LMS Tracking of Podcasts and Video Casts

I received an interesting question from someone who is working on providing content to a remote sales force of about 40 people on topics such as selling process, products and selling skills.  They currently provide some podcasts and video casts, but would like to track the new content that is being developed now. 

It seems like this should be an obvious question.  You can put the audio or video inside a SCORM course and load it into an LMS.  Given the small audience and limited scope, likely a Rapid Learning Management System would make a lot of sense if that was the direction.  I’d have to think a bit more to have a specific suggestion on the course authoring tool for this, but should be easy enough to do this.

However, in this case the sales force is used to accessing this as MP3 and MP4 files available for download into their iPods, iPhones, etc.  They are not used to connecting via an LMS.  Likely the sales force is not going to be happy about:

• The extra clicks and complexity to access - Does a Learner WANT an LMS?
• Not playing it back on their disconnected mobile device.

This is a fairly common use case.  Certainly, I’m missing something.  So, asked my various networks about this and got back few responses. 

Peter Casebow via twitter:

@tonykarrer got to ask how does it help org to count or know who's had access unless for compliance reasons. What will you do with data?

They do want to track this for helping to make sure that the sales force gets through the content.  I.e., follow-up notifications.  However, they might be able to get away with putting the core content out the same way they do today and only put the assessments into the LMS.  The tracking would only be that they did a portion.  This is a change to  What Goes in the LMS?

Of course, that assumes that they don’t need to track going through the content and that there are assessments.  I’m pretty sure that neither is true.

Is there a better way to do this?

Canson to Launch PaperShow for Mac at MacWorld 2010

For the past year I have been using PaperShow extensively when I teach, do presentations, and for webinars. It has been a really indispensable tool and I carry PaperShow in my bag wherever I go. Because of PaperShow's ease of use and portability I can walk into any room and within seconds have a digital flipchart ready to go, to share and capture ideas. I have written about my experiences with PaperShow on this blog for the past year and from day one have asked Canson "when will we see PaperShow for the Mac?" Well that day is finally coming and I am happy to share with you that Canson will launch PaperShow for Mac this week at the MacWorld 2010 Conference to be held in San Francisco.

I have worked closely with Canson during this past year and I will be going to MacWorld 2010 to help them launch their new product. I have been working with PaperShow for Mac for the past couple of weeks and in some ways it is even easier to use than the Windows version. With all of the functionality of the Windows version and the ease of use of the Mac this is a real winner. So if you plan on attending MacWorld 2010, stop by the PaperShow Booth in the Exhibitor Hall-Booth 746 and say hello. I will also be doing a presentation on Friday February 12th, a Product Spotlight Session: Make Your Presentations Come to Life with PAPERSHOW for the Mac from 1:30 PM - 2:00 PM. So stop by the booth or come and learn more about PaperShow for the Mac at my presentation.

Selling Social Learning – Be a Jack

I was just reading a post - Top 5 tips to gain buy in for learning with social media.  The tips were many of the usual suspects (click on the link for details):

1. Build a solid measurable plan
2. Do your research and put it to the test
3. Choose your words carefully
4. Blitz the stigma
5. Educate the decision makers

This is good stuff, but it also got me to thinking that this might be way more complicated than it really needs to be.  Instead, one of the things that I Learned about Learning in 2009 and was an important eLearning Predictions for 2010 was to “Be a Jack”.  What does this mean?

I detailed it in Selling Learning Communities – Not Everyone Will or Wants a Group Hug.  Go listen to Jack and how he describes what he does.  And the key in selling social learning / learning communities was the simple explanation of what they are in a value proposition.  Here’s what Be a Jack sounds like:

If I can bring together outside experts and/or people from across the organization with expertise and facilitate a conversation on the critical business issues you are facing and help you capture that so that it can get distributed in the organization – is that something you would want?

Absolutely!  In fact, we all want that all the time! 

As an example, the way that I should have described a SharePoint Social Learning Experience if my audience was a CLO or VP Learning would be:

If I can bring together people from across your learning organization in a facilitated discussion possibly with outside peers or experts so that they can explore the implications of social learning, informal learning and Using SharePoint in the organization as both a system for facilitating the work of L&D and as a tool to be used as part of learning solutions – is that something you would want?

Or the HP example out of that same post:

Help marketing professionals understand the implications of Web 2.0 for HP’s marketing efforts.

Am I wrong, or doesn’t it make a lot of sense to simply Be a Jack?

An Interview with Audrey Dalton from CodeBaby Part 2

Part 2 of Interview with Audrey Dalton

BSF: Can you share some examples for us as to how eLearning Designers are taking advantage of CodeBaby for their services or products?

Services:

We offer a very generous support policy for 18% of your final single license price.
Includes:
✓ 1 year of free updates including major version changes
✓ Priority phone and email support + 12 hours of application assistance on customer projects

Lots of designers take advantage of custom services through clothing changes, character changes, and even completely new characters. We have clients that ask for doctors, nurses, specific uniforms, hats, etc.

Additionally, in the very near future, we're gearing up to provide a more extensive lineup of training services, from self-service tutorials to webinars to onsite training. We currently provide this training, but we're looking forward to extending the offerings.

And at this point, since we're a very personalized organization that's still growing, we offer a very human connection when you're dealing with us. We provide unique solutions for each client.

Telstra, the largest internet provider, trains 40,000 employees on the best practices of social media engagement featuring character "Lily". They do this by integrating Lily into an interactive flash comic book.

The Medical School at McMaster University raised public awareness of asthma symptoms on behalf of the Asthma Society of Canada, in honor of World Asthma Day. They publicly launched the module “Taking Control of Your Asthma” on May 9, 2009.


ASTD Best Winner, global accounting firm, Grant Thornton, uses CodeBaby characters in multiple languages across the globe this is due to the language independent lip synching. Learners achieved an average of a 11% higher score than the national average for their most recent tax training.

The University of Illinois uses a specific mad scientist custom characters in its science eLearning modules.

I could go on, but the list is extensive.

BSF: What eLearning applications can you integrate CodeBaby into?

AD: Anything that accepts a swf, avi or flv file, for example Articulate, Captivate, PowerPoint, Lectora, Rapid Intake, and Learn.com, etc. I'm not recommending specific tools, but the point is that this works with most everything. The only restriction we have is that you are using the CodeBaby characters for internal learning uses and you're not trying to sell eLearning that includes the CodeBaby character, unless you have a specific agreement with us.


BSF: What is the learning curve for integrating CodeBaby into your current projects?

AD: Extremely fast. If you're an eLearning developer, with one or two tutorials and perhaps a webinar, you'll be able to create a two character interaction almost immediately. I'm fairly tech savvy but nowhere near the skill level of some of our eLearning partners, and I can now create custom animated one character interaction, and I learned that in one day. We have one client, Wendy Phillips with Big Pond in Australia, that learned the program and developed an award-winning flash comic book eLearning program on employee orientation all in a matter of two weeks - from start to finish.

BSF: Could you walk us briefly through the steps to develop an eLearning solution using the CodeBay Production Studio?

AD: Yes, first things first. After you decide to use characters to simulate role plays or specific people, define that character's persona. Run a contest to name and describe your persona and get people familiar with your chosen character. Second, write dialogue script and scene instructions. How will the character walk in? What will they say? What's the location/background? You're creating a rich story before opening Studio. This way, you have outlined your props and backgrounds, character personalities and scene instructions.

Then for a very straightforward interaction, you drag and drop selected character. Drag and drop selected background (there's another step if you use your own or when exporting, it can be a transparent export which then will overlay any background in your learning output).
Import audio and allow the default for auto animation and lip syncing. Hit play and adjust gestures as necessary by dropping and dragging any number of the 400 animations. Export as flv or swf, and you're done with your first animation! As time goes on, you'll learn to use the camera changes, tweening and multiple scene and stage development.


BSF: What services does CodeBaby offer for those professionals who may be interestested in out sourcing the development?

AD: If the client provides the storyboard, we'll develop the animation. They provide their own audio or we'll source professional voice talent for them. We also create props, minor to major modifications such as glasses, aging, new clothes all the way to face wraps which means creating a character likeness of a real person, and we also develop new characters based on the client's developed persona.


BSF: What features are current users of CodeBay Production Studio asking for at this point in time?

These features will eventually be available in upcoming new versions. The most asked for new features are more character with different body sizes and additional gestures that allow for more character movement. I won't go into detail on these yet, but with our new releases, we will be satisfying these requests.


BSF: In closing- please summarize for us why eLearning Specialists should consider using CodeBaby for their projects?

AD: If you want to create amazing learning that truly helps learners retain information while enjoying the development process as you create engaging scenes and interactions, CodeBaby is the solution. Contact us for a trial to experience this for yourself!

An Interview with Audrey Dalton from CodeBaby Part 1

I had the pleasure of meeting Audrey Dalton, Product Marketing Director at CodeBaby during the DevLearn 09 Conference and had a chance to sit down and talk to her about her role and the CodeBaby platform for eLearning.


BSF: Hello Audrey, can you share with us your position and tell us a little background information about CodeBaby and the company?

AD: Responsible for all product marketing functions for the eLearning product line: Product Release Planning and Marketing, Demand generation, MarCom, Tradeshow & Event Planning, Online Community Relations, Curriculum Design, and Corporate Marketing Activities. Essentially, I'm the jack of all trades for the eLearning product marketing line and additionally have oversight for the education sector. Since we're a growing company, I'm taking on a multitude of roles at this time. Most importantly, I enjoy working with clients, our eLearning developer partners and reseller in Australia, Symmetree, to showcase and promote new uses and ideas for using CodeBaby characters in eLearning programs. In this role, I leverage my prior eLearning project management experience to facilitate their success stories and understand the customer perspective when marketing and gathering research for future product releases.

CodeBaby's history is quite interesting. CodeBaby began as a incubation project within Bioware, a Canadian company based in Edmonton, Alberta. In creating memorable 3D characters for their story-driven games, Bioware founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk noticed that those interactive characters created a powerful digital engagement and emotional response with players. In 2001, CodeBaby officially spun off as a completely separate entity. Our web product consists of digital character-driven "Conversations" that are directed at engaging customers, while driving specific objectives such as lead capture, click-to-buy, up/cross-sell, and customer self service. This product is sold on a SaaS / monthly subscription model, and integrates with a customer's site via a single line of code.

The product that I'm responsible for is the eLearning product - CodeBaby Production Studio.
CodeBaby makes the creation of animated, 3D digital characters accessible to a variety of companies who want to make their training content come to life. CodeBaby Production Studio is a timeline-based, drag-and-drop production environment that puts the capabilities of a highly skilled, 3D artist in the hands of a eLearning/training content developer. Studio comes with a library of 20+ standard characters, and 400+ animation sequences. Lip synch to recorded audio files is driven programmatically by the software, condensing hundreds of hours of animation work into only about an hour per minute of finished content.


BSF: With the shift to eLearning happening in all kinds of markets how does CodeBaby fit into this move to online learning?

AD: Good question, CodeBaby Production Studio is a natural fit for online learning, informal learning, and easily exports into any cloud-based product. Since Production Studio exports your CodeBaby scenes as swf, flv and avi files, these can be used in virtually any learning delivery. If you want the CodeBaby character to introduce classroom instruction delivered from your cloud-based presentation tool, that's easily done. If you want to create up to the minute communication announcements for your company or school, just export the CodeBaby as a swf and export to your learning portal. If you want to create more complex scenario based scenes and export into a traditional rapid eLearning or authoring tool, it's perfectly suited. As long as the medium has to do with learning, and it's for internal use, CodeBaby interactive characters are a highly effective addition to any learning program.

BSF: What do you see are the benefits of developers using CodeBaby for their eLearning projects?

AD: Are you speaking from a technical aspect or instructional design aspect? If from a technical aspect, Studio is very rich in development possibilities. For a creative, experienced developer, they'll truly enjoy playing with the 400 animations and 24 stock characters, ability to create multiple scenes and stages and the capability of producing bulk renders and exports. We have developer options to create new outfits for the characters if they use graphics programs like Maya or 3ds Max. Just the other day, one of our eLearning partners said that they've explored the program so much and have extensively studied and utilized the gestures and animations that they are now incorporating neurolinguistic programming theory into the movements in order to enhance the learning transmission. Additionally, he said that he's really looking forward to the additional animations that will available in upcoming versions.

From an instructional design perspective, we have found from our own research, from customer experience, and from Byron Reeves at Stanford from his paper the "The Benefits of Interactive Online Characters", that character interfaces bring social intelligence to online interactions. Social intelligence determines engagement, attention in learning, and persistence in relationships. Compelling social interactions are as important in online transactions as they are to teachers in real life. Bottom line, socially intelligent, interactive characters foster learning and adoption of new information and behavioral skills. We consistently hear from customers that performance improved, attention increased and they saved money when comparing online instruction with CodeBaby characters to instructor-led training or using video production. Essentially, there are no limits with how CodeBaby characters are used: as peer instructors, experts, multiple character role plays in which students learn in a non-threatening environment, in immersive simulations, sales training, customer service training, organizational change, employee orientation, best practices, compliance training, etc.


To be continued.....

Filtering, Crowdsourcing and Information Overload

Great post by Tim Kastelle - Filtering, Crowdsourcing and Innovation.  He’s talking primarily about Innovation pipelines based on crowdsourcing.  His diagram:

 

Show a fairly common model for how things can be filtered.  This is similar to the model that we used on Project Greenlight – the scriptwriting and director contest by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.  Anyone (hopefully everyone) could submit their script / movie.  From there, we had smaller and smaller batches of people reviewing until it got down to the core team looking at the top few submissions. 

This caught my eye because it’s a bit different than the model we are using on Browse My Stuff that powers sites like eLearning Learning.  In Curator Editor Research Opportunities on eLearning Learning, I described the flow that it uses:

In this case, the input is curated content although it can come from virtually anywhere.  It then relies on social signals from everyone to filter it down.

I’m not claiming that one is preferred.  And I think that you can argue that Digg uses a slightly different model.

The other part of this thought process is that the feedback on my Top 10 eLearning Predictions for 2010 was that I should have Information Overload and Information Filtering as my user chosen prediction number 10.  I tend to agree with that.  But there’s a challenge to it.  And that challenge is somewhat hinted at in this month’s big question: Instruction in a Information Snacking Culture?

• Are the training solutions being produced part of the problem of information overload?
• How do we shift to a position where we are helping to filter information and reduce overload rather than possibly contribute?

Certainly, I’m paying attention to this and I’m going to go through Tim’s post – Personal Aggregate, Filter and Connect Strategies to see how it might impact my Tool Set 2009 tools and methods, especially Information Radar, Networks and Learning Communities).

Good stuff Tim!

SharePoint Social Learning Experience

I had a great conversation last week that sparked an early stage idea for what I think would be a wonderful way for learning and development organizations to leverage SharePoint better. 

HP Web 2.0 for Marketing – Social Learning Experience

The concept is probably easiest to understand by considering what HP did around their course on Web 2.0 for Marketing.  You can find more on this by going to the LearnTrends – SharePoint in Corporate Learning Recordings.

The basic concept was that HP’s learning organization wanted to help their marketing professionals get up to speed on the implications of Web 2.0 for HP’s marketing efforts.  Of course, that’s an interesting learning problem in that the answer around “implications” is not defined. 

The L&D organization created a social learning experience that brought together 60 marketing professionals from across the organization.  They established a goal of having the group produce a summary of what they found and what Web 2.0 could mean for the organization.  In many ways, this was a facilitated work task more than a learning experience.  The L&D organization provided some instruction on the basics for how the sessions would operate and some information around Web 2.0, but a lot of the effort was discovery by the marketing professionals themselves.

In the picture below, you can see some of the mechanisms they used:

• Social Bookmarks to share resources they found
• Discussion Boards to ask questions and have discussions.
• A blog that helped spark conversations around key topics.
• A wiki that served as a repository for the resources they collected.
• Virtual class sessions to share what they were finding
• Learners were encouraged to do quick screen capture movies to explain their thoughts around particular uses of Web 2.0 technologies and share with the group.

The results were pretty incredible for HP.  And it’s exactly this kind of facilitated social learning experience where the result is somewhat a work objective that makes a lot of sense.

SharePoint Social Learning Experience

Based on the above description, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with what I think would be a fantastic learning opportunity for L&D organizations who want to understand what it means to Use SharePoint in their organization as both a system for facilitating the work of L&D and as a tool to be used as part of learning solutions.

The idea would be to:

• Set a goal to produce a presentation and set of recommendations to be presented to senior L&D management
• Get a cross section of L&D professionals and possibly others within the business
• Setup an environment that will be used both as a sandbox and as a support for the learning experience
• Introduce SharePoint (and/or other technologies) to participants
• Facilitate activities and discussions that ultimately lead towards the presentation and recommendations

Of course, there’s nothing preventing variants of this being done across multiple smaller organizations.  And certainly there are lots of external professionals that likely would make sense to either help make this happen or include as third party experts as part of the learning experience.  See Learning Community, Peers and Outside Experts for more description of possible design elements.

I also think this is a great way to help build understanding of social learning within an organization.

I’m hoping to get feedback on this?  Does it make sense as a model?  Are organizations already beyond this or should it actually be a facilitated discussion around learning technologies period, not just SharePoint?  Will it make the most sense as SharePoint 2010 begins to roll out into organizations?