e-Learning Leadership Blog

Create a Training Holiday

Allen Interactions — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:09:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

(Because of travel and Internet access complications, you'll be reading this blog a day later than intended. So please indulge me and use your time travel skills to travel back one day in time....)

Today, February 22^nd, is the actual day of George Washington's birthday (none of this new-fangled Presidents Day business for me). You see, I grew up in Illinois so we were very specific about our presidential birthdays. While the rest of the country took holiday on February 22^nd to honor Washington, we stalwart Illinoisans steadfastly worked away, having proudly taken our holiday 10 days earlier to honor our favorite son, Abraham Lincoln.

But while the day off for Lincoln's birthday was great, still, Washington's birthday holds a more affectionate place in my memory...simply because that was the one day a year we were guaranteed to have cherry pie. I'm wondering if anyone else shares that memory? The cherry pie served to commemorate Washington’s chopping down of a cherry tree. It seems we've lost those rituals nowadays; afterall, it doesn't make sense to honor ALL presidents by eating cherry pie. And now Presidents Day is just like any other undistinguished Monday off. But it was a good thing to be part of a specific event. And I knew it wasn't just an Edwards family oddity; it was an event shared by everyone--the Piggly Wiggly could be relied upon to have a sale on cherry pie filling this week every year.

So why am I writing about this? It has to do with creating meaningful and memorable experiences. On those long ago holidays I learned a lot about Washington...much of which I still remember, coupled with that rich memory of delicious pie. It had that impact not because it was so particularly fascinating, but because the content and the culture were always wrapped up in a memorable event. It was shared in the community, it didn't hesitate to involve emotions, it was multi-sensory, it was anticipated and remembered--all things that made it special; yet these are the things almost studiously avoided in approaches to our most challenging e-learning assignments.

I continuously hear complaints about the dreaded compliance training topics--both from designers who hate writing them and learners who dread taking them. I'm wondering how much more effective the task might be if we served a little cherry pie with the training. Of course I don't mean that literally, but what if we made an event of it?

Suppose you are burdened with conducting annual mandatory safety training. You’ll need to create interactivity with the actual policy information, of course, but that need not be all of it. Start with a video that tells a story, presents some perils, shows personal stories of particular success. Suppose instead of suggesting people do the training whenever they feel like it, promote it as something everyone should attempt to do on one particular day...a day that is promoted as Safety Day--or even name the day after some obscure safety pioneer in your industry. Suppose there was scheduled a Safety Bowl quiz game broadcast through WebEx over lunch with co-workers competing. Suppose everyone who had finished could get a root beer float at 4 pm. There's any number of things you could do to create meaning and memories around this training, that too often are presented as (and thus guaranteed to be) unbearably tedious.

These sorts of efforts would really cost very little to implement, and I warrant, would make this annual event, so frequently dreaded, into something highly anticipated, and more important, resulting in highly memorable learning. Make the training more engaging and it would be even better.

Impact is so often created by tapping into the emotions, into the affective elements that color our approach to challenges. When planning for user buy-in, we can't ignore these things. If you are faced with this sort of annual hurdle and are tired of being the brunt of complaints, I challenge you to think about creating a training holiday. You may be surprised how quickly the response might change. Just don't forget the cherry pie!

Love Your Learners

Allen Interactions — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:29:00 GMT

by Angel Green, Instructional Strategist

Today is Valentine’s Day – and this may sound a bit harsh, but I really don’t like this holiday. It’s not that I’m not a fan of romance, far from it. My problem with Valentine’s Day is that I believe every day should be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate your appreciation to those important to you. It should not be relegated to a single day.

Likewise, I believe every learning event should be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate your appreciation of your learners. Often, clients look to us to create a single course or two out of an entire curriculum of courses required for employees. And, while we certainly welcome the opportunity to develop these highly engaging, performance changing e-learning courses, I am often left wondering – what about all those other courses?

To me, it’s akin to nails on a chalkboard when I hear, “It’s just __________ training” - insert Compliance, New Hire, Software, or any other topic which has a perceived expectation of becoming a boring, page turning virtual data dump.

My suggestion is that in learning, as in life, you look for every opportunity to demonstrate your LOVE. For each training event you’ve been asked to create, LOVE your learners.

Listen

Take the time and really listen. It’s easy to jump to a training solution without trying to uncover the true learning need. Customer satisfaction scores have fallen? We will develop customer service training! But, if we just listen to learners, we might discover that leaders are micromanaging, the CRM software is cumbersome and service agents don’t feel empowered to offer solutions for service recovery.

Before you jump feet first into design, see if you can pull together a focus group, or even just send an email survey to the intended audience. Get real world input and you will be better equipped to develop a real world solution.

Observe

As an instructional designer, training manager or courseware developer – do you know what it’s like to drive from sales appointment to sales appointment, hearing a barrage of objections from potential customers while trying to meet a quota in order to get your paycheck? Do you know the pressure of quickly entering data into the software program while a customer is on the phone asking for a refund on their bill? Have you been out in the heat of summer standing on the side of the road estimating how many bolts you will need to use in order to complete a highway rail replacement while cars zoom by at 60 miles per hour?

Probably not, and yet somehow we believe we can create learning that will resonate with the audience. Do your best to observe learners in action – or enlist the assistance of someone who knows firsthand what it’s really like. We say it all the time, but quiz shows and themed games don’t work. To be effective in changing performance, training must be placed in an authentic context – one that feels familiar to the learner. When learners are placed in an authentic context, they recognize how they may actually use this training in their “real world.”

Value their time

Has this happened to you? You’re at a party and someone asks what you do for a living. You share your profession and wait. The people around you start sharing stories of the horrible training they’ve had to endure. The e-learning course in which they clicked “Play” and waited for the sound of silence indicating they needed to click a button. The three days they spent locked in a room with rows of computers clicking through software they already knew. The time they were able to successfully complete an hour long training program in under five minutes, happily clicking Next after Next.

Obviously, these are examples of time that was undervalued. In terms of high school economics, it’s a simple equation of opportunity cost. What is it your learners are giving up in order to complete your e-learning course? Is your course worth their time? If not, then it wasn’t worth your time, your Subject Matter Expert’s time, the legal review time, the LMS implementation time, or the time at the printer. It was a colossal waste of time.

Value your learner’s time by creating training worthy of the sacrifices made to attend.

Evaluate the right thing

How do you evaluate whether a learner has successfully mastered the content? Is it a post-course assessment score of 80%? Will answering 8 out of 10 multiple choice questions correctly mean your learners, when faced with a situation covered in the training, will make the appropriate decision? Of course not! I’m sure you realize this, but somehow we all fall into the trap of believing the post-course assessment is a valid (and mandatory) evaluation of learning.

What makes for performance change is not answering 80% of questions correct on the post-test; it’s successfully completing a series of interactions in which the learner is challenged to make the best choice given the situation they have been faced with.

By evaluating decisions, not answers, you are better able to assess how the learner will act and react to real-life situations. And, when you think about it – that’s what really counts. When faced with an ethical or legal dilemma, will your employees know how to act? When given an objection from a potential customer, will the sales person know how to respond? Evaluating decisions and giving feedback based on choices makes for great learning experiences.

So, on this Valentine’s Day, I ask that you look at every training event as an opportunity to LOVE your learners.

Turning Content into e-Learning

Allen Interactions — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:28:00 GMT

by Richard Sites, vice president - client services

For the past couple of weeks, my colleagues have blogged about the quality of e-learning design. These two blog posts offer more elegant statements on the condition of e-learning than I could ever hope to present. So I am not going to try.

What I would like to offer, however, is a solution to a challenge that frequently faces e-learning projects – the trouble with pre-existing content.

I cannot count the times I have walked into a project kick-off meeting and on the table lay mountains of three-ring binders, stacks of paper, and CDs full of corporate policies, operating procedures and other formal documentation. This is usually accompanied by someone in the room announcing proudly, “Here’s all of the content you’ll need to develop the course.”

Sadly, I know that in preparing for this project, a painstaking effort was made to sift through files, databases, research reports, marketing materials and corporate documentation. This was done with the best of intentions—to provide us (the instructional designers, developers and writers) with the data they think will best help us create an engaging, interactive e-learning course.

When faced with this mountain of documentation, I often thank the team for their effort of gathering all the material and then quickly push it to the side.

While pre-existing content helps to define core information about employee performance, it’s not the kind of information we need to build an e-learning course. Moreover, focusing on pre-existing content for e-learning course development has two basic problems:

The content was created for a purpose other than e-learning, and
The content has no context

First of all, most pre-existing content was developed with a specific intent – to convey information, policies and procedures, to market a product to consumers, to report results on a specific survey, even to train employees with the assistance of a knowledgeable instructor in the room. However, it was not developed with the intent of engaging employees in an e-learning course.

Secondly, this content has no context. Because this information was created to convey specific information in a direct and clear manner, there was no need -- and no desire—to construct a context for how the information should be used or viewed. And we know that for our e-learning to have the best chance at changing the learner’s performance, it will need to provide a memorable challenge that is placed into a meaningful context.

Our goal is to create original content. Content designed specifically for the purpose of performance change in an e-learning environment. Sure, we can reference the research, the policies and procedures, and the marketing messages, but our job is to translate information to learning.

Policies and procedures can translate to potential consequences from actions taken. Marketing messages can translate into a conversation discussing the benefits of our product with a potential customer.

To be clear, I am well aware that content is king in nearly every e-learning project. And this is a double-edged sword most of the time. However, even if we are choosing to create text heavy e-learning, we don’t necessarily need to rely on dry corporate policy documents. Even if we are going to err on the side of too much text in our e-learning course, we should at least err on the side of content that has a voice, that presents the learner with meaningful information, that creates an engaging challenge and that comes from the mind of the designer – not the compliance department.

Give your e-learning a voice and leave the three-ring binders in the compliance office.

Can We Stop Hiding Behind Failed e-Learning Design Models?

Allen Interactions — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:02:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

I spent most of last week at ASTD’s annual TechKnowledge conference in Las Vegas. As usual, there was an impressive array of vendors exhibiting in the Expo and a diverse collection of presenters in the sessions. I wish I felt more energized by these events. I am inspired, in part, but I also come away feeling somewhat discouraged—mainly by the disconnect that is so evident between what is talked about and what actually gets created.

While there is still much to know about learning, there is quite a bit of knowledge we can point to on what works effectively. Yet it seems that somehow this research and knowledge gets bypassed in “e-learning” development, as if the technology is a magic ticket that supersedes common sense and gives designers a kind of instructional amnesty. Developers and vendors alike end up creating e-“learning” interactions that would be rejected immediately if presented as instruction in any other context.

For a moment, consider if this were an interaction in a classroom:

Instructor: Read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student: I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor: OK. Now read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student: I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor: OK. Now read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student: I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor: OK. Now read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student: I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor: OK. Now read this paragraph and tell me when you’re done.
Student: I’m ready for the next paragraph.
Instructor: Which of these words did you see in paragraph #2?

Or this:

Instructor: How do you turn on this piece of equipment?
Student: I press this button.
Instructor: No.
Student: I turn this knob.
Instructor: No.
Student: I flip this switch.
Instructor: No. We’re moving on.

Or this:

Instructor: Watch this video.
Student: <silent>

Honestly, if those situations were to occur in a real-life classroom, those instructors ought to be fired. In fact, I hope it would be hard to find any real person that doggedly persistent in obstructing the possibility of learning. Yet those samples convey EXACTLY what I saw demonstrated last week in a great deal of e-learning demonstrations. (To illustrate my point, re-read the above samples replacing Instructor with Computer.)

These are monumental examples of failed teaching, and no amount of enhancement with prettier speech bubbles, or an avatar character reading the text with carefully orchestrated eye-blinks, or 3-D renderings of straightforward images, or automated narration, or even the speed with which they were created justify the belief that they are a useful contribution to learning. If we as instructional designers create these kinds of applications and label it training, we’re simply not doing our jobs.

There was a website I encountered some time ago in which the transcripts of political debates were read by very young children. It was done primarily with humorous intent, but I was surprised how clearly the readings highlighted the absolute absurdity of much political discourse. When hiding behind the formality of officials in business suits speaking in formal settings, the pointlessness of the endeavor is easy to miss. But put into the mouths of children, without the hidden agendas and preconceptions brought by the listener, the debates were exposed for the drivel they often are.

I encourage you to try something like that with e-learning scripts you are developing; it might be similarly insightful. Try executing your design for e-learning in real life—have an instructor do nothing but what the lesson provides in terms of presentation of information and assistance to the student. Confine the student to doing ONLY those things that could be done online. You may be surprised at how this simple little test illustrates how so many of our “accepted” models of instruction for e-learning utterly fail to support actual student learning.

Remember, any teaching event you create is in some way a conversation, and for a conversation to work, each participant must be present and participate in a meaningful way. As you design each project keep in mind that you are building that conversation with a living, breathing individual: instead of static presentations, create challenges; instead of judgment, provide helpful feedback for improvement; instead of mindless response mechanisms, simulate meaningful performance behaviors; instead of casting the learner as a passive observer, turn control over whenever possible for full involvement.

We need to shed the default behavior of thoughtless instructional design that is encouraged by the overly simplistic tools at our disposal. We need to overcome unreasonable expectations for the rapidity at which e-learning should be churned out. Then perhaps we can actually start taking all the great things we know about training for performance change and begin to create a discipline for designing e-learning that actually gives people a chance to learn.

e-Learning Course Text: Less is More

Allen Interactions — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:25:00 GMT

by Angel Green, Instructional Strategist

This week, while in a meeting with a client, I was asked a question, “How much text is too much?” My response– all of it.

Let me be clear: I hate words. I am a writer, and yet seeing lots of words, sentences, paragraphs and bulleted lists in e-learning raises my blood pressure and leaves me feeling defeated. First, I know the learner is not going to read them and second, I believe the words can go elsewhere.

Let’s focus on my first reason: the learner is not going to read them. We have plenty of experience witnessing that learners scan - not read - the words on screen, especially when there is a large amount of text. The fact that people read entire novels on tablet-like devices (a Kindle, an iPad or even their smartphone) has little to do with the fact that, in an e-learning course, learners still do not read large quantities of content.

Learners seek the path of what they need to do in order to complete the e-learning course. They want to get to the “good stuff’ – the interactions, the engaging pieces – as quickly as possible – and get it over with.

Our job as content writers, course developers and instructional designers should be to write as little words as possible. What content that does go into the e-learning course needs to be impactful and meaningful. We need to understand the mindset of our learners. We need to push a concept of less is more, and we need to identify alternative ways of delivering the content. Which leads me to my second point, words can be delivered elsewhere.

We’ve all suffered through it – the legal, compliance, executive committee or marketing team review our initial draft of a course (our alpha). Their response –“Looks great, but we need to tell them X.” So, we start adding in text.

Little by little our original, provocative, scenario based e-learning begins to transform into the typical, boring formula of an e-learning course: reading content and clicking Next. What started as a wonderful endeavor to provide learners with an engaging experience quickly morphed into a page turner with a couple of great interactions.

It happens to us, too – far more often than I’d like to admit.

What we need to do is gather empirical research and push our review team to look for alternative means of delivering that content. Are there PDFs that we can include? Are there links that we can send learners to for more information? Are there job aids we can reference, or develop, that can get the content the lawyers/compliance/executives say the learners must have without having it bog down our e-learning with a series of text screens?

When the answer is yes, we are good to go on our merry way of creating engaging and scenario driven content. But, when they balk at that, and they will, it becomes our duty to the learners to look for creative ways to deliver content.

We will have words we want/need/are required to include in an e-learning course. How we choose to present the words to our learners is up to us. Sure, we can give them long, passive text screens – asking them to click Next when they have finished reading. Or, we can think of unique ways to present content. When words are a necessary evil, it is our job to find the best way to give the learner that content.

I am sharing with you an example of a (relatively) easy and creative way to present content. Maybe this will spark some creativity and imagination.

In this example for our wonderful client DBi Services, it would have been easy to construct a static text page that told the learners that following the established safety requirements and protocols was vital to their job. However, we decided to use a creative and innovative way to give the same information in an entirely different manner. The focus of the learner is on one section of content at a time and the use of humor keeps the learner involved.

I hope this inspires you to think creatively, tell a story, incorporate media and images as often as you can and keep the learner engaged – even if they are only reading text. And, if you have some creative ways you have given the learner the words they need, please share them!

Bundle Up This Winter

Allen Interactions — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:39:00 GMT

by Richard Sites, studio executive

Just because many people head to Florida during the winter months to escape the snow, wind, frost and freezing conditions found elsewhere, doesn’t mean we don’t have cold weather. Ok, I get it – it’s relative. But to us native Floridians, it’s cold!

This past Sunday was no different. As my gaggle of golf buddies gathered together to get our weekly round underway, we were faced with a frost delay. The thermometer read 28 degrees, and to me, that’s cold.

The key strategy for ensuring you have proper attire in the winter in Florida is to dress in layers. Rest assured the moment you think it will remain cold all day, the temperature spikes and you end up sweating off 20 pounds. What you need to do is build up from a solid, but breathable, base. Pullovers and windbreakers layered above short sleeved shirts are the norm.

And yet it strikes me as almost comical because, without fail, on one of these cold mornings at least one of my golf buddies is sure to arrive for tee off dressed inadequately for the weather – like in shorts and a light jacket. “It’ll warm up” is the typical response when the harassment begins. It might be true, that as the day goes on the temperature will rise, but it is exposure to the current, not future, temperature that matters. We can handle a few minutes in freezing weather – but we struggle with three to four hours of it. The effect of the temperature takes some time.

The effect of instruction takes time as well, and this is the true when we create e-learning or blended training programs. We need to create several layers of instructional strategies (formal, informal, asynchronous, and synchronous) to provide learners with the greatest opportunity to feel the effect of the training.

While jackets and sweaters might keep out the cold so that we can stay comfortable longer, we don’t need to remain bundled up when the temperature finally peaks. Conversely, we don’t want to act as if we have already reached the peak temperature hours before it hits. So too, our various instructional strategies need to keep the current learner needs in mind, while also preparing for the future. Layering our strategy will keep the learner involved longer. And the longer they are involved, the more of the effect of the training will have.

So while you are bundled up this winter, consider the different ways you can broaden the learning moment for your learners. And Happy New Year!

eLearnChat Podcast: ZebraZapps Discussion & Demos

Allen Interactions — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:40:00 GMT

by Christopher Allen, product marketing manager, ZebraZapps

On January 11th 2012, I joined Rick Zanotti and Jean Franzblau on eLearnChat to talk about ZebraZapps. Watch the below podcast as we discuss the evolution of this new authoring tool and its future impact on the e-learning market.

About eLearnChat:
eLearnChat was created by Rick Zanotti and the late Terrence Wing, two well-known e-learning and media professionals. eLearnChat hosts top influencers, shakers and movers in the e-learning and training industries. Topics can range from e-learning, multimedia development, project management and more to social media. These shows are recorded during a LIVE stream on justin.tv/relatecorp.

Shake Up Your e-Learning in 2012

Allen Interactions — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:26:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

Over the holidays, I had the pleasure to visit Alabama for the first time. I enjoyed seeing new sites (and check off one more state capitol from my list of places to visit) and sample local customs. My hosts offered up a snack unfamiliar to me: a Georgia Milkshake. You make a Georgia Milkshake by taking a glass of buttermilk and crumbling corn bread into it. It sounded strange…not bad, necessarily, but I couldn’t quite imagine wanting to drink buttermilk with crumbs in it. As when faced with any new experience, I had to choose what to do: to reject the idea, reluctantly agree to sample a tiny bit, or enthusiastically take a full portion.

Well, I took the full portion, and let me tell you, it was delicious! To be fair, just as I feared, the first encounter with the crumbly buttermilk was a challenge to my expectations of what is good as set by my past limited experiences; but very quickly the delights of the combination became apparent, and we were soon talking about different variations on the combination.

That little encounter reminded me once again how important it is for us to always be open to what is new, and even more, how it is often our duty to push boundaries lest we find our lives unreasonably constrained.

Nowhere is this more important than in designing
e-learning. We all profess interest in improving our training, yet very rarely do I see examples of designers trying anything new. Tired presentations of content with senseless test questions permeate training. Tool manufacturers create structures that really only help the designer replicate the kind of lessons we have already grown tired of…only now it’s easier to make them. Advice from experts for ways to improve our e-learning too often takes the form of superficial changes of little substance…like some new backgrounds to use or a new way to make buttons. (If I’m dissatisfied with drinking milk, putting it into a prettier mug isn’t going to make the milk any better.) Even more expensive solutions and technologies, like 3-D avatars, are too often used to simplistically dress up an essentially passive learning program, rather than transforming the core interactive model that leads the student in new ways of exploration and learning.

So as we start the New Year, I encourage you to treasure the new. As long as we continue down the same paths we are already disappointed by, there’s no way we can hope for better outcomes. Unless you are absolutely content with the effectiveness of every bit of e-learning you created in the last year, then it is imperative that you force yourself to try new ideas. And don’t just take a tiny sip of the new milkshake, armed with the foregone conclusion that nothing but the routine is practicable. Be bold; attempt something you haven’t tried before. You may get too many crumbs at first, or you might get a big gulp of sour buttermilk, but with a little trust in experimentation, you’re sure to discover something incredible that can become part of your everyday routine and really enhance the success of your learners.

Reflecting on a Holiday Tradition

Allen Interactions — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:39:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

The other night I had the pleasure of engaging in one of my favorite holiday traditions: watching the 1947 Warner Bros. film Christmas in Connecticut. If you’ve seen it, you know it to be one of the warmest, most charming of holiday films. It centers on a Martha Stewart-like character, Elizabeth Lane, played by the irresistible Barbara Stanwyck, author of a popular magazine column, “Diary of a Housewife,” in which she routinely describes her perfect lifestyle as cook, chicken farmer, wife, mother, etc. in the idyllic Connecticut countryside. The only problem is that’s she’s really a single girl, domestically-challenged, living in a tiny New York apartment. Hilarity ensues when her unsuspecting editor commits her to prepare one of her signature Christmas meals for a sailor returning from battle.

The problem is that Ms. Lane knows how to convince anyone of her expertise, but when called upon to actually do anything, she’s absolutely helpless. It’s a trap so easily to fall into. I see it far too often when listening to tool vendors or content suppliers or conference speakers. On paper, the instructional designs and content plans look like the real thing…but too rarely does anyone bother to look beyond the surface to see if they actually do any good, either for the learners or for the organization. As in the movie, ability to relate content knowledge doesn’t necessarily translate to competence in performance.

As we wrap up yet another year, I find it helpful to reflect on these challenges and others and make a commitment to avoid the same mistakes that for so long have kept e-learning from reaching its potential impact. And just for fun, take a look at this wonderful film.

All of my colleagues at Allen Interactions join me in wishing you the very best of everything, whatever your traditions, in this holiday season. Below you’ll find a little game built in ZebraZapps to entertain you for a few moments – help Santa build the last two toys for Christmas!

Happy Holidays!

Help Santa build the last two toys in time for Christmas! | Roll over the white "Z" in the bottom right to access the video controls, which allow you to maximize the zapp.

An Iteration Versus A Change

Allen Interactions — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:09:00 GMT

by Richard Sites, studio executive

At the heart of the Savvy process is the iteration. Taking small purposeful steps forward in an effort to both create and uncover the appropriate design, content, media and interaction. The idea of iterating toward your goal may be easy to understand – even exciting to think about – but putting it into action might be a little more challenging.

There are myriad reasons why implementing an iterative process in your organization may be challenging, especially if you have always worked through a traditional, sequenced process. So I won’t even attempt to address them all. Rather I will focus on the main challenge in the effective implementation of an iterative process: What is an iteration?

There is a very common misunderstanding about iterations and using an iterative process. I often hear people say that they already use an iterative process, when in fact they use a process that has a lot of changes in it. When I press them to tell me how they iterate through the process, I am usually told of how they “added a button” or “changed the color” or “revised the content.”

While all of these are certainly methods of implementing an iteration, they alone are not iterations – they are changes. So what’s the difference – and the big deal after all? Everything!

As I mentioned earlier, iterations are purposeful reconsiderations of the previous form in an effort to better address the performance or learning objective. A change is merely the alteration of some element. Simply stated, an iteration is a cycle of review and redesign focused on improving the instructional moment.

So why is this distinction important? Well, remember the “E” at the end of ADDIE? It stands for evaluation. In an iterative process we don’t have to wait until the end to reach the E. As long as there is something to evaluate, the iterative process allows for evaluation at any point. An iteration gives us that moment – a change doesn’t.

Let’s put it like this: If someone does not like the gift you gave them, which is the best way to ensure you get it right next time?

Change the wrapping paper.
Move the bow to the other side.
Use less tape.
Get another gift.

Happy Holidays to all of you and we will continue this chat next year!

Savvy Continues: The Iterative Design Phase

Allen Interactions — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:14:00 GMT

by Deanna Sedivy, studio producer

I liken the Savvy Start to the excitement of getting ready for the first day of school. For some of us, it may have been years since our last first day of school, but we all remember the experience – getting school supplies ready, preparing to meet new people and learn new things.

The Iterative Design Phase reminds me of what made me anticipate that first day of school. During this phase, we get to meet the client face-to-face and learn more about their business and challenges. Since we generally spend a few days together, we also get to know each other as people as well as business associates.

As e-learning professionals, this is the time we need to put our faith in the Savvy process. For ADDIE fans, this Iterative Design Phase covers the A-D-D stages, at least at some level. The major difference between ADDIE and our Successive Approximation process is that very important key term ‘Iterative.’ The Design – Prototype – Review cycle within the Iterative Design Phase is how we iterate through this phase.

How, what, where, and when we design – prototype – review depends as much on the calendar as anything else. By this I mean that we might design a prototype in the Savvy Start, review it on Day 2, then make other revisions to the design based on the review during the Additional Design stage. So while we are still iterating through the three steps, we can accomplish this across various stages of the Iterative Design Phase.

Savvy Start

A Savvy Start is a project kick-off meeting held over a period of 1 to 3 days. The purpose of this meeting is to brainstorm ideas, create on-the-spot rapid prototypes, discuss the client’s issues and challenge existing designs and beliefs.

It is important for us to do more listening than speaking at first. Let the clients and stakeholders take the time to explain their perceived problems, corporate environment and principles. Our role is to guide the conversation and cut short any wandering discussions.

Then, talk through their needs while brainstorming ideas based on their explanation. From these discussions, disposable prototypes will begin taking form. Throughout the meeting, the project’s design, prototypes and evaluation are done iteratively in small steps.

Project Planning

During the Savvy Start, you will have initial discussions around delivery goals and required review cycle durations. It is recommended those who hold ultimate sign-off responsibility are present during at least part of the Savvy Start. During this time it is important to discuss the components of the project, such as budget, scope, time and quality.

Project planning is ongoing and can change throughout the project, but now is a good time to set some initial expectations.

Additional Design

Any prototypes created during the Savvy Start should be sketches which communicate an idea and/or process, but that can easily be thrown away. Additional designs may be produced during day 2 or 3 of a Savvy Start, or once you’ve returned to your ‘home base’, after some reconsideration of the initial design. The agreed upon prototypes and additional designs are included in a Savvy Start Summary document and are the foundation for the next phases of iteration.

In my next blog, I will discuss the Development Phase, which includes the Design Proof, Alpha, Beta and Gold releases of the course. Remember that I am only discussing a high level overview of our process in my blog posts. For more information, please get your hands on a copy of one of Michael Allen’s books. (They make great gifts!!)

Happiest of Holidays to you and yours!

Designing. For A Change.

Allen Interactions — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 18:45:00 GMT

by Angel Green, Instructional Strategist

People were angry, hurt and shocked. They planned boycotts, wrote letters and even signed petitions. A political uprising? A response to a human rights violation? An endangered species threatened? Not exactly…it was Facebook. Facebook changed the way their 800 million active members viewed their news feeds and status updates.

Change. There are few guarantees in life, but change is one. So, why is it so hard to accept change? Why is there such resistance to change? And, how should we use the study of the psychology of human change to our advantage as we work to create performance changing learning?

In my years designing learning solutions, I don’t recall a time when a client asked us to design training with a goal of keeping employee performance at the status quo. Sure, we’ve had plenty of “refresher” training requests, but these requests generally are the result of performance indicators showing slips in productivity, declining sales or increased error percentages.

The goal of 99.9% of training is to change performance. Employees are asked to change their behavior for any number of reasons: an upgrade to a software program, a new organizational procedure or process, to comply with ethical and regulatory business requirements or to increase in sales or customer satisfaction scores.

By studying theories of the psychology of the way humans react to change, we as developers of training can do our part to lessen the anxiety, frustration and hesitation to behavioral change. My goal for this blog is to offer some specific steps you can take, rather than summarize a plethora of theories about change.

Follow the emotions. In the book The Heart of Change, Kotter and Cohen suggest that behavioral change follows a See-Feel-Change sequence. To capitalize on this in training efforts, we have to remember that our learners are humans. They are not robots who will simply take data (content) and then make a change on the job. First, show the learner the problem or the solution to a problem. This “show” can be powerful through the images, stories, videos and testimonials you choose to use in the training. Next, through the interactions you create, you will move to the feel stage of the sequence. Allow your learners to feel frustration, anger and pessimism. Give them the opportunity to feel hope, pride or anticipation of success in their job because of using the new system. There are many ways you can demonstrate feelings in the characters of your training program – have their facial expression and body language change or write their thoughts out in a bubble over their head. Choose words that show you empathize with the learner’s feelings. The change phase only occurs through an internal desire to take action, which leads me to my next tip…
Be specific. Don’t beat around the bush or use ambiguous terms. To change behavior, you need to give specific direction on the actions that need to occur. Every year, people make New Year’s resolutions to “lose weight”. Unfortunately, this resolution often fails because it lacks clarity. Rather, the resolution could be written: “Take a brisk 30 minute walk three times a week before work.” Instead of “Provide excellent service” be specific – “Use the customer’s name during your transaction.” In order to be specific, it may be helpful to…
Find, or create, a bright spot. I recently read the book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. One valuable suggestion they offer is to showcase a bright spot – a person, department or branch that is the success story. Let’s say you’re looking to increase sales. Talk to the top sales folks; get their story and showcase it in the training. Looking to reduce errors? Which assembly plant has the fewest errors and what do they do differently? Get tips from the best and use them. Give your learners a role model. If this is an entirely new venture, create a bright spot. Create a character that employees can relate to and showcase the success she has from using this new process/software/technique. Finally….
Influence the influencers. This is one area where you will need to wear more of your organizational development consultant hat rather than your instructional design hat. The truth is, we can design the best learning solution: follow the show, feel, change model, be super specific in our directions, create a shining bright spot and still fail miserably in changing performance. Why? Because our influencers aren’t influencing change. Humans are influenced – by leaders, by peers, by people they aspire to be like (think celebrity endorsements). Influencers in your organization can make or break the change. Your role is to find some influencers and involve them early in the design of the training. The worst affront to change efforts are statements like, “Sure, this is how corporate says we need to do things, but really…we don’t do it that way here.”

Had Facebook heeded some of this advice prior to launching the new format – perhaps announcing the changes that were coming (show), generating excitement (feel) by creating a story of a user whose life is better now that she is able to see the instant her friend “likes” a photo (create a bright spot) – those 800 million users wouldn’t have been so upset. Of course, I don’t know too many Facebook users who jumped ship when the changes were made. But most organizations don’t have the luxury that Facebook does at the moment. Most of us need employees, and customers, who feel they are valued and that they are part of the organization.

By understanding how humans react to change, you can better design learning that motivates employees to make the changes the organization seeks. I encourage you to spend some time reading books and articles on the psychology of change. I promise it won’t be a fruitless effort.

Hands-On Webinar: Build an Allen Interactions Course in ZebraZapps

Allen Interactions — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 21:14:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

Attend a complimentary, hands-on webinar this week, occurring over two days, Wednesday, November 30 and Thursday, December 1, from 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm CST. I will lead you through some of the fascinating, quick, and easy capabilities of ZebraZapps. This webinar is appropriate if you are just starting out with e-learning authoring or if you are a power-user and have been using ZebraZapps or other tools for awhile. Click here to register.

In this two-day webinar, attendees will re-create a portion of an award-winning e-learning course Allen Interactions developed for Corning Incorporated. Over the course of this webinar series the following ZebraZapps features will be introduced:

Simple sequences
Drag and drop interactions
Providing correct and incorrect feedback
Simple counters
Object replacement

The Thanksgiving Day Turkey Bowl

Allen Interactions — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:59:00 GMT

Christopher Allen, product marketing manager, ZebraZapps

We've been having a great deal of fun building family friendly interactive e-cards with ZebraZapps. The speed and ease at which they can be created is proof for any organization wishing to capitalize on social learning opportunities – memorable and in the moment.

If your inner instructional designer is feeling the pressure (Thanksgiving traditions aside) of building boring and conforming learning material, try building an off-the-cuff experience in ZebraZapps.

Below is our latest interactive game entitled Turkey Bowl.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Follow Christopher on Twitter!

Sign up for your free 60-day trial of ZebraZapps

Roll over the Z in the lower-right hand corner of the embedded application to view it in a larger window.

A Thanksgiving Tradition: Preparing an e-Learning Feast

Allen Interactions — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:18:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

Holidays are often a celebration of traditions, and in that spirit we’re doing something a little different this week with the blog. One of the most popular posts of the last year was this one I published last Thanksgiving; re-reading it reminded me of some important considerations in creating the best e-learning possible and I hope it will do the same for you.

And be sure to appreciate your family, friends, and pleasures in your life on this long holiday weekend.

Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels!

Questions Asked & Answered: Analysis and e-Learning Design

Allen Interactions — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:22:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

Earlier this week I conducted a webinar on the topic “The 5 Most Important Analysis Questions You’ll Ever Ask.” Analysis is a critical activity in the process of creating any instruction, and it is particularly vital in making it possible to create engaging interactivity in e-learning projects. We covered a lot in the session, but I was unable to address all of the questions asked during the hour. As I was responding to those questions to be sent to the participants, it occurred to me that these responses also might be of interest to others who didn’t attend, so what follows are some brief answers to questions posted during the webinar.

First, a brief recap of the content:

Analysis activities in any e-learning development process uncover all the details and project constraints that will fuel the design. It’s particularly important to find all the information that will contribute to success early in the process. e-Learning projects are often at a disadvantage in organizations where insufficient time is allotted for analysis, where SME’s use the opportunity to overwhelm the designer with too much content, or where it is assumed that analysis is unnecessary.

While getting access to content and understanding the constraints are of great importance, I’ve found that these 5 analysis questions are critical in giving designers the information necessary to create e-learning that makes a difference.

Questions:

What do you expect learners to be able to DO after completing the course that they can’t do now?
What are the consequences TO THE LEARNER if the learner fails to master the intended outcomes?
Can you show me an active demonstration, a detailed simulation, or provide an opportunity to directly observe the desired performance?
What specific performance mistakes do new learners regularly make?
What tools, resources, job aids, or help do successful performers (or even experts) use to do these tasks?

Here are the questions from webinar attendees and my responses:

Analysis is not part of the Allen Interactions process, so aren't you contributing to analysis going away?

Analysis is DEFINITELY part of the Allen Interactions Savvy Process. We contend that the most appropriate process for creating e-learning is an iterative process that carries out the necessary activities in smaller chunks, designing ideas and testing them using rapid prototypes and cycling back to conduct more analysis and design as the project requires. It is unproductive to demand that all analysis should occur at one time before you are fully engaged in the project; sometimes you are not even aware of the questions that need to be asked until you begin design. If anything, the Allen Interactions Savvy Process increases the importance of analysis and design rather than eliminating it. I do think many rapid e-learning efforts tend to ignore analysis activities.

For Q1, what if you don't get a performance problem. What if you are developing a basic chemistry class for entry level power plant workers or factory workers?

and

What would you do if the client cannot articulate or agree to performance outcomes?

It is truly rare that an organization is going to invest in training on a topic that has no performance component whatsoever. If it seems that is the case, first you need to push back with the SMEs. SMEs often spend their lives becoming content experts and simply lose track of how the information is actually used. It’s sometimes hard work, but usually there is some performance issue of importance. (Sometimes, you need to talk to someone else…the project owner or managers, etc., who actually “own” the problem.) But if you still are stuck without performance outcomes, then you are going to have to design some performance associated with the content. e-Learning only works if learners DO something meaningful, memorable, and observable (so feedback can be delivered).

Risk/consequences to learner -- having experienced some of Allen Interactions’ e-Learning, I'd say you use the learner's risk/consequences to create the consequences & really the drama in the scenarios -- true?

I would agree that risk/consequences are a really powerful tool in creating a sense of challenge and excitement to an e-learning piece. There are other ways as well, by building suspense through narrative, delaying judgment, and developing compelling intrinsic feedback. Risk is really great at creating a sense of urgency (instead of complacency) in the mind of the learner.

Can you provide that 10% - 20% - 70% that you just gave about competency?

This question refers to the idea that in many corporate environments, there is a general pattern where about 10% of what a successful performer is done is learned in formal training, 20% through mentoring and networking with co-workers, and 70% learned on the job. You can find this idea referenced and supported in a large number of human performance contexts, but I believe it originally came from research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership. Their website (and a Google search) reveal many references to it. I think it isn’t so much a research finding as a guiding principle that makes a lot of sense.

How can similar results be achieved with lower end production values?

The key is to recognize that the instructional value is not in the production values, but in the interactions that engage the learner’s attention. Of course, the production values have some impact but are by no means the primary reason for success. Replace an animation sequence with a slide show of still images. Dispense with audio if necessary. There are a number of ways to achieve the same intent. But while you can achieve some results with lower-end production values, I think it is nearly impossible to do with ZERO production values. In most cases and for most audiences, visual imagery of some sort is absolutely essential. And that imagery almost always has to be customized to make it specific to your content. That can be done reasonably, but it can’t be done without some little investment in media talent.

How do you come up with the performance outcomes? Is it you or the company?

The performance outcomes have to come from the stakeholders within the company (either willingly or with prodding!)

How do you convince a client expecting only explication of inert knowledge (company history and organization structure) to accept that the training highlight actionable behaviors?

It’s a hard task, especially given how difficult it is to get people to let go of preconceptions. We find the most powerful method is simply by helping decision makers experience the difference between inert, content-bound e-learning and engaging, compelling learner-centered training. Often, it isn’t the case that decision makers want to make poor choices, but rather that they simply have never encountered alternatives. Of course, it is difficult to change perceptions at once, and legacy decisions can limit what you can do on any given project, but try to make small steps, documenting successes s you can.

Please speak more on how to counter the "productivity" arguments of e-learning software providers who claim/advocate that SMEs develop their own training (bypassing instructional designers in the process)?

This is really a philosophical issue. If e-learning is viewed as a publishing project, there’s really no way to counter this argument. The view is that the demonstrable existence of e-learning programs equals success. So measures of efficiency are simply a measure of how quickly PowerPoint decks can be converted to online delivery (for example). If, on the other hand, e-learning is measured by outcomes, then any even superficial investigation into training reveals that content access is not sufficient to accomplish change in performance. In general, SMEs don’t possess the skills in instruction and learning to expect them to be able to create those learning experiences.

I usually ask them to identify the performance outcomes first, then the content associated with it – you are suggesting the opposite, is that right? Identify content first, then outcomes, then map the content to the outcomes?

Well, yes, that’s what I generally find to work better, but the order doesn’t really matter. The reason I tend to get the content out first is that the SMEs are bursting at the seams to tell you this stuff. If you try to force the discussion exclusively to performance objectives, the content is going to be constantly inserted in the discussion. It seems better to get it documented and out of the way. But truly, this can vary quite a bit based on the environment, so my advice would be flexible. The main goal is to get enough information to be able to create the grid.

I work for a hospital and cannot use audio. I have found this problematic because it requires additional slides and I feel call-outs are distracting. Any suggestions?

Honestly, audio is not always desirable. To the extent you are delivering content, it is most useful when under user control. So instead of focusing on how to force the content on the learner, create a challenge that requires the information to solve. Then provide access to the content you would normally be trying to parse into small call outs. When the reader is reading for a purpose, you can be more general in how you provide access to the learning content to the individual.

How and where do you communicate the consequences to the learner? In Objectives, as WIIFM?

Use whatever means seems most effective. While screens that simply list objectives rarely are effective in communicating much of anything (students don’t read them), it is important to let the learners know “the rules” so they know what to expect. Laying out consequences in introductions and as you lay out a task is usually a good practice. Just note that you don’t have to explain EVERYTHING. Learners will experience the consequences quickly enough and learn more effectively that way. Tell just enough to get the learner engaged and working. Let the rest flow through the interactions.

So for content driven compliance training, are scenarios the best bet?

It’s difficult to make a blanket statement about any content. Scenarios tend to be valuable in creating a context to make sense of information that might otherwise seem meaningless in the abstract. Sometimes, though, I have seen scenarios made so elaborate that the actual content is made obscure. So, always try to keep the end goal in mind and not let the design get out of control.

The online and e-learning workshops I manage are not developed within an enterprise that's motivated to train their employees. Our professional membership is self directed learners, and the #2 consequence is that they may not be effective at their jobs (either as an consultant or within the organization). Can't think of any other motivation…please?

Individuals still ought to be motivated by the same issues, if not more so, since they are more directly responsible for their own success. These questions will still be very relevant in creating e-learning programs that motivate and have value. The biggest hurdle may be that your central organization may not actually know about these motivations, so part of an effective analysis might be to go to the end users for the training (your membership) rather than just relying on the administrative knowledge held within your organization.

Successful e-Learning Content Analysis

Allen Interactions — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:29:00 GMT

by Richard Sites, studio executive

All too often, e-learning projects are driven by content. Content identified as important by Subject Matter Experts. Content repurposed from instructor-led courses. Content the marketing department wants employees to know to increase sales. As creators of training, we are given this content and are expected to develop e-learning based on the assumption the content has been thoroughly vetted and does not need further review or analysis. However, typical content analysis performed by SMEs focuses on the knowledge they expect the learner to have, not how they expect the learner to apply that knowledge.

Have you had projects start like this? A mound of content and an expectation to turn that content into an e-learning course? I bet you have.

So, why is that most of us know learners must DO something to learn and transfer skills into their daily work, yet we still create boring, un-engaging, page-turning, content-focused e-learning?

I suggest the following reasons.

Traditional views of training. Many people assume employees can improve their performance through knowledge – that they will take information and personally find ways to change their performance.
Limited budget and time. Nothing is easier than putting a collection of content online in the form of a PowerPoint or page-turner.
Pressure to include every possible piece of information. With reviewers asking “Where is _____?” [this very important piece of information that has to be in the course] we often feel pressured to include as much as possible without considering the real importance of this information or if the learner can access it in other ways.
Lack of development skills. Most of us would like to do more with our e-learning, but we just don’t have the skills (or time to gain these skills) necessary to create high levels of interactivity.
Impact of legacy training. Let’s be honest, it’s not easy to challenge the status quo. We might as well create the same old type of training that everyone is used to and not rock the boat.

For us to move beyond content dumping forms of e-learning, we must take the lead and consult with/advise our project sponsors on the importance of performance oriented e-learning. This does not necessarily mean we must abandon all that content, but rather look at how we can use that content a little differently.

My very insightful colleague Ethan Edwards will be presenting a webinar next Wednesday titled, “The 5 Most Important Analysis Questions You’ll Ever Ask.” In this webinar, Ethan will identify the key questions critical for creating performance changing e-learning.

Ethan will discuss the following five questions to ask prior to creating e-learning:

What do you expect learners to be able to DO after completing the course that they can’t do now?
What are the consequences TO THE LEARNER if the learner fails to master the intended outcomes?
Can you show me an active demonstration, a detailed simulation, or provide an opportunity to directly observe the desired performance?
What specific performance mistakes do new learners regularly make?
What tools, resources, job aids, or help do successful performers (or even experts) use to do these tasks?

These questions support us in making the best use of the limited time we have with SMEs to gather the information necessary for effective, performance oriented e-learning. Again, you can register for Ethan’s complimentary webinar on this topic next week.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you experience the same content burden? How do you overcome this challenge? Are you using questions like Ethan has suggested to help create performance changing e-learning?

Cracking the e-Learning Nut

Brittany Dengerud — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 18:20:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

As fall is here in its full glory and the world prepares for winter, I’ve begun the arduous process of harvesting black walnuts. There are several old walnut trees here planted by my grandfather that, in spite of this summer’s drought, have dropped an unusually large crop of walnuts on the ground. For those of you unfamiliar with how black walnuts grow, let me tell you it is a long, labor-intensive process where every step except for the ultimate eating is not very rewarding.

Walnuts fall and are encased in a thick, wet, fleshy husk that through aging, rotting, and the work of small worms is reduced to a hard, papery coat. In collecting the walnuts in this stage, which sort of has to be done to save them from the marauding squirrels, you are guaranteed to have hands and clothes permanently stained dark brown. Once collected, you need to remove these dry husks, either by hand, or devising some other methods like my dad’s of spreading them on a hard surface and driving over them repeatedly with the car. Then you can lift out the actual nuts that are encased in thick hard shells and lay them out to dry for a week or so. Then you have to get off the remaining skin residue, usually by putting them in a gunny sack and shaking them around, letting the hard, rough nuts rub the dry powder off each other, letting the dust sift through the burlap. Only then do you face the slow task of opening the nuts with a hammer, trying to exert enough pressure to break the shell but not so much that you crack the fragile meat inside.

I remember vividly the many nights my grandmother would spend in the basement sitting at the anvil, hammer in hand, cracking walnuts. It’s a tedious job, and many hours of work result in only a small container of nut meats. And it’s somewhat uncivilized, unfit for genteel spaces, as hard pieces of shell fly and ricochet all over the place.

With this facing me, I wonder if there isn’t some easier way? Certainly commercial walnut growers have specialized equipment to ease these tasks, but I can’t warrant that kind of investment for my little operation. I could buy walnuts, but mainly what you can buy are English walnuts. English walnuts look like a nut, have the texture of a nut, and are easily cracked with a hand cracker or easily found already shelled and chopped. But they pretty much taste like nothing. (You never hear about anything being “walnut” flavored; only “black walnut” flavored.) English walnuts give you the technical substance of eating a nut with none of the pleasure.

But will I invest the time to crack those black walnuts? I’m not sure. It’s pretty hard to be committed to spend my evenings in the basement rather than on comfortable couch in front of the television. I’m afraid I may not possess the perseverance my grandma had. But if I don’t, it’s entirely because of my own choices. And it will be my loss to not enjoy the unique and irreplaceable benefit of having black walnuts to bake with.

Okay, so what does this have to do with e-learning? It just strikes me that this is exactly the choice that faces each of us involved in designing and developing e-learning at every point. Developing e-learning that actually has an impact on performance is a much bigger task than most people would guess. Designing interactivity for computer delivery is not hard so much, as it is time-consuming. There aren’t shortcuts to doing the required analysis and working through the designs of interactions, media, content, and evaluation. Then one has to wield one or more uncooperative or inadequate tools to try to wrestle the design into some deliverable format. It’s hard work. Sort of feels like pounding on black walnuts with a hammer.

Unfortunately, the temptations to skip the work are everywhere:

Just use simplistic questions rather than activities that actually relate to the behavioral objectives.
Exclusively use prebuilt templates, usually created to be as generic and inoffensive as possible rather than for instructional efficacy.
Rely entirely on canned clipart and meaningless images to “decorate” the screens rather than inform the instruction.
Scrap any kind of challenge because the simplistic authoring tools don’t allow anything but rote questioning and dismissive immediate judgng.
Be content with content presentation in lieu of actual instruction because PowerPoint lecture presentations are so easily transferred to web delivery.

We can end up with something that people will call “e-learning” but with none of the impact that instruction actually should have.

So it really comes down to what we value as training professionals. Do we actually believe in the possibility of creating performance change through engaging, interactive training? Or is e-learning just a formality we engage in to fill a place with little actual regard for the effect it has? The choice is ours. As for me, just as I owe it to to my Grandma’s memory to carry through and crack those walnuts, I owe it equally to the learners who will be subjected to the e-learning I build to create experiences that will fuel curiosity, enhance understanding, build competence, and inspire excellence.

Another tradition of fall is coming up this weekend—Halloween. In tribute to the festivities, I hope you’ll take a look at this haunted house from Allen Interactions, created with ZebraZapps, our new authoring and publishing platform.

Roll over the Z in the lower-right hand corner of the embedded application to view it in a larger window.

Mobile Learning: Look Before You Leap

Allen Interactions — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:19:00 GMT

by Jay Bravo, senior development specialist

There were a lot of great phrases this year, and beside anything that came out of Charlie Sheen’s mouth during his crazy rant – “I’m not bi-polar, I’m bi-winning!” (my personal favorite) – perhaps the most appropriate phrase of the year for the e-learning industry is … “We need to go mobile.”

Going mobile – it sounds so easy and logical for e-learning. I mean, at its core, e-learning is courseware designed to be taken anywhere. That’s why it is online, right? So that countless learners can access it to gain knowledge and skills without having to travel somewhere special and rely on an instructor to teach at his or her pace.

Of course e-learning should go mobile. But what does that mean? What are the implications, in terms of development, strategy and usage?

Before diving into the world of mobile learning, there are considerations that need to be made, questions to be answered. The first, and most important, question we should ask is: “Does a mobile learning application meet my desired outcome for this project?”

Here at Allen Interactions, we strive to create activities that logically support the instructional challenge. The same holds true for delivery of training: the medium should support the training expectations or outcomes.

Just because the market is flooded with mobile tablets and smart phones with giant screens and network access virtually everywhere (except my dining room for some reason), simply choosing to develop a mobile learning app because we can may cause us to miss the mark on our targeted outcomes. Before diving head first with half of your annual budget dedicated to mobile learning, let’s explore some questions you should ask.

On what device(s) will learners access the training? With so many devices, screen sizes and operating systems available, you need to consider how learners will access the learning. Will they take the training on an iPad, an Android Tablet, a smart phone? Unless your organization has provided, or dictated, a single platform or device, you may find yourself faced with a range of accessibility and compatibility issues.
Do you need to track data? LMS connectivity is a big issue with mobile learning. Will your LMS connect to a mobile device? How will you connect if you want to build an app vs. web app? If I can’t connect to my LMS with an app, how can I be sure people are using the courseware?
What technology will be used to develop your mobile learning? While picking a specific mobile device, such as Apple’s iPad, limits your development strategy, what’s more limiting is to say, “I want my learning to run on all devices.” Building web apps in HTML 5 seems like a logical choice, however, for more robust apps, it has many limitations that may affect your outcomes. A very common misconception I see in online discussions is that Flash developed courses will not run on mobile devices. This simply isn’t true. Flash runs seamlessly in Android devices, and can be published out through Adobe AIR to run on Apple products.

Instead of building a course which can run on both the web and mobile, developing the course for the web and supporting it with mobile learning applications may make more sense. This way you will be able to track user progress through your LMS for the course while allowing learners to access supplementary learning via supporting mobile apps.

By using this method, you give learners and developers more flexibility in terms of an informal learning environment, allowing for smaller and more frequent updates to mobile apps, as well as “apportunities” to build on to existing and future learning programs.

The short of it is that mobile technology is more than just a fad. We should all consider how we can take advantage of its opportunities to reach our learners. However, while evaluating the medium on which we design, develop and ultimately deliver our learning, our focus should always remain fixed on our desired outcome.

So my simple advice when it comes to mobile learning is to look before you leap.

Image Source: Nadeem Chughtai

Getting Prepared to Start

Allen Interactions — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 15:44:00 GMT

by Deanna Sedivy, studio producer

If you are a planner as I am, then you likely develop a plan for almost every endeavor you take on. If you register for a marathon or triathlon, you typically train and log your miles for a few months. When planning a vacation, you research flights schedules, accommodations and excursions. When hosting a party, you decide on a theme, write a guest list, send out invitations and coordinate food and beverages. The point is, when you embark on a large task, you prepare by gathering information to create your plan.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, it took a lot of learning and readjusting in order for me to embrace Dr. Allen’s SAVVY Process, our Successive Approximation approach to project management. Perhaps one of the toughest things for me to accept was to (brace yourself) forget the planning – at least during the initial Preparation Phase. For the ADDIE fans, the Preparation Phase and beginning of the Iterative Design Phase falls into the ‘A’ (Analysis) stage of the ADDIE Process.

The beauty of the SAVVY Process is that it does not require initial over-planning. You should do some basic preparation – learn a little about the client or department, but not prepare too much. Your goal should be to walk into a SAVVY Start a bit “unprepared.”
When you over-plan without the SAVVY Start, you run the risk of developing an initial bias or possibly constructing potential solutions to what the client has perceived as the problem. If you focus on the perceived problem(s), you may put on blinders for the SAVVY Start and, as the saying goes, you won’t be able to see the forest for the trees.

Most of the time, your clients believe they already know what the issue is – and sometimes they do. But, our opportunity, as consultants, is to approach the issue in a fresh way. And by asking the right questions, we often uncover performance challenges that have nothing to do with training.

For further reading on the right questions, I highly recommend a blog post by Ethan Edwards, our chief instructional strategist at Allen Interactions, titled the 5 Questions You Need to Ask.

Those five questions, according to Ethan are:

What do you expect learners to be able to DO after completing the course that they can’t do now?
What are the consequences TO THE LEARNER if the learner fails to master the intended outcomes?
Insist on an active demonstration, a detailed simulation, or an opportunity to directly observe the desired performance.
What specific performance mistakes do new learners regularly make?
What tools, resources, job aids, or help do successful performers (or even experts) use to do these tasks?

Through experiencing several SAVVY Starts, I have learned that we, as e-learning professionals, need to put our faith in the SAVVY Process. So, I challenge you to try it with your next training project!

When you get a training request, do some initial research:

Learn a little bit about the company (or department)
Read about the ”perceived” problem from the Request For Proposal (RFP), and
Identify the target audience from client documentation, the RFP and/or initial conversations with the client

Then STOP – I know it is hard, but stop yourself from over-analyzing the potential solutions until you get to the SAVVY Start or project kick-off.

In my next blog, I will discuss the Design Phase, which includes the SAVVY Start, Project Planning and Additional Design.

Where In The World Did Storytelling Go?

Allen Interactions — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:15:00 GMT

by Angel Green, Instructional Strategist

Like many children of the 80s, my first experience with a computer was on an Apple IIe. In elementary and middle school, for one hour each week, I excitedly sat paired with a fellow student in a cold classroom taking turns playing games on an Apple computer. While I realize this is one of thousands of blogs written on the impact Mr. Jobs, I would feel remiss if I did not offer my gratitude for the contributions he made. Contributions which allow me to do the work I love today.

By using those Apple IIes, I had the opportunity to become an early American settler, a detective on the hunt for a missing woman and an entrepreneur. Through playing The Oregon Trail, I learned about early American history and even a little about science – dysentery is deadly! In the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? series, I explored places around the globe and dreamed of one day traveling to the exciting locations where Carmen was found. And, finally, by playing Lemonade Stand, I learned that the decisions that I made had a direct effect on the success or failure of my own little business.

Looking at the games now, from the perspective of a person who designs computer based learning experiences, I am taken aback at how brilliant these early entrants into the field were. Though their graphics were obviously primitive, the fact that the developers of these games realized that simulated, immersive environments were the best method of teaching was genius.

The power of those early games was the storyline upon which the course was based. Humans have learned from storytelling since the beginning of time. Yet, somehow corporate learning projects have migrated away from teaching using scenarios and stories, moving instead to a more “mature” series of bulleted lists, charts, figures, policies and software demonstrations.

It’s hard to imagine that nearly 30 years later, we are still discussing simulated learning environments as if they are cutting edge. Perhaps it is because we think that in order to create a simulated environment, the graphics must be amazing, like something out of a Pixar movie. We convince ourselves that we could never create such learning because we don’t have the resources to do so.

But, by simply immersing your learners in a story, you can create that environment – the old fashioned way, through words and simple pictures. Allow your learners to become invested in the success or failure of the characters. Ask them to choose a direction, to make a decision, to explore an option and then write an ending based on those choices. Learners will become involved, engaged and motivated. And – sure enough, they will learn something along the way.

As technology continues to advance, it will continue to open new doors to reach people; to provide learning opportunities when and where it is most needed. However, we need to remember the brilliance of those early games and keep it in the forefront of our mind that while technology changes, we will forever be humans. And humans love a good storyline: we love characters and plots; we love heroes and villains.

Thank you for letting us be a part of your story. Godspeed Mr. Jobs.

Where Wild e-Learning Project Requests Roam

Allen Interactions — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 19:58:00 GMT

by Richard Sites, studio executive

Susan, an instructional designer with a large, multinational retailer, received a training request from the director of operations of customer and client relations. The request: “Please create a customer service e-learning course for our global retail sales associates.”

Susan spends three weeks putting her skills to work building this new customer service skills e-learning course. With a little help from a co-worker and lots of coffee, Susan finishes the first draft of the 90-minute course.

Susan sends the course design to the director of operations and her manager for their review. Two days later she arrives promptly to a training design review meeting, expecting to receive accolades. The design she and her co-worker have put together will make an amazing e-learning course.

However, in the meeting, Susan’s design is questioned. She is asked to explain how this e-learning course will help the retail sales associates respond to complaints in a more professional way.

“Respond to customer complaints?” Susan asks.

“Yes, that was whole reason we needed customer service training in the first place,” states the VP of HR.

“This e-learning course, while well done, does not address the original need for training,” offers the Director of Operations.

Susan’s manager suggests that she go back and add more of a focus on complaint handling.

Susan’s story is all too common. Many of our projects are initiated by a phone call or an email requesting training. But how, and by whom, was this need identified? Did Susan ever challenge the request or did she just move ahead with the e-learning development project?

One of the biggest risks in training development projects is the lack of understanding the true need. What initiated this training request? Why are you being asked to develop training? What performance problem or skill gap are you trying to resolve? In order to be successful, we must ensure we address the real needs of the learner and of the organization.

Perhaps you have received a request for training similar to one of these:

Senior management wants to make a change and has assumed that training will facilitate that change.
Performance results, such as customer satisfaction measures, are less than optimal. Management believes the scores are a result of employees’ lacking knowledge. Training is prescribed with the expectation that scores will increase when employees are knowledgeable.
A stakeholder has a strong belief that employees need more support in a particular area. For example, “All employees should have training in project management.”

Sometimes a request for a training project simply doesn’t address the right learning need, the right audience, or even the right content in order to effectively change performance for the better. So how can we ensure that we have done our best to identify the real intent of the training?

At Allen Interactions, this is an important part of our Savvy Starts (our proprietary project kick-off meetings). During the Savvy Start meeting, we question everything and collectively brainstorm a design that will meet the true learning need.
I realize not everyone has the opportunity to host a creative brainstorming session to start a project. My advice to you, when you seek to discover the true training need, is to: Confront, Clarify and Confirm.

Confront* the request head on.
Ask the requestor how they came up with the project. Also question them about other stakeholders who may have had some influence on the project start.
Clarify the data behind the training request.
After identifying the origin of the request, clarify the information that was used to determine the training need. Are there customer surveys, product returns, lower revenues, etc? Finding the number or data point that initiated the project will be helpful later.
Confirm the connection between the requested training and the expected performance results.
“So by offering employees customer skills training, you hope to decrease the number of customer complaints?”

* I am not suggesting that you are confrontational. Just be inquisitive about where the request is coming from. At the end of the day, it’s not worth getting fired for being insubordinate.

By identifying where the training request initiated, the data used to support the request, and the proposed connection between the training and the expected performance change, you can more accurately determine the performance gap, instructional objectives, and measurements that will indicate success.

Word of caution: We all work in organizations with leadership. Challenging the initial request is part of your due diligence, but at times decisions will be made that you don’t fully agree with. This doesn’t mean they are wrong or unimportant. For those projects, you simply need to do the best job of creating an engaging learning experience for the learner.

We don’t have to live where wild requests roam for too long.

A Fresh Approach to e-Learning Project Management

Allen Interactions — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:57:00 GMT

Deanna Sedivy, studio producer

I have always had a knack for planning – from laying out my school clothes during grammar school to organizing social events and activities in high school and college. Famous for my “To Do” lists, I was, and still am, the go-to-gal for orchestrating the actions necessary to make something happen. In college, my sorority sisters even dubbed me the “cruise director”.

When I first began my career as a project manager, I thought every plan had to be executed just as it was originally planned. Hiccups in the road would inevitably send my blood pressure through the roof and kick off a series of panic attacks.

Arriving at Allen Interactions, I was introduced to Dr. Allen’s philosophy and process of managing e-learning projects. The process is Successive Approximation (SAVVY) and is built on the philosophical foundation of projects taking an ‘Iterative’ approach.

Many people believe the SAVVY process and iterative approach are what define Allen Interactions’ instructional design model. But in fact, even though the process is a big part of making successful e-learning, it is a process, and not a design model.

In the context of managing e-learning projects, Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning introduces Successive Approximation and addresses how success is made by “making repeated small steps rather than perfectly executed giant steps (pg. 111).” The iterative approach (pg. 112) continually seeks to move one step closer to the final product with each milestone.

I’ll be honest with you, when I first learned about the SAVVY process I was a bit nervous. Okay, a lot nervous! The control-freak in me was not comfortable with the concept of throwing out a meticulously planned project. However, as I worked through my first few SAVVY projects, I came to the realization that a process which is not responsive to adjustments and changes is asking for trouble. In the management of e-learning projects, or any project, the most important aspect is responsiveness to people, the design and the deliverables. I am not saying there doesn’t need to be a plan but rather the plan needs to expect iterations.

In traditional project management, it seems the entire focus of the job becomes obtaining sign-offs on even the most minute (“next steps”) before moving forward. This overly inflexible, unresponsive approach can lead to:

An increase in bureaucratic issues
An increased focus on documentation
A decrease in creativity
An increased desire to seek agreement versus brainstorming and discussion
Increased costs because improvements are not realized until it is too late

In my opinion, the best project plan is one that can keep things moving forward while providing enough review and revisions at the appropriate times in order to increase the quality of the solution while also minimizing the risk of budget or timeline issues. Good project management within the iterative process is measured by the ability to be dynamic and flexible – making adjustments and coming up with new solutions in real time. In my upcoming posts, I intend to delve deeper into our Successive Approximation process and how it can be applied to a variety of instructional development projects.

So, how responsive is your process? Please share.

e-Learning That’s Saving Lives

Allen Interactions — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:30:00 GMT

by Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist

We recently had the pleasure of partnering with a wonderful non-profit organization, Operation Lifesaver, Inc. (OLI), that provides public education programs to prevent collisions, injuries and fatalities on and around railroad tracks and highway-rail grade crossings. They were seeking to address specifically the unique challenges in training drivers of all types of trucks in the procedures for safe rail crossings, and they wanted to maximize student access by building an appealing online learning experience. The first module is complete and in use and was recently featured in a news article in USA Today.

I want to share this case with you because it is such a great instance of the value in really designing around the Context-Challenge-Activity-Feedback paradigm for instructional interactivity. On the surface, this content seemed like so many other content-bound topics. At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss the content as trivial (“When the red lights flash and the arm comes down, you stop.”) But looking at performance instead of at content, it became obvious that there is a real training problem, based on the number of truck/rail accidents that happen every year. And when the cost of training failure is human lives rather than just unrealized productivity, it is even more imperative to figure out training that actually makes a difference.

While there were several additional nuances to consider that I’m omitting here, the core content was to teach the Six Steps for Safe Rail Crossings, which included such rules as: slow down, listen, look both ways, don’t stop on tracks, etc. Each step seems pretty obvious and easily recalled in a traditional “content” test, yet this information is apparently difficult to translate to performance.

So a simplistic “presentation and test” model was clearly not sufficient for this problem. The design team took this challenge seriously and came up with an amazingly engaging and, at least on the surface, effective training piece. While long-term results are not yet available, anecdotal evidence suggests that the piece is going to exceed all expectations.

The key was developing a realistic context (you are in the cab of your truck with a view of the road, traffic, and passing terrain and buildings), a fun and compelling challenge (you have three trips to take, each with several rail crossings, and you must arrive safely and without any traffic violations), realistic activities (you can do whatever you can do in your cab--accelerate, slow down, adjust radio, inspect surroundings, look side to side, etc.), and content rich feedback about your performance (the six safety steps and other techniques are reinforced through individualized content based on each user’s performance). While I think the end result is really impressive, I want to point out that it isn’t because the designers insisted on some remote, highly-sophisticated theoretical approach to the content, or one where the learner was to be immersed in media of overwhelming dazzle. Rather, they looked at the content and asked the question, “How do we want the learner to ultimately use this information?” and then created a learning experience that made those elements most prominent in the instruction while balancing quality with constraints of time and budget. The various experiences were devised so that OLI could feel confident that all of the primary variations and nuances of the content would be covered in the three “trips.”

It’s also important to note that this was achieved on a non-profit organization’s budget. Effective engaging e-learning doesn’t mean it has to cost a fortune; it just makes a difference where you focus your resources.

I’m confident that this training will change performance of drivers and save lives. Now that’s powerful e-learning.

Below you’ll find a link to a short promotional video for the training and another link to the actual courseware.

Rethinking Inside the Box

Allen Interactions — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:57:00 GMT

by Jay Bravo, senior development specialist

How many times has your boss, or her boss or her boss’ boss told you, “We really need to think outside the box on this one”? What if we had the luxury of creating any solution we could think up, regardless of its practicality in a real world environment? Imagine how different our projects might be if we weren’t subsequently given a string of limitations.

But, let’s face it, we all work inside boxes. I am not referring to the half-walled, family photo covered cubicle you call home from 8am-5pm every weekday. I mean the boxes formed when constraints are put in place that limit the ways in which we can produce amazing work – things like time, budget, resources and most importantly, expectations.

Our boxes usually look like this.

With limitations on time, budget and resources, we find ourselves frequently balancing the creative risks against the pressures of our occupational endeavors. And that’s not a bad thing. The real issue is why anyone asked you to think outside the box in the first place – they want something new, something creative, something… more.

So, instead of continually trying to jump out of the box, maybe we should focus our efforts on the way we see the box. What if we looked at our box from a different angle?

What if our box looked like this?

When viewing the box as first seen, no wonder we felt the need to push outside the boundaries! It was flat and two dimensional – and the resulting project would likely be just as flat.

When we change our view of the box of constraints, we can start to make “out of the box” decisions. The attitude can shift from, “Well, what can I do?” to “What can’t I do!?!”

We will be forced to create our own ‘MacGyver’ like solutions from our assignments. “I know my boss expects me to change our call center employees’ behavior, but all he has given me is 10 weeks, a roll of duct tape, two paper clips, a useless intern and a trial version of PPT.”

Your challenge is to find a way to exceed expectations with what you have. You can reduce, reuse and recycle things you once took for granted inside the box. Be resourceful. Question what and how you use things.

Are you still building training in PowerPoint because you don’t have another way to build it or are you just comfortable with PowerPoint?
Are you using the same old template because you assumed that it is required?
Have you ever tried to combine a couple of different instructional strategies to present the training in a new way
Can you update the current e-learning with new images or color scheme?

Now, back to the task your boss gave you. What can you do to change the call center employee’s behavior? How can you alter everyday objects to create something different that solves the problem? Who knows what creative and ingenious solutions you might be able to create simply by looking at your limitations from a different perspective.