Corporate Training & e-Learning Blog

Training Budgets Adjust Due to the Economy

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:28:12 PDT

An online survey conducted by ASTD asked people what changes have been implemented within their companies’ training departments to weather today’s turbulent economy. What have you seen in your company, and how does that compare to what these statistics show?

49.7% reduced travel of learners for training
42.5% reduced travel of instructors for training
27.5% moved instructor-led courses to e-learning or web-based courses
17.4% made no adjustments
16.2% moved training in-house (instead of off-site)
Creation of new content – 15.6% reduced
Reuse of existing programs or courses – 15.6% increased
Training dollars per employee – 20.4% reduced; 0.6% increased
Expenditures for external services – 33.5% reduced; 1.2% increased
Training budgets for the remainder of the year – 34.5% reduced; 2.4% increased
Training hours per employee – 13.2% reduced; 4.8% increased
Tuition reimbursement – 6.0% reduced; 1.8% increased

Need-to-Know Training

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:26:21 PDT

Everyone feels pinched these days, with most organizations cutting way back on training expenditures. Many companies seek newer, cheaper ways to deliver necessary training, with an emphasis on necessary. (Training topics considered “unnecessary” can include communications, interpersonal skills, negotiating, and general finance.) Some companies require a minimum number of participants in each class, others have limited the frequency of training events, and others are eliminating those non-essential topics.

On the other hand, companies must not lose sight of the fact that some training is essential. This includes training that is mandated by law or compliance requirements, training that impacts the customer or brand, courses that are safety-related or government regulated, and those that may mitigate risk.

Here is an example. More discrimination claims are filed during poor economic times. It is important for organizations to be able to provide proof of training on such topics as ethics, harassment, discrimination, and wage and hour compliance. Such proof will provide crucial defense in the event of litigation. It is important to spend money as wisely as possible and determine what is essential to your company’s survival – what courses are truly need-to-know vs. nice-to-know.

HR Magazine provides the following ideas for cutting back creatively:

Cut travel costs – use e-learning, videoconferences
Piggyback training – provide a class on the same day as a regional meeting
Increase classroom fill rates – run fewer and larger classes
Shift schedules – provide training during breaks, lunches, before/after hours
Eliminate catering – have brown-bag lunch sessions
Maximize employee knowledge – via mentoring, coaching, shadowing
Develop a wiki database – create an open-source (free) database/knowledgebase for employees
Put training online – convert existing classroom courses to e-learning
Implement free communication tools – such as Skype, Moodle
Encourage free courses provided by top universities (MIT, UC Berkeley), free downloadable podcasts of business lectures (Stanford U), free software training courses (Microsoft, Free-Ed.net)

Keep an open mind and you will be able to find even more ways to save money while still providing the training your organization needs to succeed during these tough times.

Let's Talk Terminology

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 09:53:47 PDT

Many new and potentially confusing terms and phrases have been coming across my desk lately. I presume you have been seeing them as well, and you may wonder what they all mean. I thought I would offer some short explanations of them for you here.

Cloud computing refers to the invisible "cloud" of data and applications available anywhere and anytime. Mobile devices are the most pervasive in terms of accessing this ever-growing cloud of information that is, by its own nature, everywhere.

As defined in a Brandon Hall research paper on the subject, mobile learning is "personalized learning that unites the learner's context with cloud computing using a mobile device."

Also defined in the same paper is ambient intelligence (AmI): smart interactive technology that is both invisible and ubiquitous (omnipresent) and that adapts to its environment and users.

Mobi-sodes are short episodes of mobile learning, while an intraverse is the online universe that is available through your company's intranet.

Notice this growing list of similar terms:
E-Learning: electronic (online) learning
M-Learning: mobile learning (on handheld devices and cell phones)
V-Learning: learning inside a virtual world (such as Second Life)
G-Learning: learning via computer games
C-Learning: learning via collaboration with co-workers and associates

And of course you have all seen references to Web 2.0 and E-Learning 2.0. Web 2.0 is the stage of the World Wide Web where the Internet has become a platform for users to create, upload, and share content with others, versus simply downloading content. E-Learning 2.0 is the idea of learning through digital connections and peer collaboration enhanced by technologies driving Web 2.0. Users/learners are empowered to search, create, and collaborate in order to fulfill intrinsic needs to learn new information.

Finally, more businesses are concentrating on the bottom line and their return on investment (ROI) from their organization's training efforts and expenses. As a result, you will continue to hear more about Performance-Based Learning (PBL), which focuses learners on what they need "to do" to drive business results and delivers learning aligned closely to actual need.

I hope these explanations help. As I come upon new terms and phrases in our industry, I will be sure to share and explain them.

WHAT Do You Do For a Living?

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:49:43 PDT

"Did you say instructional design? What the heck is that?" Most of the time when I am asked by a layperson what we do here at CramerSweeney Instructional Design, I do NOT answer "We do instructional design" - a non-answer which would generate the above reaction. Instead, I answer something like this: "We write and develop classroom and online training programs on any topic for corporations of all sizes." I may even follow that extremely brief answer with the names of a few of our better-known (household name) clients. Hey, who doesn't like to name drop occasionally?

But what IS instructional design (really) and what is its true purpose? First consider the fact that we, as humans, are all learning all of the time. It's what we all do, even though we are not always (or even often) conscious of doing it. Most of our learning happens on the fly - through our experiences, our senses (what we see, hear, touch), our interactions and conversations. This is our natural way of learning. Sitting in a classroom or taking an e-learning course are other ways that we learn, but they are not natural to us. The purpose of instructional design, then, is to package these formal learning experiences in the most useful, effective, and engaging manner possible.

Good instructional design helps learners make sense of new information being taught. Training should never be just a dump of information.
To make sure learners understand what they need to learn, good instructional design provides clear learning goals. This ensures that learners will not focus on the wrong things and will focus on the appropriate specific pieces of information they need to learn.
By including examples, practices, exercises, and discussions (interactivity) throughout the training, good instructional design provides the context and perspective (real meaning) learners need in order to understand and process (remember) new information.
Using information from the subject matter expert(s) and compressing it into a streamlined course saves learners a lot of time (and saves companies a lot of money).
By designing and developing engaging learning experiences, good instructional design better engages learners and provides more effective learning.

Learning is a natural and complex process that we engage in all the time. Yet, to make learning happen in an unnatural, formal environment, we need to package the learning using good instructional design! The next time someone asks me what instructional design is, I may add this to my previous answer: It requires pulling together relevant content to create effective, focused, and meaningful courses.

Make e-Learning Engaging - Please!

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:47:57 PDT

We've all seen dead-boring e-learning courses. Heck, many of us have probably been involved in creating less than stellar e-learning. But we all have had to start somewhere. And we have all seen (or at least heard about) the high drop-out rates of e-learners. Today, of course, we find ourselves in the new world of "e-learning 2.0" with uncountable tools at our disposable (including the web), some of which make developing effective and engaging e-courses not only easy but pleasurable! But what can we really do to keep learners engaged and ensure that they will complete their e-learning modules?

Allison Rossett and Antonia Chan wrote a useful white paper for Adobe Systems, called Engaging with the New eLearning, in which they offer 12 great suggestions. These are the high-level highlights:

Participants must believe the e-learning will be useful to them.
If value for the participants is not obvious, provide a vivid example to make it obvious.
The program must provide opportunities for success, never failure or uncertainty.
Make the program real to participants by, for example, anchoring the topic to something familiar to them.
Since participant involvement will be required, demonstrate what that participation might look like.
Make the program active and thought-provoking - keep participants doing and thinking.
Make it human by including stories, lessons learned, quotes, anecdotal trivia, etc.
Guide and track participants.
Blend your e-learning program with other learning tools and opportunities, such as blogs, a performance support tool, an online assessment, online chats with fellow learners, a forum, videos, etc.
Use online communities to help participants form relationships, collaborate, and work as a team with others - by using a blog, wiki, discussion board, and other online tools.
Make it POP! Add some WOW! This requires creating something dramatic, compelling, and authentic that is still also perceived as valuable to the learner.
Measure results and effectiveness, and keep on improving.

You don't have to begin implementing all 12 of these recommendations at once. Ease into them and have fun. If you're having fun, chances are better that your learners will have fun. Good luck!

Update on Mobile Learning

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 10:43:05 PDT

I don't know how many of you have been able to read The eLearning Guild's 90-page 360 Report on Mobile Learning. If you haven't seen it, I want to share with you some of the most interesting highlights.

Of the eLearning Guild members surveyed, 17.3% use mobile learning (m-learning) sometimes or often.
Members with 7+ years of experience use m-learning 25.6% more often than members with 6 years of experience or less.
Of the Guild members who took the survey, 37.5% said they plan to do more m-learning in the next 12 months.
The most popular m-learning platform used by survey responders is Blackberry (46.6%), with Windows Mobile being used by 26.9% and iPhone 15.2%.
The majority (81.4%) of members who have implemented m-learning have seen improvements in learner/user access and availability, with 59.4% seeing improved user performance.

This is an avenue for learning dissemination that will, I have no doubt, continue to grow exponentially, especially as more development tools/software continue to pop into the marketplace!

Blending Corporate Training Smoothly

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 07:32:20 PDT

Article by Guest Blog Contributor Heather Johnson.

Corporate training is necessary for a variety of reasons, from focusing on a company’s critical needs to empowering employees to take control of their responsibilities and help improve business performance. Each organization follows its own methods to impart this training, both to new hires and existing personnel according to the needs of the company. E-learning programs, once considered the outcast in the training world, has gained in popularity for more reasons than one:

The software and resources needed are cost effective.
They can be designed and tailor-made to suit the needs of your organization.
They can be altered and changed as the nature of jobs and responsibilities morph to adapt to changing expectations and policies.
They can be implemented rapidly.
These programs are standardized, which means employees across the board are provided with the same instructions in the same form of delivery. Your company is thus more cohesive as a unit.
They allow trainers to cut back on travel costs and time.
With the Internet and the Intranet offering the advantage of connectivity anywhere and everywhere, employees can train on the job or at home at their leisure.
E-learning development can be outsourced leaving your staff free to handle other responsibilities.

In spite of all these advantages that e-learning offers, organizations have moved on to a newer form of training, one which blends traditional and e-learning methods and takes the best of both to impart training to corporate circles. In other words, it’s old wine in a new bottle. Blended training came into its own when people started realizing that one size does not fit all and that each company’s needs are different.

Blended training sought to maximize returns on training programs from the organization’s point of view – it followed the principle that training programs exist not to educate employees and make them experts in their jobs but to help improve their performance in such a way that the business is profitable and that the organization’s goals are met.

With more emphasis on increased performance and maximum returns at the lowest cost, organizations are turning to a mixture of media and tools to impart training. Depending on their size and turnover, they adopt a blend of electronic and human training methods – the electronic aspect ensures that there is an element of standardization while the human aspect ensures that the process is accountable and the returns measurable. Formal classes, PowerPoint presentations, seminars on the web, manuals and discs with study material, books, meetings, conferences, hands-on experiences and simulations are all adopted in varying degrees by organizations, all of whom are striving to find the optimal combination that provides the best impact.

Guest Blog Contributor By-line:

This article is contributed by Heather Johnson, who regularly writes on California teacher certification. She invites your questions and writing job opportunities at her personal email address: heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

Mobile Learning's Slow Birth

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:55:23 PDT

Imagine a birth taking 10 years. Can't imagine it? Neither can I, but that is how long it has taken mobile learning (m-learning) to finally begin to make a visible appearance. M-learning has been discussed for amost 10 years, yet is only now approaching actual deployment.

Why now? Simply because the portable devices needed to deploy m-learning are finally here. They include smart phones, ultra-portable computers, and iPods/iPhones. And the number of learners who have them grows every day. In fact, there are more people with two mobile devices than there are people with just one (i.e., a Blackberry + an iPod).

Increasing numbers of handhelds offer internet access (the "mobile web"), further unleashing learners from their desktop or laptop computers. Today, over half a billion mobile phones connect to the internet each day, bringing information to where it's needed or wanted - anytime, anywhere. In addition to text, this information is in the form of images, animations, games, movies, videos, music, even maps and location services. IBM's Institute for Business Value predicts that a billion people will be accessing the mobile internet by 2011 - only 3 years away! At that time, our mobile transactions and interactions will generate $80 billion for the web services industry.

OK, so how quickly can the training industry accept, adopt, and truly implement m-learning?

Very soon, I hope. First, we must begin with enterprise acceptance, including executives and IT professionals willing to support a mobile infrastructure. These individuals have already seen the value of being "unplugged" as desktop computers have converted to laptops and notebook computers. Mobility has already become a focus for IT departments. Adoption of enterprise mobility is all about increasing workforce productivity - certainly not a hard sell.

As learning professionals, the more we can demonstrate productivity gains from m-learning, the more likely companies will be to support m-learning implementations. And to do so sooner instead of later.

What technologies do the IT folks need in order to support enterprise mobility and m-learning? Wireless networks, mobile applications, middleware, devices, and security and management software. They are confused, however, over which wireless networks need to support specific kinds of enterprise mobility needs, especially where new technologies are involved. Plus executives want to know the pros, cons, and deployment issues associated with the many wireless network options. Organizations must also decide who should have access to them (the entire workforce, or just select groups) and how best to cost-effectively deploy and maintain these systems. Finally, what should they do when new mobile devices come to market (such as the iPhone)? Do they support those as well?

As a newborn, m-learning has been focusing on providing performance support and information to mobile workers. Unfortunately, there are those who believe that is not the same thing as "learning". In fact, it is learning - it is a learning intervention that is accessible at the exact time and place it is needed.

Time will tell how readily accepted and integrated m-learning will become in our careers and our lives. I am quite hopeful and excited about it. I believe we need to see the introduction of more mainstream tools that produce mobile output. As Ellen Wagner said in a recent eLearning Guild article, "We all acknowledge that mobile learning is a many-splendored thing that has the potential to truly rock our professional practice."

Training Is Useless Unless...

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:36:30 PDT

T&D magazine published an interesting article titled "Why (Most) Training Is Useless: Start Developing Skills; Stop WASTING Time." David H. Maister offered some compelling insights that I would like to share with you:

True long-term changes in any organization need to begin with changes at the top - in managerial behavior.

Training should not be used as a first (or stand-alone) step to long-term change, but as part of a process toward organizational change.

Training is a waste of time and money if what is taught is never put into practice.

Too often, companies will train people in new areas but then send them back to their original jobs - where little of what was taught ever gets implemented.

"There is no point in offering skills training if there is no incentive for people to engage in the desired behavior."

Some business skills can be explained/taught but not effectively learned through mere discussion/lecture, such as being able to manage. You can learn a lot about management, but that doesn't mean you will be any good at doing it. "No amount of understanding, knowledge, or intelligence will help if you are unable to interact with people" and influence them. These kinds of skills need to be learned slowly and by doing/practicing them, not just learning about them.

Training should only be scheduled on topics that can be applied immediately - not days, weeks, months, or years before it will applied.

Training programs should have mandatory prereading and pretesting, with everyone coming to the session fully prepared.

Work groups/departments should be trained together - and with the group's manager present. This way they can immediately begin to discuss how they plan to integrate the training's ideas into their practices.

"If it's worth doing training, it's worth doing it in a way that's going to make a difference."

The "Value" of Learning?

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:17:10 PDT

Company business units all over are being expected to demonstrate and document their value to justify the investment their company is making to operate them. This includes training functions and departments. How on earth should we be expected to measure the value (ROI) of our efforts? What measures should we capture? What business result indicators should we focus on? We are training experts, not business analysts. But we are being asked to determine and measure business impacts that are extremely difficult to measure.

A Summer 2008 article published in Training Industry Quarterly gave me a few insights into this increasingly common dilemma. Some of the difficulties right out of the gate are that senior management is asking for measurements that aren’t necessarily practical for training divisions to measure. Their perspective is too “big picture” and conceptual, when what we are in fact able to measure is not. The business measures that we may be able to capture are on a much smaller scale, so we must first decide what business outcome(s) to measure and then get senior management to agree. In other words, “get them to align around some intermediate business impact parameters that are indeed measurable.”

The article goes on to offer a couple of good examples. At Halliburton, the leaders decided that the outcomes most important to them are employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and cash flow. Customer satisfaction and cash flow are relatively easy to measure. Why employee engagement? Halliburton has had evidence that employee engagement is critical to their financial and market performance. They have successfully measured it and they link leadership development programs to the impact they have on the employee engagement index.

The second example provided is from Sun Microsystems, where they discovered a link between mentoring programs and employee performance. A key step in their research was to relate mentoring to measurable performance improvement agreed to by Sun’s senior management. The metrics included rate of promotions and salary increases, as well as bonuses. They found that those who were mentored received more rapid pay raises and promotions – that they were higher performers than the control group. They also found that the mentees had similar superior performance. So Sun’s “senior managers were aligned around the business outcomes measurements based on compensation and promotion.”

Measuring the impact of learning on a business is not an exact science – nor is it the same across businesses or even industries. There is no prescribed way of doing it. You just need to figure out what is best to measure, get senior management’s agreement on it, measure it, then report on your findings. Easy, right?

So what skills do we need to be able to do this? First we need the ability to have a conversation about business impact - to understand it well enough to discuss it. We also need the ability to design a learning intervention experiment with control groups and statistical techniques. If these are not our strong skills, we need to align ourselves with people inside the organization (or outside) who can help us. The article mentions that CLO Institute offers a fully online CLO Certification program to teach some of these business skills that people who have come up through the training organization ranks may not have.

The bottom line is that training organizations are expected to change from being tactical/reactive to being more strategic. We all need to embrace this and learn how to move forward with it.

How to Spice Up a Presentation

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:58:12 PDT

By Heather Johnson (Guest blogger)

A friend had this to say of my brother – he’s the only guy I know who can sleep through his own team’s corporate presentation. Now I don’t know if this statement could be construed as derogatory to my brother or to the person who prepared and presented the presentation. Whatever the connotation, presentations are not the most entertaining films to view, especially on sonorous afternoons in air conditioned and darkened rooms that lull you to sleep. But the one you make can be the exception to the rule that presentations are boring; here are a few tips to spice up your presentation so that your audience is left asking for more:

Preparation holds the key to a good presentation. Know your subject and know your audience. Make your presentation fit to their level of reasoning and understanding, make it seem like you’re showing them what they want to see, not what you want them to see.
Interaction is the best way to get your audience involved. Ask and invite questions.
Talk with enough confidence so you appear in control of and knowledgeable about the facts but don’t overdo it or you’ll come across as talking down to your listeners.
The first blow is always the best and the hardest to recover from. The element of surprise lies in making a strong opening and getting your audience to sit straight with renewed interest.
Be prepared to answer questions mid-slide and carry on from where you left off without breaking stride.
It’s difficult, but being prepared to change tactics midway is an advantage when you sense your audience is not as attentive as you would like them to be.
Short and sweet is the catchphrase for effective presentations – the shorter and more powerful the message, the more reach it has.
Talk eloquently without the use of too many “ahs” and “ums” and “likes”.
Use your hands to complement your words and slides – body language speaks a thousand words and wooden postures never helped liven a presentation.
Balance your glance between your slides and audience as required.
Dress appropriately.
Modulate your voice according to the size and echo range of the room.
Don’t throw in a joke just to get a few laughs; use humor that is relevant to the topic at hand.
Know your slides thoroughly and never get them mixed up in the middle of a presentation.
Try and make normal facts sound innovative and interesting by showing them from a different perspective.
If you’re a beginner, there’s no shame in practicing in front of a mirror or recording yourself to provide your own feedback so you can improve and improvise as needed.

By-line:

This article is contributed by Heather Johnson, who regularly writes on the topic of college scholarship applications. She invites your questions and writing job opportunities at her personal email address: heatherjohnson2323 at gmail dot com.

Financial Squeeze on Training Departments

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:00:47 PDT

An article in ASTD's May 2008 T&D magazine outlined a recent study by Expertus and TrainingIndustry.com about training budgets and effectiveness. Over 3/4 of the respondents reported pressure to reduce costs and do more with the same budget. In addition, while there is more pressure for training departments to report return-on-investment, only 20% of respondents use ROI measures.
Leadership training and other soft skills training is difficult to track in terms of quality, so many companies are still using volumed-based instead of value-based metrics. While you can do ROI on sales and manufacturing training, who should be blamed if sales performance goes down, especially in our current economy? It doesn't seem at all fair to blame training.

A surprising finding in this study was the breakdown of dollars allocated in the training budget:

Delivery = 35%
Content development = 26%
Administration = 24%
Technology = 16%

What does this show? That a lot of time and resources (MONEY) is being spent on things that don't teach anybody anything! Here are a couple of suggestions offered in the T&D article:

Improve your company's training website:

Make it more effective and user-friendly to reduce telephone inquiries and increase class registrations and attendance/participation rates
Make better use of the training website to market training programs

Create training that is specific to the organization's needs:

Don't spend time and money creating and offering courses that no one wants or needs - and THEN determining their individual value based on how many people sign up (this is called the supply-oriented approach and is highly ineffective, inefficient, and costly!)
Don't simply roll out a cafeteria-style curriculum filled with general offerings

Do You Want to Advertise on This Blog?

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:24:27 PDT

Several readers have indicated interest in advertising on this blog. I have received these inquiries via your Comments to specific blog postings. Unfortunately, I am never able to write back directly to the inquirers because your email addresses are blocked in comments.

If you are interested in advertising here, please email me directly at jsweeney@cramersweeney.com. Thank you!!

Too Busy to Read? Try Text2Go!

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:27:00 PDT

I am an information junky. My laptop is exhausted from all the web searches I do on a daily basis - looking for information I must have, simply want to know, or am looking up for someone else. Anytime I need an answer to something, I "Google it" and always find the answer. The internet is incredible, and I can't imagine how I ever grew up during the 70's and 80's without this resource - and with only the local library (and my father's incredible brain-bank of knowledge) to rely on.

Given the amount of information I find and want/need to read throughout a given week, I can't aways find the time to, well, actually read it all! Not enough hours in a day or a week to keep up. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about! Then I was fortunate enough to have a lovely email exchange with Mark Gladding, Director of a company in Australia called Tumbywood Software. They have an awesome and affordable product called Text2Go!

Here's how they describe Text2Go on their website: "Transfer information from the web to your iPod / MP3 Player, so you can listen to it on the go and utilize time that would otherwise be wasted. Make productive use of those times when you're commuting, out for a run or in the gym. Designed to help students, doctors, lawyers, academics and knowledge workers absorb large amounts of information." It's very easy to use - I highly recommend that you check it out.

IBM Takes Online Corporate Training to New Heights

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:59:02 PDT

By Susan Jacobs (Guest blogger)

In an effort to provide its employees with extensive online training via virtual worlds, IBM has just announced that it will soon set up a private area of Second Life that is solely devoted to company personnel.

This is actually the beginning of an unprecedented partnership with Linden Lab, offering an enterprise-class version of the popular virtual world to IBM employees. Users will be able to effortlessly cross over from the mainland Second Life into the private area devoted to the company.

With IBM putting so much stock into the future of online corporate training and revenue-building virtual worlds, small to medium-sized companies are likely to follow suit. Big Blue has a reported 5,000 employees already in Second Life and the company wholeheartedly believes that virtual worlds will only grow from here.

According to a press release from the company:

This [partnership] marks the first time a portion of the Second Life Grid will be deployed behind a corporate firewall, with the goal of creating a solution that businesses can quickly deploy to get work done in a new way.

This blog has already mentioned that virtual worlds could become as important as the Web itself. In fact, Linden Lab and IBM have been discussing this very subject for quite some time. According to a report from CIO, the two companies wish to "develop open-standards based technologies and methodologies to enhance the Internet's various virtual worlds and build interoperability between them."

This could very well lead to a massive network of different virtual worlds, all available to users who wish to seamlessly cross from one area to another. Indeed, it will also be a boon to professionals who are participating with online training and virtual boardroom meetings. It seems that every business professional in the world may have his/her own avatar before long.

By-line:

Susan Jacobs is a freelance writer as well as a regular contributor for CollegeDegree.com, a site helping students to learn more about distance learning colleges. Susan invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address susan.jacobs45@gmail.com.

First-Hand Second Life Experience

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:59:13 PDT

I recently attended a Second Life meeting. There were definite pros and cons to the experience, and I was attentive to how the environment really would suit a synchronous e-learning course. Shortly after, I read a short article by Tom Werner in which he lists what he believes are the plusses and minuses to using Second Life. Here they are:

Plusses:

Tom feels that the newness and novelty of the environment can get attendees charged, excited, and energized.
You can find "pleasant" meeting locations in Second Life, such as a park or patio or nice deck. This has a positive effect on meeting attendees.
While you are able to show PowerPoint slides in Second Life, Tom's experience must have been more positive than mine. For me, despite my high-speed internet connection, the entire environment (including the viewing of PowerPoint slides) was very slow and jumpy - almost not worth using. But the plus IS that you are supposed to be able to show slides in SL.
When compared with teleconferences or web-conferencing tools, attendees seem to enjoy the experience of "meeting with" physical representations of other attendees, not just their voices.
This is quoted straight from Tom: "There can be entertaining side activities in Second Life. Our avatars hopped into a nearby hot tub after the meeting." The meeting I attended certainly wasn't that fun!

Minuses:

Attendees should learn and practice how to navigate in the SL environment (not that easy to do) before attending meetings or e-classes. Any meeting or e-learning experience can be affected by newbies.
If your meeting is for sharing and discussing information, SL isn't worth it. Just "keep it simple" by using the tools you (and everyone else) already know. You'll save everyone time.
In addition to the SL environment being very sluggish and jumpy, another gripe I have about SL is this: Why would I be interested in "meeting" with people whose avatars look nothing at all like the real people, nor do they use the same name? No, it's not my lack of imagination. It's my complete lack of desire to be forced to remember/recognize two different faces/bodies and two different names for every one hot-blooded person. Seriously, my life is already complicated enough.

As Tom mentions, it's still a good idea for me and my associates to keep our noses in SL and other such tools and environments because it is important to follow their progress. Like fine wines, they can only continue to get better with time.

Today's Instructional Designer

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:02:16 PDT

In the last several years, a great deal has changed in the training industry, including our work environment, our education, tools, and learners. As a result, instructional designers need to change in order to keep up. Back "in the day," we developed training materials primarily for traditional instructor-led classroom settings and "pushed" learning out to learners. Now with the Internet, hand-held technologies, and an ever-growing multitude of training development software tools, we need to figure out our new roles. At the same time, we need to continue to champion, and occasionally defend, the real "VALUE" of instructional design to organizations. In a recent edition of Learning Solutions e-magazine (a publication of The eLearning Guild), Reuben Tozman wrote on this topic. The quoted text below is from Tozman's article.

Let's face it, we cannot keep operating the way we did 10 years ago. We certainly can't ignore rapid e-learning, m-learning, wikis, blogs, podcasting, virtual worlds, social networking, and other knowledge dissemination methods and tools. Instead of being responsible only for "pushing" information to our learners, we need to understand all of the ways in which learners can now "pull" information for themselves. At the same time, we can't get so caught up in the excitement of new tools ourselves that we lose our focus on the true learning results we need to ensure for our learners. We need to make sure that people can access our learning programs whenever they need them, and these learning programs must still be properly structured "to deliver the most effective learning experience possible." The bottom line: we cannot lose focus on the merits of true instructional design, no matter what the development tool or delivery medium!

With so many "easy-to-use" authoring tools available today, instructional designers are often expected to do it all (design and development). And my experience is that many IDs enjoy this new-found variety in their roles. Tozman fears, however, that our value as designers will diminish if we allow this to happen. He states, "This is because an instructional designer is supposed to avoid having to stuff material into a predefined box."

I believe that if we are good at instructional design, we have a technical aptitude, and our jobs and workloads offer the time and opportunity for both design and development, why not? Some of our instructional designers, in fact, welcome the variety of switching from straight ID work to occasional development tasks. (I do not mean that these people also do programming or heavy Flash work. That is something left completely to our programmers and experienced Flash developers!) Tozman's concern, however, is "the expectation, and the standard, for the instructional designer to have those skills." I do agree with that statement.

As an instructional designer who owns and runs an instructional design (ILT and e-learning) business and who also employs instructional designers and course developers, I happen to place a high value on someone who can straddle the line. I would never expect an instructional designer to do programming or to build a high-end, Flash-based e-learning course him/herself from the bottom up. But it certainly is nice to have IDs who have enough skills and technical knowledge to take some of the basic (and templated) development work off the plates of the developers and programmers. Plus, it's nice to know that everyone can then speak the same language and collaborate and communicate more clearly and effectively. It is also extremely helpful for client relations and communication.

Tozman states, "The skill that an instructional designer possesses....is the ability to systematically break down content so that it is applicable to learners and their learning styles. This is our value....Instructional designers merge a good understanding of psychology, learning theory, communication theory, and business acumen in order to be effective and valuable in their jobs." Tozman believes that to protect that value and those skills (not undermine them and water them down), IDs must keep their distance from technology. My counter-point is this: If IDs have an understanding of psychology, learning theory, communication theory, business acument - and much more, to be sure - aren't they even more effective and valuable in their jobs with some technical knowledge as well? I believe this to be the case.

2008 Trends to Shape E-Learning

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:09:57 PST

In a recent article by Bill Brandon, editor of The eLearning Guild's Learning Solutions e-Magazine, I read that we shouldn't expect any huge changes this year in how we create or deliver e-learning. If anything, we will see small, gradual, and incremental changes brought on by industry and economic factors.

Brandon described several larger trends that will most likely affect the e-learning industry, such as the current/upcoming recession, increases in the availability of broadband and WiFi, and more mobile devices with 3G (wide-area cellular phone networks) and WiFi. These trends certainly point to the likelihood of continued growth in e-learning and m-learning across organizations.

With increased bandwidth and the ability to compress video files comes the increased use of video in both e-learning and m-learning, which I certainly noticed throughout 2007. Brandon hopes that 2008 will be "the year that video becomes a practical alternative to the ubiquitous PowerPoint bullet slide."

We can also expect to continue seeing a steady rise in enterprise social networking. You have all probably heard of Facebook. And many corporate employees read blogs (thank you for reading this one!!), use wikis, listen to podcasts, and have LinkedIn accounts (I do, too). We also utilize SharePoint here at my company to transfer large project files back and forth with our clients. Organizations already use social networks to share knowledge across departments, provide an avenue for "informal" self-directed learners, allow employees to stay connected and work collaboratively, etc.

Brandon made another interesting point that as technology continues to improve (always connected, more options, greater sophistication, better interfaces - like the iPhone and iPod touch, more engaging visual and audio elements) , user expectations will continue to rise. The limitations and frustrations experienced by e-learners who expect "more" will drive further advancements and innovation in e-learning creation and implementation. This will keep all of us e-learning professionals on our toes!!

Make Wishes / Grant Wishes

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:58:13 PST

I have to share a wonderful, new website with all of you. This is not a corporate training/e-learning site, and you will quickly see that it's a bit off-topic from my usual posts. But bear with me - it'll be worth it.

Check out Wish Upon a Hero at www.wishuponahero.com. At this website, "No wish is too large, no hero is too small. Wish Upon a Hero is an online community of people helping people." Simply register for FREE, browse wishes already posted, post new wishes (anything at all, as long as they're "clean") for yourself and/or loved ones, and become a HERO by granting other people's wishes. It's that simple - and extremely effective in helping people. Over 4,000 wishes have already been granted in just a few short months!!

Members of the website have been forming local area forums all over the United States, and there are Wish Upon a Hero members now from all over the world. The website has been reported about in various newspapers, TV news programs, and radio programs. Be sure to share it with your friends, family, and co-workers.

Creative Training Delivery

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:22:50 PST

When we think about today's most innovative learning methods, we often think about modern multimedia, such as game-based learning, simulations, and virtual reality. In ASTD's latest issue of T&D magazine, Paul Harris highlights several "terrific training ideas". I thought I'd share them with you:

1. "Laughing and learning" - Many business people are left brained, while most improvisational comedians use both sides of their brain. By learning how to use the whole brain (or at least tap into the right side occasionally), we can create more engaging ways to present information and break out of the PowerPoint mold. (Here at CramerSweeney, we are fortunate to have the resources of our own internal creative staff of art directors and multimedia/graphic designers!) Training is greatly improved by inserting some fun into it and emphasizing facts/information in creative ways - all with the goal of encouraging greater learning retention. (Take a look at a fun quiz that we created for our own website: Go to http://www.cramersweeney.com/, then click on the Smart Marketing IQ box in the lower left corner.)

In this article, Harris mentions that improv-based training helps businesses enhance how "people adapt to changing environments, process information, work in teams, and collaborate across functional and geographic boundaries...The methods address an ever-evolving range of client situations and needs." Improv games teach workers more flexible responses to situations.

2. "Hit me with knowledge" - Harvard law professor Charles R. Nesson says, "Poker is a great game for learning how to size up things for yourself, get intorisk management, and channel aggression. A student who can hold his own at a poker table, I have no worries about when they enter the real world."

My 14-year-old son loves poker. I suppose I should be encouraging him to play more often - and let him teach me Texas Hold 'Em! Nesson has even formed the Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS) among some Ivy Leagues, to promote poker as a learning tool. He also belives that poker skills can really help high school kids with math. Poker teaches you numeracy, probability, risk assessment, and subtleties vs. complexities.

3. "No, you first" - How can we increase socially responsible behavior on our roads? London and other Western European cities tried something new on their roadways. They removed traffic lights and signs so that no one would have right of way. You would expect chaos to ensue. Lo and behold, by making sure no one had the right of way, accidents dropped 44%! Drivers and pedestrians suddenly began relying on eye contact with each other rather than signs. Imagine roads with no signs telling traffic to stop, yield, or merge, and no lines on the roads to guide traffic - these are called "naked roads." These naked roads actually dramatically improved harmony on the roadway. Now everyone looks out for each other!

4. "Point-of-need learning" - Knowledge (more than training) is increasingly becoming the answer to what workers really need on the job. Learning content providers will need to become capability providers. Instead of providing customers with proprietary content/training, companies will be teaching skill transfer capability - as 80% of learning happens on the job, not in the classroom. It's all about bringing training to people's workspaces.

5. "A virtual community blossoms" - As I have written in previous blogs and Harris reports in T&D, virtual 3D worlds "have emerged as a bona fide educational tool." Organizations have begun using Second Life (a popular virtual environment) as a "place of engagement" - for employees and instructors to interact in formal or informal settings, and public or private spaces; role play; access resources; and engage in collaborative learning.

Virtual Worlds to Become as Important as the Web

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:53:22 PST

Computerworld's Heather Havernstein provided (in the 1/9/08 issue) a synposis of a Forrester Research report which states that "within five years the 3D Internet will become as important to companies as the Web is today." Within five years? I am a bit skeptical about the strength of that statement, but I have a healthy wait-and-see attitude.

The Forrester report is titled "Getting Work Done in Virtual Worlds." It discusses the effect virtual worlds will have on remote collaboration, training, and building and sharing 3D models. While today's collaboration tools do not allow people to see gestures or emotions, avatars in a virtual environment can be directed to show these expressions. The report also says, "In a virtual meeting room, you can see who is present, who is multi-tasking, who has raised a hand, or who has been away from their keyboard so long that their avatar has fallen asleep." Professionals who can find specific value in virtual meetings are surgeons, architects, engineers, and product designers who use CAD or visualization systems to create projects. Examples cited in the Computerworld article include:

Duke University and Virtual Heroes are creating a high-fidelity 3D virtual environment to train teamwork and communication skills to health care workers
University of Maryland and the I-95 Corridor Coalition built a virtual world simulation of highway emergencies
Princeton University is using a 3D virtual world to manage distributed teams of a large-scale astrophysics project

Immersive Education - Online Learning Worlds

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:18:42 PST

I read an interesting article in The Chronicle of Higher Education / Information Technology, by Andrea Foaster and dated 12/21/07. Harvard University has devoted itself to a multimillion-dollar non-profit project to build virtual-reality software exclusively for education in fantasy spaces like Second Life. Using interactive 3D graphics, web cameras, web-based telephony, and other digital media, the goal is to build 3D interactive lessons that will grab attention but without the violence and titillation used in many of today's online games. Backers of this project include Boston College, Harvard U., Amherst College, Columbia U, MIT, Sweden's Royal Inst. of Technology, Japan's U of Aizu, the Asraeli Assoc. of Grid Technologies, NASA, Sun Microsystems, the City of Bostm, and the New Media Consortium.

2008 e-Learning Predictions

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:20:02 PST

This is the time of year when bloggers and organizations publish their predictions for the upcoming year. In his "eLearning Technology" blog, Tony Karrer offers his top predictions for 2008. Let me talk about a few of them now.

In my last post, I talked about how employees will be expected to become more competent and self-managed learners. This is where eLearning 2.0 comes in to play. Karrer predicts an increase in pressure to understand and apply eLearning 2.0. He also points out that mobile learning in 2007 continued to disappoint and that it has yet to take flight. Despite the fact that so many mobile devices today offer Internet access, large adoption of m-learning still won't be here in 2008.

Karrer predicts that companies will increase their attention toward ROI and metrics when it comes to corporate training and worker performance. The large LMS players will continue to add functionality, but most likely additional functions that we do not want or need. "Serious games" will continue to be talked about, but most of us will never get to build one, buy one, or participate in one.

Industry experts should hold frequent, targeted virtual discussions, as opposed to large, multi-topic virtual conferences. Finally, Karrer believes that "knowledge worker skills" will be a huge topic for 2008 but won't really take off until 2009.

Future Trends in Training

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:54:38 PST

I recently attended an ASTD webcast titled "Future Trends in Training & Development". The speakers, Marc Rosenberg and Pat McLagan, had the following main points to make:

Learning will become less course-centric and more knowledge-centric. Instead of asking what courses they can take on a particular subject, learners will ask what knowledge is available on a particular subject. Learners will continue to become more independent and "self-taught" as it becomes increasingly easy and convenient for them to find information and knowledge at their fingertips - and right in their workplace. The web (specifically Web 2.0) is changing the internet experience from static information and transactions to dynamic collaborations, offering more interactive and personable experiences. As a result, learning will be revolutionized.

In today's workplaces, people need to think, analyze, and solve problems - not just do routine work and tasks. Therefore, it is becoming paramount that employees know where to look for validated knowledge, instead of trying to remember everything. As job responsibilities continue to require more cognitive and relational thinking and the work itself becomes a continuous and accelerated learning process, the development of personal learning skills becomes critical for both employee and company success.

What we can expect in the future, then, is more learners managing their own learning, and learning professionals supporting learners' efforts. This is referred to as professional and competent self-managed learning.

Learners must learn to:

Draw insight from information and extract learning from experience
Evaluate information quality (validate the information)
Become competent with a variety of learning resources
Use analytical, systemic, and creative thinking
Consciously manage their own learning
Help others learn

As learning professionals, we must learn to:

Help link organizational needs and learner priorities
Help accelerate the learning that organizations and individuals need
Ensure that individuals and managers have the learning capabilities and mental models they need
Make accelerated learning resources accessible; create knowledge management systems
Become a guide and facilitator of the new learning process

The Outsourcing Institute Survey

jennasweeney6@gmail.com (Jenna Sweeney) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 08:23:48 PST

For those of us whose livelihood relies on the outsourcing of others, I was very interested to find the "Top 10 Drivers Behind Today's Outsourcing Decisions (in alphabetical order)". And they are:

Accelerate reengineering benefits

Access to world class capabilities

Cash infusion

Free resources for other purposes

Function difficult to manage or out of control

Improve company focus

Make capital funds available

Reduce operating costs

Reduce risk

Resources not available internally