NYNP blog post 8-5-10

E-learning for change
Changing learners’ perspectives can change their behaviors


Last week, respected e-learning provider Allen Interactions offered a free lunchtime webinar series featuring Ethan Edwards, their Chief Instructional Strategist and author of the free ebook Creating e-Learning that Makes a Difference. He was assisted by Carrie Zens.


Each of the four days covered one of the elements of their CCAF (Context, Challenge, Activity, Feedback) design model for creating e-learning that actively engages people’s minds in order to change their behavior in a meaningful way.  Edwards pointed out that engaging people’s minds is different from simply testing whether they can regurgitate facts.  He said that whereas many e-learning programs claim to be interactive because they include tests, genuine interactivity gets learners thinking and teaches them in such a way that they change their point of view.


I attended one of Edwards’ excellent Allen Interactions ASTD e-learning instructional design workshops years ago, so I know he’s an expert presenter and I was excited to attend the series.  The key points from each day are below.  


Context
An inviting and realistic context for e-learning helps people understand the point of what they they are learning and motivates them to engage with the e-learning.  It sets the stage for success by creating a relevant experience that is obviously worth the learner’s time and attention.


Rules of thumb - good context should:
1) be immediately obvious as soon as the learner opens the e-learning
2) relate to the audience’s needs
3) create concrete experiences
4) suggest a real-world performance environment
5) be helpful as a reference point for what the participants are learning
6) be visually appealing


Challenge
Edwards pointed out that a good challenge needs to tie in with the learner’s motivation, which is usually not the same as the company’s or the e-learning designer’s motivations;  this direct appeal to the learner’s motivation can counteract complacency on the part of learners by getting them to care about the e-learning.  Possible learner motivations include interest, success, curiosity, reward, or just plain completing the task.  On the other hand, learners are usually not motivated by tests, so unless a test is absolutely required, the learners’ performance can be evaluated by providing a challenge that requires the skills and knowledge taught by the e-learning.  


Rules of thumb - a good challenge should:
1) be clear
2) increase in difficulty as the learner’s skills improve
3) relate to the learner’s motivation
4) offer a meaningful risk of failure


Activity
Edwards shared that the most common activity in e-learning is reading or listening, neither of which are particularly engaging activities.  In addition, there is no real way to tell if these are even being done by the learner or not.  With reading and listening, any learning that happens is basically a matter of chance.  Reading and listening are commonly followed by an assessment, which only shows whether a learner can recall the right answer.  


A good activity, however, helps the learners recognize the right answer by applying what they’ve learned.  It simulates key real-world activities, which makes it much more likely that genuine learning will actually occur.  


Rules of thumb - a good activity should:
1) create physical involvement
2) build commitment to learning
3) encourage investment
4) transfer ownership of the learning from the e-learning designer to the learner
5) involve all of the senses because the story behind the activity is is so fully fleshed out


Feedback
Feedback is a motivating opportunity to teach learners, as they will naturally be interested in learning about why their decisions during an activity were correct or incorrect.  When e-learning is designed well, the context peaks the learners’ interest, the challenge and activity let them apply it, and the specific feedback deepens their understanding and lets them monitor their own learning.  When e-learning is designed poorly, it dumps all of the information on the learners at once, asks them to regurgitate it during a test, and then punishes them if they don’t remember everything, without telling them what was wrong or why.  


Rules of thumb - good feedback should:
1) clearly communicate correctness
2) preserve the learner’s response for reference
3) deliver new content, as learners will be much more interested in content at the point of feedback
4) demonstrate the consequences of non-performance
5) continually reinforce the context
6) delay judgement, to allow the learners time to figure something out for themselves
7) be compelling to the learner
8) require correct performance

NYNP blog post 4-30-10

Article: Using E-learning to Train Youth Workers

The latest issue of the journal Afterschool Matters is available online today at http://www.niost.org/content/view/1645/297/. This issue is a special one with a focus on professional development, and Zora Jones Rizzi, Amita Desai Parikh, and I have an article in it called "Using E-learning to Train Youth Workers: The BELL Experience." Afterschool Matters is a peer-reviewed journal published by the National Institute on Out-of-School Time at the Wellsley Centers for Women, with support from the Robert Bowne Foundation.

In collaborating on the article, I was grateful to have the opportunity to talk with Managing Editor Georgia Hall, who offered insightful direction, and work with Editor Jan Gallagher, who provided skillful editing and guidance.

The article's downloadable at http://www.niost.org/pdf/afterschoolmatters/ASM_Spring2010.pdf, and here's the abstract: "BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life) cut training costs by two-thirds and improved outcomes for students in its summer program by developing e-learning modules for program staff and managers." Hall's Welcome from the Editor says, "Marquart, Rizzi, and Parikh, in 'Using E-learning to Train Youth Workers,' offer an effective model for overcoming familiar challenges to staff training such as limited resources, staff turnover, and multi-site programs. BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life) has successfully implemented blended online and in-person training to train its summer program staff."

NYNP blog post 12-2-09

Comparing three websites for free educational videos
There are so many websites with free instructional videos that I thought it would be useful to compare three that trainers may be able to use. (See my prior post "Resources for free university-quality educational materials" for some additional websites with free videos.) The sites below are well regarded, with many thousands of users, but each one is quite different from the other two.

Academic Earth (academicearth.org)
Academic Earth currently offers video courses from UC Berkeley, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA, and Yale. The videos range in length from one minute clips of speeches to entire courses with twenty or more separate video lectures. The website's goal is to provide everyone on earth a user-friendly, one-stop location for accessing a world-class education. Videos feature leading academic scholars and can be explored by topic, school, instructor, thematic collections called "playlists," or by doing a search. The website's design is secondary to its function, so it's organized in a straightforward and intuitive way. Videos are not extremely high quality, but they have a professional feel.

TED: Ideas worth spreading (ted.com)
TED, which started out as a conference that brought together Technology, Entertainment, and Design, offers "riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world." It has grown to include the topics of Business, Science, and Global Issues. Because of its origins, the website's design is much more sleek and cutting-edge than the other two sites. For example, while the videos can be explored by topic or by doing a search, they can also be explored by "newest," "most emailed this week," "most comments this week," "most favorited all-time," or by the following ratings: jaw-dropping, persuasive, courageous, ingenious, fascinating, inspiring, beautiful, funny, and informative. Most videos are longer than the average video online, starting around 15 minutes, as the talks, presentations, demonstrations, and performances go in-depth. The speakers include thought leaders and celebrities.

Teacher Tube (teachertube.com)
As you might guess, Teacher Tube appeals to a specific audience of educators. The website's goal is "to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos." Like YouTube, videos are contributed by members, and membership is free and open to anyone. Thus, the videos are not professionally filmed or edited, but rather homemade. They include videos of people talking directly into the camera, animated PowerPoint presentations, animations, staged skits, and even singing and dancing. The videos can be explored by doing a keyword search, or by categories that reflect the primary goal of creating a community: featured, recently added, most viewed, top rated, most discussed, most favorite, most linked, and most responded.

NYNP blog post 1-27-10

Does anyone agree on what counts as e-learning?
Allison Rossett is taking a look

Yesterday I attended a Training Magazine webinar featuring Allison Rossett on the topic "Elearning Is Not What You Think It Is." I've been a fan of Rossett since I got to see her speak this summer at the International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace and The eLearning Guild's Instructional Design Symposium (see my blog posts from 6.10.09 and 8.3.09 for details), and she was excellent once again.

Rossett is a professor at San Diego State University, and she and one of her colleagues, Jim Marshall, recently conducted a study on today's definitions of e-learning, today's e-learning practices, current aspirations for e-learning in the future, and organizational barriers to e-learning. In yesterday's webinar, Rossett shared some of their study's findings.

It was interesting to learn that amongst the almost 1,000 respondents, the top five e-learning practices today are:
1) Our programs include tests of skills and knowledge
2) We use computers as part of classroom instruction
3) Our programs present content and opportunities to practice and receive feedback. Employees work on these tutorials at a time of their own choosing.
4) Our programs use visuals with an audio track. Employees watch and listen at a time of their choosing.
5) Our programs are based on realistic scenarios which press employees to make choices and learn from the results of those choices.

The least selected response was "Our programs are delivered on mobile devices."

If you'd like to see the recording of the webinar, it's archived on Training Magazine's network at

http://www.trainingmagnetwork.com/topics/show/893 or http://bit.ly/arossettrecording.

If you'd like to participate in the study, Rossett and Marshall are still collecting data, and the SurveyMonkey link is available at
http://tinyurl.com/elearningpractice.

NYNP blog post 11-23-09

Six ideas for e-learning design

Last Friday, I attended a workshop titled "Strategies for Delivering Effective eLearning in Trying Times," hosted by e-learning company Kineo. I had worked with Kineo's UK partnership when I was at BELL, and they recently launched Kineo's US arm. It was a pleasure to see Kineo Partner Mark Harrison again, as well as meet US CEO Steve Lowenthal and US VP of Learning Design Cammy Bean.

As part of the workshop, Kineo demo-ed many of their e-learning designs, which can be seen on their website, kineo.com. It was interesting to see samples of their work, as well as several diverse ways the open source learning management system Moodle can be customized.

Here are six ideas from the workshop that you might find useful, especially if you work at a nonprofit that's short on time or resources:

1. Speed, rather than excellence, is the new wow factor. The difference between excellent and ok design is sometimes just not that big a deal anymore, but the difference between taking weeks to meet a project's goals versus taking months is truly impressive.

2. Use a fuzzy graphic to keep reviewers from ruining a project. Cammy shared a time-tested designer's trick for solving the problem of having too many reviewers who all want to put their mark on a project even when it's to the detriment of the project - intentionally include a fuzzy graphic. If you include a flaw like a fuzzy graphic, the reviewers can point it out and thereby feel like they've made a contribution (and hopefully leave the rest of the design alone).

3. You'd have to be bonkers to pay for an expensive LMS. With open source LMS options like Moodle, which are easy to use and highly customizable, there's no reason to pay for an expensive LMS. Mark shared that not only is Moodle widely used by corporations (this is backed up by a recent study by The eLearning Guild), but it's also used by the US military because the military finds it more secure to control their LMS themselves, rather than relying on a proprietary LMS.

4. Design e-learning like a magazine. Rather than forcing all learners into a linear experience, design e-learning that can be explored the way that readers explore magazines. Allow for browsing, provide a menu, and create an attractive look and feel that encourages voluntary exploration.

5. Have consultants hand off e-learning that's not finished. Some Kineo clients have found that they prefer to do the last-minute changes themselves, so Kineo has handed off e-learning that's almost finished, but not quite. The company creates e-learning that's easy for clients to edit themselves, which lets clients change their minds about the final wording as many times as they like because they control the content themselves.

6. Get the bloat out of the design process. Skip the 30-page design document, and go right to the mock-up. Better yet, start creating concrete designs during a meeting rather than merely talking about hypothetical designs, so that everyone's on the same page.

NYNP blog post 11-6-09

The latest issue of the International Journal of Advanced Corporate Learning (iJAC) is out today at http://www.i-jac.org. Zora Jones Rizzi and I have an article in this issue, titled "Case Study of BELL E-learning: Award-Winning, Interactive E-learning on a Nonprofit Budget."

The article's downloadable at http://online-journals.org/i-jac/article/view/975, and here's the abstract: "BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life) is a nonprofit organization offering academic tutoring to elementary school children from low-income, urban communities. BELL launched a blended learning training for the tutoring staff working in its summer program in 2008, and won Training Magazine’s Blended Learning and Performance Project of the Year. The e-learning from that blended learning training is discussed in this paper."

NYNP blog post 9-10-09

Waking up learning content: Patti Shank's tips
Notes from the opening session of The eLearning Guild's online forum on Instructional Design

The eLearning Guild's online forum on Best Practices in e-Learning Instructional Design and Management opened today with a session by Patti Shank, President of Learning Peaks, titled "Boredom-proofing Learning Content: Tips for Making Learning Content Compelling."

Shank presented a useful (and not boring) session, offering five overarching design techniques for keeping learners engaged:

1. Focus on making a great first impression. If learning content doesn't look interesting from the first moment, the learner will be inclined to believe that it's boring before they even get started and will begin to tune out immediately. Just as first impressions are important in life, they are important in learning.

2. Design the content so that it gets noticed. People are wired to notice content that is vivid, unusual, unexpected, or emotionally charged, so learning content should include these characteristics.

3. Promote your learners' curiosity. An easy way to do this is to ask questions or be provocative.

4. Reduce the amount of telling. Make the learning meaningful by challenging learners to analyze, compare, practice, and otherwise think for themselves.

5. Use humor.

For more info about the forum, you can go here: http://bit.ly/mEnNV.

NYNP blog post 9-3-09

Upcoming online forum hosted by The eLearning Guild
Best Practices in e-Learning Instructional Design and Management

For folks interested in learning more about e-learning, The eLearning Guild is presenting an online forum next Thursday and Friday focused on design and management. Zora Rizzi and I will be presenting one of the sessions, on Friday, September 11 from 1:15pm to 2:30pm; our session is called "Blended & Interactive Design on a Limited Budget."

Here's some info about the forum from The eLearning Guild website:
"This Online Forum focuses on best practices and strategies for e-Learning instructional design, and the management of your ID teams and processes. We have asked the top ranked speakers who presented sessions at our two recent Regional Instructional Design Symposiums to present their sessions again for this Online Forum. To facilitate your planning, we have organized the sessions into two “tracks,” one focused on strategies for managing teams and processes, and the other on practical and proven ID approaches."

Forum info is available at http://bit.ly/mEnNV

***

The recording and materials for our session today are available at http://tinyurl.com/n976km

NYNP blog post 9-2-09

Notes from Day 2 of The eLearning Guild's New England Regional Instructional Design Symposium

Designing Learning for the “Moment of Need”
Bob Mosher, LearningGuide Solutions USA

Mosher talked about creating a "holistic learning ecosystem" that helps people at each moment of need for learning. He suggested that there are five such moments of need: 1) the first time we learn something, 2) when we want to learn more, 3) when we try to remember or apply learning, 4) when things change, and 5) when something goes wrong. As trainers, we need to create support for staff that's appropriate for each stage, and Mosher suggested that e-learning can be useful for the first two types of moments, whereas just-in-time performance supports are more useful for the last three.

The learning ecosystem needs to include guidance for learners on what to access and when, because Mosher noted that research shows that 80% of adults make poor choices when given choices in their learning -- we tend to choose based on what's shortest, shiniest, etc., rather than on what will actually help us perform.

E-Learning on the Cheap! Finding Resources for Free (or Virtually Free)
Steven Yacovelli, TopDog Learning Group, LLC

Yacovelli made the point that e-learning doesn't need to be expensive to be good, as long as it's designed well. As he said, "cheap does not equal low quality." Without necessarily endorsing any products, he and the group shared many free resources, including Audacity and Wavepad for creating audio recordings, Moodle and Sakai for managing e-learning content much like an LMS, Udutu for building SCORM objects online, Wink or Camstudio for doing video screen captures, Guttenberg Press for books that are out of print, Stockvault for graphics, Comicpics or Toondoo for creating comics, and Drupal or Joomla for web authoring.

He also said that his company has a paper measurement that can help benchmark attitudes about e-learning before a project begins, which can be used to measure the project's success -- and they will share the measurement for free if the user agrees to share the data collected.

Blended and Interactive Design on a Nonprofit Budget
Matthea Marquart & Zora Rizzi, BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life)

Day 2 of the symposium was the day when Zora and I led a session, which provided lessons learned from BELL's e-learning project. It was a delight to present our project to e-learning professionals, and it was a thrill to receive positive feedback. If you're interested in checking out some of what we shared, our handouts are available at http://www.elearningguild.com/showFile.cfm?id=3495

Closing General Session – Panel
Panelists: Lee Maxey, MINDMAX, Inc.
Bob Mosher, LearningGuide Solutions
Marc Rosenberg, Marc Rosenberg and Associates
Allison Rossett, Department of Educational Technology, San Diego State University
Will Thalheimer, Work-Learning Research
Ellen Wagner, Sage Road Solutions, LLC
Moderator: Heidi Fisk, The eLearning Guild

Here are some highlights of the panel's responses to questions from symposium participants.

In response to the question of the top three things a new e-learning manager should do, Will Thalheimer said that the new manager should prioritize evaluation, learn to be a good leader of many different types of people, and maintain a sense of humor; Lee Maxey said that the new manager should read The First 90 Days, determine success measures, and get a coach that will help the manager be accountable.

In response to the question of what organizations should consider when selecting an LMS or CMS (learning management system or content management system), Marc Rosenberg said that the LMS doesn't really matter because well designed, relevant e-learning content is the key and LMS's can become a roadblock when they control what type of e-learning is produced in order to fit the LMS's limited capabilities; Lee Maxey said that it's not important to have a perfect LMS because there are many web-enabled services you can tack on as long as you get an LMS with 80% of what you need; Will Thalheimer cautioned that having an overly fancy LMS can send the message that training is separate from work if the training becomes more about the LMS than the job.

In response to the question of what kind of interactivity multiple generations need, Allison Rossett said that everyone needs interaction, so we should assume that certain generations don't need to be engaged; Will Thalheimer noted e-learning should engage people to the point that they stop multi-tasking, because research has clearly demonstrated that multitasking doesn't work and that what happens is that people jump from one task to another without focusing on anything and therefore do everything worse.

In response to what books e-learning professionals should read, the panel recommended Ruth Clark on design and e-learning, Jackie Fenn on managing the technology hype cycle, John Kotter on leading change, and Chip & Dan Heath on making ideas stick.

NYNP blog post 8-3-09

Notes from Day 1 of The eLearning Guild's New England Regional Instructional Design Symposium
Event info at http://www.elearningguild.com/content.cfm?selection=doc.1222

The eLearning Guild's Instructional Design Symposium on July 23 and 24 was excellent, and the highlights from my favorite sessions from Day 1 are below.

Mastering e-Learning Instructional Design in the 21st Century
With Brent Schlenker, The eLearning Guild

Schlenker gave a fantastic keynote address. One good quote was "clicking buttons in an elevator is not interactive, but we're told that clicking the 'next' button in an e-learning is." He pushed participants to do better with interactivity, and he suggested that at this point in technological advances, e-learning content should be searchable, editable, linkable, tagg-able, and feed-able. Another good quote was one he referenced by Plato: "You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than you can from a lifetime of conversation." He tied this to Ralph Koster's book A Theory of Fun for Game Design, which posits that with games, learning is the drug -- he suggested that e-learning should be designed to be just as effective at teaching as games.

He also referenced John Medina's book Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School and pushed participants to remember that brains need repetition, stimulation of the senses, and exploration of patterns in order to learn, so we need to build these into e-learning.

Beyond Kirkpatrick: Taking a Fresh Look at Analysis and Evaluation
Allison Rossett, San Diego State University

Rossett pushed participants to incorporate evidence into our e-learning practice -- both anecdotal evidence and metrics. She said that the data we collect in order to evaluate our e-learning should serve three broad purposes -- to plan, to report, and to improve.

Rossett quoted Abraham Lincoln -- "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax" -- to make the point that e-learning professionals should spend the majority of our time on analysis and evaluation. Her tips to make this feasible included baking in the metrics so that the e-learning is being evaluated throughout rather than just at the end, focusing only on gathering data that's actionable, and prioritizing the purposes of any project so that even with limited time and resources the project can be successful. To quote Rossett, "You can only judge success when you and those you serve have agreed on purposes."

Situation-based Learning Design: Research Insights for e-Learning
Will Thalheimer, Work-Learning Research

To increase long-term memory of what's learned in e-learning, Thalheimer said that e-learning content must be aligned with context, must include practice retrieving information from one's memory, and should be repeated over time. Situation-based learning design focuses on the first two. Content-context alignment can be achieved by matching the e-learning with the workplace in as many ways as possible, including background and incident, as well as look, feel, sounds, mood, space, etc. When designers cannot create a match, the next best strategy is to create many contexts, which also aids in memory retrieval. Regarding practice, research shows that even tests are helpful, especially if they include feedback.

When designing situation-based learning rather than topic-based learning, Thalheimer recommended considering the magic question -- "What do we want our learners to be able to do, and in what situations do we want our learners to do these things?" The answers to that question should guide designers in creating relevant e-learning. To do this, Thalheimer discussed the SEDA conceptualizati on of how people approach situations -- Situation, Evaluation, Decision, Action -- and noted that situation-based learning should include all of these phases.

NYNP blog post 7-29-09

Free webinar with a case study of a Moodle-based e-learning

Tomorrow, Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 1:00pm EST, my colleague Zora Rizzi and I will be co-facilitating a free webinar for InSync Training (for information about the company, please see my prior post "Free resource for learning how to conduct training online").

The webinar is called "Turning Classroom Training into Interactive, Cost-Effective, Asynchronous E-learning on a Moodle Platform," and here is the session description from the website:

Are you wondering how other organizations are designing cost-effective, interactive e-learning on Moodle? Do you need to cut training costs by converting classroom training into e-learning? Would you like to see some examples that spark your own ideas? BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life) launched a new self-paced, asynchronous e-learning program in 2008 that cut our classroom training in half by replacing much of it with prerequisite e-learning modules. BELL’s e-learning sits on a Moodle platform, and much of the e-learning creation is done in-house. Zora Jones Rizzi and Matthea Marquart of BELL’s Training team will share the project’s challenges, solutions, results, and lessons learned. Many of the challenges that BELL faced in designing and launching our e-learning are universal, and learning about them may help you with your own work.

Registration is free if you'd like to attend, and a free recording will also be available afterwards. Here's the website to register:
https://insync.webex.com/tc0500l/trainingcenter/register/registerSession.do
or http://tinyurl.com/nboeev

***

To view the archive:
1. Navigate to https://insync.webex.com
2. Click on "Recorded sessions”
3. Locate “Turning Classroom Training into Interactive, Cost-Effective, Asynchronous E-learning on a Moodle Platform-July 30th ”
4. There is no password required
5. Click the Playback button to the right of the title

NYNP blog post 6-10-09

Notes from Day 1 of the International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace

Today's keynote address was given by Dr. Allison Rossett of San Diego State University and was titled "E-learning is What?" Rossett shared her thoughts about good e-learning design and the future of e-learning, and I thought you'd be interested in three of her quotes:

"Consider designing training that's just-in-time, not just-in-case."
Rossett suggested that training shouldn't include every possible piece of information that learners might possibly need, but rather provide information that learners will use. One way to move overly detailed information out of training is to create performance supports that provide information right when staff members need it. An example of this concept is the Coast Guard, which used to train their staff on every single type of boat and what to do when each type of boat was encountered, even when it was likely that staff would only encounter certain boats once in their careers, if ever; they replaced much of that training by creating palm pilot devices where staff can look up boats as needed on the job.

"Training should move material to the mind, heart, and belly."
Rossett pointed out that the best training changes the brain so that the brain has new knowledge to access and use, while at the same time convincing people's emotions and guts to actually use that new knowledge.

"Trainers need to be fluent with technology, but skeptical."
Rossett said that trainers need to keep up with new technology, but also look at it with a critical eye rather than jumping to use every new type of technology that comes out. We should remember that training needs to be effective, rather than just flashy.

Another highlight
Another highlight of the day was Hal Christensen's session on electronic performance supports, in which he demonstrated two examples of just-in-time supports and passionately argued that if training provides information that learners may never use or will use so long after the training that they're likely to forget it, that particular training doesn't have much value. His top quote was "aim to change the performance, not the performer," meaning that organizations should aim to make the workplace smarter by making it easier for people to do their jobs well. He argued that performance supports are a key way to do that.

NYNP blog post 6-11-09

Notes from Day 2 of the International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace

For those who couldn't make it to the conference, I thought you'd be interested in notes on my three favorite sessions of the day.

Using technology to transform teaching vs. to extend teaching
Anders I. Morch of the University of Oslo, Norway presented "Teacher Perspectives on Learning with Mobile Technologies," which compared the results of introducing PDAs for students into classrooms in two different schools. At one school, the teachers used the PDAs for traditional activities such as having students type lists of vocabulary words. This was an example of extending traditional teaching practices onto new technology. At the other school, the teachers transformed their teaching by using the PDAs to have students create concept maps, animations, and visualizations of learning. Morch suggested that e-learning practitioners consider whether we are using technology to transform the way we train, or just extending old methods onto new technology without considering the possibilities.

Video-based role-plays
Patrick Blum of inside Business Group, Germany presented "Interactive, Dynamic Video-Based Training in Corporate Learning," in which he demonstrated video-based branching scenarios, or conversation trees, that offered realistic skills practice. The video-based e-learning simulated a conversation between a customer and the learner, with video of a customer talking and reacting to decisions made by the learner. It was used to replace live role-plays during classroom training, and offers a solution to organizations that would like to give staff the opportunity to practice live conversations, with standardized step-by-step feedback, without deploying a legion of classroom trainers.

Turning factual knowledge into practical, applicable training that prepares students for the real world
Tucker Harding of Columbia University's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning presented "Intelligent Simulation Technology for Training Humanitarian Practitioners," in which he demonstrated a case study/simulation hybrid in which learners make political decisions about a theoretical Country X. The demonstration was created to help students apply classroom learning to realistic situations, and he noted that the Center's website at http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu offers access to their project portfolio, where you can see how they've used technology in purposeful ways on 200 projects in order to improve education.

Today was also the day that Zora and I did our presentation, which was a lot of fun. We were excited to show BELL's e-learning to experts in the field, and it was interesting to hear the questions and feedback from the e-learning community.

NYNP blog post 6-3-09

Demonstration of a nonprofit's e-learning (online training)
ICELW workshop demonstrating BELL's e-learning

Next Thursday, June 11, I'll be co-presenting the workshop "Demonstrating the E-learning Component of Training Magazine’s Blended Learning & Performance Project of the Year" at the International Conference on E-Learning in the Workplace, with Zora Jones Rizzi, BELL's National E-learning Specialist. Our workshop will be from 5:00-6:00 p.m, and I'll also be chairing session 6D on Friday from 2:00-4:30 p.m.

The conference will be held at Teacher's College, Columbia University, and will feature speakers from 27 countries, including both researchers who focus on online learning and practitioners who implement e-learning at their organizations. One of the key goals mentioned on the conference website - www.icelw.org - is "to improve online learning so that it makes a measurable difference in workplace performance and morale."

There's still time to register, and if you're planning on being there, I hope you'll say hi!

NYNP blog post 5-29-09

Resources for free university-quality educational materials
Trainers can use emerging web-based resources to create cost-effective, high quality training

For those of us looking for free ways to professionally develop our organizations' staff, it may be worthwhile to access free video, audio, lecture notes, lab demonstrations, and exams from university classes and events.

YouTube Edu
YouTube Edu, available at www.youtube.com/edu, offers videos and channels from their college and university partners. Examples of these partners include Columbia Business School and Harvard's Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership, and trainers could use video from either of these partners as a training tool to develop staff's business and leadership skills.

iTunes U
iTunes U offers over 75,000 recordings of commencement speeches, lectures, classes, lab demonstrations, and more, accessible through the iTunes store. Colleges and universities such as Stanford, Oxford, and Emory have set up sites, as have museums, PBS stations, and other educational organizations such as the NY Public Library. Trainers could use the podcasts available here as prerequisite assignments to prepare staff for particular workshops, to deepen staff's expertise on subjects relevant to the organization's mission, or to provoke thoughtful and informed discussion.

Individual Universities
Other universities have chosen to create their own websites with free resources; UC Berkeley and MIT are prominent examples. UC Berkeley's http://webcast.berkeley.edu/ offers video and audio podcasts from a wide variety of lectures and events, and MIT's Open Courseware at http://ocw.mit.edu offers free lecture notes, class materials, exams, and videos from 1,900 courses, with no registration required. For example, MIT's Sloan School of Management offers class materials for both undergraduate and graduate-level course, and trainers could use the wealth of case studies, assignments, self-evaluation s, and more to create workshop activities with the credibility of coming from a world class business school.

NYNP blog post 5-22-09

Dealing with emotional requests for help from the training team
A tool to examine problems, identify manager expectations, and consider issues

Jane Bozarth of www.bozarthzone.com facilitated another free lunchtime webinar today, titled "BozarthZone! Instructional Design for the Real World," with technical assistance from Kassy LaBorie of www.insynctraining.com. (See my prior blog post "Free resource for learning how to conduct training online" for info about these webinars.)

Bozarth offered practical tips for training design, and one lesson in particular stood out -- the fact that coworkers sometimes come to trainers with intense emotions like anger, frustration, desperation, avoidance, or hope. We hear "everyone needs training on X right away," "things would be so much better if everyone just knew how to X," or "please help me get my staff to X because I've tried everything and they just won't do it."

In order to deal with an emotional request for help, trainers need to respond with a systematic analysis of the problem and how to solve it. We need to listen, ask good questions, identify the actual business challenge underneath any emotional complaints, and help ease our coworkers' emotions by finding effective solutions to the challenge even when the appropriate solution is not training.

Bozarth suggested using a tool to help with this systematic analysis -- a list of "Twenty Questions You Should Always Ask Before Starting Any Training Program," created by Dr. Nanette Miner. Bozarth included the tool in her latest book From Analysis to Evaluation: Ready-to-Use Tools to Make Training More Effective, and it's downloadable as two of the pages here: http://tinyurl.com/qhgj73.

NYNP blog post 5-11-09

An experiment in live online training

On Wednesday, May 20, from 11 - 11:50 a.m. EST, I'll be co-facilitating a live virtual workshop session as part of an online training hosted by the National Center for Summer Learning, which is based at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. BELL Senior Site Manager Ameenah Reed and I will facilitate "The Buzz on Behavior: Positive & Practical Behavior Management Strategies for Summer Programs."

This daylong online training is a first for the National Center for Summer Learning, and it's exciting to be a part of it. The online conferencing platform used will be Adobe Connect, and there is room for up to 200 participants, who will interact via chat, polls, and emoticons. This is a new format for me, as I'm more accustomed to using WebEx Training Center for groups of up to 40 people, who interact in various ways. I look forward to letting you know how it goes.

If you're interested in trying out a virtual training like this one, registration includes a full-day online training for summer program staff, as well as one year's access to a recording of the training. Information is available here:
http://www.summerlearning.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=241&Itemid=750, and this smaller url will take you to the same website: http://tinyurl.com/dnyj43.

NYNP blog post 4-28-09

E-learning training that matters

"It doesn't matter what people know -- it matters what they do and say."

Last week I attended a free lunchtime webinar hosted by Chief Learning Officer magazine (www.clomedia.com). The presenters were from respected e-learning provider Allen Interactions: Scott Colehour, solutions architect and co-founder, and R. John Welsh, Jr., vice president.

The webinar was called "Performance Learning Filter: Are Your Learning Designs Increasing Organizational Performance?"

Performance-based E-learning
Colehour and Welsh presented a filter for evaluating e-learning design that they called CCAF -- Context, Challenge, Activity, Feedback. Context refers to the framework for the e-learning, which should be relevant to the learner's workplace and job; challenge refers to a stimulus to take action within the given context; activity refers to the action taken to solve the challenge; and feedback refers to letting the learner know when they make mistakes and when they are correct.

When an e-learning incorporates all the elements of CCAF, it moves past simply making the learners aware of information, to actually changing their behavior. This is key, as the presenters' statement at the beginning of this post suggests.

The bottom line: e-learning that simply makes staff aware of information doesn't necessarily translate into improved service for our clients. To make a difference, we need to create e-learning that changes employee performance by helping them master the skills that will help them improve our clients' lives.

See for Yourself
If you'd like to see the webinar for yourself, the free recording and powerpoints are available at the links below. (Note: sometimes the blogging software adds spaces, so if you try the link and it doesn't work, just delete any extra spaces.)
* Recording: http://www.webex.com/web-seminars/view_recording/660672486?sid=CLO042309rec
* PowerPoints: http://try.webex.com/meet/pdfs/CLO_042409.pdf

NYNP blog post 4-14-09

Case study of summer academic program design & staff training
CSL conference workshop on BELL's Summer '08 program and training in Springfield

This Friday, April 17, I'll be co-presenting the workshop "The Transition Summer: BELL/Springfield Public Schools Rising 9th Grades Staff Training And Program Design" at the National Conference on Summer Learning in Chicago, with BELL's Chief Strategy Officer Carole Prest. The workshop will be from 2:30-4:00pm.

During the interactive workshop, we'll share lessons learned from building a new summer learning program for 8th grade students at risk for repeating the grade, including processes and outcomes. I'll also discuss BELL's training and demo BELL's e-learning, which won Training Magazine's Blended Learning and Performance Project of the Year for 2008.

This conference is hosted annually by the National Center for Summer Learning, which is based at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. If you're planning on being there, I hope you'll attend our workshop and say hi!

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If you're interested in taking a look at the presentation from our workshop, the slides have been posted on the National Center for Summer Learning's website, at http://www.summerlearning.org/conference/2009/resources/TheTransitionSu mmerBELL.pdf or http://tinyurl.com/lynqmn

NYNP blog post 4-7-09

Free resources for creating training games

Today I attended another excellent, free lunchtime webinar hosted by InSync Training (see my prior blog post "Free resource for learning how to conduct training online" for info about these webinars). The co-facilitators were Jane Bozarth of www.bozarthzone.com and Kassy LaBorie of www.insynctraining.com, and the guest presenter was Wendy Hardman of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

The webinar was titled "BozarthZone! Games Synchronous Trainers Play with Kassy LaBorie". The facilitators argued that games are essential elements of webinar training because they break the ice, engage participants, help people think, support the transfer of learning, make the training memorable, and let the facilitators check the learners' comprehension. They shared the quote "games = seductive tests" (William Horton). They warn, however, that any games used in training must connect to the content and have a point -- random games or filler games just waste participants' time and frustrate them.

The facilitators and participants shared a few free resources for creating games and puzzles, which you might find useful in this age of doing more with less:
http://www.edhelper.com/puzzles.htm
http://itech.pjc.edu/html/powerpoint_resources.htm
http://www.quia.com/web (free with a 30-day trial, but /year after that)
http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/ (there is a CD-ROM for sale here, but you can also create puzzles for free online)