I’ll just been asked to help moderate Monday’s NELA event on Serious Gaming. It should be a great event. I’ve seen Scot Osterweil speak before, and he is very good. If you are interested in how to use Gaming or Simulation in your eLearning this is a must-see event.
You can read the full description on the NELA blog, or just register here. It’s a free event sponsored by the British Consulate.
I hope to see you there.
I wanted to take a few minutes to summarize some notes from last weeks CMASTD & NELA Roadblocks to Learning Technology Seminar. You can read the description on the NELA blog.
The seminar started with Mike Brennan from Knowledge Infusion giving the key-note. He spoke of the K-I “Strategy -> Plan -> Action” Methodology using some of his current clients as examples.
One interesting quote he used was from a Towers Perrin study that said
“92% of reasons for failed projects are ‘soft issues’ – organizations, people, and culture.”
Mike said that delivering value is the universal key factor in driving success. To do this he recommended focusing on:
Another key item I wanted to share came during a discussion on ROI and how you can quantify the softer side of internal training initiatives. Mike suggested that a metric he has used successfully is to measure the number of people promoted internally as a measure of training success and succession management effectiveness.
I’ll have some more comments from the panel discussion that I moderated, and I’m working to get Mike’s slides posted on the NELA Blog as well.
I was talking to a colleague about a seminar we both attended recently. We each enjoyed the seminar and took away a few key pieces of information, but it had been so jam packed with info that we both felt that we hadn’t been able to take advantage of everything that was covered.
This led to a long discussion on how I would re-design the seminar into a blended learning process to help improve the knowledge retention of all of the participants. As I started to write it up, I realized it was too long for one post, so I’ve broken it down into a couple of steps.
I just finished a great online seminar hosted by CLO Media called the The Future of Corporate Education: Embedding Learning into Business Processes. It really rang true with many of the projects and ideas that I am working on right now.
Claire from Forrester referred to it as “Contextual Learning” which she said is learning integrated into the work environment, is more informal, puts the learner in charge, targets a real-time need, and is very collaborative.
I have been referring to this as a collaborative learning environment. The key is that you don’t want a worker to have to leave their work to learn what they need to do. Also, the learning needs to be much shorter and focused on their current issue, with the learning modules being between 4 and 10 minutes in length. The emphasis is much less on retention and more on immediate performance.
Ole Lunddahl went a step further and talked about using current portal and search technology to automatically embed links to learning options and performance tools within a portal that automatically change based on the information on the screen that the worker is interacting with, including the actual data that is pulled up. Think of it as AdWords for learning. I had been thinking it was possible, but it’s always nice to see an example of it.
I think the key in all of this is to look at what can help drive performance on the job, and to stop thinking of learning as an “event” that pulls you out of your work, and just design the learning into the process.
I had a great time moderating last night’s NELA panel discussion, Creating a Learning Culture in a Biotech Setting. The audience was great and only let me get through a few of my questions before they jumped in with their own and turned the night into a wonderfully interactive discussion.
One of my favorite debates came after we had finished discussing the difficulty faced by the panel due to the wide range of audience and learning types, from sales reps to scientists and researchers, internal support staff such as finance, IT, and marketing folks, and down to the folks on a 24×7 manufacturing floor.
A member of the audience pointed out that while we were talking about having to support multiple “learning styles”, we were talking mostly about “learner types.” The distinction seemed subtle, but it pointed out that many times we all assume that a specific audience all has a similar learning style. We assume that *all* sales people are outgoing and interactive, or we assume that all scientists are analytical.
This led to a discussion of how important it is to not make those types of assumptions. We should always remember to separate learner types from learning styles and do as much as we can to support them by providing multiple delivery methods if possible, or at least instructional strategies that take this into account.
A final point was brought up by Mike Laffin of Serono, who reminded us all to remember that our own personal learning preferences can color our designs and we need to keep an open mind and focus on the learner.
I have some more notes on this that I will share in the next few days, and you can also see my notes and other discussions that have been posted on the NELA Blog.
I participated in a great session last week at NELA by Saul Carliner. You can read some of my notes on the talk at the NELA Blog.
It got me thinking about some work I did in the past with a large Seattle based software company. The focus was on training with their field sales and channel sales teams and how they could use Pocket PCs (PPC) and the (then about to be launched) Pocket PC cell phone edition.
Initially, we researched how these tools could be used for mobile learning, but by the end of the project it was obvious that the most effective use of the tool was for more instant support and knowledge sharing.
All of the field sales people had laptops, which were much more useful as their primary training platform. If a sales person wanted to train on anything that would take longer than 2-5 minutes they would use their laptop, not the tiny screen of the PPC.
The key demand was for instant access to timely information. When a sales person was on the road at an account, what they wanted was to be able to look up pertinent info in the parking lot prior to the meeting. This was not the time for a 10-minute training session, but was the perfect time to reinforce prior learning and present a refresher on the sales process or a checklist of the key 3 – 5 selling points to remember for the meeting.
Sales people also wanted to be able to get any other relevant client information such as their past licenses, competitive information, and some of the best selling points that were relevant for that specific customer or industry. Additionally, if a client asked them a question they did not know the answer to, they wanted to be able to either look it up immediately to get the answer, or be able to post questions to an expert as they were leaving the account so they could respond to their client as soon as possible.
These are all very good ways to use a PPC or any small handheld device. They are very effective when used as part of larger blended learning program but focused more on very small training reinforcements and performance support. Leave the heavy lifting to the laptops, desktops and classrooms.
I was reading a recent Will Thallheimer post about conversational writing where he referenced a great post by Kathy Sierra that says exactly what I’ve been feeling for a long time:
If you want people to learn and remember what you write, say it conversationally.
She actually references a 2000 study from the Journal of Educational Psychology that showed:
“In five out of five studies, students who learned with personalized text performed better on subsequent transfer tests than students who learned with formal text. Overall, participants in the personalized group produced between 20 to 46 percent more solutions to transfer problems than the formal group.”
This has been something that I have believed in for many years, but because I don’t have a formal Instructional Design background, I never said it very loud. When I worked on developing learning content we preferred doing scenario based learning, which placed the learner in a situation that was relevant to their jobs. Because this was usually done through a story, it would take on a conversational tone. The goal was to involve the learner and make them understand how the information was relevant to them, and what difference it would make on the job. Now at least I have some solid data to defend my position.
This is one of the reasons I like reading Will’s blog, because he focuses on research that provides actual data to back up his thoughts and opinions. While I was looking around his Work-Learning Research site I was horrified to find his article on the bogus learning chart that has been circulating, and realized that… I had used it myself!
I do believe in the basic concept of the graph, but now that I think about it, it is really odd that the numbers come out evenly. That should have been a tip off. I can’t even find the talk where I used it, but I know I was part of the problem.
So, to sum up: Informal Writing is Good, Informal Data is Bad.
Using an informal or conversational tone is effective for learning, but becoming so informal that you never bother to validate your data or sources needs to be avoided.
