The Learning Circuits Blog

ASTD TechKnowledge Happenings

2012-01-23T08:50:00.000-08:00

Well, my time blogging here at The Learning Circuits Blog is quickly coming to an end. It’s been a great time with some awesome discussions. So, I hope to meet a number of readers, commentors and lurkers in person at TechKnolwedge 2012 at the end of this week.

If you are going to TechKnowledge 2012, stop by and say hello, I will be doing a number of different events and I love meeting new people as well as past, present, or future students.

TechKnowledge 2012 Twitter Game

For the first part of the conference, I have co-created a game that is designed to increase conference learning and give attendees the opportunity to network with peers or play solo.

In the game, you’ll hunt for answers to questions supplied by speakers by attending sessions and viewing session slides online and on the mobile app. The game card of questions can be found online www.tk12.astd.org/materials and on the mobile app under session number Game 1. Answers to the questions will be found in the session slides identified by a special icon. If you’d like to partner with others, use Twitter hashtag #TKgame at the conference.

A debrief of the game as a learning experience will be held in the Tech Kafé on Thursday from 5:15–6:00 p.m.

My TechKnowledge 2012 Presentation

Here is a description of my session. It will be held on Wednesday, 1/25 11:00a.m.–12:15 p.m., Room Miranda 7/8. Please stop by and say “hello.”

What Research Tells Us About 3D Avatars, Storytelling and Serious Games for Learning and Behavior Change

This decidedly unacademic presentation provides a broad, scientific overview of what we know from research about the effectiveness of today’s technology for changing learner behaviors. We will discuss the use of 3D avatars to change learner behaviors; we will consider how playing a video game changes a person’s behavior and how storytelling helps learners memorize facts. We’ll answer questions like: Are two avatars better in an e-learning module than one? Does the appearance of an avatar impact the person when they’ve finished working with the avatar? Do serious games have to be entertaining to be educational? This exciting session shows you how to use the existing research literature in your own design and delivery of online learning. You will be provided with tips and techniques for matching research findings to your own e-learning design. We’ll move the concepts from research to practice. The presentation ends with a practical case study outlining how the research tips, techniques, and practices can be applied in a real-life online learning situation. Discover how research-based practices really fit in with today's fast-paced need for quick, effective online instruction.

TechKnowledge 2012 Chats

I am participation two TK Chats. One is about Gamification on Wednesday, 1/25 from 2:00–2:45 p.m. It will be a lively discussion with Rick Raymer, Koreen Olbrish,Kris Rockwell, and myself facilitated by Judy Unrein. This will be a fun and thought-provoking discussion. Join us for the controversy.

The second might not be as controversial (or will it)? The topic is Instructional Design, which is as critical to what we do as professionals as you can get! With thought leaders like Ellen Wagner, Allison Rossett, and Steve Villachica and faciliated by Cammy Bean, it’s bound to be an engaging and thought-provoking review of the field and where it needs to go.

ARG and ARG --What are they? What does it mean? Should you care?

2012-01-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

In addition to discussing Gamification, I also wanted to take one of my January blog postings and talk about ARG.

The term ARG is batted around from time to time as a method of conducting training programs but there is a lot of confusion around the term.

Let's look at the terms, to help define the terms, I asked Koreen Olbrish who is a self-described--opinionated and snarky entrepreneur, instructional designer, learner and mom who has experience developing ARGs and who blogs at Learning in Tandem for her expert input.

She contributed an entire chapter to my upcoming book explaining the two terms and has created ARGs and implement them successfully.

Here is what Koreen wrote in the chapter:

Alternate reality games (ARGs), also sometimes called pervasive games or transmedia storytelling, are designed to combine real life and digital game play elements. So that you are playing the game in the real world but doing behaviors that are linked to the game. (my addition.)

Typically, Alternate Reality Gamess are "tracked" online but the actual game play consists of real life activities. There are many entertainment-based examples such as the games, I love bees, The Lost Experience,Numb3rs Chain Factor and examples of ARGs for social issues such as Urgent Evoke, World without Oil.

Here is a video explaining "I Love Bees"

There continues to be a lot of confusion in the term ARG--some people use "alternate reality games" and "augmented reality games" interchangeably. For a point of clarification, alternate reality games refer to game play that integrates real life and online game play through a storyline that seeks to engage learners in an experience that seems real. While augmented reality enhances reality or adds something to it. For example the yellow first down line superimposed on the football field is augmented reality. Often smartphones are used with Augmented Reality Games.

Here is an example of an augmented reality game.

The really confusing part comes in when augmented reality is used as part of an alternate reality game. To keep them straight, think about the meaning of the words; “alternate reality” seeks to create a different reality for game play purposes. “Augmented reality” adds additional information to real life environments and objects.

Here is a great video from BMW that shows the potential of augmented reality in the realm of training:

Here is one done for the military. Notice all the heavy and bulky equipment...remember, cell phones used to be heavy and bulky as well. The technology is shrinking and will soon be in a training center near you.

So yes, you should begin to care about ARG, they have the potential to be powerful instructional tools that can allow a true performance support system. I think the BMW example clearly shows how to mix training with on the job actions. The military example could be used for teaching such skills as negotiations in a highly sophisticated branching simulation or for teaching people how to insert artificial hips or even how to deal with upset customers.

Technology is driving a number of interesting advances in learning environments. The important thing for learning and development professionals to realize is that the basic understanding of how people learn and what it means to motivate learners does not change with technology. Now more than ever we need to know and put into practice evidence-based guidelines for developing instruction.

Broadening the Definition of Gamification for L&D Professionals

2012-01-12T07:50:00.000-08:00

In my posting on Learning Circuits Blog, a reader left a thoughtful and interesting comment about points and the use of the term gamification and the Blogger software won't let me write my entire comment (too many characters) so I am posting my comment here. See Kathy Sierra's comments under What is Gamification and Why it Matters to L&D Professionals.

First, Kathy, as always, thanks for your thoughtful comments on the topic of Gamification. You always help to expand my thinking on the topic. Although, I have a couple of points of clarification that I'd like to make.

You define gamification as “based entirely on operant conditioning, using +r in the form of rewards to reinforce behavior, especially the behavior of ‘engagement’.” Your definition reminds me of the old folk story that originated in India where a group of people in the dark all touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but each only one part and they come up with different descriptions. One feels a leg and says the elephant is like a pillar; and one feels the tail and says the elephant is like a rope, etc. Later they compare notes and are in complete disagreement because none of them has seen the entire elephant. (source)

I think you are only feeling one part of the elephant.

While points and rewards can be framed as operant conditioning and as a game-mechanic, it is only one part of gamification—one element, one piece. Not the entire definition of gamification. If points or rewards were the single engaging element of games then the game Progress Wars where you just click a button to get points would be the most popular game ever.

In almost every legitimate definition of gamification the term “game-based thinking” is used. This term encompasses ideas like challenge, story, instructive feedback, levels, characters and freedom to fail. These are not elements of a Skinner Box or operant conditioning. These are elements of engaging games like Angry Birds, Civilization V, Red Dead Redemption and Monopoly. All enormously popular games that do not rely on points for motivation or engagement.

It is disingenuous to state that “virtually ALL game scholars, game researchers, and professional game designers are passionately against gamification.” Serious and knowledgeable individuals like Sebastian Deterding and Amy Jo Kim and other well informed people are passionately for gamification—as properly defined.

Sebastian Deterding discusses gamification in terms of meaning, mastery and autonomy—concepts closer to Self-Determination Theory (a theory of intrinsic motivation) than operant conditioning. (Source) Amy Jo Kim discusses gamification as the design of the player journey where the player progresses over time, giving people something to master and building in emotional engagement. (Source)

Again, she is not discussing a Skinner Box approach to gamification, instead it is a thoughtful approach focusing on the overall experience and progress of an individual through some type of experience leading toward mastery. Serious, well informed people are advocating for gamification beyond the concept of adding points to experiences.

But even points are not all bad or DEmotivational. It is true that points can, in some cases, be construed as extrinsically motivating; but they can and often are intrinsically motivating as well.

Research articles by Deci & Ryan, 1985 and Lepper & Henderlong, 2000 (some of the same researchers you mentioned in your comment) indicate that in one sense something like desiring good grades can indicate that children are engaging in academic behaviors merely as a means to some extrinsic end.

BUT in another sense grades provide useful information about competence and mastery, and desiring this sort of feedback may reflect an intrinsic interest in the material or activity rather than an extrinsic orientation.

So are grades intrinsic or extrinsic? By extension then, are points, scores, and certain game rewards informational and, therefore, intrinsic and not extrinsic? Giving points to someone (as a form of information about competence) is actually intrinsically motivating. Giving someone a reward related to a specific achievement that gives them information about their level of mastery related to the achievement is intrinsically motivating. Informational-based points, rewards and achievements are intrinsic motivators, they are not operant conditioning.

Another interesting concept related to extrinsic motivation is that, over time, it might be possible that extrinsic motivators actually become intrinsic motivators. This is called “internalized motivation.”

In the above mentioned article by Lepper and Henderlong, (2000) they state “One issue not addressed is the development of internalized motivation—those originally external motives that have over time become incorporated into one’s personal goal or value systems.” They go on to state that there is some suggestion in the literature that internalized reasons gradually supplant extrinsic reasons for engaging in disliked behaviors (Chandler & Connell, 1987) and that there are specific teaching practices that facilitate internalization (Deci, Eghrari, Patrick, & Leone, 1994).”

Meaning that extrinsic motivations could eventually lead to intrinsic motivation—an area worthy of further study and a compelling reason not to dismiss points outright as dangerous. They, like almost any other instructional element, can be used appropriately or used inappropriate. Points are not inherently demotivational—it’s how they are used, it’s the design of the points system. Again, well designed systems of learning lead to positive results, poorly designed systems of learning lead to poor results. Just like every other instructional design element.

Your argument against points as solely extrinsic motivation needs be more nuanced than simply stating points undermine intrinsic motivation. In fact, points may actually be intrinsic motivators in many cases thus providing an excellent tool for learning and development professionals to leverage for instruction and motivation of learners.

Finally, given the idea that gamification is more than “operant conditioning, using +r in the form of rewards to reinforce behavior, especially the behavior of ‘engagement’” then adding game elements to something like negotiation skills is gamification.

If I take the content associated with negotiation skills and I add the elements of challenge, a story, instructive feedback, levels, characters and freedom to fail in the form of “The Negotiation Game” then that is the gamification of teaching negotiation skills. How is adding game elements to a serious topic like negotiation skills not gamification given that it includes game-based thinking? It is adding game-based thinking, game mechanics and a game-based approach to learning—that is gamification. (Notice, I didn’t even add any points or rewards.)

Perhaps it’s just the word “gamification.” So a growing trend now is to use the term “gamefulness” which may be less controversial as a term for discussing the concept of game-based thinking.

Regardless of what you call it, more game-based thinking can only improve the current state of mind-numbing, page turning e-learning--not harm it.

Thanks again for your thoughtful comments about the subject of gamification.

References:

Chandler, C. L., & Connell, J. P. (1987). Children’s intrinsic, extrinsic, and internalized motivation: A developmental study of children’s reasons for liked and disliked behaviours. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 5, 357–365.

Deci, E. L., Eghrari, H., Patrick, B. C., & Leone, D. R. (1994). Facilitating internalization: The self-determination theory perspective. Journal of Personality, 62, 119.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum Press.

Lepper, M. R., & Henderlong, J. (2000). Turning “play” into “work” and “work” into “play”: 25 years of research on intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. In C. Sansone & J. M. Harackiewicz (Eds.), Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: The search for optimal motivation and performance (pp. 257–307). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

What is Gamification? and Why it Matters to L&D Professionals

2012-01-09T13:11:00.000-08:00

In my last posting I mentioned the idea of “Gamification” and Anna thoughtfully pointed out that we need to “ define what "gamification" means to learning development. “ I couldn’t agree more and I have spent the last year exploring that concept to see what Gamification does mean to learning and development professionals.
For more on this, see my posting In Defense ofthe Term Gamification as used by Learning Professionals on Kapp Notes, and be sure to read the insightful and provocative comments.

So on this posting, let’s define Gamification.

“Gamification is using game-based mechanics, aesthetics and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems.”

Now, when most people think of “gamification” they think of rewards, points, and achievements and how artificially incentivizing people to do things based solely on rewards is a losing proposition (and most of the time it is), so let’s look at the characteristics of video games that are useful, exciting, and engaging in terms of learning and, it turns out, in terms of video game play.

Here are few examples of game-based thinking we can apply to our instruction, this is an abbreviated list. I explore many more in The Gamification of Learning and Instruction which will be out in May and in my talk at TechKnowledge 2012—coming up shortly.

Story

Games are interesting and motivating because they have a story, they provide a context in which actions need to take place. Many learning courses provide no context, no reason for actions. We need to use story elements, plot, characters, resolution, scene setting to help put learning back into context. Training, and the educational system, has removed training or learning events too far from the actual application of the knowledge. Stories bring context back. Additionally, research indicates that people remember facts better when they are in a story than when they are presented in a bulleted list.

Feedback

Another element in games is immediate feedback. When you play Pac Man, you know right away how you are doing; you visually see the number of dots left to be eaten and how close the ghosts are to cornering you. From a learning perspective, feedback is a critical element for facilitating learning. Providing frequent opportunities for students to respond during a lesson helps with learning as shown in research. Most of our learning courses do an extremely poor job of providing immediate feedback. Additionally, the feedback typically is not based on action or activity, it’s based on knowledge—how well the learner could “temporarily” remember what was covered earlier in the course. This isn’t meaningful feedback. Gamification can provide, in the form of points or “health” or “lives” feedback on progress.

Games provide meaningful and immediate feedback far more effectively and efficiently than a classroom instructor. Game-based thinking and mechanics can help learning designers think about continuous corrective feedback.

Freedom to Fail and Chance

In an instructional environment, failure is not a valid option. In games it’s encouraged with multiple lives and attempts. Games overcome the “sting of failure” specifically by doing things like giving multiple opportunities to perform a task until mastery and through the introduction of chance or randomness (two elements that schools and corporations work hard to eliminate). In fact, research indicates that gaming uncertainty can transform the emotional experience of learning improving engagement and, more importantly, improving encoding and later recall.

Levels

Games do a great job of providing personalized experiences. In many games I can choose an entry point of easy, intermediate, or difficult. Most online learning experiences are developed for “one-size-fits-all” with no consideration of different skill or knowledge backgrounds. Why can’t we design learning to accommodate different skill levels just like video games?

Two things I’d like to mention before signing off for this post. First, notice I did not mention points, rewards, or achievements. We can apply game-based thinking without having the elements of points or rewards. We don’t need to use points or rewards as motivation—however, we can use points and rewards as feedback on progress. So, let’s not abandon all mention of points or rewards because we fear they may undermine intrinsic motivation, the research is not as specific on this point as many would like. In fact, some research indicates that intrinsic and extrinsic rewards exist side-by-side in classroom environments and that they are not, indeed, opposite ends of a continuum.

Second, when I mention “gamification” people often caution me that we must “get it right” or we can cause a lot of harm and that getting gamification right is tricky. I don’t disagree but designing any type of learning event effectively is tricky and, unfortunately, learning professionals often mess that up.

One example is the continued, unscientifically supported use of learning styles. So, I don’t believe the argument that we should abandon the use of gamification because it is hard to do and because we might do it wrong. If that was the case, 40% of all corporate learning could have to be thrown out because the objectives are wrong, the instructional strategies are wrong and the assessment of knowledge is wrong. You don’t throw out a method because in some cases it might be incorrectly used, instead, we need to educate people on the correct usage of the concept.

Gamification is an exciting addition to an instructional designer’s toolkit but it should not be foreign or strange to learning and development professionals we have been using many of the techniques for years (check out the last link in the resources list)..

OK, this post is already longer than I anticipated.

Here are some resources to further your thinking on the subject and if you are going to TechKnowledge, look for my session on Wednesday, 01/25/2012 from 11:00AM -12:15PM, Room Miranda 7/8. The description title of the talk is What Research Tells Us About 3D Avatars, Storytelling and Serious Games for Learning and Behavior Change

Additional posts of interest:

Great Gamification Video by Sebastian Deterding

Combining Zombies and Running…Gamification of Exercise

Two Interesting videos on games from Google Tech Talks

What the Gamificaiton of Learning and Instruction is Not

Google Talk on Gamification: Designing the Player Journey

Gamification Sounds Like What Instructional Designers Have Done for Years

Resolve to Engage Your Learners in 2012

2012-01-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

No one wants to watch a movie in which the director yells “Lights, Camera…Multiple Choice Question” We are more excited with movies directed with the words “Lights, Camera, Action.” Multiple choice questions don’t reflect reality. In real-life we are seldom confronted with a multiple choice question, we are confronted with problems, decisions, and the need to be innovative. Not the need to choose the best answer out of four choices.

Action is what we want, it is what motivates humans. Kids can’t sit still, they need to move. We want to watch sports with activity and movement. Our jobs demand active thinking, complex decision making, and activity. Why should our learning design be inactive? Why should our online courses start with something as boring and pedantic as a learning objective? Why do we commonly create instruction with the page-of-text, page-of-text, page-of-text, multiple-choice-question format?

For the month of January as the New Year kicks off, I want learning and development professionals to think about action, activity, and innovation. I want us to make a conscious effort to force learners to do something. ..anything to get them mentally or even physically moving. Challenge your learners to interact with the e-learning and classroom instruction that you create.

Here are three tips to help you get started; some are borrowed from the field of video games which is an awesome place to look for inspiration for learning and development professionals. A term I like to use (while some others don’t) is gamification. We need to add gamification to our learning—more about that in a subsequent post.

So here is the list:

First

Start your learning with a challenge instead of a list of objectives or a lecture. Rather than state, “there are three things you should know about fraudulent claims”—start the training with, the statement “A potentially fraudulent claim has just been filed, you have 20 screens and 30 minutes to learn what to do. Proceed with caution.” As the challenge unfolds and you provide information to the learner, you should be providing more and more learning opportunities, introduce the fraud detection worksheet. Incorporate policy points into the feedback you provide the learner, add in exceptions. Too many courses are too easy. Yes, I said it…too easy. Humans don’t like or respect tasks that are too easy. Yet too many learning courses are built to the lowest common denominator. Create courses that challenger learners, they’ll learn more, remember more and, as a result, be able to do more.

Second

Create training where more than one answer is possible, feasible, and acceptable. Rarely in life are answers cut and dried. There are typically shades of gray that must be dealt with and reconciled. In most e-learning, there are absolutely right and absolutely wrong answers. How does that prepare a learner for what she will encounter on the job? Present a situation where the customer is half-right and half-wrong…what do you do? Or an ethical situation which is filled with gray. Training needs to be more nuanced than its current form. Provide alternative endings, provide different levels of “correct” …don’t keep giving one right answer.

Thir Third

Force the learners to perform the activity they are learning about. Make them enter a customer order, make them calm down an irate customer, make them close out an account. Make them operate the machinery. If you want someone to learn to do something, they must practice doing it! We can’t tell them about being a good leader and then hope they’ll be a good leader, they have to practice being a good leader, or sales person or accountant. Practice is needed to improve performance. Athletes don’t just read about competition, they practice, work on fundamentals, play scrimmages, and then perform. In training situations, the learner reads about negotiation skills, takes a multiple choice test about negotiation skills, and then is asked to go negotiate with a customer. That’s it--no practice, no scrimmage. Immediately they go to the real thing. This is not good.

So, as the New Year starts, think about what you, as a learning and development professional, can do to engage the people for whom you are building instruction. Don’t passively hand them content, instead make them do something in 2012. Your action item from this post is to create at least one challenge or action oriented activities for your learners in the next 3 months.

January Blogger: Karl Kapp

2012-01-05T08:17:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

A big thanks to Judy Unrein for blogging last month. If you didn't get a chance to read it, you should go back and catch up on her thoughts on HTML5 and our fortcoming TechKnowledge Conference.

I'm really pleased to have Karl Kapp take the blogging reins for the month of January.

I first saw Karl Kapp speak at last year’s Innovations in E-Learning event. Karl often speaks at ASTD's TechKnowledge conference and other similar events, but I’d never had a chance to hear him. I’m glad I was able to catch up with him last year. Karl’s session was on 3D, games, and simulations and why they matter for learning. The session was enthralling. Never before had I seen someone approach the topic with the amount of research and case examples that Karl did. It was a great session.

If you’re not familiar with Karl’s background, he is a leading consultant, scholar, and expert on the convergence of learning, technology, and business operations. He is a professor of instructional technology in Bloomsburg University’s Instructional Technology Department, and is the assistant director of the Institute for Interactive Technologies (IIT). Two of his more recent books are Learning in 3D, which he wrote with Tony O’Driscoll, and Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning. His forthcoming book is titled The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-Base Methods and Strategies for Training and Education.

Karl already has a very active blog in Kapp Notes, but he was nice enough to take on blogging duties here for the month of January. He’ll be talking about games, simulations, and ARGs--and ranting a bit about how to better engage learners.

Looking Forward to TechKnowledge 2012!

2011-12-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

TechKnowledge is less than a month away, and I can’t wait!

This is going to sound a little doe-eyed, but last year’s event was no less than transformative for me; I presented at a major industry conference for the first time and met a slew of incredible people who have continued to be amazing resources over the past year.

Some of that happened through serving on the planning committee for the 2012 event. We’ve worked hard over the past year to bring you a conference that serves a wide range of audiences and needs. Look at the schedule and you’ll see some sessions that go well beyond the basics, such as Reuben Tozman’s session on ID for a semantic web and Tim Martin’s session on the next generation of SCORM, as well as a wide variety of foundational sessions.

I’m also thrilled that in addition to the less-formal panels called TK Chats that were pioneered last year, there will be a Tech Kafe: a space for people to meet and chill when they want to keep discussions going--hopefully through Twitter as well as in person--even when they’re not up for a formal session. (More on that later.) And I’m excited that there will be a keynote, several concurrent sessions, and a TK Chat devoted to gaming/gamification/gamefulness; with so many opportunities to learn and discuss, I hope attendees are going to be able to figure out how much is hype and how much is relevant to their own organizations.

Finally, you’re going to see more integration with social media, both leading up to the conference and during, with efforts like the TechKnowledge 2012 Blog, the Twitter-based Tech + Knowledge scavenger hunt, and Tech Kafe. (And Brian Dusablon and I even contributed to the conference previews in a highly unofficial capacity by drinking and talking with Julie Dirksen and Diane Elkins, TK12 speakers on usability and accessibility, on The ToolBar podcast this month.) Whether you’re at the conference or not, stay up-to-date with all the TK happenings by following the hashtag: #astdTK12.

I’ve asked other members of the planning committee to share what they’re looking forward to most, as well. Here’s what they have to say:

As much excitement as I have for all of the great concurrent sessions at this year’s TK, I’m even MORE excited about TK Chat and Tech Kafe (new this year). Chats are informal talk-show-style conversations with deep thinkers on key topics -- we’ll have a little stage and a cozy couch and roaming microphones to get everyone involved. Right next to the TK Chat area is the Tech Kafe, a chill-out space where you can continue those deep conversations and connect with other conference attendees and speakers. I plan on hanging out in these two spaces as much as I possibly can. So come on down and join the fun!

- Cammy Bean, aka @cammybean

Events like TechKnowledge 2012 are opportunities for me to dwell together with friends and colleagues from across the learning and training community. I enjoy the opportunities for us to sit together and explore what we’re each doing. I’m always seeking to adopt new patterns into my craft, as well as have my assumptions challenged. My favorite thing that happens at events like TechKnowledge: the discovery of someone bright and wonderful who happens to share some huge ideas that I didn’t know I needed to know. It happened to me at TK11 and I’m really looking forward to lightning striking twice this year, too.

- Aaron E. Silvers, aka @aaronesilvers

It’s always fantastic to join together at TechKnowledge with like-minded learning professionals, and friends new and old, and this year will be no different. We will come together from around the globe to share best practices and encourage one another to take the next step in our learning journeys. I am also looking forward to hearing from the keynote speakers: Jane McGonigal, Stuart Crabb, and Lisa Doyle. Each one is sure to share cutting edge thinking and best practices about learning. They will challenge me to try new things and see new possibilities. I can’t wait!

- Cindy Huggett, aka @cindyhugg

Conferences like TechKnowledge provide the opportunity for individuals in the learning community to get together and share ideas and concepts about how our craft can be improved. As much as I enjoy the concurrent sessions, I think my favorite part of these events is actually getting to meet many of the folks that I interact with on a daily basis over services like Twitter. While learning communities online are pretty fantastic, nothing beats the face to face interactions that can be found at these conferences. These opportunities to meet new people and converse without the limits of 140 characters are really what makes TechKnowledge such a great event.

- Kris Rockwell, aka @krisrockwell

There are so many good reasons to join us in Las Vegas in January. And when you do, don’t be afraid to ask questions, answer someone’s tweets, start up conversations in any way you can. The most important lesson I learned last year is that conferences are like soylent green: They’re made of people. And TK12 will have plenty of people worth getting to know.

See you there!

Judy Unrein designs learning solutions at Artisan E-Learning, blogs at E-Learning Uncovered and onehundredfortywords, and tweets at @jkunrein.

Gearing Up for a Laptop-Free TechKnowledge 2012

2011-12-23T15:30:00.000-08:00

While I like my laptop, I’ve gotten very tired of lugging it around conferences, and my mobile devices get better battery life and pick up WiFi signal better than my laptop anyway. So I’ve decided to go to TechKnowledge almost laptop-free. (As it turns out, since I’m presenting a Creation Station and probably doing client work during the week, I’m going to have to bring my laptop, but I’m definitely going to minimize taking it to the event itself.)

Here’s how I’m preparing.

Gear

I have an iPad case that I love; it looks slick, protects the device well, has Smart Cover functionality, and allows me to stand it up at a variety of angles for reading and notetaking. Just for this effort, I’ve bought an Apple Bluetooth keyboard as well, because there’s no way I can last a week only typing on iOS. They cost $69 at the Apple Store, but I got mine from Other World Computing for $49 (brand new, but without a box or instructions). Setup instructions are here.

I don’t have a stylus that I’m particularly fond of yet, especially for sketching, but I’m looking to try some out beforehand and possibly at the conference itself. In particular, I know that both the AluPen and the Cosmonaut will be in attendance with friends of mine, and I welcome other recommendations, too!

This isn’t a consideration for me this time, but if you’re presenting a session with just a slideshow, you can do that laptop-free too... you just need Keynote and the proper connector. I’ve been told that the VGA adapter is the one you’ll need for this conference.

Apps

You’ve probably traveled enough with your mobile devices already to know what you like in travel and entertainment apps, so I’m going to skip to a few categories that I’ve found very useful for conferences.

The official TK12 conference app. It’s not on the app stores yet, but there will be a conference app and you’ll definitely want it to help you plan your conference experience.

Business card scanner/importer. These can be a huge timesaver as well as a safety net to keep you from losing valuable contacts in your travels. There are lots of these out there. I tried three free/trial ones for the iPhone: CamCard Lite, ScanBizCards Lite, and WorldCard Mobile Lite.

For this trial, I took a not-so-great picture of a business card from one of my favorite places to visit in Portland -- complete with non-English words -- and used it for all three apps.

(Tip: If you don’t want to go through the whole process of importing and checking contact info, snap quick pictures of your collected cards so that you don’t lose the information even if you lose the cards. You can process them on your flight home.)

CamCard came out on top with the most accurate reading and the best user interface, and it was the only one of the three with no limits on how many cards could be read and stored. The $7 paid version removes advertisements and adds some more advanced features.

Notetaking apps. There are several apps that have a specific functionality that’s very cool to me: the ability to record audio while you’re taking notes and play back your notetaking with the audio -- even skip to the part of the audio that you were recording when you tap a certain note that you’ve taken. The two I’ve been tinkering around with are CaptureNotes 2 and AudioNote, both of which work well. CaptureNotes is much more full-featured in general, which is good, but if I don’t take the time to become really fluid in it soon, I’ll probably stick to AudioNote for its simplicity.

Sketching apps. I tend to like Adobe Ideas and Penultimate, but like many categories of app, the best one is the one you like and know how to use. Load up your device with a few free ones, figure out what you like and don’t, and you’ll be able to turn a more educated eye toward the reviews and screenshots on your device’s app store.

QR scanner. I see plenty of QR codes on business cards and vendor booths these days so I would recommend having one, but I’ve never looked hard to find differentiating factors between them. I use QR Reader for iPhone and it works fine.

Anything else for networking. There are lots of programs that let you easily share your contact information with others... Bump and CardFlick, to name two. Most of them rely on both parties having the same app, so it’s smart to have a variety of apps and get them set up ahead of time. And there will be parts of the conference that rely on Twitter, so try it if you haven’t yet and get an app that you like for your phone or tablet. Again, there are tons of them; just find one that works well for you.

The more effort I’ve put into this, the more I’ve been curious what other gear and equipment people recommend. If you have favorites, feel free to comment, disagree, and discuss... I’m looking forward to learning from you!

Judy Unrein designs learning solutions at Artisan E-Learning, blogs at E-Learning Uncovered and onehundredfortywords, and tweets at @jkunrein.

HTML5—What’s the Urgency?

2011-12-14T09:23:00.000-08:00

I’m starting to get some questions along the lines of, “We’ve been hearing we need to switch to HTML5 delivery, and we’d like to be forward-thinking, but why and when should we do it?”

Those are really good questions; thanks for asking!

Some companies need to deliver content on iPads now. In that case, there is urgency to consider something other than a Flash-based solution. One option may be to deliver that content through (VPN) access, like Tom Kuhlmann wrote about on the Rapid E-Learning Blog a few months ago. The same post covers some publish-to-video and -PDF options. If those don’t suit your needs for interactivity, you’ll probably want to check out some of the existing HTML5 authoring tools.

For companies that aren’t planning to deliver content to mobile devices any time soon, there may not be that much urgency, and it might be difficult to understand why you would want to switch to HTML5 delivery at all. If you don’t have issues with your current technology, it’s even more difficult to explain without getting into ideological discussions (including the ever-popular Why HTML5 Will Kill Flash/Why HTML5 Will Never Kill Flash debate). You can find plenty of that elsewhere on the Internet and we’ve promised not to re-tread that topic here, so just a few words in the service of answering the question…

For me, it mainly comes down to recognizing that browser plug-ins came along largely to fill a very real gap in web technology; HTML wasn’t initially built to deliver rich multimedia. But that gap is closing fast with the capabilities of the HTML5 stack of technologies, and I have more faith in the community of companies, organizations, and individuals that keep pushing web standards forward than I have in the individual companies that develop proprietary plugins. I don’t think that plugins are evil; I simply don’t think they are the way of the future. Your company may choose to produce content in Flash or Silverlight or Quicktime and your desktop/laptop users will be able to access it as long as the company supports that technology, but when introducing new devices into the mix, your need for more widely-accepted technology will likely grow.

So, if you are considering a change to HTML5 delivery for future-proofing, my advice is to take a hard look at your needs and the existing software options and be willing to wait a bit if necessary. The authoring applications that are available now either aren’t as powerful or aren’t as compliant as some of the tools to watch that I mentioned in last week’s post. So if you buy something now, I think there’s a good possibility you’ll end up with:

software that’s not powerful and flexible enough to meet future needs,
software for which you’ll have to spend a lot of time testing the output (which you’ll have to do to some degree anyway), or
software that doesn’t take advantage of as many modern HTML5 features as you might expect.

That’s not to say that existing software isn’t good, but more competition would accelerate and further development. I think we have a little way to go before the market is mature enough to have lots of solid contenders for your software-buying dollar. And you may find yourself using combinations of tools more than you have in the past, as well.

In some ways, this whole situation feels a little like the tail wagging the dog, doesn’t it?

It’s seemed like, for years now, that the learning industry has had delivery figured out. Now limitations on that have us scrambling for new tools—some of which might not even meet our needs. There’s a good chance you’re going to be in the market for a new authoring tool or two soon, so I think it’s a good time to take another look at what strategies your tools support.

This is a huge conversation, but the issues I do want to mention that are on my radar more and more these days are reusability and revision of content. One of the cool things about HTML—5 or otherwise—is that the published output is viewable, changeable code (rather than an object inside of a plug-in), that’s easier to manipulate, even without native files. That’s the kind of openness that can promote greater reusability and easier revision, at least in a manual workflow…though if revisions are a huge factor in your company’s workflow, you might consider tools that handle that programmatically.

I hope this has cleared up a few things and, yes, opened a few cans of worms, as well. One of the things I’ve been privileged to experience over the last couple of years is that this conversation over delivery technology—seemingly a small part of what we do and already debated to a pulp in the Flash vs. HTML5 Ring of Death—has opened up for me much larger conversations about design strategy, semantics (in a good way), accessibility…the list goes on. And we need to have these conversations. I’m as game for a good Articulate Studio vs. Adobe Captivate conversation as the next person, but we also need to remember that our jobs are bigger than that. Much bigger.

Let’s discuss.

Judy Unrein designs learning solutions at Artisan E-Learning, blogs at E-Learning Uncovered and onehundredfortywords, and tweets at @jkunrein.

What Do We Mean When We Say HTML5?

2011-12-07T10:42:00.001-08:00

No doubt you’ve heard at least a whisper about HTML5 over the last year. It’s a Flash-killer. It’s the only way to get multimedia on mobile devices. It’s not going to be ready for use until 2022. It’s going to save the world.

There’s a lot of hype and a lot of confusion.

One thing that complicates the situation is that the spec is still technically undergoing revision, even as it’s currently being used in web development projects around the world. As of January 2011, it’s considered a “living standard,” and browsers are continuing to change as the spec is revised.

Another complication is that “HTML5” is often used to refer to a range of modern web technologies. Simply speaking, HTML is the language that the Web is written in, and HTML5 is the most recent version of it. But because there are a lot of other technologies commonly used to create rich experiences on the web these days (such as CSS3 and JavaScript), those get wrapped up into the the abbreviation “HTML5” in colloquial speech. There are those who think that’s a bad thing—one suggestion I’ve seen is replacing “HTML5” with “NEWT” when it’s being used to encompass more than the markup language—and while I like the idea (and the acronym), I don’t really consider it desirable to throw more jargon into the mix. I often use the phrase “the HTML5 stack” to communicate more clearly, but to me, the main thing is that people have good resources to keep them up to date on the capabilities of the technology, the delivery platforms, and the authoring tools.

And that brings us to one final complication: The makers of authoring tools—the people we often count on to help us deliver on our designs—aren’t always very invested in helping us cut through the hype to find what we need.

So what’s an elearning designer—or developer—to do? Sit this one out? Change jobs? Take that early retirement? I say none of the above! Here’s a quick primer on just what you need to know for e-learning (except the code).

Why is HTML5 important?
When I asked this question to a group I was speaking to about HTML5 authoring tools last month, about half of them held up their iPads. Good answer!

Apple has never allowed Flash on iOS devices (iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads), but these devices are way too popular for us to ignore their users. And just recently, Adobe announced that it is stopping development on the version of Flash Player that is used on all other mobile devices, as well. Even on desktop and laptop browsers, the Flash plug-in can be problematic…despite its great service over the last ten years providing the ability to rich multimedia experiences over the web.

But HTML output that you can create with tools like Lectora and ToolBook is usually so…static. How are we supposed to deliver those rich learning experiences that our learners are used to if we can’t output to Flash?

Well, HTML5 has the vast majority of the capabilities that Flash has, as well as much more widespread ability to play on mobile devices.

What can you do with HTML5?
You can build rich, app-like experiences. Blah, blah, blah.

Let me try that again.

You can make pretty stuff. You can make stuff that that responds to the learner’s input and understands gestures that used to require plugins. You can make cool multimedia experiences. You can make apps for sketching, image editing, and sound editing. You can make a drum kit. You can make a musical instrument out of the NYC subway route. You can rebuild Quake (warning: violence) and Angry Birds. (Caveat: Angry Birds still has a tiny amount of Flash built-in, for sound only as I understand). You can build lots of other games, as well.

Now, can you do all of these things? Probably not. I certainly can’t. But people who are skilled with the technology can. It wasn’t too long ago that it took a lot of skill with Flash to build the things we can create easily with rapid development tools today. We are going to have some growing pains while our tools catch up.

What can’t HTML5 do?
There are limitations (and there is an ongoing discussion about this on my individual blog), but the main point we should be concerned with is whether it can support the things we want to do in developing e-learning, not how all of HTML5’s capabilities stack up to those of other technologies. From what I’ve seen—and just based on the samples I linked above—the differences are at the margins. Most elearning designs aren’t going to cause the HTML5 stack to break a sweat.

Speaking of other technologies… is it going to kill Flash?
As Justin promised, I’m not going to waste your time on this debate. The material point for us is that if we need to produce non-Flash content so that that it can play on some devices, why bother producing a separate Flash version, as well?

If I want to deliver HTML5 output, which tools should I use?
A couple of months ago, I contributed an article to T+D on some of the more capable tools available, and I hope to report on more of them in coming months. Ones to watch in particular: Adobe Captivate is testing HTML5 output, Articulate has announced that the upcoming Storyline will output to HTML5, and Allen Technologies has announced that they are working on HTML5 output for ZebraZapps, as well.
But in addition, I would encourage you to check out tools that are not specifically built for elearning, such as Adobe Dreamweaver for full-fledged authoring and Tumult Hype and Sencha Animator for animation. Not only will it broaden your development skill set, it could encourage you to start broadening your design ideas…especially if you’ve been using rapid authoring tools for a while.

Will my learners be able to see it?
It depends. One of the great things about HTML5 is the ability to gracefully degrade content, or offer different versions of content depending on which browsers (and which versions) your audience has. For a quick graphical view of which browsers support which features and how support has been added over time, see HTML5 & CSS Readiness; for more nitty-gritty and frequently-update details, see When can I use…. In general, mobile browsers present less of a concern than desktop/laptop browsers, because they’re more frequently updated and almost all of them are built upon the same HTML5-friendly technology.

What else?
I hope this post answered some of your existing questions and I look forward to hearing any others you have!

Update: ZebraZapps added to the "tools to watch for" list.

Judy Unrein designs learning solutions at Artisan E-Learning, blogs at E-Learning Uncovered and onehundredfortywords, and tweets at @jkunrein.

December Blogger: Judy Unrein

2011-12-05T11:42:00.001-08:00

Judy Unrein designs learning solutions for Artisan E-Learning, an e-learning design and consulting firm. I first saw Judy speak at last year’s TechKnowledge conference on HTML5, a topic of increasing importance in the learning and development field. Judy is also on the advisory committee for the upcoming TechKnowledge conference (and responsible for helping put together one of the conference’s best lineup of sessions). So, with that in mind, Judy will be blogging here this month about HTML5 and providing a peek at the upcoming conference.

We’ll try to avoid the ever-popular HTML5 vs. Flash debate and really stick with the current state of HTML5 and some tools for its development, a conversation she already started in a T+D article this past October.

To catch up with Judy, you can check in on her regular blog at www.onehundredfortywords.com or connect with her on Twitter @jkunrein. She also co-hosts “The ToolBar” a podcast about learning, technology, and beer (!).

Getting Started Creating the Mobile Learning Strategy

2011-12-02T13:08:00.000-08:00

Well, alright. We have the rationale behind creating a strategy, we know what to avoid, and we understand what can happen when you fall of the tracks. What’s next you ask? It seems that it’s time to get started on the creation of the strategy!

Creating the team

As with any project, you’re going to need to assemble a team of experts that can assist you in the creation of the end product. In this case, the team needs to be dedicated, focused, and ready truly contribute. You don’t need experts in mobile, but you will need people with domain expertise in a wide variety of disciplines. Depending on your organization size and overall goals a typical team like this will be headed up by people from the following areas of your company:

you (project management)
senior management representative (aka project sponsor)
learning and development (this may be you, but I recommend getting a backup)
branding/marketing (ideally someone with a bit of UI/UX experience)
legal/compliance (find someone looking to make a name for themselves)
technology (pick a progressive, solution-oriented person with buying authority)

Each one of these individuals may have a number of people working under them to assist with surveying, research, and resource or information gathering. That said, I would recommend not having any more than this core group of individuals at any single group status meeting. Plan for a recurring status meeting during the course of this project, with you leading the meeting and providing the agenda to the core team.

If follow-up or “off-line” discussion needs to be done with sub groups later in the week, that’s great, but always keep those meetings focused and make sure that the agendas are always hashed out in advance. You don’t want drive-by meetings or sightseers popping in to these meetings. Everyone there needs to have a purpose.

If there are “to-dos” from any of these meetings, you will also be ultimately responsible for sending the recap of the meeting along with the results or findings from any previously resolved content.

Setting goals

With your team in place, the first conversations should be centered around framing what a successful effort looks like when completed. How will you, your team, and their managers know when you have hit the target? Each group is going to have distinct priorities and your major responsibility will be weighing these and prioritizing them in overall big picture. Make sure these goals are largely quantifiable and can be distilled into talking points when you are called on to report on your progress.

Research

You can’t create a strategy in a vacuum. You and your team will likely need to survey and *gasp* talk to people in order to learn more about where you need to go to achieve your goals. When framing up these discussions keep a few things in mind:

1. People are usually terrible at articulating the best solution, but are great at identifying their problems. Get people to talk about how certain aspects of their job are painful and you’re destined to find some great nuggets you can build on.

2. Keep implementation details off the table. People will inevitably start to say things like “We need an app for this,” or “How will IT get that information to us?”, but your job must be one of constant redirection.

3. Keep things positive. If you can’t keep people from referencing a botched attempt that everyone remembers the last time your company tried something like this, you may need to preface the conversation or survey with a bit of a change management effort first. Remember, here, you are the dreamer of dreams and the makers of music… Not the harbingers of doom and gloom.

4. Always use your bigger picture goals as a foundation for the survey. People’s time is valuable, don’t waste their time or your time on a lot of “What-ifs” that are never going to happen. Remember from our prevous post that this strategy MUST BE IMPLEMENTABLE. If it’s not realistic that your IT department procure 1,500 iPhones for your entire company, don’t hinge your strategy on that. If you have no competency internally in Android development and have no intentions to train or hire your developers to build apps, then don’t propose that.

Off to the races

Here we are! Ready to get started? You have a solid team, have outlined your goals, and created a lot of great research, now it’s time to distill that information and make your pitch. You’ll need to find a way to weigh the pros and cons of what you’ve found and then turn it into something you can use. Don’t get hung up analyzing which “measuring stick” is the best, just line up some options, talk it over with your team, and then choose one and stick with it as you firm up for your results. Approach this step with confidence in knowing you’ve done your best work and always keep an eye towards establishing ROI and you’re bound to make a mark for yourself.

It’s a big step, but you can do it! If you are looking for more information on how to build a mobile learning strategy, continue to read our posts at Floatlearning.com. We’re posting regularly on topics like this.

In closing, a note of thanks to the fine folks at Learning Circuits. It’s been great working with you over last few weeks.

What Happens When You Neglect to Create a Mobile Strategy?

2011-11-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

So now that you have the building blocks of your strategy in your sights, it important to maintain focus. Now is not the time to get caught up in discussions about building your first app or what type of devices the IT department is going to be buying. You need to stay in the driver’s seat and craft the strategy to match the technology landscape of the community at large and also find a healthy mix of progress and protection to meet your business goals.

What The Strategy Provides
More than anything else, the mobile learning strategy gives you a compass on which to guide your team’s efforts (maybe more appropriately, a GPS). This aerial view of the mobile learning plan you have in mind prevents distractions. Think of wasted time in meetings, hours writing RFPs, designs and wireframes destined for failure. This strategy helps you continue making progress, not wasting efforts. It allows you to see the proverbial forest for the trees.

The Trees
Oh the trees! They’re beautiful! With mobile there are just many of them. Every time a new tablet comes out, a tree! With every OS or SDK update and beta distribution, another tree! A press release from a company regarding their plug-ins status on mobile, there’s yet another. You see where I am going with this, right? Reading mobile industry news sites is a great idea of course; it keeps you informed as to where the leaders are headed. Attending conferences and webinars is also a great thing to help you see where technology is going. However, to take a single news story or a single bullet point in a keynote speech and seize on it as the cornerstone as your entire strategy will surely lead you to ruin. Each of these aforementioned ‘for instances’ is insignificant in the bigger picture and should be weighed and considered in light of all the other news items, customer or user inputs, and so on in order to help create your larger strategy.

When the trees keep popping up quicker than you can cut them down, you know you are in trouble. You’ll constantly be issuing statements to your management about what the latest development means to them and your work. You’ll start to lose credibility with your stakeholders and designers as well. You must elevate and think big!

The Forest
Step back for a moment and take a look at the trees from a distance. What direction is the wind blowing through them in your line of work? I’m talking about big ideas, concepts, and trends. Are tablets growing in popularity? Is a particular platform taking over or dwindling rapidly? Are users demanding notifications and content just-in-time? Are advanced hardware features like cameras, geolocation, 3D graphics, etc., a now expected featureset? Are regulations hampering progress in your business? Are the stakeholders ready to make decisions and contribute? Is the mobile web winning over hearts and minds in your IT department due to scalability and ease of deployment and support? These are the telling signs that let you understand where you need to spend your efforts. These signs show you the true shape of your forest.

Until Next Time
Now that we’ve gone over why a good Mobile Learning Strategy is important, what one looks like and you also have a good idea of what happens when you neglect to use one, we’ll talk implementation next week!

What Does a Good Mobile Learning Strategy Look Like?

2011-11-17T05:30:00.001-08:00

Last week we established a few baseline expectations of the benefits of a mobile learning strategy. We talked about how it affects your immediate team, your external stakeholders and how it improves the long-term success of your mobile learning efforts. With those points in mind, you’re probably ready to get your efforts underway in creating a strategy. Hold on there, partner. Before venturing in this direction it’s vital to get a good understanding of what components comprise a great mobile learning strategy, what you need to avoid, the basics on what it takes to get started and what resources are out there to help you on all of this.

What’s in a Strategy?

In essence, a strategy is a comprehensive high-level view of your mobile learning roadmap and technology landscape.

The roadmap for a successful mobile learning should take in account your learners, their goals, the organization’s pedagogy and value on training/learning, the focus placed on just-in-time learning and performance support, and the companies views on augmentation. These topics should be considered in terms of where they are now, but also with an eye to the future, possibly thinking out 6 months, 1 year, or maybe 2 years. Planning much further out than that would be very difficult due to the constantly quickening pace of the mobile landscape. The practicality of estimating where technology will be that far out, when you yourself are not one of the technologists inventing it is a fruitless exercise.

The technology landscape can be comprised of the Six P’s of a Mobile Technology Strategy, published by Float, here. These six P’s are: Platform, Procurement, Policies, Provisioning, Publishing, and Procedures. By carefully weighing your options in these areas, completing the necessary analysis, and then choosing a recommended path or paths in each of them, you will know you are making the correct steps to achieve success.

A strategy is useless unless it can be implemented, so in that light, be sure to ground your planning in the practical and don’t get too theoretical. You’ll need to make sure that scope, schedule, and budget are always aligned with your business strategy, resources, and funding you have available to you.

What’s Not In A Strategy?

It should be clear that a strategy should be full of big ideas tempered with implementation practicality as a backdrop. A strategy is not an app, or really for that matter a series of apps (though it could potentially be, depending on your analysis outcome, natch). A strategy is not an edict of platform nor policy, though these are likely to be components of your larger effort.

A strategy should not be a dead tree. This mobile world moves quickly. What was once unthinkable becomes reality with the next major keynote by a hardware or software vendor. What was once only the territory of an app becomes possible on the next OS revision’s improved webbrowser. Mergers happen, OSes evolve, consumers’ buying habits change.

Speaking of consumers, your strategy needs to take into account the likelihood that your learners will be bringing their own devices into the workplace, and that this pattern is likely to increase as IT deals with pressure to support more and more smartphones, tablets, and other form factors. A strategy missing this point will be seen as having a gaping hole in understanding the learners’ profiles.

Basics

Make no mistakes, an effort of this scale takes time and hard work. You’re going to need to dig in. Research the market place. Investigate where your competitors are going. Talk to other like-minded departments in your organization. Survey your learners. You’ll likely find common threads in your discovery process. It’s important to be expansive in your thoughts at this point.

Then once you’re ready, start the analysis. We’ll go deeper into detail on this topic in a subsequent post in this series.

Finally, you’re going to have to consider how to present your findings, curating, and then collating the important content. Keeping the deeper findings in order to back up your analysis and provide a sold foundation for the team that will implement your strategy is crucial. Business cases, estimations of the work to be done, and considerations on the skills and whether or not you will need to enlist outside vendors to produce the work should also be included in this body of findings.

Until Next Time

Well, we’ve covered a lot of great ideas here. Be sure to come back next week, when we’ll discuss the effects you’ll start to see after you’ve created and begun the implementation of your strategy.

Why is a Mobile Learning Strategy Important?

2011-11-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

With mobile learning getting a lot of interest recently (roughly 50% of businesses surveyed say they have plans to implement some form of mobile learning in the foreseeable future), it’s becoming clear that many companies don’t have a plan to successfully create a sustainable, robust mobile learning strategy. This is evidenced by the quick jump from talking about goals and roadmaps to the proverbial “We need an app for that!” conclusion that is being reached in meetings and boardrooms across all industries and company sizes.

This rush to deploy without proper planning is a big oversight and will ultimately make it difficult to understand if your mobile efforts are successful. A mobile learning strategy can help give your work grounding and a solid base on which you can build. This approach helps you bring mobile in where it will provide the biggest impact. A metered, reusable framework is far more useful than a scattershot approach. When apps are pumped out and then discarded it’s often because they didn’t perform as expected. These apps likely don’t fix the problems that were considered but not dealt with fully during the design phase. Perhaps the app shouldn’t have been built at all. Maybe its focus should have been narrower, or altogether different than what it turned out to be.

A mobile learning strategy's importance is not only limited to savings during the design and development of the applications that may be created. Real, actionable metrics can only be established for individual efforts when the bigger picture is considered. What will you measure? How will you know when you are successful? What sorts of changes are you able to and prepared to make when you start to get data back from your learners?

The creation of a strategy will allow outside stakeholders to help weigh in on your anticipated mobile learning efforts to come, giving your work a much needed validation. The strategy’s strengths will help build support throughout your organization, creating trust between your partnering departments and content creators allowing them to create great work. The concerns that could arise about the focus of the efforts or how it fits in with or aligns with other work will already have been addressed. This proactive approach works with other facets of business planning, why would mobile learning be any different?

Over the next few weeks, we’ll investigate topics related to this, covering the building blocks for a mobile learning strategy, the effects of creating one, what happens when you neglect to create one, and then finally how to get started on implementing your completed strategy. Come back and check out our next installment.

November Guest Blogger: Chad Udell

2011-11-08T08:53:00.000-08:00

Chad Udell is the managing director at Float Learning, a consultingfirm that combines strategy, mobile app development, and eLearning to guideorganizations by harnessing the power of mobile learning.

Chad has a B.S. in Graphic Design from Bradley University(where he is also an adjunct faculty member for the Interactive MediaDepartment), with deep experience in large-scale web design and development.Chad and his team have done some impressive educational interactive design workas well (see what they built for the AlderPlanetarium to get an idea of some of that work), and released some greatapps on the iTunesstore and AndroidMarketplace.

Chad is currently running ASTD's Essentials of Mobile Learningcourse along with Jeff Tillett.Chad will be blogging here this month, focusing on mobile learning. You cancatch up with Chad and the Float team over on their blog at floatlearning.com/blog, and if you’reinterested in web design and development, check in with his personal blog at visualrinse.com. Chad will be leading a fullday workshop on prototyping at the upcoming ASTD TechKnowledge Conferencein January.

Oh, and if you think Chad is only a tech guy, he also brewshis own beer (he prefers nice citrusy IPAs) and is pretty good behind a grillor smoker.

Join Chad as he explores topics this month on mobilelearning strategy and how to get started on the road to mobile learning.

MT2 Announces 2011 Top Simulations & Training Companies

2011-10-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

With Ben’s expertise in simulations and games, I thought it might be worth mentioning that Military Training Technology (MT2) magazine recently announced its listing of the 2011 Top Simulation & Training Companies. Although companies making the 2011 list come from around the world and have made a significant impact on the military training industry across the spectrum of technologies and services, many produce non-military-based offerings as well.

An impartial panel selected the winners from MT2’s most competitive group yet. The companies’ products and services enable U.S. airmen, Marines, sailors, soldiers and Coast Guardsmen to train and rehearse for missions in theater, or to prepare for deployment at home station. Companies were selected based on various criteria, which included innovation and program effectiveness. Each listing includes the name and description of the company as well as core competencies. Those that made the most significant contributions to the training community are recognized with one of the following awards:

Best Program - a company that had been involved with or led a program of the year—programs that are revolutionizing military training

Innovation - a company that leads the industry in advancement

Up and Coming - a company that is quickly rising in the industry.

Where Social Learning got its start: An interview with Dave Tosh

2011-10-13T03:36:00.001-07:00

I'm sure many of you will have come across Elgg before. For those that haven't, Elgg is an open-source engine that allows you to create your own Social Network. Founded in 2004 by Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller, Elgg was often pitched as a Social Network for education - perhaps the first foray into the world of 'online' Social Learning, some time before the phrase entered popular parlance.
Dave Tosh has since moved to pastures new (as has Werdmuller) but I thought it would be interesting to touch base with Dave to talk about those early days before Social Learning became the phrase du jour...

Ben Betts: When you were in the process of creating Elgg, did the phrase 'social learning' crop up or was it yet to emerge as a theme in education?
Dave Tosh: I can't remember anyone talking about social learning back in 2004 when Elgg started. Blogging was just beginning to come on the radar, which did introduce some 'social' aspects but it was not referred to as social learning.
BB: Which segments of the marketplace were quickest to adopt Elgg when you launched?
DT: Education was the first group to experiment with Elgg, however, it was when things moved out of the Edu arena that groups became willing to pay for customisation which was the business model and ultimately dictated the future path.
BB: In persuading your early adopters was there much focus on the command and control mechanisms within Elgg? Were people scared of how users might abuse a social system?
DT: This was one of the major stumbling blocks when people tried Elgg. It was very deliberate that there were no roles and permissions. A student was on the same level as an educator as we tried to create a space where the individual (regardless of position) could control who to collaborate with and who got access to their content. This caused confusion and it was a constant battle to get people to try and forget (for the purpose of a trial) about the top-down, course centric, constraints imposed by the LMS platforms of the time in order to experiment with a platform that was bottom up, user controlled, and experience centric.
There were other concerns raised when we visited the US around kids using the privacy options to plan attacks on the school and the school then being accountable due to provided them with the online platform for this.
BB: In your opinion, is Social Learning a fad, a passing trend, or a sea change in the way we learn online?
DT: I don't know enough about 'social learning' to comment. For me personally, learning is not a solitary pursuit. I feel the informal aspect of the learning process plays a crucial role in moving from the retention of fact to a real/deep understanding. This is something Elgg tried to address: it was not about access to course notes or course work submission but instead capturing and fostering the reflection that many students and researchers do in the cafe or pub after lectures as this was often, at least for me, when the grounding of understanding happened; in those informal discussions.
BB: If you could have kept just one feature in Elgg for social networking, what would it have been?
DT: This is a tough question as different components were important to different people. Some liked the group blogging component, others the fine-grain access controls - it was dependant on context. I guess if I had to choose, I would have kept, and focused more on, the aggregation side of things to make it easier for people to use their own tools but still participate in the community.
BB: You open-sourced Elgg; was this a commercial or idealistic decision?
DT: Elgg started out as a simple proof-of-concept - there was no business/commercial thinking involved at that time - so the decision to go open source was based on encouraging others to help build out the concept.
BB: Finally, do you have any tips for how to engage and grow an online social learning community?
DT: I am not sure about a social learning community. Regarding online communities in general, I would never underestimate the importance of having an engaged community; the community is everything. This is one of the biggest lessons I learnt during my Elgg days.

About Dave:
Dave Tosh is passionate about technology, in particular the web, and its potential for creating new learning opportunities for us all.
Dave co-founded Elgg and is now to be found experimenting
on a couple of ideas around information accuracy. You can read his blog at http://davetosh.com/

In a cash, time, and people strapped work environment, how can we develop our own games?

2011-10-07T04:41:00.002-07:00

A great question from Kevin Shadix is the topic of my first proper blog post here on Learning Circuits. For me, the answer to this question lies in the perception of what a ‘game’ is. Personally, I’ve adopted Jesse Schell’s definition of a game which suggests that a game is “a problem solving activity, approached with an attitude of fun”.

It’s a pretty simplistic definition but it helps me to frame my thinking when it comes to designing a new game. The definition says nothing of time or expense, or even particular skills and resources to be deployed; it is purely about solving a problem with a fun approach.

Of course, Schell isn’t the only person to have an opinion on the definition of games and for many this would be too simplistic. So I’ll throw another at you here; this time from Chris Crawford, which doesn’t so much define Games as it defines the taxonomy of creative expressions…

Things get really interesting with Crawford’s taxonomy when you get to the lower reaches. Crawford suggests that without a competitor whose outcome you can directly influence, you don’t have a game. I’m not so sure direct “attacks” are actually required in order to influence the outcome of an event – think about the mind games that occur in a running race where you can’t actually touch your opponent, but you can psych them out. But his definition really boils down to this element of conflict, an element which makes it into other definitions of games, such as that of Learning Games expert Simon Egenfeldt-Nelson, who suggests the definition of computer games to be ‘virtual worlds with a conflict’.

For me, ‘virtual worlds’ is a contentious term because it conjures the image of 3D graphics engines, Second Life and the rest of it. I don’t believe that this level of virtual world is necessary to create a computer game, but I do believe it is necessary to create a reality which is different to our own – be that through a webpage, an app or a world.

Constructing the ‘world’ is a key part of the games design, as are a number of other elements. I’ll throw back to Jesse Schell who neatly outlined 4 pillars of game design for us to work from:

Schell suggested that all games have a basis within these 4 pillars.

They have Aesthetics – a look, feel and touch which appeals to players and is appropriate to the context. This might mean a 3D virtual world, or it might mean a few scribbles on a piece of paper. If you are short on resources, it probably doesn’t mean a 3D world, but that’s no big issue. Many fine computer games are played out through a text interface within a browser window.

Schell also talks about the Story behind the game. This, for me, is one of the most important features in any game. Does it have a narrative that I am compelled to see through to the end? Am I genuinely interested in the outcome? To often ‘serious games’ overlook this aspect as they seek to rip the ‘fun’ elements out as an unnecessary and childish addition. It couldn’t be more core. If ‘fun’ isn’t a part of your vocab, leave games-based learning well alone.

Mechanics are the pillar which the architects of many a ‘gamification’ have come to rest upon. Mechanics are the methods by which we compete within a game, the way in which we do better and win. Most people come to rest on the ideas of points, levels and badges as being the sum-total of mechanics, but again, this is selling the concept short. Mechanics can be woven into complex design patterns which promote engagement within the game if they are done right. Think about ideas like Quests, Treasure Hunts, Reputation, Scarcity of Resources and Roles as just a handful of mechanics which you can use to promote engagement and signal competence within the game.

Finally, technology is the pillar which allows your participants to play your game. Simplistically, the technology you choose needs to facilitate the other pillars to the best of its ability. If you choose an aesthetic which happens to be a webpage, then you better have a web server which can serve it up reliably and your students better be able to access it. But it doesn’t need to be an X-Box to do this.

I guess what I’m getting at with this background information is that you shouldn’t feel constrained by the ‘normal’ view of what a triple-A rated game on the store shelf looks like. You don’t need to invest in the next Call of Duty to make a great game. By considering the core components of a game and aligning the games objectives with your learning outcomes, you can create a neat solution which doesn’t cost the earth. Games come in all shapes and sizes and, if you structure your expectations accordingly, can be brought in at low or even no cost if you are willing to do the work yourself.

Plagiarism is rife in the game development world and I wouldn’t be adverse from taking a leaf or two from existing games as your inspiration. For example, in a recent project we created a very simple game that replicated “Guitar Hero” to teach students the rhythms behind a horses hoof falls. Really simple, less than a day to make and it works really well.

In reality, unless you happen to be a kick-ass coder, most games that are within the reach of your ‘average joe’ probably play out most of their story without the use of a computer game engine. But that’s fine too; the approach transcends computer games technology once you know the core components of creating a decent game. Nowhere in those definitions will you find an insistence to make it a 3D photo-realistic shoot ‘em up.

Let me close on a favourite story of mine for the development of a simple game.

Imagine you are running a new employee orientation course. On the first morning, you arrive 10 minutes late, looking a real mess. You announce to the class that you’ve lost everything for the onboarding programme – every scrap of information, save for the contents page at the front of the binder. Your job is on the line unless you can pull this information back together before the end of the day. You need their help. They need to get online, get around the office, and get talking to people to find you the information you need. They’ll compete against each other to get the info back to you first as you only need one copy. But you need it all by the end of the day.

Well, what are you waiting for? Get going!

Howdy and October's Big Question

2011-10-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

Hi all and welcome to my one month tenure at the editing console for the Learning Circuits Blog. Thanks to Justin and the team for the opportunity and the nice introduction!

I've been working in and around E-Learning for the last 10 years or so - enough time to know a lot about nothing and a little about everything. Drawn in by the possibilities of blending technology with education, I'm a bit sad to say that the results haven't always been everything I might have hoped for...

There's a very early episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa imagines herself in the school of the future. She puts on her VR headset and is transported alongside Genghis Khan to explore the battlefields with him on horseback. Somewhere along the way, we seemed to miss out on this vision.

Driven as I was by this view of the future, it perhaps should come as no great surprise that my area of interest resides firmly in Social Learning Games - a whole buzzphrase, let alone buzzword.

We've been researching, experimenting and implementing solutions that embrace both social and game-like behaviour for the last couple of years and we've seen some stunning results. But more of that later... it's time for the Big Question!

Does Gamification have a role in Workplace Learning?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 - Tweet your thoughts using the hashtag: #LCBQ. We will do our best to collect together tweets around the topic.

Option 3 - Post in your blog (please link to this post). We recommend including #LCBQ in your title to help us. Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and post, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link (or you could also include your blog name). So, it should look like: Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology.

Feel free to interpret "Gamification" in the way you see fit - we'll discuss the outcome later in the month.

Cheers for now!

Ben

October's Guest Blogger: Ben Betts

2011-10-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

I met Ben Betts at last year's Learning 2010 Conference. He was there as part of their great 30 Under 30 group. Ben spoke as part of a panel session on the Sales and Marketing Cycle for E-Learning. I was immediately impressed with him and his ideas.

Ben is the Managing Director at HT2, an innovative learning technologies group focused on gaming, social, and mobile learning. Ben was the lead designer and creator of HT2’s Curatr platform, which adds social and gaming elements to e-learning. As if that’s not enough, Ben is also getting his Engineering Doctorate at the University of Warwick. Make sure to ask him how his thesis is going.

Ben will be blogging here during the month of October, after that, you can catch up with him over at his blog.

A Brief Introduction – Communities of Practice Manager

2011-09-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

As Ryann mentioned in a previous post, I’m the Community of Practice Manager for Learning Technologies at ASTD. In this role, I engage with the community and help build ASTD’s portfolio of content—from T+D articles to books to educational programs to conferences and beyond. I also help foster discussion and debate within the community.

I’ve been with ASTD for nearly five years, working primarily on books and Infoline with ASTD Press. While I’m already familiar with many of the concerns and needs of our members and audience focused on learning technologies, I look forward to connecting with many of you, virtually or in person, to discuss this evolving field. My goal is to provide content and support that helps you get your job done, better and faster.

Indeed, no area in world of learning is more exciting than Learning Technologies. My current areas of focus are Social Learning, Mobile Learning, and Simulations and Serious Games. These topics should come as no surprise as they’ve been the buzz for some time. But Mobile and Social Learning are both ready to take that next step in maturity; we’re ready to move beyond the surface of such tools and benefits to explore how these elements take a strategic place in your learning strategy—and we’re ready to take a hard look at results and calculate value. If you’re skeptical about the power of games, consider the recent breakthrough with Fold.it and its role in deciphering an AIDS causing protein. It’s definitely an exciting time to be in the learning field.

With your help, we can advance the learning profession and create a world that works better. Feel free to contact me directly at Justin (at) ASTD (dot) org.

New LC Blog – What Issues/Trends Do You Want Us to Cover?

2011-09-13T08:22:00.000-07:00

Change is afoot for the LC Blog. After many years of managing the LC Blog for us, we’re giving Tony Karrer a much needed break. (We’re actually hoping that will give him time to work on other projects for ASTD. Shhh. He doesn’t know about that part...yet.) Please join ASTD in thanking Tony for his many years of managing the LC Blog. We couldn’t have carried on these last years without him—or the Big Question Thought Leaders who helped keep us up and running.

So, what do we have planned? For several years the LC Blog has focused on having industry leaders respond to a Big Question of the Month (the LCBQ). We’re planning on expanding the blog by inviting those experts and other “blogger extraordinaires” to take over the blog. Starting in October, each month a different thought leader will post to the blog weekly. They will pose their own LCBQ, remark on new technology and tools, and report on issues and trends affecting workplace learning and performance professionals directly working with technology.

In the meantime, Justin Brusino, ASTD Community of Practice Manager for Learning Technologies (more about him next week), and I will make a few posts introducing you to the coming blog leaders and asking readers what experts we should tap for this new venture and issues they should address. To that end, the September #LCBQ is:

What issues and trends do you think are having a major impact on the industry—and should be on the hot list for the LC Blog to tackle?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 - Tweet your thoughts using the hastag: #LCBQ. We will do our best to collect together tweets around the topic.

Option 3 - Post in your blog (please link to this post). We recommend including #LCBQ in your title to help us. Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and post, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link (or you could also include your blog name). So, it should look like: Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology.

Stay tuned!

Ryann Ellis, Learning Circuits Editor

Vacation in August for the LCBQ

2011-08-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say that the Big Question Thought Leaders and I will be taking a vacation in August from the LCBQ. Enjoy the time off. Look forward to next month's big question.

Fun e-learning? #LCBQ

2011-07-01T04:48:00.000-07:00

This month's big question comes from Jeff Goldman and the rest of the Big Question Thought Leaders.

Summer has begun (in the northern hemisphere) and summer means fun. And if you are from the southern hemisphere, my perception is that you have fun all the time - except maybe taking eLearning. So, the #LCBQ for July is:

How do you make e-learning fun?

We also would like to hear when e-learning should or should not be fun. Or is engaging really what you go after? And how does that differ from fun?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 - Tweet your thoughts using the hastag: #LCBQ

We will do our best to collect together tweets around the topic.

Option 3 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post). We recommend including #LCBQ in your title to help us.

Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Clive Shepherd's contribution - see also Enjoyable e-learning–is it an oxymoron?
Jeff - How I make e-learning fun!
Eloise - Making e-learning fun
Andrea May - eLearning and Fun: Two Words Not Normally Seen Together
Taurna Goel -Making Learning Fun!
Kasper Spiro - I don't want e-Learning to be funny at all: see my blog
Holly MacDonald - Loosen Up and Have a Little Fun

Break Down Organizational Walls When It Comes to Learning #LCBQ

2011-06-01T11:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Holly and the rest of the Big Question Thought Leaders for helping me to craft this month's question.

In many organizations, our learners are reaching outside of the organization to enhance their learning experience, through social networking/media and many other methods. In other organizations, the learning audience includes partners and customers, and the learning ecosystem expands beyond employees.

The #LCBQ for June is:

How do we break down organizational walls when it comes to learning?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 - Tweet your thoughts using the hastag: #LCBQ

We will do our best to collect together tweets around the topic.

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Harold Jarche - Connecting with Communities of Practice
Paul Angileri - What's the "High Concept, High Touch" Solution for Organizational Learning Today?
Andrea May Collaborative Learning in Spite of Organizational Walls
Dennis Callahan - 9 Ways to Break Down Organizational Walls
Kasper Spiro: How do we break down organizational walls when it comes to learning
Jeff Goldman - Making It Over the Wall #LCBQ
Taruna Goel - Break Free From Organizational Walls
Glenn Hansen - Breaking Down Organisational Walls

On-Demand Learning and Performance #LCBQ

2011-05-02T06:37:00.000-07:00

Last month we asked how you can address the "I want it now!" demand from stakeholders. Jeff Goldman talked about the other stakeholder - the learner - who want their learning on-demand.

The #LCBQ for May is:

How do we need to change in what we do in order to address learning/performance needs that are on-demand?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 - Tweet your thoughts using the hastag: #LCBQ

We will do our best to collect together tweets around the topic.

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Jack Pierce and the e-learning NOT as usual blog
Eloise - What changes do we need to make for on-demand learning
Addressing On Demand Learning Needs
Andrea May Addressing On-Demand Learning and Performance Needs #LCBQ
Kasper Spiro - Context, Context, Context will make e-Learning work #LCBQ"
Doctoring the Informal Learning Environment
Jeff's response - On-Demand Scenario #LCBQ
Glenn's response: Glenn Hansen- On demand learning
Holly - May’s #LCBQ – We all want it now
Mike - 3 New Roles for Learning Professionals Driven by Web 2.0 #LCBQ

Addressing I Want it Now #LCBQ

2011-04-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy to be working with the Big Question Thought Leaders on the questions each month.

For April the LCBQ is:

How do you address the "I want it now!" demand from stakeholders?

As one of the LCBQ thought leaders put it:

The other day I walked into an executives office and they had a site up about "Rapid Instructional Design." I spent quite a bit of time in discussion with this executive. It is a real tough balance of providing instructionally sound courses/events and providing it is an time frame acceptable by stakeholders.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 - Tweet your thoughts using the hastag: #LCBQ

We will do our best to collect together tweets around the topic.

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Glenn Hansen - Addressing "I want it now!"
Kasper Spiro - On Demand Agile eLearning Development
Clive on Learning - The Big Question: How do you respond to the ‘I want it now’ demand?
Jeff Goldman / MinuteBio - A Priest, A Rabbi and an Instructional Designer Are in a Bar and Identify a Training Need: A response to the #LCBQ"
Tony Karrer - Agile eLearning - 27 Great Articles
Holly McDonald -I want it now – who doesn’t? #LCBQ
Open Sesame - We Need Learning and We Need It Now!
Tom Gram, Performance X Design: I Want it Now!
Jeff's additional response - The Other Stakeholder Wants It Now Too #LCBQ

Assessing Learning Initiatives

2011-03-01T05:58:00.000-08:00

I'm very happy to be working with the Big Question Thought Leaders. We've added some European perspective to the group with the addition of Kasper Spiro.

For March the LCBQ is:

How do you assess whether your informal learning, social learning, continuous learning, performance support initiatives have the desired impact or achieve the desired results?

As training organizations increasingly focus on improving performance with new kinds of learning/performance initiatives, how do we go about making sure they have impact/results? The focus here is what people are doing today and what makes sense to do. We'd love to hear examples.

By the way, if you have an idea for what all of this should be called, we would be curious to hear about that as well.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below. This may be hard given the complexity of the topic.

Option 2 - Tweet your thoughts using the hastag: #LCBQ

We will do our best to collect together tweets around the topic.

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Clark Quinn - Learnlets - Social Media Metrics
Jay Cross - The Big Question: How to assess learning initiatives…
Eloise Pasteur Assessing Informal Learning
Kasper Spiro -Impact of informal learning: output learning #LCBQ
Tom Gram, Performance X Design: Evaluating Training and Learning Circa 2011
Tom Gram, Performance X Design: Evaluating with the Success Case Method
Jeff Goldman - Informal Learning... Maybe I can Informally Assess Its Impact
Guy Wallace -My Answer to the Big Question for March 2011 at Learning Circuits Blog
Thomas Edgerton - How do you measure informal learning?
Taruna Goel - Assessing Informal Learning

eLearning Predictions and Plans 2011 #LCBQ

2011-02-08T06:00:00.000-08:00

This is a month late this year, but I'm excited because the Big Question Thought Leaders are working with me around this question.

For February the question is:

What are your
Predictions and Plans for 2011?

The goal here is to here what people see happening for them this year.

What are your biggest challenges for this upcoming year?
What are your major plans for the year?
What predictions do you have for the year?

In your predictions and plans, don't try to look too broadly. Instead, what's always valuable is to hear from people about their specific area, or what's happening in their job.

You might want to look back at previous years:

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below. This may be hard given the complexity of the topic.

Option 2 - Tweet your thoughts using the hastag: #LCBQ

We will do our best to collect together tweets around the topic.

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Glenn Hansen's 2011 predictions -2011 - the year of collaboration
Holly - What does 2011 look like for Consultants?
Jeff Goldman's - 2011 predictions
Manish Gupta - e-Learning Predictions for 2011
Thomas Edgerton - 2011 Predictions
Clark Quinn - Learnlets - Predictions
Kasper Spiro - My e-Learning Predictions LCBQ
Tony Karrer - Top 10 eLearning Predictions 2011 #LCBQ

Big Question Thought Leaders

2011-02-07T06:31:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to announce that several thought leaders have joined together with me to revitalize the Big Question. We will likely be trying some different things over the next few months. What exactly, we aren't sure. We'll figure it out as we go.

The goals of the Big Question will remain the same:

A way to highlight thought leaders around topics of interest to eLearning Professionals
A way to stimulate different perspectives on questions that are of interest to eLearning Professionals.

We are definitely interested in having contributions from other Thought Leaders, so feel free to contact me: akarrer@techempower.com if you are interested in participating.

Glenn Hansen

Glenn has over 10 year's experience in the field of workplace learning and performance, and is currently the Learning and Development Manager at The Salvation Army Employment Plus in Australia. He has a particular interest in how communications technology can enhance and facilitate corporate learning and performance, and the creation of new opportunities for learning in and outside the workforce. Glenn holds a Master of Psychology degree, and enjoys Australian Rules Football, NFL and most other sports that involve a ball and action.

Blog: http://www.glennhansen.tumblr.com

Twitter: @glennhansen_

Thomas Edgerton

Thomas Edgerton is a performance consultant, professional coach, instructional technologist, master swimmer, and perpetual optimist. Over the years, his award winning work traverses sneaker net to the present crossing diverse industries, platforms, pedagogy, and people. Let me warn you beforehand, I am more hopeful today than at any previous point in my life.

twitter: 4EFRSWM

linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasedgerton

website: www.skilledge.,net

Jeffrey Goldman

Jeff Goldman has 13+ years experience in the training and development field, including nine years designing and developing e-learning. He has a dual focus in both online learning and classroom training and has experience designing learning solutions in banking, healthcare, and for nonprofit organizations. Jeff holds a Master of Arts degree in Instructional Systems Design from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Blog: www.minutebio.com/blog

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/minutebio

Twitter: www.twitter.com/minutebio

Holly MacDonald

Holly lives on a small semi-rural island off the coast of British Columbia, Canada where she works as an independent learning strategist, advising clients thoughout their journey to e-learning. She's particularly interested in performance support and the rise of user generated content as growth areas for traditional workplace learning. Holly's been tinkering in the learning field for over 15 years in a variety of roles. After 12+ years in the corporate world, she decided that climbing the career ladder was not the only option and freedom 55 was someone else's dream. She's enjoying the diversity that consulting offers, even if the workload is daunting at times. She's a voracious reader (mostly snobby fiction), a fair-weather sea kayaker, enthusiastic (but not particularly skilful) downhill skier and a busy mom who seeks to find time to do it all.

Web: http://www.sparkandco.ca

Twitter: http://twitter.com/sparkandco

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/hollymacdonald

Blog: http://sparkyourinterest.wordpress.com/

Kasper Spiro

Kasper has over 25 years of experience in the field of learning and user performance support. His learning experience goes from teaching, authoring textbooks, designing and creating e-Learning, knowledge management and user performance support. As a manager his experience ranges from being CEO of an early internet startup in the nineties to his current position as CEO of easygenerator.

He has a passion for learning, learning technology and innovation. With easygenerator he is on a mission to make it the best e-learning authoring system in the world and innovate e-Learning along the way. He believes that we should bring (e)-Learning to the workplace and that learning content is key in reaching that goal.

Blog: www.KasperSpiro.com

LinkedIn, Skype, Twitter: KasperSpiro

Web: www.easygenerator.com

Big Question - Should It Continue?

2011-01-03T07:07:00.001-08:00

I've been moderating the Big Question for more than four years at this point. For me, it's been a great way to foster conversation in the blogosphere.

In the past few months, activity (posts, comments, comments on posts) on the big questions has seen a big drop.

So - here's the big question for January 2011:

Should the Big Question continue?

And if you think it should but with changes, then what are those changes?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Learning 2010

2010-12-01T05:41:00.000-08:00

We are going to continue a tradition in the Big Question ...

The Big Question for December is:

What did you learn about learning in 2010?

If you are a blogger, I would highly recommend taking this as an opportunity to go back through your blog posts over the year and looking for any "aha moments" or highlight the posts that you think were the best/most interesting.

If you are not a blogger, please go read Should All Learning Professionals Blog? and
Top Ten Reasons To Blog and Top Ten Not to Blog and consider if this might not be the perfect moment to start.

If I still (after 3 years) can't convince you, then you should still take this as an opportunity to reflect on the year and come up with what you've learned. I can promise it's well worth the time.

You might want to look back at some discussions going on during the last few yearly recaps:

2009 - Learning 2009
2008 - Learn about Learning?
2007 - What Did You Learn about Learning?
2006 - Past experiences. Present Challenge. Future Predictions.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Jason McDonald - Maybe You Should Read the Manual
Ryan Tracey - Online courses must die!
Tony Karrer - Seven Things I Learned This Year
Kelly Meeker/OpenSesame - 10 Useful Things I Learned This Year
Paul Angileri - The Fluidity of Learning in Today's Organizations
Jeff Goldman - Reflecting on My 2010 Blog Posts and Happy New Year

Questions No Longer and New Questions

2010-11-03T06:34:00.000-07:00

I just saw a great post by George Siemens - Questions I’m no Longer Asking where he lays out the questions that he no longer finds interesting or relevant. This is incredible stuff because it really points to what's changed over the past few years.

George is asking this more for educators, but I'd like to piggy back and ask about this for learning professionals (educators, trainers, eLearning designers/creators, etc.).

The November Big Question is:

What questions are you no longer asking? What are your new questions?

If you aren't sure what I'm asking, look at the post by George. It lays it out pretty well.

How to Respond:

Jason McDonald - Maybe You Should Read the Manual
Clive Shepherd Clive on Learning
Questions I No Longer Ask - Jeff's Response
Paul Angileri - There Is No Chalk
Holly MacDonald - Spark Your Interest! - Questions I'm No Longer Answsering
RK Prasad - Custom Training and eLearning Blog

Examples of Big Impact from Technology

2010-10-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

Whoops, October completely snuck up on me. I'm a couple days late posting this. And I have a bit different question this month.

One of the things that has always bugged me is that its very hard to find good case studies. A few years ago, we asked a big question Where are the Examples of eLearning? It resulted in finding some good examples such as: Elearning samples and eLearning Examples. There are a few more to be found via eLearning Case Studies on the eLearning Learning site.

But most of the time, these examples and case studies tend to focus on different styles of interaction in online courses.

I wanted to do something a bit different here. For most of us, we've worked on a few projects that use technology and have had a Big Impact on performance and the business. It wasn't just a check-the-box kind of training exercise. It was big and meaningful. I want to hear about those projects.

The October Big Question is:

Examples of Big Impact from Technology?

Brag a little, it's okay. If you can't name the company, just say "Big Box Retailer" or something like that. I want to know what projects you are most proud of in your life. But it does need to have technology as part of the solution.

How to Respond:

Jason McDonald - Maybe You Should Read the Manual
Tony Karrer - Goals Accountability and Social Support for Big Impact
Ignatia Inge de Waard lists her success factors for big impact eLearning

Voice-Over in eLearning

2010-09-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Over the past couple of months, Dr. Joel Harband has been teaching me all about Using Text-to-Speech in eLearning. This has been a great way for me to learn about the topic.

However, there was a comment on one of my posts that made me realize that the discussion of the use of voice-over in eLearning was far beyond the conversation that Joel and I were having. The comment was:

Even the best Text-to-Speech can only do one thing - receive text and spit it back out. There is no substitute for a professional voice talent, who can interpret the meaning and message of your e-learning scripts. A good voice talent knows how and when to change up the tone or feel of a read when things are getting overly technical or have gone on a while. The most sophisticated text-to-speech cannot approach a real voice person for e-learning. Why do text-to-speech when the cost of a good voice talent will more than pay for itself with satisfied clients and learners?

If you step back, there's a set of broader questions that I've often struggled with:

When does it make sense to use voice-over in your eLearning course?
Given the range of solutions for voice-over from text-to-speech, home-grown human voice-over, professional voice-over: how do you decide what's right for your course?
How do you justify the budget and how does that factor into your choice of solution?
Are there places where text-to-speech makes sense?
Given relatively low-cost recording and editing solutions, does anyone use a studio anymore? When/why?
And, last but not least, I've read a lot of conflicting information about the right way to use voice-over in a course. How do you do it right? Can you have the same text on the screen? Can you have text on the screen or diagrams/animations only?

The September Question is:

Effective voice-over in eLearning?

This is one of the bigger big questions. I'm hoping that we can use this to collect up some pretty good information to help eLearning professionals to make smart choices about voice-over in eLearning.

How to Respond:

Jason McDonald - Narration in eLearning
Ignatia / Inge de Waard's thoughts on when to use TTS or the human voice in eLearning.
Cathy Moore -Do we really need narration? and Addicted to Audio? and Should We Narrate On-Screen Text?
Jeff's Response - Narration in e-Learning, Sometimes
Shaun - Perception of value
Karl Kapp - Kapp Notes: Audio in E-Learning
Tony Karrer - Text-to-Speech vs Human Narration for eLearning
Nibha Verma - Effective Voice-Over In ELearning!

Brain Learning and eLearning Design

2010-07-01T06:37:00.000-07:00

David Grebow suggested this month's Big Question (thanks David).

There's been a lot of discussion around cognitive theory and "how the brain learns." I've been to a lot of conference sessions around this and I've captured a bunch of really great resources below.

But even with all of that discussion there's a question of whether people are really making changes to the design of their online learning.

So the July Question is:

Does the discussion of "how the brain learns" impact your eLearning design?

How to Respond:

Jason McDonald - Maybe You Should Read the Manual
Thoughts from Clive Shepherd at Clive on Learning.
YouTube Video - Brain based education: Fad or breakthrough--high quality
Clark Quinn's Learnlets - Brain science in design?
Paul Angileri - If What You Mean Is the Opposite of the Thing, then Yes...
Rakesh Poddar - Instructional Design is about Adapting Instruction to Brain’s Ways

Top 32 Posts on Brain, Learning, eLearning Design

I used eLearning Learning to do some quick research to find top resources related to Cognitive Theory, Brain in combination with terms like Instructional Design, Online Learning, Learning Theory, Pedagogy such as: Cognitive Learning Theory, Brain Learning Theory, Instructional Design and Cognitive Theory, Brain and Learning Styles, Brain and Instructional Design, Brain Online Learning Design, Online Learning Pedagogy - this found 32 really great resources on this topic that I've listed below:

The Science Behind Learning: Cognitive Tips and How Tos for Corporate Training, February 28, 2010
Expanding On The Nine Events Of Instruction- The eLearning Coach, April 19, 2010
Transfer of Learning - Theories and Implications- Designed for Learning, October 31, 2009
Why are people so dumb? (Cognitive Biases), November 1, 2009
Cognitive Load vs. Load Time, October 9, 2009
Aging. Can We Enhance People's Cognitive Outcomes?, June 4, 2009
Rob Barton: Reducing Extraneous Cognitive Load by Accounting for Individual Differences, January 12, 2009
Push Your Brain! Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, January 26, 2009
Discovering Instructional Design, Part 1- The E-Learning Curve, May 19, 2009
Taxonomy of Learning Theories- E-learning in the Corporate Sector, January 12, 2010
Game-based meta-cognitive coaching- Learnlets, October 15, 2009
20 Facts You Must Know About Working Memory- The eLearning Coach, June 2, 2010
Start and End eLearning Courses with Methods That Facilitate Learning- Integrated Learnings, January 26, 2010
Cognitive Psychology Anyone?- The eLearning Coach, January 25, 2010
Inaccurate claims of brain training benefits- Lars is Learning, January 8, 2008
Definition: Cognitivism- Kapp Notes, December 28, 2006
Theory-informed design tips- E-learning in the Corporate Sector, February 9, 2010
The science of learning- Clive on Learning, February 21, 2007
Deeper Instructional Design- In the Middle of the Curve, November 13, 2008
Brain Based Learning- eLearning Blender, September 28, 2008
Understanding Learning Styles Research- Experiencing eLearning, September 1, 2008
4 ways to enlist the learners’ unconscious mind- Thinking Cloud, December 20, 2009
Daniel Pink and Framing the Task, September 22, 2009
Brain rules – where does that leave us?- Clive on Learning, June 22, 2009
Brain Rules & learning- Informal Learning, June 13, 2010
Brain changing technology- Learning Technology Learning, March 15, 2010
The art of changing the brain- Clive on Learning, May 13, 2008
Tools and our brain, July 10, 2009
Be Skeptical of Brain-Based Learning, July 21, 2008
Are you being fooled by claims of brain-based learning?, June 2, 2010
That brain of ours, July 9, 2009
12 Brain Rules continue to stir interest with Instructional Designers, April 10, 2009

Tools to Learn

2010-06-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

I did an interview last week for the Frank Peters Show around my experience working as a Startup CTO. It was a lot of fun because I regularly list to Frank's podcast. Frank asked me about the disconnect (especially in Los Angeles Web Development) between the fact that it's hard to find really good developers and the fact that there seems to be a lack of opportunity for students to learn about programming. Most high schools don't teach programming. For me, that's when I was exposed. There was a great teacher, Mr. Thigpen, who taught me BASIC and then we worked together via independent studies for me to learn Pascal. It's what got me into computer science. Frank is determined to set up some kind of program for boy scouts locally so they can be exposed. I think that's a great idea. But it also got me to thinking ...

Last month - there was a wonderful set of posts looking at all kinds of things that might come to be Learning Technology 2015. A fair number of these posts suggest that to be a well rounded eLearning professional, you are going to need to know quite a bit about different kinds of tools. And, of course, there are issues like the possible Beginning of Long Slow Death of Flash that might have a big impact on what you should learn.

So the June Question is:

What tools should we learn?

Initially I was thinking - what tools should we be teaching? And I was thinking about the context of things like master's programs. But, it's also what tools should we be teaching to professionals at industry events or training programs?

And really, the reality is that you shouldn't rely on your educational institution, employer, association, etc. to decide what tools you should learn? The question is really about the specific tools that would make sense to learn today in order to be a valuable eLearning professional in 2015? There's also a question of the depth you need to know these tools.

If you really want to be helpful, you might point us to resources that someone could use to learn the tool at the level you are suggesting.

How to Respond:

Harold Jarche What Tools Should we Learn?
Piotr - read more
Holly MacDonald
Jeff Goldman - Development Tools I Would Learn If I Were You - Jeff's response to June’s Big Question
A view from Clive Shepherd
Tony Karrer - Learning Flash
Jeff Goldman - What I Would Like to Say About HTML5 and Flash

Learning Technology 2015

2010-05-03T15:53:00.000-07:00

I was struggling this month to feel inspired about a Big Question. I probably need some help soon to keep the questions going and interesting. Volunteers?

Luckily Stephen Downes came to my rescue by pointing me to a fantastic piece Technology to Enhance Learning in 2015? In it, Derek Morrison talks about his answers to the question:

So what can, should, or will, we offer the digital generation by 2015?

In the world of workplace eLearning, the question is only slightly different and leads us to ask for five year out predictions. So the May Question is:

What will workplace learning technology look like in 2015?

or more correctly, how will things have changed from today. What are your predictions.

And if you are smart, you will do what Derek did and keep it in a medium where you can enhance it so that if you look back in five years you can fudge your answers.

I'm looking forward to seeing some interesting responses to this. I hope a few of the old timers like Brent, Mark, Jay - heck - you know who you are - will jump in on this.

How to Respond:

Kimberly Worthy - Stepping onto the eLearning Path: Learning Technology for 2015
Tony Karrer - Performance Support 2015
Clark Quinn - Learning Technology 2015
Jeff's Response to the Big Question
Tony Karrer - Beginning of Long Slow Death of Flash
Amit Garg (Upside Learning) - Future of learning technology - 2015
Is the Matrix the future?
Ignatia 2015 - augmented learning in a ubiquitous environment.
Tony Karrer - Future of Virtual 3D Environments for Learning
Learning Moments
Logos Learn -Workplace Learning Technology in 2015: Implications for Instructional Design
Clive Shepherd's predictions
Lynn Wernham's thoughts
Rani Gill - 2015 - Signal vs. Noise
Sreya - Future of organizational learning.
The BIG Answer - Maybe!

Keeping Up

2010-04-01T04:02:00.000-07:00

Because of my fairly continuous speaking and writing about new tools and technologies, I received a great suggestion for this month's big question:

Isn't this an ever-expanding universe of tech goodies? Will we be forced to chase hot tools and social platforms to stay competitive? How the heck are we supposed to stay up to speed on all the latest stuff and be successful using it personally and professionally?

Thus, the March question is:

How do we keep up?

How to Respond:

Jeff Goldman - My answer to April's Big Question
Holly Macdonald - How to Keep Up - Follow What Sparks Your Interest
Kapp Notes: Answering the Question: How Do We Keep Up
Amit Garg (Upside Learning) - How Are We Keeping Up?
Ignatia/Inge de Waard her 5 strategies to keep up with innovation
Thoughts on keeping up from Clive Shepherd.
Keep up with Technology
PKM in a Nutshell

Open Content in Workplace Learning?

2010-03-01T05:44:00.000-08:00

One of my Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010 was around Open Content for Workplace Learning:

I’m not sure why this already hasn’t had a bigger impact, but workplace learning is going to start to catch up on the value of OCW and OER.

Just visit the OER Commons and Open Courseware Consortium. Do a search on something like “instructional design”. Drill down a bit and there are some incredible resources.

To me it's a bit surprising that there isn't more going on around this.

Thus, the March question is:

How do we leverage Open Content in Workplace Learning?

There are quite a few different aspects to this question and I would love to get some different perspectives to weigh in around these different aspects:

There were earlier attempts at consortia aimed at creating common content, but these have had different results. Can someone weigh in with what's happened around that? Particularly, what are some of the challenges there?
Where does existing open content fit into workplace learning needs?
What are some of the bigger challenges?
What are the issues around rights with the materials and using it in different situations?

Basically, is there opportunity here. If so, where and how.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below. This may be hard given the complexity of the topic.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Instruction in a Information Snacking Culture?

2010-02-01T06:48:00.000-08:00

There's a trend that seems to be ongoing, but I'm noticing it even more recently. People seem to be spending less time going through information in depth and less willing to spend time on information. We seem to be snacking on information, not consuming it in big chunks.

And it's been something I've been really wondering about on all kinds of levels. I've mentioned before Stop Reading - Skim Dive Skim and that seems to be how people consume blog posts much more these days. I've also noticed a trend towards more twitter mentions of blog posts, but less deep commenting behavior much less thoughtful blog responses.

Inside corporations, there certainly seems to be a continual theme of spending less time on learning activities. In some cases, there's almost an anger about providing additional information to employees.

Thus, for February the question is:

Instruction in an Information Snacking Culture?

There are a lot of aspects to this question:

Has there really been a shift? Are people changing their information consumption? Are they really snacking more?
Do we need to think about instruction differently? Is it a matter of better design so that people are engaged beyond a snack?
Is this a problem? I feel like it's harder to get a deep conversation going, especially in a twitter world. But maybe that's me. How can we effectively work and learn in an information snacking world?

I'm hoping this will actually be a case where we will get beyond snacks to a good exchange because this is something that I'm really wondering about and would like to discuss.

How to Respond:

The Big Question - Snacking Culture
Holly MacDonald: My First Foray Into the Big Question
My take on the big question
Terry Eberhart - Digin4ed: “On Instruction in an Information Snacking Culture”
Janet - Just enough? Or not enough?
RK Prasad - Information Snacking Culture
Suzanne posted at her blog
Claudia Escribano - Learning a Little at a Time

Predictions and Plans for 2010

2010-01-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

We had great response to last month's question - Learning 2009. It was a great opportunity to look back at 2008. This month we are going to look forward.

Thus, for January the question is:

What are your
Predictions and Plans for 2010?

The goal here is to here what people see happening for them this year.

What are your biggest challenges for this upcoming year?
What are your major plans for the year?
What predictions do you have for the year?

You might want to take a look back at last month's posts and as well what people talked about in:

How to Respond:

Jay Cross - 2010
Clark Quinn's Learnlets: Plans for 2010 and Predictions for 2010
Ignatia looks in her crystal ball: 8 learning predictions for 2010.
eLearn Magazine - Predictions for 2010
Dan Pontefract hopes for Learnerprise in 2010
Jana's Plans for 2010
Tech Crunch Ten Technologies That Will Rock 2010
the eLearning coach - 2009 Technology Trends That Impact Online Learning
Forrester Insight and research - Key Learning Trends for 2010: Are You Onboard?
Jeanne Meister New Learning Playbook - Five Words To Describe Corporate Learning in 2010
Learning Solutions Magazine by Bill Brandon - 2010 Predictions
E-Learning Queen - 12 Predictions
mLearning Trends - My mLearning Predictions for 2010.
Predictions for 2009 reviewed and then revised for 2010
Learning Predictions – 2010
Jeff Goldman - Predictions for 2010
Rani Gill - 2010 - Design thinking, Analytics, new metaphors + more
Tony Karrer - Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010
Ken Allan - posted on 31 December 2009.
Manish Gupta - Predictions for 2010
Claudia Escribano: My 2010 Challenges, Plans, and Predictions

Learning 2009

2009-12-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

We are going to continue a tradition in the Big Question ...

The Big Question for December is:

What did you learn about learning in 2009?

If you are a blogger, I would highly recommend taking this as an opportunity to go back through your blog posts over the year and looking for any "aha moments" or highlight the posts that you think were the best/most interesting.

If you happen to be a blogger who is part of eLearning Learning, there are some tricks you can use to help you find your best stuff for the year - see Using Special Parameters to Create Year End Post for details on producing a post like 2009 Top Posts and Topics.

You might want to look back at some discussions going on during the last two yearly recaps:

2008 - Learn about Learning?
2007 - What Did You Learn about Learning?
2006 - Past experiences. Present Challenge. Future Predictions.

January's Topic:

Predictions for learning in 2010

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

MinuteBio - My Response to December's Big Question
Kapp Notes: 2009 Top Posts and Topics: Kapp Notes
Mel Aclaro - BusinessCasualBlog.com "Top 5 aha moments about Learning in 2009."
Jenise Cook - Jenise: RidgeViewMedia.com The Big Question | December 2009
RK Prasad - Custom Training and eLearning Blog
Rupa Rajagopalan -2009 Top Posts - The Writers Gateway
Geetha Krishnan: My Learning 2009
What I Learnt About Learning 2009
Tony Karrer - Learned about Learning in 2009
E-Learning Curve Blog: Top 20 E-Learning Blogs 2009 + Reflections on the Year
Learning in 2009: My Story
April Hayman: 2009 in Review.
You have build my learning in 2009, so thank you - Ignatia/Inge de Waard
Abhijit Kadle - What I Learned About Learning in 2009
Taruna Goel - What I learned about learning in 2009
Gina Minks - Here's mine, sneaking it in at the last minute!

Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning

2009-11-02T06:55:00.000-08:00

I've received various forms of the same question from different people over the past few years. The basic question is:

How do I communicate the value of social media as a learning tool to my organization?

Which provides us this month's big question:

Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning?

Let me provide some flavor for this question straight from someone who asked me about this:

My coworkers are Baby Boomers and Traditionals. When I mention blogs or any social networking they "poo-poo" me and say our workers should not use those tools because it will make them inefficient and not do their jobs. When I have presented the idea of how we can use discussion threads on our environment to discuss topics and make comments outside the classroom, many of my co-workers said it can't be done. They either haven't opened their mind to the idea or really care. In essence, if it is not classroom, they are really not interested in it.

My question is how do I get my coworkers to even consider the capabilities of these tools when it really does not interest them.

So some of the questions this raises in my mind:

How do you communicate about the potential here to other learning professionals? to knowledge workers? to management?
How do you communicate the value to an audience who doesn't have experience with social media?

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far (also see Comments):

GoodPractice Blog: Making the case for social media
Jeff Goldman - My Response to the Big Question
UK Centre for Legal Education: Digital Directions
Paul Angileri - How To Make The Case For Social Media?
Kapp Notes: Selling Social Media for Learning: ASTD Big Question
How to show value? Show value.
Geetha Krishnan: The Value of Social Media for Learning
Internet Time Blog
Jane Hart - here's a list of 100+ ways to use social media for learning - http://c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/examples.html
RK Prasad - Custom Training and eLearning Blog
Arunima Majumdar - Learning Through Social Networks
Clive Shepherd
Ken Allan - Lead By Example
wander@will blog: Social Media Acceptance
Clark Quinn's Learnlets - Promoting Social Media
Gina Minks: Adventures in Corporate Education
Karyn Romeis - What has been the impact of the use of social media on my professional practice as a corporate learning professional?
Claudia Escribano: You Never Know Until You Try
Tony Karrer - Selling Learning Communities

New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills

2009-10-01T08:06:00.000-07:00

In response to my recent post Narrowing Gap between Face-to-Face and Online Presentations, the comments were really fantastic, but got the discussion going in a different direction - and it is clear that a comment box is way too small for this discussion.

Both your face-to-face and your online audience is likely multitasking. They might be participating in chat / backchannel. They might be blogging. They might be taking notes. They might be checking and responding to email. They might be figuring out where to go to dinner.

Clive Shepherd captured the problem as Multitasking is now every presenter’s problem.

The comments suggest that there are things that presenters and learners should do to to address this. Hence, this month's big question is:

New Presenter and Learner Methods & Skills?

Working with Subject Matter Experts

2009-09-01T13:23:00.000-07:00

I want to thank Jeff Goldman - Minute Bio for his great response last month. He suggested that we focus the Big Question on specific issues and then suggested four questions.

So, let's start with his first suggestion:

Working effectively with subject matter experts

There's a lot to this topic, and certainly it's an on-going challenge. Some specific questions that are raised in this area:

What should all IDs know about working with a SME?
What can you and can't you expect a SME to do?
Does it work to have SMEs create rapid eLearning?
How does social and informal learning impact how you engage with SMEs?
What's your favorite instructive story of working with a SME?

I've seen a few good posts in the recent past on this topic. Feel free to include prior posts or resources you know about in your response.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below. Likely there can be some pretty good thoughts left via a comment.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far:

Feedback on the Big Question?

2009-08-02T07:16:00.000-07:00

We are coming up on three years since the first Big Question - Should all Learning Professionals Blog? That's still a great topic and the content you can find there is pretty interesting. I still personally believe that blogging is a great self-directed learning tool. Ah, but I digress.

I normally don't do a Big Question in August. This year, I'm just going to do something a little bit different.

The goals of the Big Question are:

Get different perspectives on topics that are of interest to workplace learning professionals
Provide input to Learning Circuits, T&D and other parts of ASTD on topical issues
Provide a way for bloggers and others to find relevant blogs
Support the network of bloggers

I'd like to get feedback on the Big Question:

What works?
What do you think should change?
Are there other models that you've seen that might be interesting to consider?
What aspects of online community management might apply here

And here is a list of past topics that might be worth looking through for thoughts and ideas:

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below. Likely there can be some pretty good thoughts left via a comment.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far:

Jeff - August Big Question - Feedback

New Skills for Learning Professionals

2009-07-01T01:00:00.000-07:00

This month's big question comes out of a discussion that I've been having in various forms over the past few years. In a Learning 2.0 world, where learning and performance solutions take on a wider variety of forms and where churn happens at a much more rapid pace, what new skills and knowledge are required for learning professionals?

New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals?

I know that there's already quite a bit out there on this topic, so please point us to existing information on the topic.

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Put your thoughts in a comment below. Likely there can be some pretty good thoughts left via a comment.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Responses So Far:

Mohamed Amine Chatti - New Skills for Learning Professionals
Harold Jarche - 2008 article on Skills 2.0
Clive Shepherd
Jay Cross - Informal Learning blog.
E-Learning Curve Blog: Learning Professionals’ Skills 2.0
Natalie - What Should Learning Professionals Know Today?
Gina - Adventures in Corporate Education
Jane Bozarth - New Skills for Learning Professionals
Blogger in Middle-earth: New Strategies, New Skills? A Big Question
Nancy White - 4 Meta Skills for Learning Professionals
Nancy White - Skills for Learning Professionals Part 2
Nancy White -Skills for Learning Professionals Part 3
Michael Chalk -Psst.. knowledge-worker? You have mad skills?
Harold Jarche -Skills for learning professionals
Clark Quinn: Web 2.0 Learning Skills
JD - eLearning Dude
Tom Gram: New Skills for the Learning Pro?
Karyn Romeis - Do your job!
Victoria Macarthur: A Propositional Structure: New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals? (Adaptation, Personalization, and Community)
Peter's Blog: New Skills for Learning Professionals
Nancy White: Deeper Skills for Learning Professionals…Part 4
Michele Martin - Information Literacy and Habits of Mind
Learning Practice Blog by Vasan: Skills for Learning Professional
David Mallon: The Disciplines of Modern Enterprise Learning
Tony Karrer - eLearning Technology: Network Skills
ID Reflections
Gabi Witthaus, Beyond Distance at Leicester: New skills for learning professionals - highlights from the discussion so far
Leonardo Coelho - Conhecimento XXI/ Learning in the 21st Century
Anthony Montalvo: Nuevas competencias y conocimientos
Jenise Cook - My Thoughts on New Skills for Learning Professionals
Ray Jimenez - Collaborative Learning Anthropologist and Specialist (CLA): Enterprise 2.0, Web 2.0 and Learning Career or Job Opportunities
Larry Irons -- eLearning 2.0, Social Media, and Co-Creation of Learning Content
Vidyut Kale - New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals

Time Spent

2009-06-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

This month's big question comes from an inquiry I received from Robert Kennedy via my blog. The question was:

What is your typical day like? How do you do all you do with elearning learning, elearning technology, techempower, work literacy and all the consulting and still remain profitable while having a LIFE? Ok, so that is more than one question, but hopefully you get the drift. What are your thoughts here?

This is a great question and I'm guessing the answers will be quite interesting. After all, when I do presentations that introduce things like blogs, RSS readers, social networks, etc. I am almost always asked - "How much time do you spend on this? Where do you find the time?" And what they really mean is - I'm already too busy, how the heck can I also do all of what you are telling me about. So I really hope that we can have a great resource here that will give people a sense of what's going on in the lives of people who are adopting some of these things.

Where is your time spent?

I'm really hoping that we can get a broad cross section of answers. I consider myself to be somewhat of a "special case" ... but I'm guessing that's true for many of us.

Beyond the basic answer I'm hoping you will chime in with thoughts around:

How much time do you spend and how did you find time for all the relatively newer things like reading blogs, twitter, social networks, etc.?
What are you doing less of today than you were 3-5 years ago?
Do you have less of a life with all of these new things?

How to Respond:

Jenise Cook | Ridge View Media's Blog - Time Spent
Rupa - Big Question June 2009 :Where is your time spent?
Jennifer Beever: The Big Question June 2009: Where is Your Time Spent?
Just Reflections
Archana: Quantifying Time Spent on Web 2.0 tools
Abhijit Kadle - The Big Question: Time Spent
Michele Martin: The Big Question
How Clive Shepherd spends his time
Robert Kennedy - Big Question - June 2009
Ken Allan - 'ere 'tis.
Sreya Dutta Big Question: Time Spent
Virginia Yonkers: Connecting 2 the world
Norman Lamont: http://normanlamont.typepad.com/eellearning/
Tony Karrer: How I Spend My Time
Inge de Waard: Finding my 2.0-time schedule scrambled for personal reasons
Francis - http://www.mantissa.net/blog/2009/06/15/the-big-question-how-do-you-spend-your-time/
Gina from Adventures in Corporate Education: Where do I spend my time? June’s Big Question

Social Grid Value

2009-05-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

This month's big question comes from an inquiry that I received as a result of my presentation on the Social Grid. The question is the basis of the May 2009 Big Question:

How does/will the Social Grid will impact Human Capital and Organizations?

In Social Learning Measurement, I discussed some different ways that we could measure social learning, but I think the question that is raised here is a question that needs to be asked prior to asking about measurement.

My guess is that there are all kinds of interesting dynamics that will come about in organizations that have a strong social grid and a workforce that is highly skilled in using that social grid. For example, the recent MIT Study that showed that more highly networked individuals were more productive (see Workplace Productivity).

What do you see as the impact?

How to Respond:

Clark Quinn - Learnlets on Twitter and Chaos

April 2009 - Getting Unstuck

2009-04-01T05:00:00.000-07:00

Last month's big question got quite a great response. I'm very much looking forward to the response this month.

The inspiration for this question comes straight from Gina Minks' post - I think grad school is making me crazy. She is in a graduate school program and is a great self-directed learner:

I’m learning about things like instructional theories, learning theories, how to tie learning to performance, how to tie learning to business requirements, and ways to measure all these things.
I’m learning that my technical skills are important as learning moves to a web 2.0 platform. I’m learning my experience as a community organizer is very transferable to building online communities. I’ve learned my background in information studies helps tie all these things together.
Participating in courses like CCK08 helped accelerate my thinking on the real possibilities of change that are available now.

But Gina also works inside an organization (in her case a large corporation) but I think most people will recognize her comment:

The realities of being part of a large organization and my responsibilities are more clear to me now too.
I feel I’m going to be stuck doing the same thing forever with all these cool ideas in my head that will never get implemented.

Thus, for April 2009 Big Question is:

Stuck? Getting unstuck?

There's really quite a bit to this question.

Do you sometimes feel stuck? Feel like you have so many more ideas about how you could help your organization or your clients, but that What Clients Want is just some training?
Should you attempt to get unstuck? How hard should you push your internal or external clients to get them to see the full range of what is possible? Or should you give them what they ask for?
If you are feeling some level of stuck, what should you do to get unstuck? How important is it to get unstuck? Is it okay to learn a lot about all kinds of different solutions, but to primarily work on simple training solutions?
If you are stuck, should you be concerned about your future?

For those of you who are not bloggers, come and at least comment on whether you feel a bit stuck!

How to Respond:

Sreya Dutta - Big Question: OMG I'm Stuck!!
Jeff Goldman - April's Big Question
Rupa Rajagopalan - Big Question: Stuck? Getting Unstuck?
Ignatia/Inge de Waard - Get your innovative eLearning ideas out no matter what others think!
Robert Kennedy - Getting Rid Of The Glue
Anthony Montalvo - Help! I'm stuck!
Clark Quinn's Learnlets: Getting Revolutionary
Stephanie Sandifer - Getting Unstuck
Lisa Meece - April's Big Question on the LOL Blog
Amit Garg - Upside Learning Blog - Just do it
Kern's Learnability Matters - Getting Stuck and Unstuck

Workplace Learning in 10 Years

2009-03-01T04:45:00.000-08:00

This month it's time for a truly BIG question. The inspiration for this question comes from the recent posts discussing the future of workplace learning:

Jay Cross and Harold Jarche - Future of the Training Department
Jay Cross - eLearning is not the Answer
Tony Karrer - Corporate Training
Dave Wilkins - The Future of Training Started Yesterday

Thus, for March 2009 Big Question is:

Workplace Learning in
10 Years?

If you peer inside an organization in 10 years time and you look at how workplace learning is being supported by that organization, what will you see? What will the mix of Push vs. Pull Learning; Formal vs. Informal supported by the organization? Are there training departments? What are they doing? How big are they as compared to today? What new departments will be responsible for parts of workplace learning? What will current members of training departments be doing in 10 years?

How to Respond:

The Learning Revolution: 2019: A workplace learning odyssey
Piotr Peszko: Will "training" exist in 2019 ?
MinuteBio Big Question - In the Year 2019
Quinnovator (at Learnlets) - Workplace learning in 10 years
David Wilkins - Social Learning Blog: "Workplace Learning" in 10 Years?
Harold, Clark, Jay - YouTube discussion.
Jay Cross - my personal thoughts on the matter.
Karyn Romeis - March's big question - worplace learning in 10 years
Mohamed Amine Chatti - The future of the training department
Clive Shepherd's predictions - http://tinyurl.com/d7qakm
Lisa Meece The Big Question: http://www.bottomlineperformance.com/lolblog/?p=689
Here's a vision of technology in 2019 that will stretch your thinking.
Adventures in Corporate Education - I answered the big question with a question. :)
Jacob McNulty: Learning & Development in the Future
Anthony Montalvo - El aprendizaje en la empresa en 10 años
Matt Moore: Learning + Knowledge = ?
Sreya Dutta: Big Question: Workplace Learning in 10 years
Ken Allan's Response
Tony Karrer - eLearning Technology - Workplace Learning Professionals Next Job - Management Consultant
Ignatia/Inge de Waard gives a Belgian/Indian/American two cents of a human/machine interface for the future (that is now)
Rodolpho Arruda - Workplace Learning in 10 Years
Ryan Tracey - E-Learning in the Corporate Sector
Workplace Learning and Me - 10 years from now...
Upside Learning Blog - The Future of Workplace Learning
Saul Carliner - Long Live Instructor Led Learning
Tony Karrer - Long Live

Digital, Rapid eLearning, & Social Media Conversations

2009-02-02T20:44:00.000-08:00

From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom - Innovate

Digital wisdom is a twofold concept, referring both to wisdom arising from the use of digital technology to access cognitive power beyond our innate capacity and to wisdom in the prudent use of technology to enhance our capabilities.

It Only Took HOW Long? -Duthie earning

We've ended up with 78 minutes of what could be argued is elearning content for doctors. Total production time? 11.9 hours. Run the math and it comes to 9.15 hours' development time per hour of finished 'seat time,' roughly 9:1. Compare this to high production value, interactive elearning, which generally takes 200-300 hours per hour (200:1 to 300:1).

The trouble is that the doctors each spent (in my estimate) 5-10 hours apiece preparing their slides and narrations.

Spy

Listen in on the social media conversations of any topic you're interested in. The above link will take you to the latest converstaions on eLearning. Don't like that one -- try this one.

Two Strands of Connectionism - The Technium

One strand of massive connectionism is currently called social media. The other strand of massive connectionism relies on a massive number of machines. This new territory can best be illustrated by the far-right top extreme where both sides meet in the center - the area where we have maximum machine connection and maximum human connection. This overlap or convergence space would be the emerging global superorganism.

Economic Impact

2009-02-01T05:00:00.000-08:00

There were some really interesting posts last month in - Challenges Plans and Predictions for 2009. This month's topic was suggested by several people and was touched on by some of the posts last month.

Thus, for February the Big Question is:

What is the impact of the economy on you and your organization? What are you doing as a result?

The goal here is for each of us to reflect and share what's happening to us today as well as looking at what we might need to plan for going forward.

How to Respond:

Jeff Goldman - Big Question: Minutebio.com
Clark Quinn - Learnlets - Economic Impact
Michael Hanley - E-Learning Curve - Impact of Economic Crisis on Elearning
Virginia Yonkers - Answer
Ken Allan - Recent posts on the topic ( 1 ) ( 2 )
Terrence Seamon - http://learningvoyager.blogspot.com/2009/02/big-question-for-february.html
Jesse Kramer my answer
Kapp Notes: Impact of Tough Times
Karyn Romeis - Making it up as I go along
Clive Shepherd - What is the impact of the economy on your organisation?
Anthony Montalvo - La Gran Pregunta
Ankit Jain - Opportunity in Adversity

Challenges Plans and Predictions for 2009

2009-01-01T06:00:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

We had great response to last month's question - What Did You Learn about Learning in 2008? This was a great opportunity to look back at 2008. This month we are going to look forward.

Thus, for January the question is:

What are your
Challenges, Plans and Predictions for 2009?

The goal here is again to be a bit reflective.

What are your biggest challenges for this upcoming year?
What are your major plans for the year?
What predictions do you have for the year?

You might want to take a look back at last month's posts and as well what people talked about in:

January 2008 - Predictions for Learning in 2008?
December 2006 - Past experiences. Present Challenge. Future Predictions.

How to Respond:

Sarah Stewart: Sarah's Musings: http://sarah-stewart.blogspot.com/2008/12/huge-challenge-for-me-in-2009.html
Ken Allan - few and simple
Gillian said: http://learningandqualifications.wordpress.com/2009/01/02/re-charged-and-de-clutteredre-charged-and-de-cluttered/
John Zurovchak Long Tail Learning Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009
Karyn Romeis Predicting 2009?
Clark Quinn: Learnlets predictions.
Adventures in Corporate Education: Gina's answer to January's Big Question
My predictions for 2009 at MinuteBio
Lee Graham's eLearning 3.0 Blog: "Your Wish List for eLearning in 2009"
Leslie http://heartofsocialwork.blogspot.com/
Plans, Challenges, Predictions!
Design of Knowledge: 2009 is the Year that Training becomes an Evidence-Based Profession
Dan Roddy, Learning Rocks 2009 - Year of consumer e-learning
Kapp Notes: 2009 Predictions, Remembrance and Challenges
ThirdForce - Seven technologies we're predicting will impact 2009...
Geetha Krishnan: 2009 - Predictions, Challenges, Plans
Mark T. Burke, Virtical Education: 2009 Challenges, Plans and Predictions
Kevin Thorn: LearnNuggets Challenges,Plans,Predictions for 2009
Clive Shepherd: Predictions for 2009
Globe Trotting Kerry - my thoughts here
Ankit Jain - A New Perspective to eLearning Prediction for 2009
Tony Karrer - 12 eLearning Predictions for 2009

Learn about Learning - 2008

2008-12-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

We are going to continue a tradition in the Big Question ...

The Big Question for December is:

What did you learn about learning in 2008?

January's Topic:

Predictions for learning in 2009

How to Respond:

Option 1 - Simply put your thoughts in a comment below.

Option 2 -

Step 1 - Post in your blog (please link to this post).
Step 2 - Put a comment in this blog with an HTML ready link that I can simply copy and paste (an HTML anchor tag). I will only copy and past, thus, I would also recommend you include your NAME immediately before your link. So, it should look like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0

or you could also include your blog name with something like:

Tony Karrer - e-Learning 2.0 : eLearningTechnology

Posts so far (and read comments as well):

Jeff Goldman - What I have Learned
Michael Hanley - A Year in E-Learning: One Blog’s Progress
http://learningjournal.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/musings-toward-new-years-resolutions/
Tony Karrer - 2008 2009
Clark Quinn - What did I learn about learning in 2008?
Ken Allan - The Baby, The Bath and The Bathwater
Karyn Romeis - Oh dear, the dread annual question!
Jason Allen - Nurtured Chaos
Ken Allan - Having Saved the Baby
Ignatia/Inge de Waard - My two cents of learning during the last year.
Rupa - http://blog.thewritersgateway.com/2008/12/08/what-i-learnt-in-2008/
Katie Christo - What have I learned about learning in 2008?
Virginia Yonkers: Connecting 2 the World
Erin Murphy - What did I learn about learning in 2008
Adventures in Corporate Education - Big Question: What did you learn in 2008
John Zurovchak - Long Tail Learning:The Big Question December 2008
Ellen at the aLearning Blog
Taruna Goel - Learning About Learning in 2008
Kevin Marsh - http://storycurve.blogspot.com/2008/12/what-i-learned-in-2008.html
Kevin Thorn - 5 Things I learned in 2008
Kerry... what I've learned
Manish Mohan - What I learned in 2008
Karl Kapp - New Learning
Clive Shepherd
Christy Tucker: What I Learned This Year
Geetha Krishnan: 2008: Low on Learning
Ingrid O'Sullivan - What did I learn in 2008? Lots..

The Learning Circuits Blog

ASTD TechKnowledge Happenings

ARG and ARG --What are they? What does it mean? Should you care?

Broadening the Definition of Gamification for L&D Professionals

What is Gamification? and Why it Matters to L&D Professionals

Resolve to Engage Your Learners in 2012

January Blogger: Karl Kapp

Looking Forward to TechKnowledge 2012!

Gearing Up for a Laptop-Free TechKnowledge 2012

HTML5—What’s the Urgency?

What Do We Mean When We Say HTML5?

December Blogger: Judy Unrein

Getting Started Creating the Mobile Learning Strategy

What Happens When You Neglect to Create a Mobile Strategy?

What Does a Good Mobile Learning Strategy Look Like?

Why is a Mobile Learning Strategy Important?

November Guest Blogger: Chad Udell

MT2 Announces 2011 Top Simulations & Training Companies

Where Social Learning got its start: An interview with Dave Tosh

In a cash, time, and people strapped work environment, how can we develop our own games?

Howdy and October's Big Question

October's Guest Blogger: Ben Betts

A Brief Introduction – Communities of Practice Manager

New LC Blog – What Issues/Trends Do You Want Us to Cover?

Vacation in August for the LCBQ

Fun e-learning? #LCBQ

Break Down Organizational Walls When It Comes to Learning #LCBQ

On-Demand Learning and Performance #LCBQ

Addressing I Want it Now #LCBQ

Assessing Learning Initiatives

eLearning Predictions and Plans 2011 #LCBQ

What are your Predictions and Plans for 2011?

Big Question Thought Leaders

Glenn Hansen

Thomas Edgerton

Jeffrey Goldman

Holly MacDonald

Kasper Spiro

Big Question - Should It Continue?

Should the Big Question continue?

Learning 2010

What did you learn about learning in 2010?

Questions No Longer and New Questions

What questions are you no longer asking? What are your new questions?

Examples of Big Impact from Technology

Examples of Big Impact from Technology?

Voice-Over in eLearning

Effective voice-over in eLearning?

Brain Learning and eLearning Design

Does the discussion of "how the brain learns" impact your eLearning design?

Tools to Learn

What tools should we learn?

Learning Technology 2015

What will workplace learning technology look like in 2015?

Keeping Up

How do we keep up?

Open Content in Workplace Learning?

How do we leverage Open Content in Workplace Learning?

Instruction in a Information Snacking Culture?

Instruction in an Information Snacking Culture?

Predictions and Plans for 2010

What are yourPredictions and Plans for 2010?

Learning 2009

What did you learn about learning in 2009?

Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning

Presenting the Value of Social Media for Learning?

New Presenter and Learner Methods and Skills

New Presenter and Learner Methods & Skills?

Working with Subject Matter Experts

Feedback on the Big Question?

New Skills for Learning Professionals

New Skills and Knowledge for Learning Professionals?

Time Spent

Where is your time spent?

Social Grid Value

How does/will the Social Grid will impact Human Capital and Organizations?

April 2009 - Getting Unstuck

Stuck? Getting unstuck?

Workplace Learning in 10 Years

Workplace Learning in10 Years?

What are your
Predictions and Plans for 2011?

What are your
Predictions and Plans for 2010?

Workplace Learning in
10 Years?

What are your
Challenges, Plans and Predictions for 2009?