

The hardware that the content will be viewed on.The design of the content to fit within a limited screen size.The human element, being the physical and psychological use and perception of any content viewed on a mobile device.

The major technical factor to consider when developing content for mobile devices are the actual device(s) that will be used to view the content. The range of mobile devices currently available to view online content is very large and the operating systems for these mobile devices are in no way standardised.  What’s more, the types of interactive outputs available for standard eLearning on a PC can be limited by the devices operating system specifications, the classic example being Apple devices not running Flash Media.

This creates a large, however not insurmountable, problem. How can you guarantee that your content will work in the way intended for all of your audience?

There are a number of ways to get around this challenge. Firstly and most obviously you need to be able to test your content across the range of available mobile devices and operating systems that your audience will be using to ensure that the content plays and works correctly. If you find an interaction or media item that doesn’t work then you can make alterations before the content goes public.

Secondly you can look at using a content development tool that recognises the emergence of the mobile as a valid delivery tool and is working to align the content publishing outputs with this delivery option. For instance Articulate has built an App for iPads that allows the majority of eLearning interactions to work on an Apple device. Articulate Storyline and now also Articulate Studio 13 allows for the publishing straight to HTML5 for mobile devices.

The design of your eLearning content is the next major consideration and this is directly linked to two elements. Firstly the physical, mobile devices have a much smaller screen size than a PC and mechanics of accessing and manipulating the content on screen is very different when there is no external mouse and keyboard. Secondly the psychological, the nature of the majority of popular content available via mobile devices is creating prejudice amongst users for very small and succinct packets of information.

As a subtext to both of these design considerations is the environment in which the content is being viewed. As the major appeal of mobile devices is accessibility of content from any location, we should rightly assume that the content you are developing will be viewed from any location. More specifically the content you are developing will be viewed in a non-office environment which is fraught with distraction both on the device in the form of texts, emails, phone calls and also from the person’s surroundings such as emergency vehicle sirens, kids playing, their bus arriving.

All of the above design considerations lead us down one particular pathway. Make it quick, make it relevant.

So let’s break down these design considerations and look at what we can do to make the content work within the constraints of the device and audience perception.

1. Visual Design

The single biggest and most obvious design consideration with mobile devices is the limited screen size and also significantly the range of screen sizes between smart phones and tablets. This means that unless you have a specified device you are designing for, you need to make your design operable in the smaller smart phone screen sizes as the standard. This thinking then takes us down a particular change in the way that mobile eLearning content is designed and that is that text on screen is out and images and media are in.

You can only fit a certain amount of text on a smart phone screen before scrolling or zooming is required and both of these functions will disrupt the flow of your content and lead to distractions in your audience. Recent studies have shown that the average attention span for reading text on mobile device is no more than three short paragraphs and if you were to have multiple screens of predominantly text the attention and therefore retention of the audience would drop off extremely quickly. This is very large design shift for eLearning since the vast majority of content is still heavily reliant on text to relay information. To overcome this we need to shift our attention away from text and focus more on the audio narration of concepts, video content and relevant imagery since images can tell a thousand words.

The smaller screen size also means that any images or video media that you do use will need to dominate the screen simply to make them easily visible.

Having said this, interactions such as drag and drop and clickable items are still entirely viable in a mobile delivery however the screen size constrains do limit the number of intractable items on a single screen.

2. The Psychological Design

Beyond the pure aesthetic of the screen and the necessity to increase the usage of audio, and video  content and simple image based interactions, there a number of design considerations around the way mobile content in general is perceived and consumed by the users of these devices.

Any content made available on a mobile device is accessed and consumed at the convenience of the user. There is no set timeframe for this access and there is no control over the environment in which the content is view or engaged with. Companies who develop mobile Apps and content for mobile dissemination generally understand this and deliberately segment their content so that it is delivered in small, quickly and easily digestible chunks of information.

This concept directly fits in with the surveys conducted on mobile device users, as mentioned previously, where the active attention spans of these users when reviewing content averaged out at:

a) Less than three paragraphs of text

b) Less than 30 seconds of audio

c) Less than one minute of video

eLearning developers who are designing content for mobile devices should take these types of surveys into consideration when storyboarding their courses.

Granted the above statistics represent all types of online content viewed and in a large number of cases the content being viewed may not be immediately or socially relevant to the consumer, which would automatically reduce attention spans, eLearning design should still embrace the same principles.

Even mobile eLearning content that is job specific or career or personal development based, which should engender great willingness to view and therefore longer attention spans, is still subject to the external environmental interruptions we encounter every day.

So the design message we take from this that if we can chunk down our content into much smaller bytes of information, perhaps focusing on single scenarios, individual concepts or theoretical summaries. Then provide these smaller chucks as a suite of interrelated content items, from which the user can either cherry pick individually relevant items or view interrelated items as a series of sequenced events, then we can still deliver the learning outcomes required in a format and a manner in which mobile content users will understand and engage with.

Beyond this the chunking down of content into smaller bytes also allows us to start embracing gamification concepts such as progression, investment and cascading information streams, which we will look at in another blog.

At B Online Learning we are able to provide comprehensive training in mobile and eLearning design and delivery as well as the usage of all Articulate development products Articulate Storyline and Articulate Studio. These products have been developed with output of content  to mobile devices as one of the key features.

About Ben Saunders:
For the past 10 years Ben has been immersed in the world of learning and communication (and training and development), from planning and design to build and implementation, from both the client and vendor perspectives. His experience bridges the gaps between business expectation, technology and learning theory, importantly this allows Ben to translate and articulate business needs into defined learner outcomes. He has experience with various LMS implementations including Moodle, Docebo, Plateau, SABA, DOTS as well as bespoke solutions. Ben is an Articulate Trainer/Developer with B Online Learning.

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Friday, June 6, 2014

Is this another fine mess we’ve got ourselves into?

Laurel & Hardy

It’s probably worth me expanding upon the deliberately vague title of this blog post before I go any further.

By ‘this‘ I mean ‘mobile’ learning.

By ‘another‘ I mean as we did all those years ago in the early days of ‘e’ learning. (admittedly I have no personal experience of those days, only anecdotal examples)

By ‘we’ve‘ I mean us in the L&D community. Both within the vendor community and the client community.

So what do I mean by all this?

During a recent meeting with some colleagues, I reflected upon the conversations that I have had with potential clients over the past 6 months with regards to the use of mobile technologies. With a very small exception (probably 2-3 out of approx 60 conversations) those conversations have revolved around the creation of ‘mobile learning’, which actually translated as the “shrinking down of desktop content to allow it to be viewed and interacted with on a mobile device“.

Very little, if any mention, of creating performance support resources…

No consideration of using the devices native functions I.e. camera, keyboard, GPS, voice recorder, to enhance the experience….

A heavy focus on the learner ‘learning‘ something from it, as opposed to the worker ‘enhancing‘ their performance from it (Hell, who needs to learn the London Underground routes if you’ve got the app in your pocket?)

And this is where I think we have got it wrong again!

We have used the blanket phrase ‘m-learning’ to describe the use of mobile devices to facilitate learning. Now to *us*, we acknowledge (at least I hope you do) that this can include using the device to (amongst other things)

Consume traditional self paced click next eLearning (yes of course there is a place for this)Listen to podcastsTake pictures of things to help us remember something in the futureEngage in online dialogue conversations with othersRecord audioDetermine your proximityThe creation of User Generated Content for othersCall for help!

Of course, with some degree of thought and design the above functions can (and probably should) be incorporated into many (I may even dare to say ‘all’) learning programmes, but in my opinion (based as I said on my conversations with many people on this subject) this simply isn’t the case.

Why?

Well I think the fact that we have used the term ‘m-learning’ which is not a million miles away from the term ‘e-learning’ (which let’s be honest, most people see as being click-next, self-paced stuff) hasn’t helped matters, I think we’ve inadvertently given the impression that it’s traditional eLearning on a mobile device has a part to play in it.

I also think that the recent hysteria over some eLearning authoring products and their ‘mobile readiness’ (which translates as traditional eLearning but outputted to HTML5 or a native app) hasn’t helped matters either

“Ooooo look! I can recreate my traditional self-paced, click-next stuff to work on a mobile device – I must be creating m-learning”

Well technically I have to concede

“Yes. Yes, you are”

but I feel that unless we start to make more noise about the fact that m-learning is more than shrinking down content and actually the ‘learning‘ part of it could well be redundant, we will miss another opportunity to really harness these technologies just as I guess we have done in the past……

Image source


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Open Source LMS Landscape in 2012

I’ve been meaning to generate an up-to-date list of open source learning management systems for some time. A recent trawl of Sourceforge, Github, Google Code and Codeplex for the term ‘learning’, as well as the list published at  http://list.ly/list/1Vt-opensource-learning-management-systems-lms-elearning, resulted in nearly 100 viable projects. There may be more, of course. Many thanks to my colleague, Duncan Croucher, for his substantial help in establishing and refining this list over the past week.

The full list is at the foot of this post. We then set about refining this list against a set of criteria as follows:

Is code being committed?Are there regular stable releases?Are there support forums?Are there plugins available on the website?Are there commercial support services available?Is there developer documentation on the website?

Applying this set of filters reduces the full list down to a mere 10 LMS projects which can be considered mature, stable and sustainable. This is clearly a much more manageable and feasible list against which more detailed comparisons can be made. Those comparisons will come in a further post over the coming weeks.

Here are the shortlist of 10 and the full list of open source LMS projects. if you spot anything missing or can help improve the refinement criteria, pls let me know.

Shortlist of 10.

Update 17 August: There are an additional three projects which did not make the cut simply because they failed on one criteria: no available plug-ins on the website, which indicates that a mature developer community has become established around the project. In the case of Totara, the absence of a public code repository or public file downloads means that it potentially fails on two further criteria: evidence of recent code commits and evidence of regular releases. However, given my personal knowledge of these three projects I would include them on my own personal shortlist, but whether you would choose to do so I will leave up to you. I think it’s a case of ‘buyer beware’ in these cases and understanding the risk of failing to meet any specific shortlist criteria.

Full list of open source LMS projects as at 13 August 2012.


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I’m absolutely loving…

… the structure of the online Rapid eLearning Design programme that I have been undertaking for the past week.

The ReD programme is the brain-child of @RobHubbard from LearningAge solutions who has cleverly set the premise of the programme around each of the delegates being ‘Junior Operatives’ in the fictitious Ministry of Instructional Design, but hey! Rob can do a much better job of explaining the premise in this video here.

As I’m only a week into it it is a little difficult to offer any in-depth feedback, however what already deserves recognition is the way in which the programme is structured. Rob has done a great job of blending:

Social LearningRapid eLearningImmersive Learning EnvironmentsSelf-directed learningMind-mapsOnline assessmentsPeer-reviewsWebinarsand Blogs

and we’ve only just finished Week 1!

Whilst the above list may seem a hell of a lot to be participating in in a week, the real credit to the programme is the way in which it ‘just works’ from the learners perspective.

There were a few interactions within the induction game, that caused me to raise an eyebrow as the responses that the characters provided did not neccesarily fit with what I considered to be a holistic approach to elearning; this was echoed by other members in the Ning site that acts as the social-learning element of the programme (we are thinking that the responses were deliberate, in order to spark debate) – I’ll be checking this with Rob tomorrow during the Week 2 webinar.

There were 2 ‘assignments’ to undertake this week. One centred around the use of images in elearning (my submision is actually the header at the top of this Blog site!) and the other was around the use of audio in elearning. That submission can be heard below.

H2 HANDY RECORDER

Audio intro/outro source.


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