Monday, January 19, 2009

Learning Materials

I've been having a very nice email conversation with a reader who contacted me with a question. The question is one that I've seen before, and I thought it would be worth asking for help from the community. Here's the basic question -

What belongs in an LMS?

more specifically, the question is:

For learning materials / content that is not a course such as videos, reference, documents, do you house these inside your LMS?

They have about 300 or so courses (ILT and courseware) on a variety of subjects in the LMS. They have quite a bit of other learning support materials. There is internal debate about putting this in the LMS vs. having it reside on the intranet (SharePoint in this case).

Advantages of having it in the LMS:
  • Usage tracked on a per-user basis (so you can see what dept, etc. are using materials)
  • Organized using the same structure as rest of courses
  • Appears near the courses so learners don't have to hunt around for it. And when a person thinks "learning" - there's a single location
  • Encourages use as part of learning
  • Uses same approval workflows
Advantages of having it ouside the LMS and on the intranet:
  • Easier to access directly when outside the LMS
  • Organization is easier outside the LMS
  • Content inside the LMS seems cleaner without all the non-course material
  • Materials not developed/approved by L&D do not require management in the LMS, instead they use SharePoint to manage
A few additional notes:
  • The CLO is asking for best practices, and in this case believes that there is a somewhat magic number of having "no more than 300 courses in the LMS."
  • Part of this is a philosophical debate about whether materials that are not really "training" materials should be inside an LMS.
  • They know that they can link between stuff inside the LMS and back to the other resources, but that doesn't really solve it. It's more a question of whether the other materials have first class status in the LMS and all the normal charateristics of something housed there.
Additional Aspects

Workflow of Other Types of Materials? - If you believe it makes sense to put this in the LMS, then there's the added question of how you handle the workflow, approvals, etc. for these other materials?

Value in Additional Tracking? - If you currently keep these kinds of materials in your LMS, do you get significant value from the ability to track to a specific user level?

Where do You Draw the Line? - Assuming that you are willing to put some or all of these additional materials in the LMS, you must draw the line somewhere. Where do you draw the line between having something in the LMS vs. putting it outside?

Additional information from my blog and other bloggers on Learning Management Systems (LMS) can be found by clicking the above links as provided by the eLearning Learning community.
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Friday, January 16, 2009

Nonprofit Technology Portal

I've been working with Beth Kanter on the creation of something similar to the eLearning Learning content community, but centered around the vibrant community that focuses on the use of technology in nonprofits. This is a work in progress, but she's done a pretty good job explaining what it is and why she's doing this in her post: How Do You Browse By Category Blog Content from NpTech Bloggers?

She raises some interesting questions around how you browse through existing blog content which was one of the primary reasons for originally creating the technology. As a blogger, keeping my labels/tags/categories up to date, was always very hard. So, this technology not only does that for me, but it helps surface the particular terms that I use more than others.

If you have thoughts on eLearning Learning or Nonprofit Technology, this is still a work in progress and we are hoping to get feedback.
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Thursday, January 15, 2009

New Features in Webspiration

Here are some updates to Webspiration which I have previously written about. Webspiration is really maturing and is a wonderful online tool for visual thinkers. As a long time Inspiration user I am really excited by this version which is accessible to me anytime I am connected to the web. If you haven't taken the time-please do so you, will be very pleased with the features and the collaboration tools that are built-in to this application.

Learning Library

Inside the Launch Center we've built a learning library with helpful articles to strengthen your visual thinking skills. College users will find some great tips on how to write papers with the least pain possible, or how to use Webspiration to study more effectively. Business users can learn the essentials of brainstorming, read some quick tips for creating diagrams, or learn how outlining can streamline your business writing.

Help Center

Our new expanded Help Center is designed to get your questions answered quickly and provide access to the information you need to use Webspiration's functions to their fullest.

The new Frequently Asked Questions section answers the most common questions we get from users, and is a great place to start if you need some help. Also in the Help Center is the Getting Started Guide, which gives you a comprehensive overview of Webspiration.

And, of course, the Help Center provides you access to our friendly Webspiration Technical Support team, in case you need help with anything that wasn't covered in the FAQ's or Getting Started Guide.

Sample Gallery

Seeing how other people are using Webspiration can sometimes trigger some great ideas of your own. The new sample gallery has samples of many different uses for visual thinking, whether it's mapping out processes, organizing papers, or laying out web sites.

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Networks and Communities

Mercenary Rationale for Network Work & Learning

As I discussed in Evaluating Performance of Concept Workers, evaluating the performance of a concept worker is difficult because there's no right answer and most often the evaluator knows less about the subject than the worker.

Thus, the bottom line in evaluating a concept workers performance is by looking at:
  • Was a reasonable process used?
  • Are the conclusions reasonable?
  • How would this compare to results from other concept workers?
To make sure you pass this test - I suggest cheating. And there is no better cheat for the concept worker than reaching out to other people to test your process and conclusions. Basically make sure you can say,
"Look, I talked to a couple of people who have done this before. They said I've gone through the right steps. I've looked at the right stuff. My answer seems pretty reasonable. If they would have done it, they would have come up with the same thing."
Limits of Search

In Value from Social Media, I looked at a scenario where I'm evaluating a particular solution for my company / organization. Through Google, I find a lot of information. But in many cases, I will still be left feeling uncomfortable ...
  • What’s really going to happen?
  • Did I miss something important?
  • How important are the various issues?
  • Is my answer reasonable?
These are common questions when only search is used. Often it's difficult to use search to address:
  • Experience - What have been the experiences of other organizations (not the canned case studies) when they’ve used this solution.
  • Boundaries / Existence - I’ve got a particular issue and I’m not sure if answers to that issue exist out there, I’ve not found it in my searching.
  • Confirmation - I’m beginning to have an answer, but I’d like to get confirmation of the answer based on my particular situation based on experience.
  • Importance - Some of the issues I see, I’m not sure how important they are in practice, should I be concerned.
However, each of these can be directly addressed through conversation. This is why I say that Leveraging Networks is Key Skill.

I'm coming to believe this is the most important Knowledge Worker Skill Gap.

Network Readiness

Before you can reach into a network or community to seek conversation, you generally need to have spent time on
  • Building some level of connection (network building).
  • Being ready to engage to seek conversation (network access).
Patti Anklam, in Seven Leaders Lessons tells us:
High-performing people tend to have stronger, more intentional networks.
The word "intentional" is intentional. You have to look systematically at your networks and communities to be in position to be able to use them as part of your work and learning. As part of your top-down evaluation, one of the points you have to evaluate is whether you have appropriate networks and communities. Even if you are a member of LinkedIn, you may not have links to people in the right fields. Thus, you may have to spend time building some initial links so that you can reach out effectively. Similarly, you should spend a bit of time finding the right communities.

I personally do a lot of my network building slowly. I try to get people into my networks when I meet them (for example connect on LinkedIn). I keep my ears open for new communities and often lurk for a while to see what's going to happen there.

When I'm relatively new to an area, then I spend much more time building my network. Recently I started up with a new client in a new area. I spent a good chunk of time my first month reaching out (mostly through LinkedIn) to make connections with people who had lots of related experience to get thoughts and ideas around particular issues that we might face - and found a lot more issues that I hadn't considered. I also signed up to a couple Ning communities where I'm lurking. Now I have a great starting point when I want further conversation.

Conversation Seeking

So bottom line is that it's really important for us to be able to seek out different forms of conversation inside and especially outside our organizations. There are a myriad of different places and ways to seek conversations.

A few months ago, we asked how people went about deciding where and how to seek conversations. The answer was, as always, it depends.

Karyn Romeis uses a series that goeses from people she already knows who might be experts then to less known connections. She looks at distance vs. likelihood vs. experience vs. cost.

Karl Kapp makes the point that you should ask in multiple places because you never know who might have the answer and the overall cost is negligible.

I think there's some risk of being spammy if you ask too broad, but Karl has somewhat convinced me that what I really need:
  • Find networks and communities related to my future needs
  • Know mechanisms used to seek conversations in these networks and communities
  • Build enough connection into networks and communities to be ready to leverage
  • Be able to quickly and with minimal effort seek conversation in appropriate networks and communities.
So, it's being aware of what's available, getting integrated enough to have it open for use, and be able to navigate it when you need it.

The top two slam dunk answers here are:
  • LinkedIn
  • Various learning communities
I personally also use my blog and twitter
  • Blog
  • Twitter
If you look at my top two, they would both be called social networks.

Introduction to Social Networking



Before You Seek Conversation

There's an acronym that everyone should know - RTFM. It stands for Read the Friggin Manual. It's a common response to stupid questions posted in certain communities. To me its a reminder that before you ever seek a conversation you should have done your homework.

Your homework is:
  1. Search the web - save related content
  2. Search the community / network for prior discussion - save related
  3. Maybe ask someone you know already for a reality check
This arms you with the basics before you ask your question or seek conversation. It also allows you to ask the best kind of question -
I've searched on the web and in this community for information on X and I found A, B, C.

But I am not finding Y, I'd like to find people who can help.

-or-

I'm concluding Z, but I'd like to talk to people who have done this.
You are showing that you've done your homework. Your question will be much more interesting. You are providing value via the question with the appropriate links. And this form of inquiry gets much better response.

You will notice that in this template question, I am asking for a conversation. In some cases, I will change it to ask for written responses.

LinkedIn

There's quite a bit about the use of LinkedIn for this purpose, so rather than reciting it here, please go check out:
For me, the bottom line usage of LinkedIn really comes down to three primary activities:
  1. Seeking conversation directly - LinkedIn for Finding Expertise
  2. Asking questions to get written answers and to seek conversation - Searching for Expertise - LinkedIn Answers. Note: I often try to connect with people who provide answers directly (via Skype or phone) to discuss in more detail.
  3. Having discussions via groups - which acts much like questions and I do the same thing.
It's very interesting to see how LinkedIn Answers and Groups has given us new opportunities to surface interested experts and having that connected to known mechanisms for sparking conversation.

If you've never approached a few people for a conversation on a topic via LinkedIn, then you should make that happen within the next month.

Learning Communities

The key here is to have ready access to a variety of communities. Take a look at the Learning Communities List.

Additional Reading

Patti Anklam has a series on living in a network age:
From her series:
High-performing people tend to have stronger, more intentional networks.
Other Related Tools and Methods
Other Posts in the Series
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Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Hot List

There are some very cool new features especially our hot list feature coming out soon on the eLearning Learning Content Community. The site is beginning to take into account social signals. In other words, we are using what is happening:
  • with the content out in the network
  • on the eLearning Learning
  • searches that land on us and that occur on the site,
  • and various other kinds of behaviors.
Together these social signals indicate that the content is likely of higher quality (or at least of higher interest). Thus it belongs in both a best of list and a hot list. This is going to take some work to get it right, but we believe it will help to highlight various hot list content.

We are particularly excited that this capability will soon allow us to have a weekly post that highlights hot list for the week. This will be something like:

Hot List for the Week of 1/2/2009 - 1/9/2009

Hot List Posts Hot List Items
Hot List Keywords

Notes on the weekly hot list.
  • The posts come from the primary sources for this group. Other items come from other sources.
  • Keywords are based on occurrences this week in addition to other social signals.
I'm not always sure I can explain why certain things are going to be in the hot list for the week. The social signals seem obvious in some cases, but not always clear to me in other cases. Still I would claim that most of those posts are pretty good ones - certainly I'm happy seeing that list. Similarly, it's interesting to see what keywords are getting to the top each week.

I'm very curious to hear any reactions to this idea of a hot list.
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Information Radar


For many of the roles and projects you will be involved in, part of what you need to be able to do is to put yourself in a continuous learning mode. You need information radar that continuously scans for new, quality information that you should be aware of. And certainly, you have to be able to quickly commit it to your metamemory.

Information Addiction

Let me start this topic with a word of caution. Most of you reading this are infovores. When you find new nuggets of information, you get a chemical reaction in your brain much like an opium hit. This reaction causes you to seek more information. In other words, you are quite literally an information addict. Be careful about feeding your habit.


Assess Information Sources

For this reason, I always start any new task, project, role with an honest assessment of whether I really need to be actively tuned into information and what information that is.

You should also periodically go back to your top-down strategy, assess your specific information objectives and then make a deliberate assessment of different information sources. Which newspapers, magazines, journals, news sources, blogs should you look at, how often, how high a priority is this?

Also assess current information sources to see which can be removed. Managing your RSS Feeds has some good suggestions on how to do assessment in an ongoing basis using quarantine folders.

With that caution, here are some thoughts on the methods and tools I use as part of my information radar.

RSS Readers

A central tool for my information radar is my RSS reader. It allows me to gather information from all kinds of sources (blogs, publications, wikis, calendars, etc.) If you are new to the world of RSS readers and subscribing to blogs, here are some good starting points.



Skim and Remember

In Stop Reading - Skim Dive Skim, I proposed that for most of the information we come across via our information radar, we will not read it. Instead we will, skim, dive, skim. And then quickly add it to our better memory.

Remembering content I've seen via my RSS Reader has changed a bit over the past few years. I used to use Keep New or Favorites to save items that I thought were interesting but that I didn't have time to read or process at that moment. I found that it scattered a big part of my memory into another source, so I've stopped using these techniques.

Thus, while I'm scanning I have three levels of remember ready to apply:

1. Visit Pages - If a post, article, etc. looks like it might ever be worth remembering, then I visit the page and skim it there so it goes into Google History. Posts that you have seen in your reader but not visited are not in Google History. They are searchable via the RSS Reader, but that requires that you remember how your originally encountered the information. I believe I'm better off with fewer places to search for things I've seen.

2. Tag Page - If while skimming the article you visited, it looks like something I might need later (future anticpated information need), then I save/tag it in delicious.

3. Notes / Blog - As I skim dive skim, I often will take notes into working documents or blog posts about anything that is interesting. I do this more to help me process the material. But it also helps to surface it again. Make sure you save a link to the source as well.

Information Trickles

For information needs where I want a trickle of information to be coming through and if I miss something "interesting" its not a problem. I'm looking for filtering the content to find the best stuff within a narrow range.
  • Aggregator Blogs. These folks scan through content in a given area and point you to the stuff they feel is most interesting. The three that jump to mind in the world of learning and eLearning are: OL Daily, Big Dog Little Dog, and eLearning Learning.
  • Delicious Popular. Use delicious popular such as http://delicious.com/popular/elearning this shows web pages that many people are tagging with a particular tag. There is a feed for any delicious page including the popular pages.

Information Floods

For areas where I want to be fairly actively engaged in a continuous flow and there's a greater need to see most everything, I use:
Other Tools
  • AideRSS - can be used to limit a given blog or set of blogs to the top few.
Blogging

For me, blogging fits into more than one category. I'm choosing to put it here as I most often use it as a means of processing information that I come across as part of my continuous learning strategy. It definitely moves beyond a simple information radar and into something more. It also is a big part of my networking and community strategy.

As a starting point



Taking Notes

As an alternative to blogging, another option to help remember and process what you are finding through your information radar is the act of taking notes. There are a variety of tools that you can use. I hate to say it, but I still use notepad or Word. Since I rely on desktop search, they work okay for me. My guess is that in another year I'll have a different answer.

Independent of the tool, research shows that the act of taking active notes - not verbatim notes but higher level cognitive notes - while you are receiving information improves encoding. Thus, its fair to assume (though I don't have research proof on this) that while you are skim-dive-skimming active note taking means greater encoding.

Several people have suggested to me that it's significantly easier to take notes on paper while reviewing online. Ummm ... no it's not. Keep a narrow window open alongside your browser that allows you to copy and paste and add your notes. Oh, and make sure you include the URL. I hate it when I find my notes but then have to search for the page again in my bookmarks or via Google search.

By the way, this is the same technique I use when I'm talking to someone on the phone or in a meeting. A narrow window for capturing real-time thoughts works well for me. Oh, wait, am I talking about better memory now or information radar. I guess it's both.

A big part of effective information radar is doing more than just having it temporarily pass by your eyeballs.

It's adding it to memory and processing it appropriately.

Other Posts in the Series
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Monday, January 12, 2009

Prepare for a Conference

Heading into ASTD TechKnowledge, there's a particularly timely podcast that I just did for Tom Crawford of VizThink on the topic of:
How to be an Insanely Great Conference Attendee
If you follow the link you can get to the podcast.

This is based somewhat on a post from a couple of years ago - Be an Insanely Great Professional Conference Attendee. The main ideas out of that post still apply. The key theme is to spend some time to come prepared with Better Questions.

Some other specific recommendations on things you could do before the conference that would make your conference that much better.
  • Participate in ASTD's free online sessions: Learning Technologies 101
  • Start a blog just for your conference experience.
  • Take advantage of Conversation Topics to figure out questions and get connected with me.
  • Join ASTD National LinkedIn Group and answer Anthony Allen's Post on LinkedIn
  • Go to my post ASTD TechKnowledge and leave a comment that you are coming.
  • Get Twitterific installed on your iPhone from the AppStore.
  • There will be more information coming around the use of Twitter at the conference.
  • Visit any of the following bloggers / speakers who will be attending - leave them a note and maybe get together with them while you are there - or ask them your question ahead of time.
Some of the bloggers attending the conference:
I'm sure I'm missing some, so let me know who else should be on the list.
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