I attended the CeBIT Expo at Sydney’s Darling Harbour this morning.
While there wasn’t a lot that caught my eye in terms of e‑learning (it is an IT event after all), I liked the look of these tough little tablet PCs that were being demonstrated by Motion Computing.
They look perfect for “on the go” kind of work, and I’m pondering their potential for m‑learning in rough environments – you know, open‑cut mines, construction sites, sales people’s cars…
Following on from my previous article, below I share some of the key messages that I drew from Day 2 at the LearnX Asia Pacific conference held recently in Sydney…
I expected the keynote by Stephen Downes to be the standout session of the event, and I was not disappointed. Instead of focusing on supporting the learning of others, Stephen shifted his focus to how e‑learning professionals can support their own learning. His premise is, bluntly, if you don’t take care of your own career, you risk losing it.
One of Stephen’s key principles for personal professional development is interaction, which he defines as participation in a learning community (or CoP). In fact, Stephen considers it so important, he elegantly expresses it as: “Interaction is breathing for the brain”. His point is: if you aren’t interacting with other people through media such as mailing lists, blogs, Twitter, discussion forums etc, then you are not developing professionally and you will eventually stagnate.
Stephen offers the following tips: place yourself (not the content) at the centre of your own learning network; organise your knowledge (eg build your own CMS with Drupal); simplify your learning by summarising it; and accept the fact that you can’t read it all, so choose what you need now and let the rest of it go – if you need it again in the future, it will be on the Web somewhere.
Stephen has kindly made the slides and audio from his session available on Stephen’s Web.
Anne Walsh and Brendan Revell from Fraynework Multimedia provided an overview of the e-learning support they are providing to The Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters are a religious order working to alleviate poverty in 47 countries around the world. They use web conferencing to facilitate large group meetings and also 1-to-1 meetings across geographical boundaries. Each Sister has the power to set up a web conference via their organisational CMS platform, which also provides access to their email, e-newsletters etc.
Anne and Brendan are clearly proud of their work, given that the average age of the Sisterhood is over 65. The implementation of web conferencing has not only reduced travel costs significantly for the order, but has also given each member a voice that they otherwise would not have had. A practical tip that Anne and Brendan share for introducing web conferencing to those who are unfamiliar with it: facilitate several group conferences first to allow the audience to grow comfortable with the concept. As their confidence grows, they will start to set up their own meetings at their own pace without feeling like they are being railroaded into it.
Margaret Aspin, Director of Aspin Online Consulting, explored the challenges of managing and training teleworkers and virtual teams. Key drivers in our changing environment (eg tightening labour market, climate change, terrorism, work/life balance) are increasingly pushing workers to the virtual workplace.
Margaret maintains that it takes about 6 months for office-based workers to feel comfortable transitioning into a fully virtual team space. This new paradigm demands proactive, transformational leadership from people managers. Margaret offers them the following tips: always be mindful of the remote worker/learner; train them to chunk their days into productive periods free from interruption; avoid information overload; and build social capital through social networking.
By applying principles of e-marketing, Faith Legendre, Senior Global Consultant at Cisco WebEx, explains how you can optimise the success of your online training.
Faith umbrellas these principles under 7 steps: determine the goals of your training program; smooth out the technologies and systems you will use; plan who does what during delivery; promote the event; execute the training; follow-up the training after delivery; measure and report. Faith also offers practical tips to maximise attendance: survey your learners to identify the most appropriate delivery day and time for them (avoid Mondays and after 3pm); employ champions throughout the organisation to raise the profile the event; send out an engaging video clip to prospective attendees prior to delivery, and send out another video clip to the actual attendees post delivery as a “gift” for attending.
Nachiket Khare, Sales Manager at Harbinger Knowledge Products, reminds us that while one of the consequences of cost-cutting during the GFC will be less interactivity in our e‑learningware, it’s an important aspect of learning. Nachiket used this concept as a segue to introduce his company’s tool, Raptivity, as a low-cost, yet powerful, rapid and easy-to-use interactivity builder.
Caryl Oliver was on hand to demonstrate her use of Raptivity in building engaging, self-paced e-learning for the hospitality and transportation sectors. Despite the commercial overtones of this session, I happen to think that Raptivity is a wonderful product, and it certainly won plenty of awards at this year’s LearnX.
Robb Reiner, CLO at Evolve Studios, informed us that static graphics are typically more effective than animations for conveying general information to learners. However, animations are superior when illustrating complex structural, functional and procedural relationships between objects and events.
Robb demonstrated a few of the impressive works that his company has produced for various clients, including a mind-blowing 3D animation of the inner workings of a glock pistol for the Australian Police. Unfortunately I think that during the GFC, amazing resources like these are going to be beyond most non-government budgets.
Carolyn Barker, Managing Director of The Cyber Institute, finalised the conference with a keynote about m-learning. Carolyn exploded the myth that m-learning is a passing fad; however, she maintains that it must be done right. In particular she recommends: restricting m-learning to “nanobites” of no more than 3 minutes in duration; covering only 1 or 2 key concepts per nanobite; using rich media where appropriate; and providing opportunities for collaboration (eg discussing photos uploaded to Flickr).
Carolyn also made the point that m-learning should support other forms of learning. She maintains that “blended learning is king” – m-learning is just one of its inputs.
***
I hope you have learned something from my synopses of the conference, or at the very least they have provoked some creative ideas.
See you at LearnX 2010!
I attended the annual LearnX Asia Pacific conference this week at Sydney’s Darling Harbour.
While the weather was dreary, I found the sessions topical and thought provoking. Below I’ve shared some of the key messages that I drew from Day 1…
Ken Hudson, Director of The Speed Thinking Zone, kicked off proceedings with a keynote address about working smarter, not harder. Ken’s central theme is that being able to think faster and better can help us unlock ideas and improve our productivity. Maintaining that “our brain works better when our bodies are moving”, Ken got everyone in the room to participate in a few ice-breaker activities involving coin catching and brainstorming answers to pop questions. I must admit, it lifted the energy of the room.
Ken then introduced a 9-circle template with the question “In these tough economic times, why should we invest more into training?” – and asked us to list 9 possibilities in 2 minutes. The idea isn’t necessarily to achieve a full gamut of answers, but to get the party started quickly. I think Ken’s ideas have real potential for expediting meetings and stimulating brainstorming sessions, but I still think that careful thought and deep reflection are necessary follow-ups. For more information about speed thinking, visit Ken’s website and refer to his book The Idea Generator.
Faith Legendre, Senior Global Consultant at Cisco WebEx, provided the audience with a synopsis of our 4 major generations today (Generation Vet, Boomers, Gen Y & Gen X), and an overview of their changing learning styles over time (push to pull, formal to informal, comprehensive to nibblets, and physical classes to online).
While Faith recognised that generational attributes are widely disputed (eg online habits are not defined by age but by exposure to emerging technology), her key message is that people across all generations are using technology today to bridge gaps and collaborate. Faith also highlighted the technology collaboration community at Cisco Community Central.
Susan Pepper, Managing Director of the ROI Institute of Australia, reinforced the need for rigorous evaluation to ensure the success of e‑learning. Susan adheres to 5 levels of feedback, comprising Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluation, plus the calculation of return on investment (ROI).
Susan also recommends that evaluation data be collected not only post implementation, but also during implementation to remedy any problems as they arise. Another key message is that e-learning programs require thorough planning, particularly to determine the organisation’s need, which in turn should inform the objectives of the solution.
Ben Saunders, Business Analyst Consultant at HCS, provided us with a comprehensive overview of m‑learning. While pointing out that m-learning started as far back as 3000BC when the Sumerians carved out text onto portable stone tablets, Ben recognises that the increasing sophistication and decreasing cost of mobile devices (eg smart phones) are making m-learning more relevant today.
Ben categorises the limitations of m‑learning under three major banners: hardware (screen size, usability, information security), software (multiple operating systems, unsupported file formats, SCORM compliance) and culture (work/life balance and the digital divide). However, he also notes that learners are already using mobile technologies in their general day-to-day activities, leading them to expect to do likewise for education.
Glen Hansen, National L&D Manager at Employment Plus, shared his organisation’s experience of using web conferencing to transition from traditional face-to-face learning delivery to a blended model. While the transition period was challenging (learning curve, lost skills through staff turnover), Glen cites significant benefits, such as: enhanced collaboration, enablement of JIT learning, consistency of message and reduced single point sensitivity.
Glen also shares some practical tips for webconferencing, such as: conduct a needs analysis before launching web conferencing, trial potential software prior to selection, enquire whether the provider includes training in their package, appoint a moderator to support the facilitator during sessions, freeze the webcam to save bandwidth, use plenty of graphics, and provide opportunities for the learners to interact with one another. Glen also recommends The eLearning Guild’s Handbook on Synchronous e‑Learning.
I must admit that I felt like I had walked into the wrong session, as Ingrid Karlaftis, National Account Executive at Catapult E-Learning, adopted the vendor’s perspective of selling an e-learning solution to an organisation. However, I think Ingrid’s key messages can help e-learning practitioners within organisations, especially when implementing a project or major initiative.
For example: never over promise and under deliver, work hand-in-hand with your clients along the journey, identify the needs of each team across the business (they will be different!), promote the notion of “one community”, train the trainer, maintain your transparency, provide constant support, measure and report.
This was a shameless sales pitch, but to be fair, the presenters didn’t pretend otherwise. Adam Morgan and his crew promoted the advantages of employing professional actors (rather than “Tim from Accounts”) to produce the voiceovers in your e-learning courseware. Why? Because actors are better skilled at engaging your audience.
Adam has a point in that an outfit like Voiceoversonthenet can cater for different audiences through variables such as accent, tone, gender and pace. So should you use an actor? Well that’s up to you.
The final session on Day 1 was a facilitated discussion about building talent and learning anytime, anywhere, at any pace.
Among the topics discussed: Bob Spence observed that informal learning relies on trust that the material being learned is worthwhile; Rob Wilkins shared his view that the feudal management system of a typical corporation inhibits its use of social media for learning; Anne Moore suggested that organisations need to become more like Gen-Y’s to support the next generation of employees who will lead us beyond the GFC; John Clifford informed us that every Telstra field technician has a laptop and a mobile device to enable e-learning on the road; Ann Quach recommended that we focus on content, then its mode of delivery (avoid using a blog or wiki just because it’s the latest fad); and Wendy John reminded us to empower staff to learn when they need to, otherwise engagement will be low and the experience will be a waste of time.
Stay tuned for an overview of Day 2…!
The annual LearnX E-Learning & Training Awards were announced today, and I’m proud to say that my team won a Gold award for Best Training Team, for our development and support of a self-paced, blended learning model at AMP.
We’re in good company, with the Australian Red Cross Blood Service taking out the Platinum award, and the Commonwealth Bank and The Cyber Institute also claiming Gold.
Congratulations also to the winners of the other categories, including the AMP Horizons Financial Planning Academy which won a Gold award for Best Employee Induction Training Program.
E-Learning Provocateur 