Dr. Andrea Edmundson, CEO of eWorld Learning, has focused her career on creating culturally appropriate content for learners across the globe. She states that it is more important now than ever, not only from a business but reputation perspective as well, to have content that is culturally aware and appropriate, and that there are severe effects of being inappropriate, including loss to your bottom line in some cases. Since beginning her career in this field 25 years ago, Dr. Edmundson has lived, worked, or traveled in more than 30 countries, learning and growing her understanding about different cultures and their learning needs. She has a PhD from Walden University in Educational Technology.

Her podcast addresses several common questions including:

• What is culturally appropriate instructional design?
• Ramifications of Structurally inappropriate instructional Design
• Best Practices in Creating Culturally Appropriate Learning

Listen now to our latest podcast, “Exploring Cultural Differences in Instructional Design,” featuring Dr. Andrea Edmundson.

Brent Schlenker argues that corporations and academic institutions are struggling with the same technology concerns: security, social behavior and productivity. He makes the point that corporate eLearning and academic eLearning are converging as new technologies drive new business models.

Today’s podcast is based on insights from Jeanne’s book. Jeanne walks us towards The 2020 Workplace by reviewing the seismic shifts in play today that will affect the future. She provides case studies and stories of forward-thinking companies and their talent practices – and offers some predictions for the future so that you can prepare your organization, your team, and yourself for 2020.

Today’s podcast is based on insights from Kevin’s book. Did you know that, on average, people who are dissatisfied at work weigh 5 pounds more than people who are satisfied in their job and that they also have a higher risk for heart attacks? Kevin shows us how having a bad job is lethal (literally) to both the employee and the company, and he outlines the three drivers needed to create an engaged workplace. Kevin’s insights provide a roadmap for leaders who want to maximize the employee engagement of their teams.

Today’s podcast is based on insights from her book, as Connie takes us through the basics of Visual Learning – from what it is to how we are ‘hardwired’ for it, and how instructional designers can make graphics more cognitively efficient. Finally Connie talks about how emotion and cognition are interdependent and how designers can leverage this to connect with the audience through emotions.

In the corporate learning context, Mark argues that learners cannot quickly get the information they need because the content they require is sitting inside the company’s LMS without the ability to search for it. Mark explains how the problem lies not with the system itself, but with how it is used in conjunction with other systems and he offers his advice on how corporations can best address this issue in the workplace.

In this podcast, Prof. Baraniuk predicts a bright future for open education. However, he believes that we are not there yet and explains why. He discusses the barriers of today’s technology, standards and licensing models when it comes to the open education movement, and he argues how these barriers need to be overcome in order to hit a critical mass and allow remixing of content in an open source way. Professor Baraniuk also discusses the ways that the open education movement can be applied to corporate training and how this can bring a competitive advantage to organizations.

In this podcast, Bob makes the important distinction between performance support and informal learning, and tells us why he believes the rapid rise of mobile has brought performance support to the tipping point. A strong believer that mobile performance support – or mSupport – needs to be simple and relevant information delivered at the moment of need, he discusses how content needs to evolve from an eLearning environment to something suitable for consumption on mobile devices. We also hear Bob’s view on the resurgence of single-source along with some best practices for organizations making the leap from eLearning to mLearning.

In this podcast, George argues that traditional courses, where students rely on the educator to structure their learning experience, rob the learner of an enormous part of the learning experience. So, he makes the case for social learning networks and he explains how educational institutions and corporate enterprises can embrace social media & social networks as part of the big shift towards informal and on-demand learning.

In this podcast, Ben explains the four keys areas where social learning is taking hold in organizations: employee on-boarding, expertise location, internal collaboration, and partner on-boarding. He shares success stories in each of these areas from global marquee companies including Swiss Re, Toshiba, CSC, and Manheim. Ben also touches on who within organizations are generally the driving force behind social learning initiatives, discusses what drives rapid adoption & engagement, and shares best practices for implementing a social learning strategy within an organization. This is a can’t miss podcast!

In this podcast, Jay misquotes Marc Twain by arguing that “rumors of LMS’ death are greatly exaggerated.” He discusses how recovering economies and globalization have changed the LMS business models resulting in new drivers for the adoption of LMSs globally such as compliance, risk management, and special-purpose learning portals. Jay then gets on social learning and addresses the key question “who owns social media” in a company. And closing out, he is also sharing his advice on how training organizations can make the best out of their LMS investment.

Doug believes that both the economic crisis and the globalization of all business have fundamentally altered how we manage training services and deliver learning content worldwide. He notes that nearly every organization outsources some aspect of their training operations and offers us a set of best practices on how to determine what should be outsourced and how to select the right partners. Doug also shares with us TrainingIndustry.com’s insight on corporate spend for learning technologies in the coming years – he sees authoring platforms and portals for the aggregation of user-generated content achieving the most growth. He also shares with us his predictions for corporate training in 2010.

According to Michael Hanley, it is unrealistic to expect that at this point innovation waves or “disruptive technologies” will interoperate with content management and delivery platforms organizations currently use. Digging into standards, Michael explains the importance of understanding the distinction between de facto and accredited standards and talks about his belief that conforming to ISO certifications reflects the professionalism of learning companies. Finally, in order to surpass the disconnect between learning professionals and vendors when it comes to learning standards requirements, Michael gives out his own set of advice on what questions purchasers need to prepare and ask to their vendors.

Ellen explains how the role of instructional designers has changed along with the change in people’s dependence on technology. The new role of instructional designers requires skills for bridging both learning and technology as well as understanding how to create engaging learning experiences. Ellen is also addressing the role of new technologies in social learning and mobile learning. She is discussing why social media are here to stay and how the infrastructure for mobile learning is more mature today so as to change how learners and corporations feel about a new emerging mobile learning world.

Also, in a bonus part, Ellen Wagner shares her best practices for designing reusable learning content.

This dream team aims high and isn’t afraid to turn conventional thinking on its head in order to help training organizations innovate. As far as the Internet Time Alliance is concerned, we are seeing the end of the training department as we knew it only a few years ago. As work becomes more complex, training is now less about developing content and more about developing networks.

The team discusses that while CLOs recognize that they have to embrace networks, informal learning, and social technologies, there are still a number of misconceptions and obstacles that prevent collaborative learning from being an organic part of the enterprise training infrastructure. Once these social initiatives are embraced however, CLOs and their training organizations are poised to have equal or even greater footing than other executives in the C-suite.

This podcast is broken up into 5 parts. Each part comprises a panel discussion around a specific topic. This post is part I. Listen to the discussion below or jump next to part II.

- Can you each tell us a little bit about the Internet Time Alliance initiative and how you manage collaboration and knowledge sharing within the group?

- From your recent survey, 3 out of 4 CLOs admitted that their people could not keep up with the needs of their business. Is it that these CLOs are incapable of coping with today’s business environment? Are we seeing the end of the training department as we know it?

- What do you think the key enablers are for collaborative learning to become truly embraced in a corporate setting as opposed to something that’s done at grassroots level?

- There is still a level of discomfort with the use of social media within corporate environments, training included. As far as CLOs are concerned, do you think that this is a mentality issue, a process issue, or a technology issue?

- Do you feel that we are on our way to integrating learning as an equal within enterprise, both at a functional & personnel level and at an enterprise application level?