Summer E-Learning Guild Courses Announced

I was pleased to receive my updated E-Learning Guild announcement in my inbox this morning.

 

The seminars sound very hip and exciting: Learning in the 21^st Century: Get Social, Get Game, Get Learning!

 

Over the course of four days there will be expert speakers tackling the latest in Collaborative Learning (podcasts and blogs – two of my passions will be covered) along with other social networking and learning opportunities.

 

As well there will be a series on Immersive Learning Simulations where this discussion centers around games, simulations and virtual environments designed to aid and engross the student in their learning.

Check out the link to the E-Learning Guild summer seminar series in Chicago for more details.

 

Tom Kuhlmann: The Real Purpose of E-Learning Template

I am a huge fan of Tom's Articulate blog. I wanted to share a great discussion generating article with you that Tom posted on his site. To get the full effect, you may wish to start at the previous article.

Take a look at The Rapid E-Learning Blog and see what has me so ex-E-cited.

This isn't the first time I've found myself nodding in absolute agreement with Tom saying something about PowerPoint presentations are different than PowerPoint e-learning! A template is a guide, and once you have become proficient with a template, you don't need it anymore – right? Well – maybe not – while Tom does mention templates are great for beginners and not so great for experienced e-learning professionals, he does bring to light the problem of reliance. While you rely so much on the template you can lose focus on developing your own ID (instructional design) skills. He's Right! – AGAIN I found myself nodding in agreement so hard I feel a bout of whiplash coming on!

So read along and see why Tom thinks there is still a place for templates within E-Learning – and let's get the discussion going.

Learning Paths – The Evolution of Training

Today I'm pleased to introduce you to our first, official guest Blogger! Welcome Arupa Tesolin to the E-Learning Network!

I had an opportunity to chat with Ms. Tesolin about this concept of defining a path to the right learning outcome. It's a great idea, an informative article, and I hope you enjoy it.
Jac Hutchinson

Copyright April 18, 2005 by Arupa Tesolin, Intuita, 905.271.7272, reprint permission received June 9, 2008.

A new approach to training is winning rave reviews from companies who are reducing the time it takes to get employees up to speed by 30% or more. Learning Paths, the brainchild of Steve Rosenbaum and Jim Williams, is making training more realistic and accelerating the development process at the same time. Both Steven and Jim are long-time corporate trainers who together recently authored a book by the same name co-published by Wiley and The American Society of Training & Development (ASTD), (more info see ).

The concept of a Learning Path represents much more than a re-labelling of old terms. Put simply it is a complete rethink of how training ought to work from the point of view of both the company and the employee. And it is concrete, completely and definitively measurable from Day 1.

Here's how it compares to the way training usually happens. The typical training process starts with a needs assessment to determine performance and business needs. Then course objectives are determined and a detailed training program curriculum follows. The return on investment is somewhat nebulous and speculative while quality depends on the content and delivery of the training program. Following the training in an optimal scenario, participants and managers give feedback on content, delivery and performance. But it pretty much ends there. In actuality, the feedback process assesses whether the training program fulfilled what it said it would, not whether the right things were taught the right way to begin with.

The process discipline involved with Learning Paths ensures that the right things are taught the right way AND in the shortest time. Learning Paths involves a re-engineering of the basic training process from start to finish. It's really much cooler than the term implies. Intuitively employers "get" that the payoffs are via both increased profits and employee motivation. It is the "how" they get it that is the most fascinating.

The up front measure is Time to Proficiency, which means how long it takes to get an employee performing at an average level. Historically, curriculum approaches tend to fill classroom days with stuff. By contrast, a Learning Path covers the entire learning protocol both in and beyond the classroom. The key to success with Learning Paths is getting very direct with what really happens during the so-called "Mystery Period", between when training ends and proficiency is achieved.

"This is the precise interval", says Steve, "where most gains in learning can be achieved."

"Usually there's a lot of wandering around. Learning happens when someone has time to show you. A lot of things happen after training that ought to be either included in the training or written down. When people get out of training they start to ask questions as they struggle. And they're usually the same questions all the time. Why wait for people to ask the question? Let's put the questions back into the training."

The first part of the process is to map your existing Learning Path. First review the existing training program and what happens after that, then quantitatively establish the performance level and figure out how many days it takes for an employee to reach an acceptable average performance level. This defines what proficiency is required.
Here are two examples of different proficiency requirements. The first is from an airline reservation agent. Average performance of an effective employee for this company means handling 20 calls per hour, processing 3 reservations, $1500 in revenue, and a cancellation rate of 3%. The second from a field sales representative is 3 calls per day, $10,000 in sales, 5% return rates and 1 new customer per month. Each parameter of proficiency is captured in a report, statement, or the company data-base.

Usually from this point it's easy to determine how much training costs and how much each day of less-than-average performance costs the organization. Shrinking this time by 30% adds up to a lot of measurable savings and potential profits. And employees are more motivated too because they are learning quickly, and not wasting time in training.

This is done by systematically improving and speeding up the learning process by removing unessential elements, replacing theory with more practice and on-the-job coaching, self-study assignments, and creating other learning opportunities that could include e-learning or other components with feedback that replace components of the classroom training program with a designed learning track that works better. Steve calls this part of the process Quick Hits and says that time and cost savings of 30% represent are typical easily achieved results.
The process invests and engages supervisors in a direct role as coaches and mentors. But there is nothing ambiguous about this coaching role and its outcomes. They are linked directly to proficiency development.

"Another factor that can be positively impacted by Learning Paths is attrition. The majority of turnover happens in first 90 days. Some significant things can be done to address that early turnover by putting training feedback into the hiring process. For example an organization hires nurses for an in-home health care job doing full-time health support. In coming employees who are nurses have an expectation that there is more nursing in the job than patient care. But it's not that kind of a job. So, if it takes 90 days to get a nurse to say they don't like it we've lost a lot of money and time training that employee. It's better if they quit on the first day. The solution is to show the employee up front what the job is and what the conditions are."

But how do Learning Paths differ from a competency model? Steve described it this way. "Doing a competency model can help you get to where you want to go by determining skills, knowledge and attitude. But this breaks it down into very small pieces. When one of those pieces is done together with other pieces that's another competency."

"As an example let's look at a Call Center. You need to be proficient on the computer, you have to have good communications skills to talk with customers and you have to know and be able to explain the products and services they offer. But you need to do all of this at the same time. That's what proficiency is, the linkages among the skills and groups of skills that are done together."

Learning Path project successes have been achieved with major enterprises both in North America, Europe and in India, proof that the method works internationally and in multi-national companies. Smaller companies too, where finances and resources might be more constrained, also have a lot to gain from this methodology. Learning Paths are also used effectively at the first stage of a training project to scope out what parts are best done by e-learning, in the classroom, on the job or by coaching.

The best part of Learning Paths? They work. And they achieve results through involvement and buy-in from all stakeholders involved in the training process, executives, HR Managers, trainers, and most importantly supervisors and employees.

Arupa Tesolin is a Speaker, Trainer and Innovation Consultant who provides Innovation Training programs through Intuita and is the Canadian Partner for Learning Paths International. www.learningpathsinternational.com She is a Speaker, seminar leader and consultant who is the author of 2 books, Ting! & Spark. 905.271.7272.

Bring Your E-Learning to Life with Talking Images!

Recently I had an opportunity to work on a unique project for one of our clients who was having trouble recruiting and retaining competent, loyal employees. So we developed a tool using Lectora that guides the hiring manager through the steps of recruiting. The tool was used in an instructor-led seminar attended by hiring managers.

If you think about the process of hiring someone, you know that a bunch of similar-looking resumes come flooding in. The hiring manager has to sift through them, and then most likely arrange a phone interview with the top prospects. A face-to-face interview is then scheduled with those candidates who passed the phone interview stage.

Realize that certain impressions are formed at each stage of this process. The hiring manager might think someone looks great on paper, but then finds they are a complete dud on the phone. Or maybe the candidate is great on the phone, but you find your impression of them alters greatly once they arrive for their face-to-face interview.

My team and I thought it would be a great idea to guide the seminar participants through these stages in a realistic, interactive way. How? By using audio to simulate the phone interview and avatars for the face-to-face interviews. An avatar, as you may know, is a digital representation of a human.

On the day of the seminar, the instructor divided the hiring managers attending the seminar into groups of five and provided one laptop to each group. Each laptop was pre-loaded with our interactive Lectora presentation.

Based on the results of a Zoomerang survey we submitted to the attendees in the weeks before the seminar, we created a job description for an account manager position for an insurance firm. We then created five resumes for potential candidates. We also provided participants with a brief bio on each candidate as well as the most common questions that we felt would be asked of these candidates.

We scripted answers to the interview questions unique to each candidate (fitting the personalities we had created for them – i.e. the older female had a deep voice and came across as no-nonsense, a lot of ‘likes’ and ‘ums’ were used for the younger candidates). Using the voice over skills of the good-natured folks on our staff, we recorded audio of the answers to be used in the ‘phone interviews’. (Techie note: I love the Blue Snowball USB microphone for audio recording and WavePad and Audacity for editing the .wav files.)

We had the participants conduct a ‘phone interview’ by having them click on a simple rollover button in Lectora that would play each candidate’s answers to the various phone interview questions. We then asked participants to jot down notes of their first impressions of these interviewees.

Now the fun part! The face-to-face interview using the avatars.

To create the avatars for this course, I needed .jpg images for each candidate and the CrazyTalk 5 program from Reallusion. I visited iStock photo and my other favorite image site, Dreamstime, and searched for five candidate images. Our team chose a young African American female, a middle-aged Caucasian female, a young European male, a Spanish male, and an older Caucasian female. The trick to choosing images for use as an avatar with CrazyTalk is to make sure they are facing front and have their mouths closed. It also helps to have them isolated against a white background.

I imported the images and pre-recorded audio files into CrazyTalk and with minimal intervention, the program brought the candidates to life. Using the masking tool in CrazyTalk, I was able to apply a background behind each candidate of an office environment, making them look like they were sitting across the hiring manager’s desk. I then exported the finished product into a .wmv file for insertion into Lectora.

In this phase of the exercise, the seminar participants were able to now put a face with a resume and could click on each candidate’s photo and hear their responses to the in-person interview questions. The participants were amazed at how their impressions either coincided with or were completely different than their original impressions from the resume.

Here’s an example of one of the candidates. This is a simple .jpg image purchased from Dreamstime.

Now here is the .wmv file of the avatar talking:

Remember, this moving, talking person was created from a simple still .jpg photo!

The feedback from this seminar was incredible. And creating these avatar images was easy and added zip to what could have been just another boring hiring presentation. Try it!

The Power of a Storyboard

In the last few days I have been working on two e-Learning courses for different customers. In both cases the storyboards were created for me by Content Consultants, otherwise known as SME's (Subject Matter Expert). One of my content consultants has a strong learning background the other is truly a SME. Seeing these two very different storyboards helped me to realize just how important a strong storyboard is.

When I write e-Learning courses that I am going to develop I find that I slack off on the level of details I include because I know I will be putting into our authoring tool, Lectora 2008. I also know what I want to accomplish. Based on my experience this week it has help me to understand what exactly I should include on my own courses just in case someone else creates the course. In my organization the client sees the storyboard before the course is created. A strong storyboard will gives them a better description of the product they will be receiving.

I wanted to share some of my lessons learned after this week.

• If there are specific images, in my case screen shots, that need to be included in the course either include a link as to where the images can be found or the actual images. Descriptions just don't cut it.
• Speaking of images don't just do a piece of the image if you want your learner to understand exactly where the specific section is located. It doesn't help if they don't have a road map to guide them.
• If the course is going to have a drop down list of items the learner can choose from be sure to include every option the user can select from. Writing in the storyboard to have the learner select C without listing A-D won't really help once it time to develop the course.
• Details, details, details. This should have been first! In my case both courses are for new individuals to the company. Be sure to include the "why's" don't just assume that everyone will be on the same page. Learners need to understand why they should do something before you tell them the instructions on how to do it.

In the end both courses are working out just fine. However, I find myself asking a lot more clarifying questions to my SME because I have gaps in my materials.

Thanks for letting my share my best practices. I hope they helped. Until next time.