Tagoras

ASAE 2010 Postgame – More Learning 2.0

Jeff Cobb — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:20:57 +0000

In a previous post on Learning 2.0 at (and after and around) the ASAE annual meeting I emphasized Twitter as a learning tool. To follow up, I want to highlight the round-up of blog posts that ASAE itself has linked to from its Acronym blog.

Whether or not you were able to attend the meeting, taking a tour of these posts is a great learning experience. And no doubt each was also an excellent way for the writer to reflect on the experience and consolidate learning by putting thoughts into writing.

Here are the Acronym posts. Each contains a dozen or more links to bloggers sharing thoughts about the annual meeting experience:

I won’t continue to harp on how powerful this sort of thing is – the learning, the link juice, the potentially viral exposure, and all as part of a natural process of providing great value to members. One last item I will throw in, though, is that you can view an archive of all of the tweets that came out of and are continuing to come out of the annual meeting at:

http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/asae10

(Twitter itself does not keep tweets for all that long, so if you want to have a record of tweets from your conferences, tweet chats, etc., TwapperKeeper is a good option.)

Jeff

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An Association E-learning Conversation, Part II

Jeff Cobb — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:10:04 +0000

This is the second installment in a series of podcasts I have created from a conversation with association e-learning colleague Ellen Behrens. In the first podcast we discussed innovation in association e-learning, mobile learning, personal learning environments, the iPad, and informal learning. In this one we venture into virtual conferences, social media, resourcing association education.

To listen to the podcast, just click on the player, or if you prefer, right click and download it. It runs about 20 minutes.

Enjoy the podcast, and stay tuned for the next installment in our conversation.

Jeff

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Score One for Learning 2.0 at ASAE Annual

Jeff Cobb — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 12:51:32 +0000

We’re expecting a baby here on the home front, so it wasn’t in the cards for me to attend ASAE annual in person this year. But I was still “there” to a significant extent, and will probably remain “there” for a while after.

No, I don’t have mystical powers or a transporter (for those of you old enough and/or geeky enough to know what that means). But I do have Twitter and a wide range of other social learning tools. I tuned into them some during the conference, and I am continuing to tune into them now as the tweets continue and the blog posts flow. Here’s just a quick snapshot of what’s near the top of my Twitter reader as I write this post:

@maddiegrant: RT @FrankFortin: Signs of a GREAT community: #asae10: 8300 tweets, 817 tweeps, only 14.5% of tweets were from the top 10.

@kikilitalien RT @robertmbarnes: Written my notes from #asae10 in @evernote and will synch, then upload to my blog and the #aussieyap group when I land in Syd.

@satovich Back from #asae10 & reviewing www.asae10.org session tweets – many, many takeaways about going mobile

@jtcobb Good stream on leading edge learning coming out of @KathiEdwards session: #asae10le2

@TeriTally RT @peachdave: Was just checking out #sweetspot broadcasted live from #asae10 http://ustre.am/:Ce8k @kikiitalien @maddiegrant

@ tomhood RT @IABC: The 7 Secrets of Inspiring Leaders – #1 Passion. Outline of @carminegallo’s keynote presentation at #ASAE10. http://bit.ly/doSouh

@ SpeakerSue Almost as if I attended #asae10. Next year! Thank you: @walterASCD @msimps01

Now, let’s just consider what we’ve got here from just a handful of tweets:

A group of peers actively engaged in discussing what’s going on at the conference and some of the things they are learning about. Each represents a possible connection for more dialogue and knowledge sharing. (i.e., you might want to consider following these people on Twitter!)
An indication that one of these people is going to upload all of his notes from the conference using (the amazing note-taking and sharing platform) Evernote. He’s then going to synch this to his blog AND share it in the Aussie YAP group. Wow – bring it on!
Links to the main conference Twitter stream (#asae10) as well the stream for a specific session (#asae10le2).
A link to a streaming video presentation (http://ustre.am/:Ce8k).
A link to a blog post with thoughts on one of the keynotes (http://bit.ly/doSouh).

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Folks, this is powerful stuff.

It is important to note that ASAE did not “control” this or dictate how it should happen. This is just what happens when a community of like-minded professionals have access to share the experiences and knowledge generated from a focused event. But ASAE played a very important role in (a) providing the focused event, and (b) fully supporting and encouraging use of the tools. Kudos.

Could this be even more powerful? Sure. It’s not always easy to know what is going on within a flood of communication like this. Personally, I found it quite difficult to locate the session stream I link to above in my tweet.

And obviously, not everything is of equal value. Associations cannot and should not try to control the flow of communication in social media environments, but recognizing them as learning environments and, through active participation, helping people find the connections and resources of most interest to them will be of increasing importance. (Not to say that ASAE doesn’t do this – but it is an area in which it can keep evolving and leading the way.)

Bottom line: social learning that connects online and off – aka, Learning 2.0 – is powerful, and it’s not just a theory. Indeed, it might just be something you want to put to work for your next event.

Jeff

P.S. – I encourage you to check out the free eBook Learning 2.0 for Associations. I’ll forewarn you, though, that I wrote this nearly 3 years ago when Twitter was hardly a blip on the radar screen. I am finally starting a much needed update that will include Twitter and a number of other additions.

Also, you may want to see some other Learning 2.0 related posts here on Tagoblog:

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An Association E-learning Conversation, Part I

Jeff Cobb — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 01:12:50 +0000

The last time I had the opportunity to talk with Ellen Behrens – aka the travelin’ aLearning expert – she was in the Black Hills of South Dakota and had just released her book on association e-learning strategy, aLearning: A Trail Guide to Association eLearning. We’ve been past due for another conversation for quite a while now, so I was glad when I was able to catch Ellen for call a couple of weeks ago as she was spending time in Glacier National Park. We spent about an hour on the phone, and I plan to carve a number of podcasts out of the recording from our conversation.

The first podcast is below – just click on the player, or if you prefer, right click and download it. It runs about 18.5 minutes, and in it we cover topics ranging from innovation in association e-learning, mobile learning, personal learning environments, the iPad, and informal learning. There’s bound to be something in there that you’ll find interesting!

Enjoy the podcast, and stay tuned for the next installment in our conversation.

Jeff

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Learning Technology Providers at ASAE Annual

Jeff Cobb — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:11:19 +0000

It’s not cheap to pay the booth fees, shipping, and travel to put a team on the floor at the ASAE annual meeting (which starts this Sunday in Los Angeles). I take making the commitment to do it as one good sign that a company is serious about serving associations (as opposed to just opportunistically picking up accounts to add to its corporate or academic list). So, if you are going to the annual meeting in LA this year, be sure to drop by and see the following companies. Even if you are not in the market for technologies right now, these are people who are immersed in association education daily and have good knowledge to share.

I’ve included the booth number beside each as well as links to any relevant interviews or other resources we have for them here on the Tagoras site.

213 Blackboard

501 Blue Sky Broadcast

610 CommPartners

CommPartners ASAE 2009 Interview – Virtual Conferences

233 Digital Ignite

Digital Ignite LMS Interview

300 Digitell, Inc.

513 iCohere

657 KRM Information Services

KRM ASAE 2009 Interview – Distance Learning Growth

455 LearnSomething, Inc.

347 Peach New Media

446 Results Direct

224 WBT Systems

625 Web Courseworks

Jeff

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aLearning Survey for Association Sector Providers

Jeff Cobb — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 14:03:49 +0000

If you or your company provide educational products or services to the nonprofit sector, be sure to take Ellen Behrens’ short (really) survey on “the biggest challenges and greatest opportunities in this unique market sector.” She is going to share the results, and I think they will also be of great interest to those who buy products and services. Here’s the link – it will be open through the end of August:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MRM5T5B

The responses are anonymous, but I thought I’d go ahead and share some of mine here:

What do you believe will be the “Next Big Thing” when it comes to products and services for association learning?

I’m not convinced there is a “next big thing,” unless perhaps it is the overall elevation of the learning function and deeper integration of learning with marketing, membership, and technology as a vital, accountable part of the association business model. Web 2.0 has brought a range of competitive pressures. Organizations that are not able to differentiate by providing learning connections and resources that others cannot provide will have a hard time thriving.

What’s your primary business challenge in working with associations and the non-profit sector in general?

Nearly every individual with which we work is strapped for time. Simply getting timely responses and decisions is a continual challenge. In some cases, this situation is truly a reflection of resource constraints. In many, however, it seems to reflect that either (a) the organization is not setting and managing priorities well, or (b) learning initiatives simply are not among the highest priorities.

Describe the one thing you wish association/non-profit leaders understood about your business that they don’t seem to “get” and what you think would make the difference for them.

In the abstract, I think most leaders “get” that the world has change dramatically – that power has shifted to members and customers, for example – but I don’t think there is enough concrete, hands-on experience with what recent technology advances make possible. Personally, as a member of many associations, I find that few really understand that their value to me has plummeted with the rise of technologies that enable me to find knowledge resources and make networking connections on my own. I write renewal checks with increasing reluctance, and some I do not write at all.

Is there anything you’d like to add here [please no sales pitches…. ]?

Whenever I speak about social media, open education, or other new paradigms that involve significantly less control than legacy models, I can pretty much rest assured that the first questions I get will relate to risk, liability, and the (supposed) value of intellectual property. I don’t want to devalue these questions, but for the most part, these are issues that can be addressed by a combination of common sense, good policies, and the insurance that an organization should be carrying anyway. The bottom line is that organizations are going to have to be willing to stick their necks out a bit if they want to move forward in ways that truly provide value to their members.

Comments are welcomed.

Jeff

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What drives the decision to learn?

Jeff Cobb — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:09:33 +0000

ASAE will soon be releasing its newest “Decision to…” study, and this time around the focus is on the decision to learn. The study collected data from 7,848 association members across 12 different organizations with the aim of discovering more about what drives them to participate in association educational offerings. This month’s Associations Now features a brief article on some of the The Decision to Learn findings.

I was part of a small group of volunteers that reviewed the draft manuscript of The Decision to Learn and helped to write some of the scenarios in it. A significant number of findings in the study were not all that surprising to me, though that is probably only because I spend nearly all of my time bumping around in association education circles and I do a lot of surveying and interviewing of members regarding their educational behaviors and preferences. So, for example, I am not surprised that members say they greatly prefer classroom-based learning over e-learning and yet do, in fact, participate in a great deal of e-learning. (See the article for specific percentages.) These findings jibe with what we hear again and again from members.

On the other hand, the study makes explicit a point that I think any organization offering education – online or off – really needs to take to heart and which I have come to fully appreciate only in recent months. Namely, the strongest predictor of whether a prospective learner will choose your offering over other available options is her sense of affiliation with your organization. As the article says:

…a member’s sense of affiliation with the cosponsoring association is a stronger measure than demographics (gender, generation, level of education, or world location) in predicting participation in learning programs offered by their associations.

In other words, how strongly does she identify with you and trust you as a major source of support in her professional life?

There are at least two corollary lessons that extend from this finding. First, association educators should be deeply concerned with and involved in how their organizations approach building a sense of identity and affiliation with members. The marketing and membership functions cannot be silos in which educators have no interaction. Their success directly impacts the success of education (and, no doubt, vice versa).

Second, the marketing of education needs to tap into the sense of affiliation that members may have. Most of the marketing I see for programs tends to be utilitarian and extrinsically focused – i.e., get your certification, earn your credit, save time, etc. – but The Decision to Learn makes clear that we need to connect with members less at a logical level and more at an emotional level if we really want to get them excited about the learning opportunities we offer. Again, doing this effectively means much tighter collaboration with the marketing and membership functions.

If you have a moment to read the article, I welcome your thoughts on it. And I look forward to writing more about the Decision to Learn in the coming weeks.

Jeff

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Making is Connecting is Learning

Jeff Cobb — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:41:43 +0000

I found the following video through Stephen Downes, who found it on Tim Kastelle’s excellent blog. In it, David Gauntlett does a very nice job of weaving together distinct but related perspectives on how social connections and tools engender engagement and creativity.

As Gauntlett puts it, “Making is connecting because you have to connect things together (materials, ideas, or both) to make something new.” “Making sense” and learning, in my mind, most definitely fall in this space, and Gauntlett’s comments point directly to what I feel is one of the most significant benefits of the social Web for those delivering education to adult learners: the availability of social tools makes deep engagement easier than ever for the motivated self-learner. That may sound live an obvious or trivial observation, but I find that so far it is not one that has been acted upon all that well by association educators or others who deliver continuing education.

The standard model – online and off – for delivery of continuing education is the lecture. Personally, I agree with Mark Guzdial that there is not necessarily anything wrong with that. For motivated learners who already possess a certain amount of expertise a good lecture often is the most effective way to deliver education. We don’t need to contrive a lot of active learning or forced collaboration – techniques I encounter too often in inappropriate contexts at association conferences. But we should make sure learners are aware of and versed in using the range of social tools that can support their learning outside of the lecture.

As for that last point, it is clear enough at this point that use of social tools is growing and not likely to to flatten out, much less diminish anytime soon. Facebook now has more than half a billion users (yes, that’s billion with a “b”), Twitter is well past 100 million, LinkedIn has passed 70 million, YouTube is the second largest search engine behind Google. There is little doubt that your learners are in there somewhere, and whether they are fully conscious of it or not, they are using these tools for making sense and learning.

So far, though, our research has suggested that association use of these tools to actively complement and support learning experiences – whether online or off – is relatively low. (A range of free research with relevant data is available on our resources page.) Motivated adult learners will, of course, embrace these tools on their own, but the playing field is far from level right now in terms of general knowledge and comfort with social media and how it can be used as effective a learning tool. Associations could and should play a major role in leveling this playing field, but this will require association educators and subject matter experts getting more up to speed than they currently are.

Again, I recommend the Gauntlett video above as food for thought along these lines. And some other starter resources you might consider are:

Enjoy. And as always, I welcome your comments.

Jeff

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Virtual Conferences – Take the Survey, Get Some Data

Jeff Cobb — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:14:24 +0000

Today we launched a survey aimed at finding out more about how membership organizations are making use of virtual conferences. If you represent a membership organization and are the right person to provide input on this topic for your organization, we would be really grateful if you would participate. The survey applies to:

Organizations that have no current plans to offer a virtual conference
Organizations that have already offered one or more virtual conferences
Organizations that plan to offer a virtual conference at some point in the future

In other words, it applies to pretty much all membership organizations. We will share summary data from the survey with all participants who elect to receive it and will also be presenting findings from the survey in August at the ASAE & the Center for Association Leadership annual meeting (which features a virtual conference component this year!). Here’s the link to the survey followed by a few other notes that we recommend reading:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/virtual-conferences

The survey will close at the end of the day on Wednesday, August 11.

Notes worth reading:

For organizations that have already offered a virtual conference or plan to, the survey should take about 10 to 12 minutes of your time. For organizations that have no plans to offer a virtual conference (we really need to hear from you too!) it will take significantly less.

The survey should be completed only by individuals who represent a nonprofit membership organization and can reply to questions about virtual conferences accurately on its behalf.

Only one person from an organization should complete the survey. Before beginning, please consult with your colleagues as appropriate to determine who will complete the survey on behalf of your organization.

We say this in the survey, but I thought it would also be helpful to note here the definition that we are using for “virtual conference.” In our experience, the meaning of the term can vary greatly from individual to individual and organization to organization, but here is our definition (feel free to quibble as much as you would like in the comments to this post:

A virtual conference is a Web-based event that replicates many aspects of a traditional place-based conference. It features multiple sessions (not just a single Webinar or Webcast) and may include keynote presentations, training and education workshops, discussion areas, social networking opportunities, exhibit areas for vendors, and various other features. Activities in a virtual conference may take place in real time (synchronously), on demand (asynchronously), or some combination of the two.

We hope you will participate, and we would also be grateful if you would help spread the word – on Twitter, on Facebook, on your blog, in your e-mail newsletters, etc. Just send folks to this post, or directly to the survey at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/virtual-conferences

Jeff

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When Picking an LMS, Use Cases Don’t Lie

Jeff Cobb — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:20:58 +0000

This is a slight revamp of a post I did a couple of years ago on a different blog. I’ve seen interest in LMS adoption by associations grow in the meantime, but I still see relatively little attention given to use cases.

***

I recently received a regular e-mail update from one of the corporate e-learning research firms, with the subject line “Are all of these LMS reps really telling the truth?” The premise was that organizations often purchase learning management systems based on claims made by the sales representative about particular online learning features or functionalities only to discover that the finalized product does not really work in quite the way expected. In an effort to sell one of its recent reports, the research firm suggests that the issue is not really one of sales representatives telling the truth, but rather of differences in how LMS companies approach fulfillment of specific feature requests. In its review of more than 200 features across dozens of learning management systems, the firm assigns one of six classifications to each feature reviewed:

Automatic: Built-in, out-of-the-box functionality that can be simply switched on and ready to be used.
Semi-automatic: The feature is mostly available in the system but requires some programming and/or customization to activate.
Semi-custom: This feature is partially available in the system and can be adapted through some moderate custom program.
Custom: This feature is not available in the current system but can somewhat easily be added through custom programming services at the time of implementation.
NA; not a current feature: This feature is not available in the current release of the software.
Third-party add-on: This feature can be added upon implementation using third-party software.

This list of categories is followed with the impressive claim “The result is that you know exactly what you’re getting when selecting a learning management system.” In a word: nonsense.

Don’t misunderstand me: There is indeed a lot of confusion around how LMS companies articulate and implement similar features. And we are big believers that good solid research reports can eliminate a lot of needless time that is spent during the average RFP process gathering basic feature information from LMS providers. But knowing the feature is there, or even that it is “automatic” or “semi-custom” – as helpful as that may be – only gets you a fraction of the way to knowing whether you will end up with a deployed system that truly meets your business needs. Even with these categorizations, there is still a great deal of interpretation involved in how a feature works. In my opinion, a more critical step is the development of detailed use cases or user scenarios that accurately describe the most critical functions you expect an online learning system to support. Ideally this exercise should precede any focus on specific features and should then drive your review of features during vendor demonstrations.

I am not an IT guy by training, so I will not pretend to know the best approaches and practices for the development of formal software development use cases. Having been on both the buy and the sell side of learning technologies many times, however, I know the practical steps any organization can take to help ensure a good business choice through use case development. To start with, be absolutely certain that you understand your overall strategy and business goals for e-learning. A key part of your strategy and goal formulation should be developing a thorough understanding of who your end users are and which online learning products and services will be of most value to them. Uses cases are only valid to the extent that they map back to actual user needs that correspond with your organization’s business goals. With these factors in mind, the next step is to invoke and document your imagination.

Imagine yourself in the place of your most typical end user or administrative user, actually sitting at the keyboard and on the verge of interacting with the learning management system environment. Now, in your mind, start walking through the specific actions you would expect to take and what you would expect the result of each action to be. A simple three column table like the following can serve to capture the actions you take and the corresponding results.

ID	User Action	Desired Outcome
A	An end user navigates to her personal menu in the learning management system.	By default, all of the courses that the user is currently enrolled in or has ever been enrolled in are listed in ascending alphabetical order by title. For each title, an icon indicates the status of the course: not started, complete, in progress. For each title there is also an option to view additional details about the course.
B	An end user follows use case A. The user clicks a link or icon to view additional details about a	The view for the course expands to show additional information associated with the course, including course description information scores for any assessments associated with the course. a link to print a certificate for the course (visible only when course is completed successfully)
C	An end user follows use case B. The end user clicks “print certificate”.	A PDF document launches that displays the following: (Detail certificate contents)

As you can probably already sense, the above can become a very detailed and ultimately very tedious exercise. The goal as a business decision-maker, however, is not to think through every possible variation that can occur. Rather, working with the dozen or so “must-have” scenarios that you can imagine, make sure you have walked through the broad set of actions that comprise that scenario. Even doing this at a relatively broad level requires discipline and time, but the process inevitably clarifies your vision and identifies challenges and opportunities of which you were previously unaware. Ideally, once you have gone through the process, you should also walk through the results with a handful of target users.

A set of use cases that as been reviewed and verified by target end users is one of the most valuable tools you can have in determining the features your learning management system must have and can serve as the roadmap for vendor demonstrations. Having prospective vendors speak to and demonstrate against your specific use cases in real time will be more valuable than any information you are likely to gather through an RFP. And as a bonus, the use cases you develop during the technology selection process also serve as the basis for test cases that can be used to verify that a vendor ultimately delivers what you pay for.

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