25 Interactions for eLearning - Free eBook

BJ Schone has published a nice little eBook and has an associated blog that provides some interactions that can be used in eLearning that will make the learning more fun and engaging. Some of the interactions he talks about are:

• Scatter steps
• Order of importance
• Find the mismatch
• Story-based questions
• Scavenger hunt
• Branching stories

I was planning to also point folks to other lists of these kinds of interactions (which I believe are out there), but for some reason I couldn't easily find them. Would love some pointers to other such lists to provide here.

In the meantime, a couple of ideas for where you can find other similar kinds of descriptions of eLearning interactions:

• Look at Articulate product - tabbed interaction, process, timeline, pyramid diagram, labeled graphic, interactive FAQ, media tour, circle diagram, guided image, FAQ and more.
• Similarly you can look at Adobe's various products to get ideas - look at Dreamweaver + Coursebuilder and Captivate especially.
• Raptivity's list of interaction types.

If you know of a list of eLearning interaction types (or articles on it) - please drop a comment.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) Gotchas

I regularly read Tracy Hamilton's blog. She's been writing about getting a new LMS. I hate to say it, but this is likely not going to go well. It will be fun to keep reading about it, probably much better than having to be Tracy during the process. In her latest post: What's Happening With My New LMS?!?! she tells us:

Oh and my little meeting about my job role and what path this LMS will lead me down. NOTHING!!!! We can't possibly discuss that until we have the tool in place and know exactly in what capacity we will use the darn thing.

Uh oh. They are bringing in an LMS and they don't know how they'll use it nor do they know who will be responsible in what ways for the LMS. Ouch.

For the eLearningGuild, I wrote a description of the 10 Gotchas in LMS Selection, Installation and Configuration as part of their Research Report on Learning Management Systems. I'm not sure I can publish the details of my section in my blog, but the abstract is available for the report (and has some good stuff in it). Luckily it has the Table of Contents for my section which lists my Gotchas:

• Gotcha #1 – Starting With an Unrealistic Expectation of What You Need
• Gotcha #2 – Missing a Key Stakeholder
• Gotcha #3 – Failing to Get Agreement on the Process with Key Stakeholders
• Gotcha #4 – Failing to Identify Key Differentiating Use Cases
• Gotcha #5 – Coupling Content Authoring with LMS Selection
• Gotcha #6 – Not Testing a LMS
• Gotcha #7 – Failing to Ask a Critical Question or Two
• Gotcha #8 – Poor Contract Negotiations
• Gotcha #9 – Tripping on the Models
• Gotcha #10 – Customization

So far it appears that Tracy's company has hit Gotchas 1, 4, and 6. Likely also several others.

Tracy, keep up the reporting!

Have Work and Learning Changed or the Way We Do Work and Learning?

I'm struggling a bit with the question of whether what we need to do around Work and Learning has changed or is it only that the Context and the Methods have changed.

Let me try to explain the question and then I'm hoping I'll get a bit of help on answers.

I believe that the Context we do our Work and Learning is changing:

• Ever increasing pace of information creation
• Greater volume of information
• Improved accessibility of these large quantities of information
• Wider and more varied sources of information
  
• Larger numbers of people creating content
• Greater access to wider networks of people

and I believe that there are many new methods, skills, tools, knowledge around how to accomplish our work and learning (see Needed Skills for New Media).

However, when I look at what I do day-to-day and what other people do day-to-day as part of their work and learning, I don't see it as really being different. Basically, I see us:

• Staying generally knowledgeable on about my industry, my job skills, etc.
• Performing research tasks to figure out things (tacit knowledge work), e.g., what eLearning tools should I be using.
• Performing transactional information work where we get some piece of information and quickly do something with it, e.g., respond to email
  
• Acquire knowledge/skills in new domains
  

That would have been accurate for many years, right? So is there really anything changed about these core tasks? And what do you call this core part? Is there a really good description of these work and learning tasks?

Banning Phrases - Adoption by Corporations

I heard (on the radio this morning) about a mayor in a Russian city who banned various phrases for city employees. The mayor explains his rationale as:

• City officials should help improve people's lives and solve their problems, not make excuses.
• I am tired of civil servants telling me that problems were impossible to solve, rather than offering practical solutions.
• the use of these expressions by city administration officials while speaking to the head of the city will speed their departure.
  

The phrases include:

• What am I supposed to do?
• I'm not dealing with this
• We're having lunch
• The working day is over
• Somebody else has the documents
• I think I was off sick at the time
• It's lunch time

This got me to thinking that something similar maybe should be adopted by other organizations. Certainly there are a lot of phrases that become part of people's lexicon that help them avoid helping to solve problems. For me, it's one of the most frustrating things to deal with. Non-answers. Avoidance.

Thoughts?

Learning and Networking with a Blog (Deleted Scenes)

My article in Training + Development Magazine was just published - Learning and Networking with a Blog. You must launch the reader and then go to page 20 to find the article.

Unfortunately, a couple of things got cut between the final edits from T+D and when it was published. So here are two associated pieces of content that are the article's "deleted scenes":

Getting Started with Blogging

Probably the first step in blogging is learning about blogging for yourself before you try to use it for your organization. To help with this, it might be worth looking at a discussion in October 2006 on the question – “Should All Learning Professionals Be Blogging?” You can find a somewhat tongue-in-cheek summary - Top Ten Reasons to Blog and Not to Blog.

Assuming you decide that it’s something worth trying, then you should first sign up with an RSS Reader such as Bloglines or Google Reader. Then subscribe to blogs. Two good lists of related blogs can be found at:

http://www.articulate.com/blog/the-19-best-elearning-blogs/

http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/02/top-ten-elearning-blogs.html

Then you will want to sign up on a blogging system such as Blogger, and begin to write blog posts. To help you get connected with other bloggers, it’s good practice to link your posts to their posts and leave comments on their blog. Another way to get connected is to contribute to ASTD’s Learning Circuits Monthly Big Question. You can find this on the Learning Circuit’s Blog.

Once you are comfortable with blogging, you can begin to focus on where and how it should be used in your organization. IBM, well-known for fostering blogs and Wikis, has established guidelines that provide a good model:

http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

Common Questions and Issues around Blogging
There are a few questions that commonly come up around blogging:

What should I write about?

The best advice here is to write about what interests you. By being interested, you will be interesting. Most workplace learning professionals write about topics such as projects, challenges, answers to questions they see on other blogs, answers to questions they get asked at work or by peers, and links to interesting content or documents.

How much time does it take?

Blogging can consume a large amount of time so it’s a good idea to start small and work up. Most bloggers will tell you that it has replaced other learning activities and that they seamlessly work it into their day. As they research a new topic, they find they can write a blog post that will help them capture their thoughts. Typical specific answers range from 30 minutes per day to an hour per week.

Can I write about confidential matters?

Some companies, such as Motorola and IBM, greatly encourage their staff to blog. They have established policies about what is acceptable or not to write in a blog post. The basic answer is that unless it is a private blog, everything you write is public and will exist forever. No confidential information should ever be put in a blog post. Most bloggers find that it is rather easy to turn specific questions or issues on a project into generic discussions that contain no confidential information.