eLearning Certifications

I received an interesting and probably fairly important question. I believe this person represents a fair number of individuals who work in the world of workplace training / learning.

I am a Senior Organizational Development and Training Specialist based in San Diego, CA. I came across your blog today searching for certification programs in the area of eLearning and/or Web Based Training Design. I have about 6 years of experience of classroom training but my company has been reluctant to give us any kind of exposure to web based training or make any real changes to this effective training medium. I know that to secure my future in this field, I must gain some more knowledge in this area on my own.

So I'm wondering if you have any suggestions on some credible, relatively affordable programs that provide certification in eLearning or Web Based Training Design. Any information you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Kudos to this person for not allowing the limitations of their organization limit what they are going to learn. That said, those limits will certainly make it more challenging to find a good choice around eLearning Certifications. Let’s try to help them out.

When I asked about this last time in eLearning Certification, some of the responses:

• OU (Open University in the UK) does - you can take a full course, or simply individual modules. I think one of my colleagues is doing one. It's worth a look: http://www.open.ac.uk/. Any of their courses be offered as distance and/or online learning, so the location shouldn't be an issue.
• We have an online eLearning Certificate that may be of interest. The program uses synchronous technology with a real instructor at the other end so there are time commitments but--and I am only slightly bias in this case :)--it is a really good program.
  Check it out at Bloomsburg University's Instructional Technology page.
• The University of Southern Queensland offer a Postgrad Certificate in a variety of options:
  - educational technology
  - online learning
  www.usq.edu.au
• Friesen, Kay & Associates - http://www.fka.com/index.asp
• The Allen Academy - (need new link - help?) http://www.allenacademy.com/students/certification.htm
• ASTD eLearning Certification - http://www.astd.org/content/education/certificatePrograms/ELearning
  
• Clark Training - http://www.clarktraining.com/certification.php
• Professional eLearning Designers' Association - www.peldaglobal.com
• University of Illinois Global Campus, they have a certificate program. http://global.uillinois.edu/search?keyword=&subject=all&degree_type=all&campus=Global+Campus
• Fairmont State University offers a graduate certificate in Online Learning. Information can be found online at:
  http://www.fairmontstate.edu/graduatestudies/grad_programs.asp
• University of Texas at Brownsville http://www.utb.edu/vpaa/de/Pages/E-LearningCertificate.aspx as part of an online graduate degree in Instructional Technology. The four courses required for the e-learning certificate are Instructional Design, Educational Telecommunications, Multimedia/Hypermedia, and a capstone project course.
• University of MD, Baltimore County (UMBC) - ISD graduate program. This program also offers certifications in Instructional Technology and Distance Ed, if you are not ready for the time involved in getting the MA. http://www.umbc.edu/isd/
• San Diego State University - http://edtec.sdsu.edu/ Full Masters and certificates, online and on campus, for decades. You can't be engaged in elearning or workplace learning and performance that leverages technology without bumping into many SDSU EDTEC grads.
  

Also, check out Certification Magazine for many options. http://www.certmag.com

I’m sure there are a lot more programs out there at this point. And a myriad of online degree programs.

I also think it would make a lot of sense to look at some of the recent discussions about certifications and degrees in instructional design. Here are some quick findings via eLearning Learning – particularly I looked at best of pages around: instructional design, eLearning Certification and did queries around degrees, etc. Some really good reading…

• Instructional Design Certificate or Masters Degree
• When Accidental Instructional Designers Become Intentional
• Accidental Instructional Designers
• 10 Qualities of the Ideal Instructional Designer
• We Need a Degree in Instructional Design
• Online Programs that Offer Training in eLearning?
• Still early days for instructional design
• Getting Started with Instructional Design
• The future of certification
• New courses: Certificate in Emerging Technologies for Learning
• The Various Roles of Instructional Design (work in progress)
• Interviews on Instructional Design
• Instructional Design: What's in a name?
• Instructional Designers with ID Degrees? Survey Results...
• Why an Instructional Design Degree from Bloomsburg University ROCKS!
• The science of learning
• Instructional Design - If - When - How Much
• Do Instructional Design Degrees Get "Wasted"?
• Instructional Designers with Degrees: Survey Update
• Help, I have an Instructional Design Master's Degree and I Can't Create E-Learning
• My Response to "...Instructional Design is Dead" - by many people
• IDs - It's time for some seriously tough love
• E-Learning for Newbies
• List of e-Learning Job Descriptions

Virtual Presentation – Ten eLearning Predictions for 2010

I’m still working on my yearly post that is my eLearning Predictions.  That will be coming out shortly.  In the meantime, I’ve been invited to do a virtual presentation for ASTD DC on this topic.  The organizer will give preference to his local members, but will let other folks attend who contact him.  Here’s the information:

Ten eLearning Predictions for 2010

To kick off the new year, Dr. Tony Karrer is sharing some thoughts on what's going to be happening in the world of eLearning in 2010. Back in 2006, Tony was talking about eLearning 2.0 and it's long term impact on workplace learning.  What will be similar kinds of key issues that we need to be aware of in 2010?

Tony promises to deliver a fast-paced, interactive discussion that will look at trends around social and informal learning, mobile, authoring, learning management systems, and others.  Come participate in what promises to be a fun session.

This event will be held via the web on Thursday January 21 from 2:45 – 4:00 Eastern. It is being hosted by the local DC Chapter of ASTD’s Technology Learning Group. If you are interested in attending, please contact Todd Slater at toddslater1@gmail.com for webinar information. 

About the Presenter:

Dr. Tony Karrer is an expert on innovative uses of technology that improves human performance.  He is a sought after presenter on Web 2.0’s impact on knowledge work and workplace learning. He is author of the award-winning eLearning Technology blog, creator of eLearning Learning, and founder of Work Literacy.

Dr. Karrer’s experience is diverse including initial CTO of eHarmony, associate professor of Computer Science, and consultant to Credit Suisse, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, Universal, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Symbol Technologies and many others. He was valedictorian and attended USC as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the U.S. where he received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science.

Information Filtering

Harold Jarche posted Business models looking back and forward where he looks at various trends and implications on business opportunities.  One of the main points he makes is:

In early 2010 it is pretty obvious that nobody needs an other Web portal.

I both agree and disagree.  He’s right.  No one really wants another web portal.  We’ve got plenty of information sources already.  At the same time, we need lots of help filtering the flood of information.  Harold is a master of that and effectively uses twitter, RSS reader and lots of other sources to bring across and filter information.

My strong belief is that there is more and more of a need for effective information filtering.  Basically, easy ways to get the information that you want or need.  Heck, a lot of what learning professionals do is filter information.

Harold is comfortable with small pieces, loosely joined as a means of filtering.  My belief is that there’s a fairly large population that will get value from what are essentially portals that take advantage of social signals (a powerful information filtering mechanism).  That’s somewhat the whole point behind eLearning Learning.

Professionals who don’t have time to try to find, subscribe, read all of the various blogs and other sources can look to a portal like eLearning Learning (and particularly it’s Best Of emails) as a means of getting a filtered set of all of this.

Of course, there’s so much more to defining what someone particularly needs.  This filtering is horribly crude and will get much better over the years.  But since a lot of what a portal can bring is information filtering – I’m not quite so ready to sign up with Harold’s assertion.

Time to Performance

There have already been some great contributions to this month’s big question – Predictions and Plans for 2010.  I was reading Jay Cross’ response and one of his predictions:

Faster, faster, faster, real time. Time-to-performance becomes the new metric.

It’s funny to see that term again.  I thought that Time-to-performance was going to be the key metric back in 2002.  When I was working with various high tech, insurance and financial services companies – a key ingredient was how quickly people could effectively roll-out new products, policies, respond to competitive threats, etc.  It really was about how quickly you can become proficient on all the new stuff.  It was about Time to Performance.

Granted there are still core skills that will need to be developed in other ways (see Does Deliberative Practice Lead to Quick Proficiency for a bit of discussion around that).  Still a lot of what we talk about with informal learning, performance support, etc. is how we can make people perform quickly.  Or at least have the appearance of expertise (see  Expert Level Answers via Social Networks as one way to appear to be expert).

Still since the last time this term and related metrics never really took off, I’m curious what people think.

Is Time to Performance really going to get traction in 2010?

Custom LMS Anymore?

Happy new year.  I took some time off from blogging over the holidays.  I’m just now getting back into the swing of things.  To help me get moving, I just posted Storyboard Templates and iPhones – Best of December 2009 over on eLearning Learning.  Some great content posted back in December that I need to go back and review.

I’m hoping that folks might be able to help someone who just sent me a question. 

This is a company that sells mostly compliance training to the healthcare market (Hospitals, healthcare practices, individual physicians etc…).  They have a licensed LMS, but want to move away from it and build a custom LMS that meets their specific needs.

Their questions:

1. What are some features that they might not be thinking about that people will be asking for in the near future?  In their words, “what is the need of the hour”?

2. Is it a good idea to start with an open source LMS?  Their team strength is principally .NET, ASP 2.0.  Are there  any open source LMS on those technologies?

And my question:

3. Does it make that much sense to build a custom LMS anymore?  I’ve seen it numerous times, but I feel like some of the low cost LMS or rapid LMS solutions would make more sense?

Appreciate any thoughts you have on this.