Learning Visions

Best Project Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Thu, 22 May 2008 23:45:00 +0000

A baby girl. Born on Sunday. Yes, ahead of schedule by a few days! No name yet. People find this very disconcerting -- an unlabled person -- but we're waiting for the right name to appear stamped on her forehead.

No News

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Sat, 17 May 2008 10:20:00 +0000

That is to say, I have not yet had this baby.

My official "due date" is not until May 21, but I've been hoping (as all expectant mothers do), that this is one project that would be delivered a bit early.

Can't project manage these things...

In the meantime, I've taken the last week off from work to do things like: hang out with my kids and husband, garden, cook, fold laundry, hang out with my parents, get my teeth cleaned, nap, knit, and various nesting projects.

My instructional design postings will be sporadic, at best, over the next few months. Unless I decide to post about the absolute lack of instructional design manuals that come with new babies!

Making Six Sigma Training Fun

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Tue, 06 May 2008 18:46:00 +0000

OK. Maybe it's not possible to make Six Sigma eLearning fun. But I've tried.

And to be honest, it wasn't quite Six Sigma, but close.

This manufacturing process training course was originally delivered as a four hour plus death-by-PowerPoint classroom session (if you could see the original PPT source content, you'd begin glazing over within a few slides).

I went out on a few limbs here and tried to design something different. Within certain parameters as defined by the client (of course).

Here's some of what I tried to incorporate in order to (we hope) create an engaging experience:

Less is More. Cut, cut, cut.

Of course, SMES pushed back on this approach during story board review.

But when I hear someone telling me that this is the spot in the classroom session when the users start drooling and staring out the window, don't you think that's a good place to simplify?

Storyline. I created characters that the learner follows throughout the course. "Meet Pete and his team." Learn from this manufacturing group and how they applied these principles to their work place.

And we made it fun. Rubber Ducks! Everyone loves rubber ducks, right? Applying concepts to a fun, but real-world scenario to ensure better knowledge transfer and retention.

Got some pushback on this one, again from the SMEs. "Is it too juvenile?"

When reviewing the alpha version of the course, I made sure to have their team have actual end-users take the course and see what their responses were.

End-users thought it was fun. SMEs felt a bit threatened by this fun take on their sacred content. The juries still out.

Games! We created three or four mini-games scattered throughout the course to test concepts. Of course, we used rubber ducks whenever possible to create some fun graphics and exercises. For design inspiration, I took a few pages out of Karl Kapp's book Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.

Using Audio. I tried to make more effective use of audio. Avoided reading text heavy pages word-for-word. But I got pushback. "Unless there's audio on every page, our user's will think it's broken..."

Better Assessment Questions. I wrote scenario based questions that were about context and concepts -- not rote memorization skills.

Navigation. I tried, but couldn't convince my client to go with open navigation. We had to go with lockouts, meaning the learner must go through the topics in order and can't advance to the next topic until the previous topic has been completed. Alas.

Overall Feedback. So far, the client likes it, but there's some uncertainty. "This is unlike anything we've done before." Which can be a good thing and a bad thing, right?

Do you think I went too far with the rubber duck motif? Did I threaten a sacred cow?

Photo Credits:

So many ducks...Ducking hell. by Gaetan Lee
Cut my breath by batega
Devil Duck by wonderferret

All Work And No Learning...

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:55:00 +0000

Lately, work has just felt way too busy. No conscious time to stop and smell the roses; to reflect on what's been going on and why; to incorporate any lessons learned. There's barely any time to even think if I've learned any lessons.

Sometimes I just want to punch in the proverbial time card and go home and do the rest of my life. Or sometimes the next project or task slams right into me and there's no time to breath.

But how lame is that?

When this kind of grueling, work cycle hits, aren't you in danger? Not just of burnout, but of being stuck in the mode of repeating the same mistakes again and again? Of continuing to do the same crappy job, because you know how to crank out that kind of crap in the necessary time frame?

How does one build learning into work -- how do you build learning into work -- when you just don't feel like you have the time?

Here's some of what I've been trying lately, in an effort not to let some important lessons slip by -- in an effort to keep the passion and NOT enter burnout land:

Take notes. Instead of just relying on my faulty memory ("Oh, there's no way I'll forget that..."), I've been taking notes: In my paper notebook, in Google Notebooks, an occasional Jott to myself. Things I could've/should've/would've done differently, if only...Ideally, I'd blog about my experiences more, but frankly, I just haven't had the time.

Verbalize. Speak the mistakes out loud to other teammates, if I can. This helps internalize it.

Be open. Always try to learn from the mistakes; don't just brush them under the rug and pretend they didn't happen. They did. [I've been working on a knitting project for the past few months and have learned more undoing stitches and fixing mistakes, than anything else. Some mistakes I've left in the piece -- humble reminders of my own imperfection. That, and some things just aren't worth going back to fix -- but at least I can understand what I did wrong all those rows ago].

Take time off. Create a light at the end of your tunnel. I've got a maternity leave to look forward to pretty soon. A different kind of focus, a lot of opportunity to make different kinds of mistakes, but it will be a change in pace. If I didn't have that on the books, I'd certainly need some time off...

What else?

Read blogs (yes, but I haven't had the time to focus -- instead I skim -- not nearly as satisfying...)
Lessons learned meetings (do people still do this? We talk about it, but there's rarely the time. Suggestions?)

So how do you keep your passionate learning mind open when you're working your butt off?

This post was written rather hastily as a humble contribution to the April 2008 Working/Learning Blog Carnival. Be sure to check out all the other great contributions!

Instructional Designers Poll: Market Sector and Advanced Degrees

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:21:00 +0000

My original survey on Instructional Designers and Advanced Degrees had some holes in it. For awhile now I've been wondering about Market Sector differences in ID. I want to know if there's a difference in the ratio of working instructional designers with advanced degrees in the corporate and academic sectors.

Please take the latest poll!

Instructional Designers: Choose the option that best describes you... ( surveys)

Instructional Designers with Formal Training: Survey Update

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:01:00 +0000

As of today, over 119 responses to the ongoing survey Instructional Designers: Do You Have An Advanced Degree?

37% of IDs say "Yes, I do have a formal/advanced ID degree."
63% of working IDS say "Nope. I'm flying on intuition and experience and informal learning."

Only 13% of those without a degree say they have ever been denied work as a result.

38% of respondents have been in the field for just 3-5 years. Is that a spike in the amount of ID work going on? Or is this a high burnout field that people don't stick around in for too long?

I'm still curious about the breakdown in degrees between the corporate and academic sectors. What's the ratio of IDs working in corporate with advanced degrees vs. academic?

The survey remains open indefinitely. Chime in, if you haven't.

Hiring Women in 1943. You Go, Girl!

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:50:00 +0000

This has very little to do with eLearning - although I'm sure those of you with a creative mindset could think of something! It's certainly good for a laugh on a busy morning.

A client sent this scanned page to me this morning. A reprint from the July 1943 issue of Transportation Magazine (as reproduced in the September/October 2007 issue of Savvy & Sage Magazine: Getting the Most of Midlife and Beyond).

Here are eleven helpful tips on the subject from Western Properties:

1. Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters, they're less likely to be flirtatious, they need the work or they wouldn't be doing it, they still have the pep and interest to work hard and deal with the public efficiently.

2. When you have to use older women, try to get ones who have worked outside the home at some time in their lives. Older women who have never contacted the public have a hard time adapting themselves and are inclined to be cantankerous and fussy. It's always well to impress upon older women the importance of friendliness and courtesy.

3. General experience indicates that "husky" girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even tempered and efficient than their underweight systems.

4. Retain a physician to give each woman you hire a special physical examination - one covering female conditions. This step not only protects the property against the possibilities of lawsuit, but reveals whether the employee-to-be has any female weaknesses which would make her mentally or physically unfit for the job.

5. Stress at the outset the importance of time the fact that a minute or two lost here and there makes serious inroads on schedules. Until this point is gotten across, service is likely to be slowed up.

6. Given the female employee a definite day-long schedule of duties so that they'll keep busy without bothering the management for instructions every few minutes. Numerous properties say that women make excellent workers when they have their jobs cut out for them, but that they lack initiative in finding work themselves.

7. Whenever possible, let the inside employee change from one job to another at some time during the day. Women are inclined to be less nervous and happier with change.

8. Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowance for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

9. Be tactful when issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way men do. Never ridicule a woman - it breaks her spirit and cuts off her efficiency.

10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.

11. Get enough size variety in operator's uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point can't be stressed too much in keeping women happy.

Today's challenge: apply one of the eleven helpful tips mentioned in this article to eLearning/instructional design.

I'll start:

#8 Give every girl an adequate number of rest periods during the day. You have to make some allowance for feminine psychology. A girl has more confidence and is more efficient if she can keep her hair tidied, apply fresh lipstick and wash her hands several times a day.

Another argument in favor of chunking your eLearning into 10-20 experiences. If I don't have the time to apply fresh lipstick during an eLearning course, then I just won't finish it!

Jott This Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:00:00 +0000

I haven't had so much time lately to blog, as this project I'm working on has been quite grueling.

I find my best time for thinking up excellent blog entries is late at night when I'm lying in bed. That is, of course, if I'm even awake after the kids have finally fallen asleep.

Now I'm trying to maximize my time on the drive to work. Today, especially, my ideas are fresh from a restless night last night.

So thanks to Michelle Martin for turning me on to Jott.

I am calling this blog entry in on my cellphone as I drive. When I arrive at work, it will be in my inbox. I'll simply have to cut and paste it into my blog tool, reformat it, and do some heavy editing. And then, presto magic, I have a new blog post.

It's taken a little getting used to.

Things I'm learning:

I have to talk much more slowly. Otherwise Jott doesn't get what I'm saying.
Jargon can be hard for Jott to translate. But it does a pretty good job and inserts [...] when it's not sure just what you mumbled.
You can only jott in 30 second chunks. I have way more to say than that. The answer is to immediately jott yourself again (and you don't have to redial the number, the lovely Jott Attendant asks you who you want to Jott when a previous jott is finished).

I arrived at work this morning to find 9 Jotts in my inbox -- fodder for a few blog posts at least.

(There's much more that you can do with Jott -- send Jotts to friends, send yourself reminders or txt msgs, create to do lists. I'm just scratching the surface here.)

E-Learning Project Reality: Guerrilla Instructional Design

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 20:07:00 +0000

I'll define it in one word: grueling.

Since November, I have been working on a big project for a brand-name institution: 29 self-paced eLearning courses.

Mostly software training, with bits of process and product information thrown in for good measure.

Courses range from 15-30 minutes each and are geared towards my client's external clients. No assessments or formal testing. Lots of software interactivity.

Most of these courses already exist as online, instructor-led experiences. I've got the PowerPoints and Word docs to prove it.

Relentless schedule. The lifecycle of an ideal course, on paper, is about 40 days. That's from initial content kickoff to final live courses.

It goes a little something like this:

Content Gathering

The first step is the contact kick off meeting. This includes myself, the instructional designers at the client company who manage things on their end, and any subject matter experts that they can assemble for the meeting.

We go through any existing classroom notes. We talk about the performance objectives. We review the content at a high level.

Generally, within a couple of days of the kickoff, I have a second meeting with the SME or course trainer. If possible, I sit in on a live training session. Schedules don't always work out, so more often this is a one-on-one tour of the software and the content notes with the trainer. Here we attempt to get into all the detail

Thankfully, I type really fast, so I've got a lot of good material to work with when I get to the next stage.

Story Boarding

If the stars are aligned, I immediately begin story boarding. Depending on the length and complexity of the course, this takes anywhere from 1 day to 5 days. Of course, this varies greatly depending upon how accessible the subject matter expert are to me.

Client Review

This is the single longest phase of this project.

Each course goes through an extensive review process on the client side, starting with the client's ID team and their SME team. The document is sent out to everyone, then the whole team gathers in a conference call and walks through the story board together.

Ideally, the team has reviewed the document beforehand and has all of their comments, but more often than not, this is their first look at it. I capture all of their comments, make revisions, and send out an updated version.

The client ID team wrangles the SMEs and gets more comments until we have a SME approved script.

Next, the story board goes to the client's editing department for copy editing. Have we dotted the right letters? Have we adhered to corporate guidelines?

From there, onward for a legal review to make sure all the trademarks are in the correct places and no false promises are being made.

This is where things get delayed and backed up: the SMEs and the legal department.

Development

Once we have a final, legally approved document we can begin building the course.

The client takes all the screen captures because we can't have access to the software.

I prep the script and send it off for audio production (we've been working with an excellent independent guy with his own studio who can churn this stuff out!)

My development team builds the sucker. We've got this down to a lean and mean 5-7 days, which includes internal QA. We use a fairly templated approach, so at this point there aren't many bugs to discover.

Course Review

We post the course for the client team to review. Usually, this is another online walkthrough. Sometimes the SMEs have looked at it beforehand and have their comments all lined up, sometimes this is their first look at the thing. You never know.

We revise and fix. Sometimes have to record new audio. Occasionally have had to rewrite big chunks and send a story board back to editing and eReview because the right SMEs weren't initially included in the review cycle...or someone just didn't get that they really needed to review the story board...or....or. But that hasn't happened too many times.

Course Goes Live

We post the final course. The client IT team downloads all the files and puts it on their servers and the thing is live.

Phew.

Instructional Design: When the Schedule Dictates What You Can Actually Do

So how much time do you think we have here for real creative instructional design? Not much.

This is the harsh reality of eLearning in the trenches. When great just can't get in the way of good enough.

This is what I've started calling guerilla instructional design. Get in and out as fast as you can with the fewest casualties.

But the client is delighted with what we've been producing. Initial feedback from actual end-users has been really positive. Something's working here.

Is That A Light At The End of The Tunnel?

This morning I sent off a first draft of story board #22.
About six courses have actually gone live.
Another four courses have been built and are in revision purgatory.
Another ten plus story boards have been written and are somewhere in the vast client review process.

The great irony is that the projected due date for the final course is May 21st, which also happens to be the due date of the real baby that is currently kicking around inside of me.

My client hopes I go late.

Photo credits:

Instructional Strategies?

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:07:00 +0000

What instructional strategies do you use to make your content more memorable and engaging? I'm not just thinking about the gadgets and the gizmos that you use or the instructional design "method" behind the process (e.g., ADDIE), but rather the teaching tools themselves. Strategies that help learners connect with and remember the content.

Mnemonics

"King Phillip Came Over From Geneva Spain"

Remember that one from high school biology? I remember the mnemonic itself, but not all the terms. Something like: Kingdom, Phyllo, C?, O?, Family, Genus, Species.

Luckily, these days I can quickly search online for a refresher.

I missed Class and Order. And it's Phylum, not Phyllo. But not bad for knowledge I haven't used in 25 years.

Wikiquote has a lengthy catalog of mnemonics for a wide variety of subjects, from bartending to home repair.

Do you ever develop a mnemonic for a custom course? Or chunk out your content and create an easily remembered acronym to remind the learner of the steps they need to follow?

I don't know if I've ever done that. But I've got a mind to try it out one of these courses.

Getting Snappy

I had an interview with an instructional designer the other day, who's developed and led a lot of instructor-led courses. She described getting her learners to "snap things out."

She works with the content, chunks it out, and creates snappy rhymes to help learners remember the material. In class, she has the learners walk around the classroom, chanting the rhyme and snapping it out.

Things might get a bit silly with all that snapping, but I bet it's effective.

How could you do that in an e-learning experience? How do you get your learners to get snap happy?

I'm excellent at creating ridiculous rhymes and ditties for my kids; I think I could come up with something interesting for a course.

Reflective Learning
I learned this one from Clive Shepherd's 60 Minute Masters: insert moments of reflection into the course.

Create pauses in the activity to get the learner to stop and think; apply the content to their own world; make their own connections.

In a recent course, I designed "Think About It!" pages. The course asks the learner an open question. The learner can type their thoughts onto a yellow sticky pad on the screen. These aren't saved for managerial review, they're just a moment in time for that learner.

Time Well Spent

It takes more than rapid regurgitation of content to develop a mnemonic or create a snappy tune. My bet is many eLearning designers don't often have the time to develop creative instructional strategies. But, given the right course, it may be time well spent.

Other Ideas?

Here's a few more ideas off the top of my head:

Storytelling
Case studies
Role plays

What other strategies or approaches could you suggest?

Photo credits:

Salaries for Instructional Designers

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 20:40:00 +0000

Are you wondering if your salary is up to snuff? Do you need a raise? Want to figure out what you might make if you were to enter the illustrious world of instructional design?

Here's a list of salary resources where you can find out more:

Payscale
(I liked this one a lot. You enter your own salary and location and see how it compares to the averages in your region.)

Indeed
(Kind of basic, but it's good to view another data set.)

ASTD (Warning, you need to purchase the article, which I didn't do...)

E-Learning Guild's Annual Salary Reports for the US and Canada 2008 (Lots of ways to cut the data here. Great report!)

[I discovered the first three links via a posting on the ITFORUM discussion list.]

Photo credit: $5700 by Andrew Magill

Accidental Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:56:00 +0000

Yesterday, on my evening commute, I head a wonderful essay by noted cellist Yo-Yo Ma for NPR's "This I Believe" series.

"Every day I make an effort to go toward what I don't understand. This wandering leads to the accidental learning that continually shapes my life."

I really like the term accidental learning.

It's more than informal. It's accidental. It's serendipitous.

So, what kind of accidents have you stumbled upon today? What unknowns have you crept into? What discomfort have you gone towards?

Photo credit: Cello Inlay by asluthier

Instructional Design: Where's Your Center? Who's Your Master?

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:20:00 +0000

As you create training solutions, to what master are you answering?

Are you being content centric or learner centric? Or are you forced to be sponsor centric?

Content Centric Solutions

These are those courses that have the entire book of knowledge in 'em. Every software interaction and menu is explained in detail. It's all there. You've covered the content to death. And probably killed a learner or two in the process, if they even bothered to stick with it.

Learner Centric Solutions

This is what we're all striving for, right? That course that meets the needs of the learner. The right content, in the right format.

Sponsor Centric Solutions

Unfortunately, it's often the project sponsor who's really calling the tune. They claim to have detailed understanding of the learner. As the course designer, you're not encouraged or even allowed access to actual learners to get an understanding yourself. Perhaps that kind of access isn't possible, given the limited budget.

Or maybe what really matters is what the Senior VP of Training thinks of all this. If they like the colors and the interactivity and the general format, then they consider the project a success. Evaluation complete.

eLearning vendors (those that design custom courseware) are often handed the course to be built. The sponsor says "we want this eLearning course." So the vendor scopes it out and does the design work, the storyboarding, the development work.

But the bottom line is, the vendor needs to butter their bread and produce what the client has asked for.

What strategies do you use to ensure a project stays learner centric vs. sponsor centric? How do you ensure your consulting expertise gets communicated in a development project?

Photo credit: Spirals On Blue by Tanakawho

Metaphors of Instructional Design

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:17:00 +0000

In the exciting and sometimes heated recent debate on the role of instructional designers (The Value of Instructional Designers, Karl Kapp's We Need a Degree in Instructional Design, Learning Circuits Big Question for Feb) I've seen instructional design compared to:

brain surgery
interior design
carpentry

I certainly don't think it's rocket science nor do I think it's brain surgery.

I like the analogy Michele Martin uses: instructional design as cooking.

Most of us can cook a little something. Perhaps you're best at opening a box of frozen fish sticks and laying them on the cookie sheet and dumping a bag of frozen peas in a pot. In recent years, I've resorted to this meal quite often. Hey, I've got small kids and I know my audience. Which is critical in both cooking and instructional design.

Not all meals are created equal. Just like training experiences. Some might require that you simply follow the recipe; others may demand a five star experience:

Just Follow the Recipe

A lot of people out there can create a great meal by following a recipe to a T.

Of course, you need the right tools -- accurate measuring spoons and cups, and the right ingredients.

Muffins, spaghetti sauce, cookies, yum. There are still those who follow the recipe and end up with burnt yuck.

The Dump and Pray Method

My Granny followed the dump and pray method of cooking.

Admittedly, I never had the pleasure or displeasure of sampling her menus, so I can't say if this method worked for her, but I've found it works for me in the kitchen.

Granted, I've read a lot of cookbooks. I watch an occasional cooking show, but not as a rule. (I don't have cable, so I don't know from Rachel Ray). And I've cooked a lot. Generally, I know what works. I know how to carmelize a mean onion and have a good sense of my herb cabinet.

I've taken many a cookbook recipe and improvised, creating something new and innovative. I can step out of the box.

Many self taught cooks achieve culinary perfection through this type of of experimention. Can you replicate the meal the next time? Maybe yes. But maybe it's slightly different the next time 'cuz you've used more garlic.

The dump and pray method works best when you understand your audience. Do you know who's going to be eating this particular meal? And it works best when you know your tools and your ingredients.

Creating a Five Star Meal

I don't know much about the starring system for restaurants, but my limited understanding knows that it has to do with the complete experience. The right napkins and place settings must be used or you lose a star.

I was once making an omelete with a professional chef who showed me how to make the red pepper we were cutting up five star: each piece had to be the exact same size, all the white trimmed off, all the edges perfectly square.

I rarely see the worth in that. But then, I tend to prefer thick chunky, even in an omelete.

But there may be times when a five star meal is exactly what's required. In which case you need a five star chef who probably went to a high-end Culinary Institute of Learning and has the knife sharpening skills to prove it.

Instructional Designers as Chefs

Different eating experiences require different expertise. And I would argue that different training experiences also require different expertise. Back to Instructional Design as a Spectrum.

Sometimes we may just dump and pray -- and if you're good, you come up with something great. Sometimes you just follow the recipe -- perhaps using a rapid eLearning Template tool and a solid ISD model. Sometimes you need a five star chef.

If you've seen the recent animated feature, Ratotouille (I watched it twice while home sick a few weeks ago) then you know that "Anyone can cook." Even a rat.

Now I'm not saying that SMEs are rats, or instructional designers are rats....

So what are you cooking up these days?

Photo credits:
The Last Happy Chef by Mykl Roventine
Open Onion by Darwin Bell
Mouse Spaghetti Tastes Better When Cooked by Jannes Pockele

InVision Learning: Seeking an Instructional Designer

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 18:33:00 +0000

We're seeking a full-time Instructional Designer to join our growing company here in Westborough, Massachusetts.

Invision Learning is seeking an Instructional Designer to design leading-edge interactive multimedia and web-based eLearning applications. Our company specializes in Custom Courses, Flash Templates, and Learning Portals...

If you, or someone you know, is an experienced instructional designer looking for work in the greater Boston area, please let me know!

We're looking for someone with a focus on the content creation side; we don't expect or even want you to build these things. You'll work closely with our Flash designers and programmers who will do that heavy lifting. Your focus will be more on the client and content side. Check out my job description for a better sense...

(You'd get to work with me -- how exciting is that?)

My Client is Addicted: Audio in eLearning

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:00:00 +0000

Cathy Moore had a post a few months ago (Addicted to Audio?) that inspired me to change my approach to using audio in eLearning. She suggested using audio sparingly.

So I've been storyboarding differently. When I see a need for a text heavy pages, I eliminate audio so as not to "depress learning." I avoided narrating onscreen text.

In the comments on Cathy's post, there was a bit of discussion about switching back and forth between pages with and pages without audio.

Yesterday, after round four of a storyboard review process (which has stretched out for months, by the way, due to unavailable/overloaded client SMEs), the lead ID at my client came back asking for audio on EVERY page.

The biggest thing I would like to see is that we add some voiceover on just about all of the slides. Based on experience here, our learners are used to having v.o. on just about all slides. They think the program isn't working when they come across a slide that doesn't have v.o. It doesn't need to be much - but there should be something (verbal instruction rather than just text for example).

Now, maybe I'm just jaded and want to get to an approved storyboard. Maybe it's the fact that I'm recovering from pneumonia and just don't have the energy to fight the fight. But I caved. And yesterday I just added audio back to every page. A little. A line here or there.

Can't win every battle.

The reality of everyday instructional design.

Photo credit: Microphone by hiddedevries

Who Gets to Be Called an Instructional Designer?

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:38:00 +0000

A SME builds a course with the latest rapid eLearning tool. A teacher makes a leap into a new field and gets a job as an "instructional designer". A technical writer takes on a new challenge.

Are they instructional designers? If so, when? When do you cross the line and enter the hallowed world of Instructional Design?

Unlike medicine, interior design, or electricians, the field of instructional design does not require a license to practice. At least not yet. I never took a test that said I was actually an instructional designer.

So at what point does one "become" an instructional designer? What are the criteria?

Is it the number of courses you have created?
The quality of those courses? (And who graded them?)
Is it the number of theories you can cite?
The number of Gagne's events you can recite?
Is it your mindset? Your desire to figure out a better way, so you can create a better learning experience the next time around?
Is it a degree?
Is it your business card?
Does it matter where on the instructional design spectrum you fall and the types of learning experiences you create?

Who and what gave me the right to call myself an instructional designer? What about you?

Essential Reading for Instructional Design?

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 23:51:00 +0000

As an instructional designer/eLearning professional, what books are the essential tools in your reference library?

I'm not looking for the obtuse theory books. I prefer the get-down-and-dirty variety.

These are my current faves. Easy-readers (a term of praise, in this case). Practical books with lots of real examples. They might refer to theory, but they don't get bogged down in it:

e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer
Michael Allen's Guide to E-Learning by Michael Allen
Gadgets, Games & Gizmos for Learning by Karl Kapp

Last May, I started a bit of a list in this post: Beginning Instructional Designer's Toolkit.

Dr. John Curry was kind enough to post a really detailed reading list in his post How to Get an Instructional Design Education Without Paying Tuition (gotta love that title!)

After my appeal for something a little more pared down that I might actually be able to read, Dr. John came up with these essentials:

The Conditions of Learning and Theory of Instruction, by Robert Gagné
Training Complex Cognitive Skills, by Jeroen J.G. van Merriënboer [currently unavailable on Amazon]
The First Principles of Instruction, by M. David Merrill [I couldn't find that listing on Amazon, but there are a number of results for M. David Merrill]
The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman

Other ID books of note that have been recently recommended to me:

e-Learning by Design by William Horton (recommended by Christy Tucker)
What Every Manager Should Know About Training by Robert Mager (recommended by Dave Ferguson)
The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams (not the comedian) (this was recently recommended to me by someone who asked the same question on LinkedIn.

What would you add? Or can we stop? I'm already feeling a bit overwhelmed. Perhaps we need to start a lending library.

Photo credit: Little by MegElizabeth

Theory vs. Application in Instructional Design: One Academic's View

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:53:00 +0000

A long time ago, I decided I was much better at the practical side of things than the theoretical.

I did great in Calculus AB(?) in high school, which involved solving problems like figuring out the volume of weird spaces. In college, at the urging of my father, I took the next "level up" in Calculus. This turned out to be a big mistake as it was all about proving theorems. I dropped out of that class halfway through the semester and decided I just didn't have the math/technical/scientific nature.

I'm still a really hands-on person. Perhaps this is why I never went back to grad school. Or maybe I'm just too lazy and poor.

Over the past few days, I've been having a back and forth with Dr. John Curry, an Assistant Professor in Educational Technology at Oklahoma State. Now, I'm not linking to John just because he is full of praise of me (which is nice and somewhat embarrassing, I must admit...), but rather because he brings up some interesting points about the disconnect between the theory of instructional design in academia and the actual practice of it.

See what John has to say in Instructional Design and Academia -- Where Theory and Practice RARELY Meet.

John asks,

"So does it matter if Cammy knows (and I have no idea if she does) what the Dick/Carey, Smith/Ragan, or Morrison/Ross/Kemp models are? What about Component Display Theory, Elaboration Theory, the Conditions of Learning, Learning Hierarchies, the ARCS model, 4C/ID, ADDIE, ASSURE, Schema theory, Cognitive apprenticeship, Social Learning theory, or Cognitive flexibility? Does she need to know those?"

Well. My truthful answer is that I've heard of some of these theories and theoreticians. I've even read about some of them. I actually have some books on my shelf that cover these topics. Admittedly, I may not have read all of the books.

Do you think it matters?

Photo Credit: Integral Calculus DSC00163 by Mr. ToHa

Instructional Designers with Degrees: Latest Survey Results

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:38:00 +0000

Since I last reported the results of the survey asking practicing instructional designers if they have an advanced degree in ID, the picture has shifted slightly.

As of today, 86 instructional designers have responded to the survey: Do You Have a Degree in ID?

About 35% of instructional designers have an advanced degree in ID. And 65% of us don't.

As reported earlier, there continues to be a wide range of backgrounds for IDers, mostly in the liberal arts.

View the latest survey results here.

Instructional Designer as Consultant?

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:40:00 +0000

With the rise of rapid eLearning tools and the ease with which virtually anyone can now create a course, what's changing for the instructional designer?

Consider this part two of my response to the Learning Circuits Big Question for February: Instructional Design - If, When and How Much?

(See part one: Instructional Design as a Spectrum)

In eLearning Magazine's predictions for 2008, Patti Shank said this:

Learning content, activity, and assessment authoring tools continue to improve. There are great tools with a short learning curve (for example, Adobe Captivate and Articulate Presenter) and tools with a longer learning curve that are really excellent (for example, Lectora, and Flashform). Savvy instructional designers are starting to realize that they cannot be involved in the development of all instructional content in their organizations. Designers are beginning to help others author content and that should leave the more complex projects, where quality of instruction and assurance of skills is needed, in the hands of capable instructional designers. One oh-so-hopeful prediction: Instructional design programs will begin teaching instructional designers to write. Why this critical skill isn't considered a must-have has me scratching my head.

—Patti Shank, President, Learning Peaks LLC, USA

Instructional Designer as Consultant

Are we seeing this happen? Are "instructional designers" of the experienced/trained in ID sort, providing more consulting expertise to the lower-tier of instructional designers (a.k.a. SMEs using rapid eLearning tools)?

Clive Shepherd thinks so. And thus the 60-Minute Masters: a crash course created by an instructional designer to teach SMEs the basics of instructional design.

Tom Kuhlman is certainly providing this expertise to the Articulate user community and beyond with his Rapid E-Learning Blog.

Laura from Canada sees an increasing call for IDs as "instructional consultants." In her comments on The Value of Instructional Designers, she observes:

Just wanted to add that I think the role of the ID, as seen in Canada at least, seems to be one of instructional consultant. This is from the numerous job posts (mostly medium size organizations) where they are asking for instructional designers who can assess the learning needs of the company and deliver the right training solutions in a blended format. Basically, they want an 'expert' to tell them how and what to train. There seems to be a mix between contract and full time positions, and I'm not sure how to read into that. I've worked as a technical writer for a long time and am seeing a drop in that area and an increase in instructional designers.

I don't know how to interpret this, nor are my findings indicative of any official status in IDs.

Is this what's happening? Are designers beginning to help others author content? Are IDs starting to serve the role of consultant more than the role of creator?

Personally, I am starting to see a bit of a demand for this. One of the products that my company creates are Flash based eLearning templates. We customize them for each client, based on the instructional design approach that organization is taking, look and feel, etc. What we're finding now is that our clients' "IDs" often have little to no ID experience and need help figuring out how to make the best use of this great tool we've built for them.

Is this a standard part of the package now for most rapid eLearning tool companies? Is this rolled right into the product or is that consulting expertise considered extra?

The Big Question: Instructional Design as a Spectrum

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:32:00 +0000

The Learning Circuits Big Question this month: Instructional Design - If, When and How Much?

My response here is not so much an answer to this question, but rather, further musings on this endless topic that I've been rambling on about of late.

Shades of Instructional Design

What if we leave the labels aside for a moment. What if we say that everyone who creates instruction is an instructional designer.

Different tools; different projects; different expertise. Some instructional designers are trained in ID; some are subject matter experts who've been assigned a training project or see a training need.

Of course, there may be and there are many variations in the quality of instruction that result.

But one could argue that some SMEs may and do have a natural flair for the art of instructional design (Rupa's post on ID as art; Donald Clark's post).

Some instructional designers, with a Master's Degree and all, may have no natural flair and may design poor instruction.

Many instructional designers find their way into this job rather randomly. Look at our survey results. Look at my own path to instructional design.

I'm wondering if we should be talking about tiers of instructional design. Of course, this is all semantics, and maybe it doesn't matter. But maybe it does.

Some instructional designers:

Design self-paced eLearning. PowerPoints on steroids.
Create complex simulations and games.
Work with 3D tools like Second Life.
Use web 2.0 technologies to design collaborative, just-in-time training experiences.
Look at organizations' structures and define strategy.
Craft distance learning events for college credit that pull together elements of both asynchronous and synchronous learning experiences.
Create online learning experiences for use in K-12 classrooms.

We're all still instructional designers. But the shades are many.

I pick purple. What color are you?

Photo: chalk by frumbert

Online Schooling for the K-12 Set

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:18:00 +0000

It's not homeschooling, it's online schooling. And it's increasingly being funded as part of the U.S. public school system.

This hasn't gotten onto my radar before -- I'm not sure if there are any state-funded online programs in Massachusetts. Or maybe it's just that my kids haven't gotten to that age yet.

See the article in the New York Times: Online Schooling Grows, Setting Off a Debate

Despite enthusiastic support from parents, the schools have met with opposition from some educators, who say elementary students may be too young for Internet learning, and from teachers, unions and school boards, partly because they divert state payments from the online student’s home district.

What do you think? Is this the inevitable wave of the future for U.S. education?

Will's New Taxonomy for Learning Objectives

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:41:00 +0000

Will Thalheimer, along with many other illustrious eLearning professionals, made some great points in the comments of Writing Less Objectionable Learning Objections.

Be sure to check out Will's post from June of 2006: New Taxonomy for Learning Objectives:

Instructional professionals use learning objectives for different purposes—even for different audiences. Learning objectives are used to guide the attention of the learner toward critical learning messages. Learning objectives are used to tell the learner what's in the course. They are used by instructional designers to guide the design of the learning. They are used by evaluation designers to develop metrics and assessments.

Will talks about four, and possibly five, different types of objectives:

Focusing Objectives
Performance Objectives
Instructional-Design Objectives
Instructional-Evaluation Objectives
Content-Outlining Objectives (Which is what many of us are used to producing in the form of text-bulleted lists of course objectives).

How does this jive with how you've been thinking about objectives?

Writing Less Objectionable Learning Objectives

noreply@blogger.com (Cammy Bean) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 15:39:00 +0000

My recent post on alternatives to listing out learning objectives generated a lot of interest and a good conversation. ( See My Objection to Learning Objectives.)

I attempt to summarize here, but feel free to go back to the original post and read all the comments:

Clive Shepherd hates when learning objectives are the first thing you see. It's like the opening credits of a movie. Boring. When clients insist on the objectives list, Clive includes an opening scene to spice things up.

Karl Kapp suggests starting off a course with a series of questions related to the objectives, or to start off with a scenario. [In the comments of this post, Karl clarifies: he's not suggesting pre-test questions, but rather a series of thought-provoking questions to get the learner to THINK about the content at hand].

Jay Cross says it's "presumptuous and confining for developers to foist objectives on learners, for it disregards the learner's needs, prior learning, and context." He suggests a list of potential outcomes with check boxes, effectively allowing the learner to create his or her own objectives.

Chris refers us to Will Thalheimer's “The Learning Benefit of Questions”, in which Will argues that introductory questions have a notable impact on learning. Chris suggests that a reasonable alternative to the “At the end of this class you will be able to” list is a series of questions. Chris is also a big fan of Michael Allen.

Pete Blair always includes the objectives. "Personally, I don't like to hide things from learners and play guessing games, so I am an advocate of letting the learner know, up front, what they will be expected to do at the conclusion of the course, lesson, or whatever. If they choose to skip that part of the course, then that's OK by me, they must still meet the objective(s) before they complete the course."

Christy Tucker did a nice write up from the the opening presentation of the WebEx/eLearning Guild Online eLearning Summit. Michael Allen was one of three keynote speakers. He had this to say on objectives:

"...throw out the crutches we’ve used in the past, like starting every unit with objectives that make sense to designers. You can write objectives in a different way so they fit with a context of why you want to learn something. There are better ways to do some of the things we’ve been doing. You can just throw some of that out though. Think like a learner. Give them a challenge at the beginning so they experience what they have to learn instead of just telling them what they need to learn."

How do you try to think like a learner? Have you come up with some novel way to handle learning objections? Have you met resistance from your clients when you tried to do it differently?

Photo credit: I Learn By Going Where I Have To Go by Joe Shlabotnik