» Here’s Why Unlocking Your Course Navigation Will Create Better Learning The Rapid eLearning Blog

» Here’s Why Unlocking Your Course Navigation Will Create Better Learning The Rapid eLearning Blog:

Most of our corporate compliance training rules are very loosely defined and vague - on purpose, giving us room for interpretation and implementation. A simple example is rules about HIPAA and data security/passwords. Ask 50 different hospitals what that means and how they implement it, and you’ll get 50 different answers.

Does this type of training have to be as boring and wasteful (of time) as it currently is in most organizations? NO! We can do better. One simple method is to allow your users to “test out” of the courses.

We are required to have annual “training” on certain core topics for compliance reasons. We allow users to go straight to the test. If they pass, there’s no need to force them to view the course at all. We are working on re-doing the course navigation to allow users to go to the sections where they are weak (I hope to automate this process).

One reason trainers and educators get a bad rap is that we waste people’s time - a lot! (Think about your most boring college professor who loved to lecture on and on about something you cared nothing for, but you were required to take the course! He probably felt very powerful preaching to his captive audience. Remember how you wanted to skip that class each week?)

We do it because it meets our need for power. “You absolutely MUST view every single slide and read every single paragraph and diagram, because I say so and ‘the law requires it.’”

Yeah right! We use that as an excuse to meet our own power agenda. If we align ourselves with the organization’s business goals we will see that many of our courses can become much more “Lean” (ever heard of Lean Management?) - including our statutory or compliance courses!

» The 3 Essential Questions Every Learner Wants Answered The Rapid eLearning Blog

» The 3 Essential Questions Every Learner Wants Answered The Rapid eLearning Blog

Another great blog from Tom Kuhlman at Articulate. My comments are quoted here:

... I almost always start with question #3: how will I prove what I know? This was one of the important points taught to me during my BS.Ed. courses on creating Evaluations and Assessments. It’s a Covey-ism “begin with the end in mind.” My dad called it “thinking like an engineer.” Bottom line: start with how you will assess the learning, then work backwards from there to design learning objectives which will allow the student to pass the assessment. Its a simple concept that can accommodate very complex learning situations.

Of course, good instructional design really doesn’t start with the assessment. It starts much earlier defining learning goals and aligning them with business goals, etc. But, assuming those are done and out of the way… when the rubber meets the road - you start with the assessment. Then you create multiple learning activities designed to help the student pass the assessment. This is, in a nutshell: Mastery Learning.

For corporate elearning, it's all about Mastery Learning, right? When would it not be about Mastery Learning? The only time I can think of is when one must comply with some statutory regulations which require an organization to document a certain amount of training annually or periodically. In those cases, just make the assessment the first thing you do in the course. If you fail the initial assessment, then you must take the course and complete a final assessment.

The Power of Diversity: Engaging a Multi-Generational Workforce

TrainingIndustry.com_7 :: The Power of Diversity: Engaging a Multi-Generational Workforce I missed the webinar, but here is a link to the archive of it. It is a sales pitch for Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, but there are always a few nuggets worth keeping from most of these sales webinars.

Cathy Moore: Dump The Drone!

Another great presentation from Cathy Moore. A must read.

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Garr Blogs On McKee

Garr Reynold's recent blog on McKee and the concept of storytelling is worth reading for e-learning instructional designers and educators everywhere. The goal of education is not to merely dispense information but to effect change in the lives of the students. Storytelling is the difference between spewing information and effecting change. One method impacts us and touches us at an emotional level, the other simply presents facts for memorizing and forgetting.

This Is The Essence of E-Learning Design

Cathy Moore's blog "Making Change" is a great blog. She doesn't post very often, but when she does... BANG! This article with the slide show is worth the price of admission and more. She captures the essence of what it takes to design an effective e-learning project. Thanks Cathy!

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Online Graduate Degrees for E-Learning Professionals

I've looked at a few online graduate degress for e-learning professionals and now I've decided to take my search to the web 2.0 community...

• What do you think about online graduate degrees in e-learning?
• Which schools have the most "bang for the buck"?
• Which schools degree's carry the most "clout"?
• Which schools degree's will actually provide the most benefit?

The programs that interest me are:

• San Diego State Univeristy's program
• University of Missouri's program
• Boise State's program

What else is available that is worth investigating?

About Me

A little background info on me:

• I work in the healthcare field in a rural hospital with several off-campus clinics.
  
• I work in the Information Technology department; I manage the Help Desk and am implementing a technology training project.
• e-Learning is my current focus and passion
• B.S. Ed. with 10 years experience as a public educator and Technology Coordinator
• 3 years in healthcare
• Open Source Software fan (Linux, Moodle, Joomla, Drupal, LAMP stack, Ubuntu, Red Hat, K12LTSP, etc.)
• I enjoy digital design for web, print, and other multi-media applications
• I am a "systems thinker" (and have been since before I even knew what that term meant)
• Certificated by The William Glasser Institute in the concepts of Choice Theory, Lead Management and Reality Therapy

Applications I use regularly:

• Adobe Photoshop & GIMP
• Powerpoint (yes, you read that correctly!)
• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Adobe Captivate
• Adobe Illustrator
• Firefox
• Blogger
• Twitter
• Joomla
  

Improving Systems Via Systems Thinking

Thanks Dr. W. Edwards Deming for making systems thinking a normal part of management vocabulary. Thanks Dr. William Glasser for understanding the psychology behind successful implementations of systems thinking and organizational reform, via Choice Theory and Lead Management. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has a nice summary of systems thinking and implementation of organizational reform projects.

What does this have to do with TechLearnology? Well just everything! I believe the key to successful organizational reform projects is all in the training. How the upper management is trained to handle implementation (think: psychology); how the middle management is trained to work the employees; how the employees are trained to do their jobs the "new" way, etc. It's all about the training... from softskills to hard skills.

The Art and Science of Rapid E-learning Design

I was discussing Adobe Captivate on a Moodle forum here. This got me thinking about workflow processes for rapid e-learning. This is sort of a touchy subject for those of us who create content because it is both a science and an art. We are designers (whether we realize it or not). We are artists (whether we like it or not). We are also psychologists of a sort as well as workflow analysts.

I think the best instructional designers realize the balance of science and art. We must stay abreast of the latest research in the field of instructional design and educational psychology. We must also keep current with the latest trends in Web 2.0 and software applications. This is the science part. We must also be aware of the art of design: layouts, typography, color balance, human-computer interfaces, etc. More than that we must be aware of the business use of our skillsets: our job is to help businesses become more effective/efficient and improve their bottom lines. We do this by providing excellent training materials which yield a performance improvement for employees (we hope).

If we've done our job well, we've helped employees improve their lives by improving their workflow processes. We've made the supervisors happy because productivity increases. It's a win-win-win situation. I love it! This is exciting and fun stuff to me.

So I'm going to outline my current workflow process for creating rapid e-learning content in a future post. I've learned much from Tom Kuhlman at Articulate on his blog (you should subscribe to it!).

Cooperative Learning For the Corporate World

When I was a public school teacher I was trained in the "group learning" approach known as Cooperative Learning (a nice overview is here). In undergraduate classes I studied Johnson and Johnson's work in the subject. In actual professional practice I was certified in Dr. Kagan's approach to cooperative learning. (Here is a teach-nology.com webpage with links to all kinds of information on the subject.) Suffice it to say that there is a huge body of research on this subject as it applies to the field of public education.

Enter the Corporate World
I work in the corporate world now (healthcare) as an I.T. Educator. Things are different on the corporate side of the fence. But the science (and art) of learning are unchanged. There is no reason to believe that cooperative learning does not apply in a corporate setting. In fact, I argue that it is more applicable for modern enterprises, which is why it must become more widely adopted in public schools.

In my healthcare organization, teams must work cooperatively to properly treat a patient. Ultimately, we are paid on our ability to work together efficiently and effectively as a team. The better we do this, the better our bottom line. Soon Medicare will punish hospitals that actually make patients more ill than when they arrived. My goal is to help train all the variety of staff members on using the modern technology available as a means to a more efficient, effective workplace. I can see no better place than here to utilize the concepts of Cooperative Learning.

Main Concepts
In concept its similar to Project Management techniques and approaches with one special exception: the group has a vested interest in each member's success. It's not really cooperative learning unless the following conditions are met:

• Positive Interdependence: each group member's work is essential in completing the project or task
• Individual (and Group) Accountability: the entire team succeeds together (one person alone can not "win it" for the group)
• Equal Participation: each member has equal participation - no attention "hogs" or super stars or bullies
• Group Interaction: members must interact with each other to accomplish the task or project - it's not like working on a factory production line.

Big Takeaway
For me the big takeaway is this: we must learn to work together and structure things so that we each have a vested interest in the other's success. There are very few things in life which are zero-sum games - where if I win, you must by default, lose. In fact those organizations which can learn how to attain the win-win approach are best suited to take advantage of the economy of the future.

I'll know this is in place at my organization when I see employees who lack a certain skillset, and other team members realize how that negatively impacts the team, AND they encourage and help the "deficient" team member to become proficient... instead of pointing a finger of blame, shaking their heads going "tsk, tsk, tsk."

Old School Vs. New School
Old school thinking was this: "If I have special knowledge that others don't have... then I'm powerful and important and irreplaceable". That worked fine back when knowledge, skills and information was the important economic commodity. Today this is still true to some extent. But the truly successful organizations realize that the new economic commodity is the ability to work well on a team (or to lead the team) and the ability to adapt quickly to changes.

Changes are coming so quickly that what once qualified as special knowledge just 2 years ago, may be completely obsolete today. We can not afford to hang all our hopes on our limited set of special knowledge or skills - outsourcing has shown us this time and again; someone else is willing to do what I can do for less money (and they have the same special knowledge or skill as I do).

The special knowledge or skills of the future are: social skills and adaptability.

The New School of thought is not centered completely on myself, but rather on how I can contribute to the team, and how we team members can succeed at our project or task.

Learning to Tweak Moodle: It Sucks Less Than Others

I'm still a Moodle newbie. I feel I must jump into this application and really learn how to harness its power as both an Administrator and an Instructor. I know this app is powerful and can serve my organization's needs as a Corporate Learning Managment System, since so many other organizations are using it that way successfully - and these are much bigger, more complex deployments than what I'm attempting.

But I'm also a geek who likes to tweak. Does that make me a geak? Or tweek? I think the key to my successful deployment of Moodle is to learn how the programmers envisioned the application to work; learn the modules; learn the framework, structure and parameters of the app. Then, tweak it to fit my needs.

This requires a balance of IT geekiness along with solid Instructional Design understanding; and that must be paired with the specific learning requirements for my organization: mid-sized community hospital.

First, I'm tasked with eliminating our current LMS which is very costly to use and update - and its not user friendly (no one likes this application!). Since that application "sucks", hopefully I can create a solution in Moodle which is significantly less "sucky".

I think a combination of built-in Moodle modules (content and quizzes mostly, along with some forums and wikis) and Adobe Captivate for software simulations will do the trick. I plan to also add other multimedia such as video or Flash and perhaps a PowerPoint or two.

In the upcoming weeks I shall endeavor to see how much Moodle sucks less than our previous LMS. I hope to be pleasantly surprised. And I'm thankful for the helpful Moodle community of users and Admins.

Twitter for E-Learning

This article discusses usage of Twitter to communicate with customers. Take that same concept and apply it to communicating with learners...

Who's Talking About You on Twitter?

via CustomersAreAlways on 4/15/08

So, I had a few dates with Twitter this past weekend and it looks like love is in the air. I know you're probably asking, Where the heck have you been, Maria? Twitter has been around for ages and you're now just getting it?

I'm not one of those early adopters when it comes to social networking sites, although I now truly see the potential to gain new business. I've said before that there is power in social networking and social media (I learned that there is a difference between the two) when it comes to communicating with customers, but I never really gave much thought to a Twitter explosion on customer service.

Imagine being able to send out a "tweet" to your friends while you're sitting in a restaurant..."XYZ restaurant's service sucks! Don't come today...or ever!" I like the idea of being able to send out a quick real-time message like that instead of having to wait until I get home to write up a long blog post about my experience. Well, actually, I could do both to make more of an impact ;)

In doing a search for companies who use Twitter, I discovered that JetBlue engages in real conversations (You can follow JetBlue here).

And if you happen to be a Tweeter, I invite you to follow me here.

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to CustomersAreAlways using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

Designing Usable, Self-Paced e-Learning Courses: A Practical Guide

Designing Usable, Self-Paced e-Learning Courses: A Practical Guide
This is a nice summary of designing usable eLearning courses.

Design Does Matter in E-Learning

We've all heard the phrase "Content is King" and its difficult to argue against it.  But if content is king, then "Design is Queen."  And when the two have a baby in the E-Learning field, the result is something extraordinary.  Read this blog from Tom Kuhlman at Articulate about Why Looks Matter in E-Learning.  This is good stuff, as always, from Tom.  When I grow up I want to be like Tom.