Narrowing Gap between Face-to-Face and Online Presentations

Are people noticing this? It seems that face-to-face and online presenting are becoming more similar. Some aspects:

• Wireless access is becoming more common in places where presentations occur. If you are a conference organizer and you don't arrange for wireless, be prepared for some negative comments. See Better Conferences.
• A larger percentage of the audience these days brings a laptop to presentations and it seems that the factor of Laptop Distraction is quieting down.
• If your audience is already on a laptop and connected wirelessly, then you can use techniques such as Twitter Conference Ideas with twitter as a back-channel or twitter to post links to the audience. You can get the audience to provide thoughts and suggestions just like chat online. In fact, this is on of my favorite things about online presentations (see Examples of eLearning 2.0 for how great the audience input can be). But now you can somewhat do this at Face-to-Face presentations.
• It used to be that your online audience was distracted. Now your face-to-face audience may seem distracted as well. I had a recent presentation at a large corporation. 75% of the audience had a laptop. Some percentage of that audience was taking notes and chatting on Yammer. Some percentage was reading email. Hard to tell which was which.

The last bullet is probably the biggest change here. I'm used to presenting in-person where the audience is highly engaged, taking notes, etc. It was a bit different for me to see an audience looking at their laptops that much.

I've talked about this in Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences and made the comment that:

In-person conferences have an advantage of getting more attention from the attendees.

That's still probably true as there's a higher commitment level, but the gap is narrowing. Clive as points to this in Multitasking is now every presenter’s problem.

What struck me is how the gap is narrowing between face-to-face and online events. You could usually rely on a fully attentive audience face-to-face while bemoaning the ease with which multitasking occurs online. The reality is that the same phenomenon is now occurring in each setting.

What's interesting here is that it used to be that you could count on your in-person audience to be singletasking (is that a word?) and paying attention. Now, they are going to be multitasking just like your online audience. I've always said that one of the wonderful things about face-to-face presentations is that you can see your audience and get immediate reaction based on their faces. But what about when they are looking at their laptop? If anything it's worse than online. When you present online and the chat channel is active but on-topic, you feel you are doing good. When you are in-person and everyone is looking at their laptop, it doesn't feel good. Hmmm…

One last thought … I recently presented to a group of professional speakers about the use of social media. There was quite a bit of discussion around Face-to-Face vs. Online Conferences. I'm still of the opinion that Face to Face Still Matters. However, because of the dramatically different characteristics of Online Conferences and In-Person Conferences and because of the narrowing gap between face-to-face and online presentations – we will see a shift towards more online conferences such as LearnTrends 2009.

Update: Since this comment block is too small for such big questions, I've decided to make this the Big Question on ASTD for October 2009. You can find the question here:

New Presenter and Learner Skills and Methods

Feel free to comment here as well, but I'm hoping we will attract a few longer entries there.

2.0 and Interesting Times

Interesting post by Dan Pontefract where he provides definitions of some different "2.0" definitions and the HR & Organizational impacts. It's worth taking a look at some of these:

• Enterprise 2.0

  • Definition (via Andrew McAfee):
    • the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers
  • HR & Org Implication:
    • Enterprise 2.0 is the use of Web 2.0 concepts in an organization; thus, failure to drive its introduction may result in redundant platforms/processes & confused employees
• Learning 2.0
  • Definition:
    • the shift from a predominantly formal instructor-led/eLearning model to one that encompasses formal, informal and social learning methodologies
  • HR & Org Implication:
    • organizational culture can evolve via a strong learning ecosystem; to continue with antiquated ‘spray and pray’ formal only training models is akin to GM’s 2011 automobile lineup being full of SUV’s
• Work 2.0
  • Definition:
    • the shift from a 9-5 workday to a flexible workweek inclusive of work location (ie. home, shared workspace, coffee shops, etc.)
  • HR & Org Implication:
    • the performance of an individual should be measured not on when they are in the office or present in their cubicle; rather, on the end result and its merits for the organization itself (whenever the deliverables are accomplished)

While people may not like the "2.0" terms, I believe there's merit to using them if only to indicate the substantial impact that these things will have on organizations and particularly on Learning and Development.

The theme of LearnTrends 2009 is a term I call Convergence. It's really about the fact that learning and development leaders have an opportunity to embrace 2.0. This means:

• providing solutions beyond traditional training / courses
• working closely with other parts of the organization including Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge Management, Corporate Library, OD, IT and, of course, the business
• getting smart about a whole lot of new kinds of solutions
• looking outside the firewall for solutions

And all of this comes in an ever more challenging world:

• The Business of Learning faces real pressure and we are expected to do more with less.
• We need to provide value to concept workers who are the highest value people in the organization and are in a continuous learning mode – it's part of their work. But concept workers don't get as much value in traditional learning solutions.
• These workers direct their own learning. Learning and Development is likely not producing much content that will be useful to their day-to-day work except by building core skills. Thus, we must look to provide value in the long tail of learning.
• The nature and value of content production is changing.
• There's a ton more content available both inside and outside the organization and some of it is free learning
• There's much greater accessibility of experts inside and outside the organization and ways to engage with them.

When I described eLearning 2.0 back in February 2006, I focused on the technology aspects. But there's so much more to all of this picture. I'm not sure if Convergence quite captures it, but …

These are truly interesting times.

Digital Asset Management – LCMS, ECM and SharePoint

Interesting post by Vic Uzumeri where he responds to a question that I asked him.  I'm going to also address the broader concept he raises about Work Networking.  But in this post, I want to consider:

We developed CoSolvent because we couldn’t find a reliable way move rich media (typically video) to and from the individual subject matter experts (SMEs) and managers among our various corporate training clients.

Living near Hollywood and the many different production companies and studios, I've talked to and worked on several projects that were digital asset management systems.  This includes working on the software the runs sites like Nasa Images.  So, I'm pretty familiar with the issues of digital asset management (DAM) and having to move large and manage large media assets.

Vic provides the following list of reasons that companies use his digital asset management software for eLearning projects:

• The companies that employ our target audience strongly discourage employees from putting company assets on ‘public’ sites.
• Workers often didn’t want their co-workers to see their materials until they had a chance to approve them.
• People often work with collections of related, but dissimilar materials. 
• We wanted to accommodate all types of video as input.

What's interesting is that my impression is that most corporations don't have that much of an issue with digital asset management and that these concerns are there, but not enough of an issue for people to jump on these solutions.  Am I wrong on that? 

Is there a need and desire for software or software as a service that provides digital asset management as part of eLearning projects?  Does the LCMS already provide this for you?  Does your enterprise content management solution provide this for you?

I do know of a couple of large corporations that do a good job of cataloging and organizing the digital assets – images, digital videos, documents.  They have hundreds of hours of courses.  And there developers are geographically dispersed.  Even still, most of these companies use relatively simple organization methods and the issues are getting developers to contribute assets, catalog them and then provide effective search and browsing.  In one case, they use a fairly rich enterprise content management (ECM) solution (a corporate-wide solution).

By the way, my impression is also that the digital asset management that comes with LCMS solutions is pretty limited.  Theoretically, this provides this same ability to organize digital assets so they can be shared by developers.  In practice, once things scale up, it becomes pretty hard to keep it organized and effectively find the assets you want.

I have heard a common lament that large files cause a little bit of an issue in that many IT departments limit network storage because of the need to provide robust back-ups and retention.  But using a storage as a service model with these large assets outside the firewall doesn't make much sense in that there's also often a restriction on network traffic.

The workflow and access restrictions are there.  You don't want people seeing your stuff that's still in development.  There's some course content that should not be accessible outside a particular group.  Again, most of this gets handled by standard network folders and permission structures.

Oh, and let's not forget that a lot of companies are Using Sharepoint for the exact purpose of organizing the efforts and assets of learning development.

Maybe it's because I have not run into these situations, but my impression is that there's not that much need for digital asset management solutions around eLearning and that you are probably already served by your LCMS, enterprise content management, or SharePoint if it is an issue.

Please share your experience and knowledge around this.

Searching Google with Context Organizer

One of the tools that I have been relying more and more on is Context Organizer. With the increase of information that we all need to process it is great to have a tool like Context Organizer to help me make sense of the information and summarize it for me. I have explained in past blog posts how Context Organizer can be used with MindManager 8 to build a map from URL's, PDF files and Word Documents. But one of the most powerful features is being able to do Google Searches and within seconds have the sites that are found summarized with key words and relevancy at my disposal. Context Organizer allows me to do my Google searches and processes them with a click of the button. If you want to see what I'm talking about then take a look at the video below to give you an idea of the power of this tool.

While not specifically developed for individuals with reading difficulties just think of how this can be used to help students deal with the mountains of text that they encounter each and every day. Using Context Organizer, information can be quickly summarized for students and then using a text to speech software the information could be read. There is also the ability to send the summaries to Microsoft Word which could make this a great research tool for students with reading and writing disabilities. Think of this as cognitive assist for students with reading disabilities and a great tool for doing research. You can download a trial of Context Organizer at their website.

Subscribing to the AssistiveTek's Podcasts

For the past five years I have had my blog posts automatically converted to text to speech using the Odiogo service. Odiogo takes my RSS feed and automatically converts any new posts on my blog to high quality text to speech. You probably have see the Listen Now button before each blog post that allows you to access the Odiogo controls to have the post read. If you have not tried it out I urge you to do so- having the Odiogo feature on my blog allows anyone to access the information that I am sharing in a different output. Additionally, if you would like you can download a blog post to a MP 3 file or save a post to your iTunes Library. However, if you would like to subscribe to my blog and have every new post automatically delivered to your iPod or iPhone in a format you can listen to I have put together a demonstration video to show you how you can subscribe to my blog in iTunes. It is fairly easy to subscribe to my blog and once you do you will automatically get each new post delivered to your iPod or iPhone when you plug it into your computer. For those of you who are familiar with how to subscribe to a podcast in iTunes - all you need to do is paste this URL [http://podcasts.odiogo.com/assistive-tehnology/podcasts-xml.php] into the Subscribe to Podcast dialog box. That's all there is to it. To view the demonstration video on how to subscribe to my podcasts click here.

Tweetchat- A New Twitter Service

I was reading some blogs today and Brent Schlenker had mentioned a new Twitter service called Tweetchat which sounded pretty interesting. In a nut shell you log into your Twitter account and then Tweetchat will automatically track tweets with a specific (#) hashtag. This really adds to the educational use of Twitter and allows multiple users to have an online chat in real time, discussing a topic. All users have to remember to do is include the hashtag somewhere in their tweet so that it can be tracked. The nice part of Tweetchat is the ability to quickly reply to a tweet and follow the thread of the conversation. I will definitely want to explore this new Twitter tool and see how I can use it in the work that I do to communicate with my graduate students.

Comapping: collaborative information mapping

Wallace Tait and Brian Friedlander

Web 2.0 has certainly made a significant impact on the ways we now create, manage and exchange information and knowledge. Collaboration is indeed the corner stone for real time communications within personal, academic and business arenas while using web 2.0 (Cloud) applications.

We have simply been given much more flexibility through the use of cloud computing.

Regarding Visual mapping; cloud collaboration has exponentially increased the potentials for being more effective and productive. The cloud can become a repository (Data bank) for storing and sharing much of your information and knowledge, and you also have control over who gets to access your information too. Less travelling to meet clients, your web space becomes a virtual office and classroom where you can operate, collaborate and present with ease; as long as you have web access.

There’s a recent interesting trend coming from web 2.0 visual mapping apps. They are now moving towards offering desktop versions of their apps, so desktop computing isn’t dead yet.

We were recently given access to Comapping by Michael Pliskin Director of R&D. Comapping is both a web and desktop based information management app that expresses a left to right format defined as visual mapping. The desktop application seamlessly synchronizes with the web based tool.

During the summer of 2006 Comapping was born through a joint venture between Area9 in Denmark and Lanit-Tercom in Russia. These two organizations initially developed and used Comapping as an internal organization wide communication tool. They were frustrated with limitations that traditional mind mapping software posed. Soon realizing they were not alone while facing similar limitations with incumbent mind mapping software applications; Comapping was further developed for wider commercial use.

It’s an awesome information mapping/management tool that enables you to collaborate with absolute ease, and it’s extremely fast. The developers have crafted a new and expressive category of information mapping that is independent of the Mind mapping genre. The Comap, Comapping and Comapper shall without a doubt, be definitions associated with forward thinking information management.

Using Comapping has exponentially enhanced and improved our time and project management, to the point of having more clarity that equates to monetizing other more important aspects of our consulting work. Simply put, Comapping has; and continues to transform our information management capabilities.

In our opinion Comapping has a powerful advantage over mind mapping apps, due to the left to right format and the top down logical process approach of this format. Project managers will most certainly feel comfortable with Comapping, as shall Business System managers who use the ISO 9001 standards.

The left to right format, when mapping expresses a very comfortable and logical feel to Comapping.

Asger Ottar Alstrup, CEO and Board Member of Comapping developed the unique auto-collapsing algorithm that optimizes use of often scarce computer screen real estate while mapping. The animated look to Comapping is very comfortable and pleasing to the eye. Navigation throughout a map while presenting information to colleagues and clients is one of the great strengths of Comapping.

Real time collaboration is indeed a notable strength of Comapping. You will find it easy to invite a colleague into your mind map and give them permission to read or edit your map. While collaborating on the map, you can view where your colleague is and what part of the map they are editing. You can also use a chat window to communicate during the session.

The experience of co-editing the map was fast and flawless. One of our top features of Comapping is the ability to easily publish your Comaps to you blog or web site by simply copying an embed code.

With the recent addition of the Comapping desktop application, and its strong import and export features, Comapping is a strong information mapping tool for your collaboration needs. The desktop version is a clone to the online version, enabling you to work off line when required.

Once you have created your mind map using the desktop version of Comapping you can save it to your online account and then access it through your browser. Comapping gives you lots of options if you would like to Export your mind maps to other applications.

We found the no nonsense approach to mapping information while creating, managing and exchanging relevant business information was performed with ease. The learning curve was so short; we were up and running with Comapping within 10 minutes.

Comapping is continuously being developed, therefore the user can have confidence the developers listen to the voice of the user. Expect a great future from Comapping.

The Personal, Academic and Business application of Comapping is very evident, and we encourage you to download, use and purchase this excellent information management tool. It is available in two formats; desktop and web editions. Visit www.comapping.com for more information.

Below is a Comapping map; to navigate the map, choose a topic and press the tab key

IIUG 2009 vNext survey: Speak for yourself

Although the IIUG site is quiet about this, an email note was sent to IIUG members advertising this year's vNext survey.

The survey tries to poll user's opinions about new features that we would like to see in future Informix versions. The results will be (and I quote) "passed on to the powers that be". Meaning the R&D team will take them into consideration while planning for future versions.

Some of the features proposed are very interesting, but if you have some ideas not mentioned in the survey you can add your own.

I won't waste time listing the proposed features here. Just take a look at:

http://www.iiug.org/2009_survey/

and take the opportunity to fill it. It's fairly quick, and your comments are important.
IBM have been improving Informix, and this is a continuous process where user input is precious.

Should I Use Dreamweaver to Build My Course?

I received a question that I've heard in many forms and I'd like to ask help on this.

I am looking for some advice about whether or not my choice to use Dreamweaver with learning extensions (CourseBuilder + Learning Site) is a good idea or not.  I understand that Dreamweaver is not SCORM compliant (or at least it wasn't).

The reason why I thought it would be good to use, is because I work for a small company, and I am the only Technical Writer / eLearning Developer, so needed something simple and straightforward to use, but that could also offer me flexibility to design my own modules.  My modules are going to take a previously written training guide and turn it into an online interactive format.  It will need to have Forward & Back buttons, interactive exercises, tests & quizzes integration.  We don't have an LMS at this point, but we may need to track it in the future.

Also, Dreamweaver is relatively cheap, so I could make a good case to my managers to buy it for me.  There's also good help material available online, and there is a good book written by Michael Doyle "Dreamweaver MX e-Learning Toolkit" (although it was written in 2003).

I do use Camtasia to create my training videos, but have heard that Adobe Captivate is a good product as well.

Dreamweaver appears harder to use than other eLearning tools I have seen out there, but I appreciate its flexibility.

So, first, let's admit that many people in our industry are pretty much solo developers of eLearning.  They have to do everything on their own.  And they also are not building that much eLearning day-to-day, so it's pretty common to have to go through figuring out what tool to use.  And because they are solo, there's no time to spend evaluating a bunch of different tools.  Yes, I could download the free trial version and try it out, but that would take a fair bit of time.  At the same time, if I don't make a good choice, I could be suffering a lot of unnecessary pain.  Sound familiar?

So can you help me (and the reader) out?

1. Decision Process? If you were this person, how would you go about selecting the tool to use?  Given there are a lot of Rapid eLearning Tools and Software Simulation Tools out there, how do you choose which tools to consider?  How would you decide which to download and trial?  Anything else you would do to make this decision?
2. In terms of the specific tools here, any suggestions?   Dreamweaver?  Camtasia?  Adobe Captivate?  Articulate?  What others jump to mind?

Thanks, in advance.

Vidly- Awesome Video Tool for Twitter

I had a chance today to come across Vidly- which is a video tool that can be used with your Twitter account. Using your webcam you can record up to a ten minute video with Vidly, add your Tweet and off it goes to Twitter to post your message with a link to your video. You also have the option to upload a video in several different video formats. I found Vidly easy to use and completed my first Vidly video in minutes which is now posted on Twitter. You can also get the embed code for the video and place it on your blog or wiki and share it that way. You can watch the video in the post. What a great tool to use for educational purposes. Think of all of the ways you could use video in an instructional setting- it boggles the mind what you can do- even with an inexpensive webcam! In this video, I talk about using Papershow in the college library with my class. Enjoy!

Inside Interview on Snow Leopard Update of ConceptDraw Products

I want to thank Gregory Zhukov, President of CS Odessa for providing me with this inside interview. I know that I found this to be interesting reading in getting an insiders perspective of what it was like to release ConceptDraw Office for the Macintosh with support for Apple's latest operating software Snow Leopard. So enjoy!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interviewed by: Vladimir Bogatov

In this post release interview of ConceptDraw, Danil Somsikov discusses some of the details on the new update of ConceptDraw Office to support Apple’s Snow Leopard. Danil talks about how this update improves the user experience for those whose daily work relies on ConceptDraw Products..

On September 9th 2009, CS Odessa released an update of their ConceptDraw Office suite, and its associated products, to support the Macintosh Snow Leopard release version 10.6.
This update covered all three products included in the ConceptDraw suite:
• ConceptDraw PRO – Professional business graphics tool for drawing schemes, diagrams and illustrating business documentation
• ConceptDraw PROJECT — Project planning tool and
• ConceptDraw MINDMAP — Tool for writing notes and presenting plans, knowledge and ideas
Many Mac users are familiar with ConceptDraw Products as professional software tools that enable them to visually work with documents and information. CS Odessa is well known for its constant stream of innovation. The latest ConceptDraw Office release for Snow Leopard reminded me of the value that is built into all the ConceptDraw Products, and I felt that this would be a good time to interview one of the key developers of ConceptDraw Office.

Danil Somsikov is a senior developer of ConceptDraw MINDMAP who recently took the time to sit down with me to discuss this release from a developer viewpoint. Of course, I also wanted to take this opportunity for Danil Somsikov to talk about the value in ConceptDraw MINDMAP as well as the support of Snow Leopard. We also spent some time discussing why the ConceptDraw MINDMAP implementation and its close integration with its suite mates within ConceptDraw Office is so important for project management and viewed as a real time saver to our customers.

What can you tell us of the ConceptDraw release for Snow Leopard and the approach taken by you and the other developers?

Our main goal for this update was the support of Snow Leopard. We focused on releasing this update on time to provide business users of Snow Leopard with reliable and stable application. We know many people use our products very heavily in their business, so we spent many hours preparing the release to support our customer’s requirements.When we do the next major update we will use many of the major innovations that are contained in Snow Leopard. Multithreading and a 64-bit architecture enabled us to implement huge improvements in our application’s speed, as well as to the application’s user interface.

Was there anything significant in the fact that the update was released at 9/09/09?

It was just a random play of events that kept us working very hard up to the last minute, it is just pure happenstance that we had everything completed at exactly 9 AM of 9/9/9. :-)

What can you say about the application speed for Snow Leopard? Can you see any difference between Snow Leopard and previous
versions of the Mac OS?

Yes, the application works significantly faster; we have found it to be one and a half times
more efficient.

How many interface changes were made in the updated version for Snow Leopard?

Technically, we paid the most attention to delivering a quick and responsive interface; Snow Leopard helped us with that. The updated interfaces work very smoothly. We made no changes to the GUI (graphical user interface) so this update will remain very familiar for our customers.

What was the hardest part of releasing this version for Snow Leopard?

This time we made many modifications in accordance with Cocoa changes. I really love the Mac platform and all of us on the development team made the required changes to deliver a reliable and stable application for our Snow Leopard users. Traditionally, even with the minor updates of ConceptDraw Products, users can expect to see some additional new and useful features.

What features were added for this update for Snow Leopard?

This time we extended functionality of exporting to PowerPoint, I think our users who use this export feature of the product will like the improvements.

How do you personally use mind mapping in your daily work?

Oh, wow, I use it for everything! I have a multipage mind map in the form of my own personal dashboard where I keep all my notes, books I have or am currently reading, my personal journal/log, and frequently I email mind maps to my friends. I even have a very large mind map that describes all of my work projects and presentations. Additionally, I use mind maps to collect information which may be of use for my current or future work. Aside from these, I use maps to organize information to make decisions that involve many different scenarios and options.

What do you see that differentiates the ConceptDraw MINDMAP product in the marketplace?
How much space do you have to write in?

I will be brief here and limit it to five:
• One, our customers tell us that the product is very easy to learn and use, but is very
powerful at the same time. We work hard to accomplish this; it is a constant focus
of ours.
• Two, we are well integrated with ConceptDraw PROJECT. This makes it easy to start
and manage projects. We are not just a lightweight visual representation of task data,
but a real tool that can be used.
• Three, ConceptDraw MINDMAP multiple page feature in a single map is a very powerful
way to organize larger maps. I use this functionality in most of my maps.
• Four, we provide identical functionality with our Macintosh and PC versions of all of our
products. For people that use both, or want to migrate from one to the other, this is
a immeasurable feature.
• Five, our Brainstorm mode is very powerful and well liked by all of our customers
I could go on, but for the sake of space I will stop at five!

Can you tell me be about your favorite feature of ConceptDraw MINDMAP?

I love the shortcut keys Ctrl+Arrows (up/down, left/right). When viewing a map, I use
the Ctrl+Arrows keys to change a topic’s location levels inside the map’s structure. I find
that for books I read — changing a topic’s location helps me better understand the subject
and creates a more thoughtful and logical description. When I’m changing the topic’s order
and finally discover the right place – my understanding of the subject improves. I like that. :-)
Once you have distributed topics to the right places on the branches of the mind map
tree, the problem becomes much clearer and making decisions becomes an easy and visual
process. It’s a great guideline to follow.

What do you wish to tell people who use ConceptDraw?

I encourage all users of ConceptDraw to write to us with their ideas and wish lists. We research
and implement many fresh ideas of what our users have told us, they would want in
a toolbox for daily use. We are happy to consider all ideas from our customers, especially the most innovative
functionality suggestions which intend to save time and make them more efficient. Many of these ideas have been or are being implemented in future major upgrades. An example of this type of work is the implementation of our One Click Navigation feature set, which was added because of user feedback on making navigation easier within
large maps.We have also implemented a number of easy to use tools for transforming notes into
a presentation. Another feature that we added was an extensive toolbox for project managers who
need to communicate work status of projects and tasks on a daily basis.

What would you like to add to this interview?
I love helping people become more productive. It is my wish to continue to develop our
products that will be useful in anyone’s daily work! :-)
______________________________________
The powerful cross-platform development technology, used by CS Odessa, provides
customers with regular updates as quick as any Windows or Macintosh operating
system updates are scheduled for release. We will always ensure that
ConceptDraw Products will be on-time with updates in the future.
Our development team listens to customer feedback which has a positive impact
on our product development. We are focused and dedicated to improving our products
with innovative functionality and new techniques for “visual writing”.
Who benefits from visual writing? There is a universal need to produce highly visual
documents everywhere and by everyone. One such category of knowledge worker who
require this capability are project managers. They have an appreciation for tools which
saves time and resources on their tasks, and can automatically generate different views
of a project’s data for a wide audience of project participants and stakeholders.

Free Learning

Harold Jarche had a great post If learning was free that raises questions that need to be continually asked by learning and development around the issues of Free.

In the Business of Learning, I compared publishing and learning. Big publishers are having problems as the cost of distribution goes towards zero and as that brings along a ton of competition from the low end. Learning as a publisher of courses, content, etc. is facing the same thing. There's a lot of other content out there.

• How differentiated is the content that we produce from all of the Free Learning that's otherwise available?
• Is our content really that much better?

The typical response of large publishers is that their content is better. And yes, Britannica, New York Times, etc. that have paid, professional editors, writers are better quality than alternatives for the specific content that they cover. But all major publications have limitations in that because of the cost, they have to go after large audiences and they need to stay at higher level topics. They can't afford to go into depth in niche areas because the costs would be too high for the return.

Harold is drawing a parallel with Advertising. When you produce advertising for massive distribution on network TV, you can afford to spend a lot of time and money to produce the ads. However, when you begin to go after small, niche audiences, then low cost production becomes important. Harold tells us:

Anybody see a parallel here with instructional systems design or curriculum development? These processes take time and money and once the investment is made, nobody wants to do it again. Web media can be created quickly and, if designed in an open manner, can change according to the needs of learners and facilitators. For instance, we developed the Work Literacy site in about a week and at no cost. It was added to and modified by the participants. Everyone was an unpaid volunteer. Total cost: zero.

What Harold is raising is that there are going to be lots of free learning that is going to compete with our the more costly paid learning that learning organizations will continue to produce. Free learning can come from groups like Work Literacy that provided a large online learning experience for free, or from LearnTrends that produces amazing content like LearnTrends 2009 for free. It also comes from all the subject matter experts both inside and outside your organization that are continually producing content.

Free Learning may not be as high a quality – although I would claim that LearnTrends and WorkLiteracy filled niches. And sure if we spend time and money to produce courseware, it will be better than the stuff created by a subject matter expert with a rapid elearning tool. And there will continue to be times when the payback for better quality content will justify the cost. But …

The reality is that focusing our attention on publishing higher quality content – being at the high-end of materials – will mean that we are Marginalized. And let's not sugar coat this.

So rather than passing out clubs, we really need to embrace Free Learning:

• Pull free learning together and deliver it into the organization.
• Help people find free learning that you've not yet aggregated.
• Teach people new learning skills.
• Leverage the actions that go along with free learning to add value back into the organization.

Embrace, facilitate, support, connect, leverage free learning.

Please help - I'm looking right now for examples of organizations using open course content (e.g., OCW, OER) as part of their internal learning. If you know of examples, please contact me.

Free Learning Resources

I took a quick look on eLearning Learning to see what it has to say around Free. It was interesting to see all the different kinds of finds there are by visiting related pages like:

• Free Tools
• Free Webinars
• Free Resources
• Free Courses
• Free Courseware

And one item that comes to the top a lot is ZaidLearn's post University Learning - OCW - OER - Free - worth checking out.

LearnTrends Innovation Awards

George Siemens, Jay Cross and Tony Karrer are pleased to announce the first ever LearnTrends 2009 Innovation Awards.

These awards are designed to recognize the products, projects and companies that represent interesting innovations in use of technology for Corporate / Workplace Learning and Performance.

Winners will be announced and will be asked to do short presentations during the conference.

Deadline for submission is: October 30.

You can see details of what we are asking for in the form below.

To apply for an award, please fill out the:

Submission Form

If you have questions, feel free to Leave a Comment or drop me an email: akarrer@techempower.com

Please Help

We very much want to get nominations from all corners. If you can help us spread the word about these awards, that would be greatly appreciated. Think something is innovative – please let them know about this. Post about this on your blog. Tweet about it. Any help would be appreciated.

Here are some graphics you can use:

Go!Tweet! from Vernier Software & Technology

I just learned about this new Twitter application from Vernier Software & Technology called Go!Tweet which can provide real time data capturing that is sent and posted through your Twitter account. Imagine classrooms linked across the globe using this technology to capture real time scientific data using Twitter. It is really simple to get started using this new application. First you will need a Twitter account. Second, you can download the Go!Tweet application from Vernier which at this time is only available for the Macintosh. Thirdly, you will need to have one of the following digital sensors:

• Go!Temp USB Temperature Sensor
• Go!Motion USB Motion Detector
• Go!Link USB Sensor Interface and a compatible sensor

Once you have the Go!Tweet application installed simply plug in your sensor and start sending your data to your Twitter account. I used my Go!Temp USB sensor this morning to send the temperature in my kitchen to Twitter. Now imagine have a consortium of schools doing a project and using the Go!Tweet application to send live data that can be tracked over Twitter- pretty cool! Remember that you can use the # hashtag to track your online data collection projects. Just have everyone who is involved in your data collection project use the same hashtag ie. #DataProject101 which can then be searched on Twitter. You can go into the Preferences in Go!Tweet and enter the hashtag that will automatically be posted with the data. Works like a charm! Now just wondering when Go!Tweet will be available for Windows?

LearnTrends 2009 - Free Online Conference

George Siemens, Jay Cross and Tony Karrer are pleased to announce our third annual free online conference:

LearnTrends 2009 - Agenda and Speakers

The Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations Conference

November 17-19, 2009 | Online | Free

The theme/focus this year is on Convergence in Workplace Learning. We will bring together people who look at different aspects of learning and knowledge work to understand better what's going on in those areas and how we should be thinking about this holistically. I'm particularly looking forward to discussions of how:

• Enterprise 2.0
• Communities and Networks
• Knowledge Management
• Corporate Libraries
• Talent Management

come together to form a cohesive picture. What should L&D managers be doing relative to these related efforts? How does this impact our eLearning Strategy? Heck just discussing eLearning Strategy should be fun with the right people in the room.

As always, this conference is about getting together interesting people who bring a slightly different perspective and have meaningful conversation around innovation in workplace learning. We typically get more than a thousand people signed up and at least a hundred in each session.

And every year I learn a lot.

To register, you must first register on the LearnTrends community and then register on the Conference Event Page.

Lots of details of speakers will follow.

The conference will also include the LearnTrends Innovation Awards 2009. Please see that post for details.

Please Help

We very much welcome broad participation in the event. Anything you can do to help get the word out would be appreciated. Some ideas:

• Post about it on your blog.
• Add it to your sidebar.
• Put a comment in a discussion group or LinkedIn group.
• Tweet about it.
• Send an email to your work colleagues to let them know.

Wow, I ran out of ideas quick. What else can people do to get the word out?

One suggestion I just received - let's use the hashtag: #learntrends to refer to things related to the group and the conference.

Oh and here are some graphics you can use along with your announcement.

Putting eLearning on the Map

I just got finished reading in Education Week, Swine-Flu Plans Put E-Learning in the Spotlight and was thinking that with the potential for the H1NI virus to close schools across the United States this Fall, it is time for administrators, technology directors and teachers to consider some stop gap measures so there is continuity in instruction. Over the past couple of years business has relied more and more on the internet for the presentation of information. Using services like Glance, Adobe Connect Pro, Adobe ConeectNow, Webex, Elluminate, GotoMeeting, and Dimdim businesses have saved millions of dollars and have been able to effectively provide high quality professional development. I know from my own participation in many webinars how much I have learned over the past two years. It is time that schools begin to invest in these services so that the school day can be extended beyond 3.00 pm. When looking at the potential for many school closing because of the H1NI virus it would prudent for schools to invest and learn how to deliver instruction using these powerful technologies. Yes- I know not everyone has access to the internet in their home's but there are opportunities for community centers and libraries to be able to host the sessions, if needed. Using these aforementioned technologies with built-in Voice Over Internet Protocol, teachers can reach out to their students and continue to provide instruction.

Teachers may also want to look into using Skype to keep in touch with their students using the video-conferencing feature or audio features. With an inexpensive webcam it is possible to deliver instruction to small groups of students at no cost! Students would be able to see their teacher and ask questions as if they were in their classroom. I can remember growing up in New York City during one of the longest teacher strikes and having my teachers meet in the basement of one of our home's to teach us. Now with the advent of Skype and similar technologies teachers could deliver instruction without leaving their home.

In the interim what can schools do to provide continuity of instruction if school closings become an inevitability? For one, there are a number of free or inexpensive resources that could help schools provide teacher materials to their students. Teachers can begin to look at creating a wiki (PBWiki) that would allow them a central point to communicate and store files or start a blog (Blooger) with linked resources to stay in touch with their students. Teachers can also create materials using Google Docs and post links from the school website so that students can access them. It would also be a good idea for teachers to begin to collect student or parent's emails so that in the event that there needs to be communication-teachers could send out an email with information.

Some schools have already implemented Blackboard or Moodle which can provide a great learning environment for students with access to materials, discussion boards, links and resources. For teachers who do not have access to the aforementioned services you may want to take a look at creating a Google Site which is free. Google Sites are free and relatively easy to set up. Google Sites provide the ability to set permissions and control access while providing tools to create engaging learning environments.

One of the technologies that I have been using for some time in the courses that I teach is screencasting. This technology allows you as the teacher to capture anything that is on your computer screen including the audio. Imagine for a moment being able to solving a math problem and show your students how to do it step by step as if they were in your classroom. Well in fact using screencasting technology it is possible and relatively easy to do. For the past several years I have used Camtasia Studio and Adobe Captivate to create my screencasts which I have used on my blog and in the classes that I teach. For those of you that are looking for a free solution you can take a look at Jing and Screenr. To get started using these program open the application that you want to use- connect your microphone and hit the Record button. That's all there is to it. Once you are done you can post your movies to the web and have your students access them. Each 3-5 minutes video can highlight a new concept or idea and instruct your student on the days lesson. if you have an interactive whiteboard in your classroom-many of the notebook software applications have the recording feature built-in to capture a screencast.

Over the past year I have been writing about various digital pen technologies that can open the door to screencasting which have tremendous teaching potential. The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen is an ideal tool for creating pencasts. Just turn in on and start writing and talking, when you are done upload your pencast to the web- get the URL and your students can watch and listen to you over the web. If you are using PowerPoint in your classroom you should take a look at Papershow which allows you to annotate your PowerPoint presentations and using a tool like Jing it is easy to record your session for playback. Papershow is an ideal tool when used in a distance learning and when doing webinars. When using Papershow in conjunction with screensharing methodologies it offers teachers the ability to have an interactive whiteboard to share their ideas and lessons over the internet. Imagine having the ability to write on a piece of paper and your students will see everything that you are writing. At the end of the session you can then save your notes as a PDF or email them to your students.

While no one can predict if there will be an outbreak of the N1H1 virus there are steps that schools can begin to make to insure the continuity of instruction using today's e-learning tools. First and foremost- schools need to have a reliable and effective way to communicate with their students and or families via email or the web. Schools should begin to think about how they intend to communicate to the families and work with teachers to help set up their web pages or sites to disseminate information. As I shared with you there are lots of ways that teachers could provide continuity of instruction should their schools have to remain closed for a period of time. While there are lot of new and exciting technologies to deliver instruction over the internet - schools should begin to explore how these can be incorporated with their plans in the event that schools will be closed. In any case, schools need to explore how these elearning technologies and Web 2.0 can enrich the instruction in the classroom and begin utilize these tools for developing opportunities for student learning beyond the school day. It is time that all schools look into delivering learning using these new and exciting eLearning tools.

Brandon Hall Free Webinars Added

Just a quick note to announce that the crew at Brandon Hall have joined up as eLearning Calendar Curators. Janet Clarey just announced it today on Workplace Learning Today. The bottom line to this is that we will all be working together to create a calendar of Free Online eLearning Events.

If you want to subscribe to be notified of upcoming events, go subscribe to the Best of from eLearning Learning.

If you want to help by becoming a calendar curator, please Leave A Comment.

If you see events that we are missing, please Leave A Comment.

Leave A Comment

Blogs are all about conversation. I just saw a post that explained to readers how to leave a comment, and I thought that might be a good idea to have that post as well and it would be a nice addition to the content in my First Time Visitor's Guide. Please, if you have thoughts or questions on one of my posts leave a comment.

• It shows me that you care.
• That it inspired a thought or a question.

I learn a tremendous amount from the comments on my blog. So, please, please, leave a comment.

Have I begged enough?

Comment Policy

I welcome comments on this blog — suggestions, affirmations, critiques, questions.

I ask that your comments:

• are constructive and not personal or hurtful
• are related to the content of the post
• include personal connections to what the post is about. A comment which does not add to the conversation, runs of on an inappropriate tangent, or kills the conversation may be edited, moved, or deleted.

I try to respond to comments fairly quickly. In some cases, I wait a little while so that other people can weigh in.

How to Leave a Comment

To leave a comment, just click on the "Post a Comment" link near the bottom of each post.

It will take you to a page that looks something like:

You can provide various bits of information so we know who you are. I'd recommend not doing Anonymous comments unless that's really important. It's pretty easy to just give a name/URL combination.

This is pretty simple, so please leave a comment.

Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank

Looking at Capital City Bank from the outside, I wouldn’t have expected to find a great example of social learning inside. 

They are a solid, conservative bank. They have more than 1,100 associates spread out across Florida, Georgia and Alabama.  I recently had a great conversation with Becky Barch, a performance consultant at the Bank, about her smart application of discussion forum software from ElementK.

The forum is targeted to a small group – loan/lending assistants. There are roughly 22 people in that role in at Capital City Bank. Because loans can be fairly complex and unique, there were continual questions that came up. One person had become the “defacto associate help desk”. This individual ended up fielding all of the calls.

Becky turned around and used a discussion forum to make the situation better. The same associate who received and handled the questions before now gets the question as a discussion item and responds in the forum. They also have enlisted another associate to help field questions. And, in fact, other lending assistants will jump in with answers as well. Because the answers are stored in the discussion forum, they can be seen by everyone and can later be searched.

Questions come up on all kinds of topics. A recent topic was “Fees for Department of Motor Vehicles.” These fees vary depending on the county and there wasn’t an obvious place to find the information. So, various people contributed links and attached PDFs with the information that was needed.

They are now using the discussion forum as part of training initiatives. As they are rolling out a new escrow initiative, they’ve had webinars that were supported by Q&A in the forum. Because lending assistants are familiar with the forum, they’ve found this to be an effective pattern.

How Did They Get There?

One of the things I’ve found from doing many presentations on social/informal/eLearning 2.0 is there will be lots of activity when I get to the challenges when using this kind of approach. I spent quite a bit of time discussing how Becky made this happen . And I should point out that Becky makes all of this seem quite simple. I had to drag most of this information out of her.

First, the Bank has a bit of experience from the very top with social media. They have an internal message board used by the CEO of the Bank called “Bill’s Blog.” Anyone can ask a question and various associates would formulate an answer post. If needed an “official” or correct answer, it would be highlighted. The idea was to use this as a tool to learn and get questions answered. It has has been successful in the Bank and certainly signals openness to using social media.

However, I think the real story here is more around Becky’s background, particularly the first course that she took at Florida State University (FSU) from Professor Jeong (an expert in discussion forums for learning). Not surprisingly given Dr. Jeong’s background, this course heavily leveraged peer discussion through discussion forums. Becky said she was wondering where the professor was in all of this for a long time. She expected more involvement. However, as the course progressed and the concepts of social learning and self-reflection as part of the learning process emerged, she saw the beauty in what Dr. Jong had done. He had set up a great environment and taught them how to engage. He provided very specific instructions and guidance, and provided plenty of support. It took a while, but Becky and the other students really came to understand that kind of learning.

So, when Becky saw this situation, it was obvious that a discussion forum could work. And, certainly the subject matter expert, she was happy the work she was doing would reach more than one person at a time. She knew that much support would be needed, as the company definitely has an e-mail and phone culture. She set up sample questions with answers to provide context and initial categories for the questions. She supported the users and the subject matter expert as they began using the system. Of course, given the culture, most of the users have the system setup so they get e-mail notifications from the discussion forum.

Over time, they are beginning to establish a culture where many associates are contributing information. Initially, another lending assistant was set up with permission to post answers to help out the subject matter expert. But that changed associates’ perspectives on the site and more associates are getting comfortable posting answers, suggestions, etc. Becky ensured a safe and positive environment to make sure that people feel comfortable asking and answering questions.

I was certainly curious about how Becky overcame the obstacle of potential risk/liability in a heavily regulated field like lending. She didn’t see it as that much of an issue. Lending assistants were already familiar with sending questions via e-mail and documenting loans. These folks were knowledgeable about issues related to fair lending. It was unlikely there would be an issue and if one arose, they would follow standard procedures that would have been executed via e-mail in the past. The system actually has an advantage in that respect since users can flag potential issues in the system. But so far, this has not been the case.

Lessons Learned and Next Steps

Becky has found other groups want to adopt this same kind of approach. She’s slowly deciding on how she will tackle these.

Becky discovered how important it is to know the boundaries of the community If you want this to be a safe environment, you have to know who is in or out. Who has access to the information? They’ve had some challenges with more people have wanting access to the forums as they see value in the information. But, does that violate the safety of being able to ask anything in a safe environment?

We also had an interesting discussion about what happens when management asks for access. Obviously, you can’t say no. But how do you provide access without violating the spirit of the group? This hasn’t been a problem at the Bank, but it is an interesting issue. Becky suggested providing temporary access to those who would not normally have access so they can see how the tool is being used without violating the user’s trust.

Becky said forwarding the future she will have more up-front discussion about who will and won’t have access. In particular, asking the question, “Who else do you see who would benefit from this?”

Final Thought

One thing that really struck me about my conversations with Becky is how obvious she made all of this sound. But it was only obvious after her experience at FSU. It was obvious to her when she saw what was currently happening. It was obvious how she could support the lending assistants with detailed help / guidance. It’s obvious to Becky.

I’m pretty sure it would not have been obvious to a lot of other people. And I’m not quite sure how to make this obvious, but I’m thinking about it. Becky’s suggestion is that everyone should participate in a 100% online course with a discussion forum and someone there who knows how to moderate it.

Becky – thanks for a great conversation and sharing with me/us!

Do you have a case study for me?

I'm hoping to do a lot of case studies over the next 6-12 months looking at interesting examples of the use of social/informal/web 2.0 learning.  If you have an example, please drop me an email: akarrer@techempower.com.

SmartDraw 2010 & Project Management

I have been a SmartDraw user for some time now and was delighted to learn that SmartDraw 2010 was soon going to be released with some new mind mapping and project management features that I was interested in exploring. As I shared with you in a previous post I was introduced to some of the new features of SmartDraw 2010 by the CEO Paul Stannard who is extremely passionate about the product. One of the markets that SmatDraw realizes there is a strong need for their product is in the area of project management. So with this release they have added more functionality and have made the product easier to use and have cut down on the steps it takes to go from mind mapping a project to creating a Gantt Chart or a timeline.

In SmartDraw 2010 you will still find it easy to create a basic mind map using the the SmartPanel. If you want to create your mind map even faster in SmartDraw 2010 you can quickly create a mind map using the Control and Arrow keys to create your ideas on the screen. I found this quite intuitive and within minutes was able to complete a mind map. If you like there are several mind mapping templates that ships with SmartDraw 2010 can be a great starting point for your session. I personally would have liked to see more templates and be able to have the option to change the direction of the mind map so that I could have top to down or left to right. You will find in SmartDraw 2010 that you can easily apply styles, so that your finished mind map has a a very professional and polished look. You will also find that SmartDraw 2010 spaces everything just so that branches on your mind map are equidistant from one another which is a nice touch. There are lots of ways to share you maps in SmartDraw 2010- you can export it 12 different file formats- everything from PDF to HTML or send it to Microsoft PowerPoint. The list is extensive! SmartDraw 2010 has also added the ability for users to add Comments on the mind map so that when they are shared they can be reviewed somewhat similar to the feature found in Microsoft Word. This is a wonderful feature especially in corporations that are using SharePoint. SmartDraw 2010 integrates seamlessly with SharePoint and lets you browse your server and open SmartDraw files.

Going from your mind map in SmartDraw 2010 to a Gantt Chart or Timeline is very easy. Simply select the View As button and select Gantt Chart or Timeline. Within seconds your Gantt Chart is displayed on your screen. SmartDraw 2010 has been updated and will allow you to manage much larger projects than in the previous version. I believe that in SmartDraw 2009 the limit was 100 tasks. You will also find that moving around SmartDraw 2010 even with larger data sets is easy to do and the program doesn't even skip a beat. SmartDraw 2010 now shows a Summary bar when you have subtasks under a topic- which works really well. HOwever, I would have like to see the Summary bar automatically reflect the percentage of the work done based on the completion entries in the subtasks. For now you will have to enter a the percentage completion value into the Summary task manually. You now more control of the information that is shown on the Columns in your Gantt view and it is easy to add Start Dates, End Dates, Cost, Duration, % Complete, Department, Number, & Resource to your Gantt chart. Whiel SmartDraw 2009 supported Finish to Start dependencies, it is a lot easier to set them up in the SmartDraw 2010. Unfortunately SmartDraw 2010 does not support Start to Start, Finish to Finish or Finish to Start dependencies. When you have completed your Gantt Chart in SmartDraw 2010 you can also export it to Microsoft Project. Likewise, you can also import data from Microsoft Project and bring it into SmartDraw 2010.

It is now just as easy to create a timeline from your mind map which is just a click away. Simply select the Timeline option from your mind map and within seconds you have a professionally delivered timeline of your project which for some will be able to comprehend more easily than if it were presented as a Gantt chart. You will find SmartDraw 2010 a flexible and easy to use application to handle small to medium projects. It is an ideal tool for communicate your project and getting all of your stakeholders on board. You will find it easy to print our comprehensive Gantt charts and timeline which can go a long way to keep your projects on time and within budget. For more information about SmartDraw 2010 click here.

eLearning Strategy

I spend a fair amount of my consulting time working with large organizations to help define how they will apply technology to particular business / performance / learning needs. This is either in terms of specific needs, e.g., improve customer satisfaction, or as part of an overall eLearning strategy.

I've spent several hours this morning trying to find good resources on eLearning Strategy development and particularly looking for examples to use in this post. I've really been striking out. I'm hoping that people will help out.

Update Nov. 2010 - I just did a search for eLearning Strategy articles and through eLearning Learning found a bunch more around eLearning Strategies, Learning Strategies that resulted in Top 35 Articles on eLearning Strategy.

Most of the time I'm working with a centralized technology groups within Learning and Development that acts as a services arm to corporate L&D and to distributed L&D that is spread throughout the organization. I wish I had a good name for these groups, but they are called something different in most organizations. For the purpose of this post, I'll call it the L&D Technology Group.

It's interesting working closely with L&D Technology Groups because you are a key influencer, but you don't really decide much about the performance and learning strategies. Rather, you are very similar to a services company. You get requests for help building particular kinds of solutions. You determine business requirements around that solution and get to influence where it goes. But ultimately, the internal customer and likely someone who is in another department within L&D who is responsible for learning design (ID) ultimately decides on the approach that will be taken.

Another interesting aspect for the L&D Technology Group is that you really don't know what your next client may ask you to do. So, you have to be prepared for a wide variety of different kinds of requirements and be ready to service them. You can't afford to be constantly saying, "We can't help you with that." At the same time, you can't over-engineer because it costs too much to prepare for every last contingency.

This is the heart of the challenge in defining eLearning Strategy:

• predicting future needs,
• planning to effectively and efficiently service those needs.

Predicting Needs

The starting point for an eLearning Strategy is predicting needs. This is very hard. Clearly, you are going to go around the organization to various business owners, partners such as IT, KM, Corporate Library, etc., and to your distributed L&D organization to understand what you can about the kinds of requirements they will have in the future. Of course, you can't say - "What requirements will you have for me in the future?" Few of your internal customers or partners will be able to answer that question in a way that really helps you.

Instead, the eLearning Strategy discussion is a learning, teaching and evangelist discussion. You start the conversation by understanding what their real business, performance, talent and learning challenges are. And then you shift from those challenges to the myriad of different kinds of solutions that might be part of solutions. You have to walk people through different tools and learning methods. Show potential customers within the organization what they are and how they can be applied. Then collaborate around where and how they might fit with the organizations needs.

This conversations can result in some really great outcomes. But most often, it's quite a mess. You will hear about many different kinds of possible future needs. Some wish list kinds of things. Often you have to talk your internal customer out of something that's pretty crazy. "Sure that 3D telepresence stuff if pretty cool. I bet we could get similar outcomes by using X. It wouldn't be quite as cool, but is probably much more cost effective."

Still in my experience this is messy stuff and you try your best to capture what it means for you in terms of requirements.

I would love to hear how people do this and if they have good ways of capturing this mess of requirements.

Planning Services

From this messy set of requirements, you are really looking at a strategy where you define the set of services you will deliver to the rest of the organization. This includes:

• Learning Method Support
• Tools / Technologies
• Process / People / Vendors

You need to be the one who is aware of what's happening generally with technology in the organization. You have to be a really good partner with IT. You are going to be learning's liaison to IT.

You likely are also a liaison to vendors. As parts of the organization have variable needs for technology solutions, part of the strategy is to be able to quickly and effectively engage with vendors to address particular needs.

Technology steward – you likely can't say to the rest of the organization, "Don't use these tools." But you can say, "We know this set of tools works. If you use this other tool, we won't be able to support you as well."

Packaging Your eLearning Strategy

In most cases, if you are going after significant dollars, a key aspect of your eLearning Strategy will be how you present it. Most often this includes some kind of vision for what you are looking to provide. It will summarize at a high level the requirements you are hearing and then will talk about what this means in terms of your Learning Strategies and then how the technologies fit into this.

Most of the time, it's best not to focus too much on all the different individual types of solutions you are prepared to deliver, but rather on the net effects. Still almost every eLearning Strategy will contain something like the Learning Methods from Reuters:

This is broader than the technology group, but there are implications for the technology group. You can also see that there are talent elements in this list.

It will also contain a list of major technology or related initiatives along a timeline:

I did a bit of searching looking for examples of corporate/workplace eLearning Strategy presentation decks. I didn't find a lot. It would be really interesting to see what people produce around these things. Please point me to them!

Bigger eLearning Strategy Questions

Focus?

• See Learning Performance Business Talent Focus. This question of focus and scope has a major impact on the strategy.
• What's your role relative to Talent Strategies? Are you involved in Selection, Onboarding, Reviews, Development?
• What's your role relative to providing business and performance focused initiatives? Are you on the front lines of improving customer satisfaction? Do you get in and analyze aspects of performance relative to that and provide Data Driven performance solutions? Or are you going to be brought in to provide training?

Informal learning?

• Are you focused on and responsible for informal learning solutions? What responsibility do you have after the learning event?
• Providing a set of tools (wikis, blogs, discussion groups, etc.) that can be used as part of informal learning support does not mean that you are really supporting informal learning in the organization. There's a lot more to it than that. And part of your strategy should be to be prepared to help your internal customers with those aspects.

Others

• Off-the-Shelf / External Content?What's your responsibility for finding, vetting, facilitating the acquisition of external content sources, e.g., Skillsoft, Books 24x7, Safari, etc.
• Content management, re-use
• Portal and portal integration
• Reporting/dashboards

What are some of the other big eLearning Strategy questions?

Resources

Bersin provides a great high-level list of issues to consider in their Modernize Corporate Training: The Enterprise Learning Framework. It is good to raise possible areas to consider.

Also worth a peek is: The eLearning Guild : Guild eBooks: Handbook of e-Learning Strategy

What other resources are there on this topic? What would help me think through what I might be missing in my strategy? What would help me create a presentation to executives with our eLearning Strategy?