What Can I Learning From Social Networking Sites?

Like many of my age group I spend way too much time on a social networking site. I check the status of my friends, post my own, review photos and take a bunch of useless quizzes. I have found out what I should have been named, Annie in case you wondered, what my aura says, how much I know about movies and other useless information. What I want to know is how I can use this same technology to make my eLearning just as ‘sticky’?

In my training courses I have used online midterm and final assessments to check the knowledge of my students. But really what I am doing is forcing them to regurgitate what they learned throughout the session. I don’t think I am really measuring their learning or are they excited to do it. In fact I have had adults suffer from test anxiety just like when they were in school.

How could I make the experience more enjoyable?

What about this? Create quizzes like I take on that networking site. With this theory I could have my students taking quizzes that they are interested in. They would be short 10 question multiple choice quizzes that can be accessed at will, in any order the learner wants, you could even add an images to the questions. My thought would be creating several quizzes for a course. After they are created they can be posted an LMS and allow students to access them when they like. They could be used as a pre-test to find out how much they know or just as a review of material they already learned. All at their own pace and in any order they like their own version of self directed learning.

I was even thinking some of the quizzes could be on generic topics such as customer service skills, collections or sales techniques, topics that are often glossed over many times due to time constraints. On quizzes that don’t correlate to topics taught in class a quick review could be made on questions answered incorrectly to give the student additional information.

Of course now it would be trying it out to see if it would work. How do you make your eLearning sticky?

Will eLearning Replace Trainers???

I saw this question posed today on an eLearning site and I had to ask myself that question. As an individual who has a background in eLearning as well as many years as a classroom facilitator will one replace the other?

It really got me thinking. I remember growing up with Atari and Commodore 64’s. I never would have imagined at that time that Pong could turn into Wii Fit or that I would be writing this blog on a wireless laptop in my living room. But the world has changed drastically in the last 30 years and we are really only at the beginning.

I think that training has had the same evolution. You used to go into a training room and get your information spoon fed to you by an instructor/ trainer. Interaction was not asked for nor was it prized. You were simply there to fill a seat.

I think of many learning (note learning not training) environments now and that is not the case. We actively want people to participate and be engaged in the learning process. Learning professionals use games, stand up facilitation, eLearning or a blended learning approach to get the message to their students. If it helps to increase the learning, application or retention of the information anything goes.

The same principle applies if I am creating an online course. I have learned the hard way that 25 pages of straight content doesn’t allow a student to learn but then again neither does 25 pages of amazingly beautiful Photo Shop images with no content. I now know that I can incorporate pictures, games, audio or video to my core text to help get students to learn. It is to my advantage as a designer to touch as many learning styles as possible and eLearning allows me to accomplish that in an easy way.

Now back to the question, will eLearning replace trainers? In my opinion…no. I know that when I develop an online course I still think of myself as a trainer. I am not a programmer or a software designer I am merely a facilitator in a different medium. At the end of the day my goal is have the person who is taking my course to learn, that’s it.

What are your thoughts is eLearning going to replace trainers?

eLearning & Off Shoring…my experience

For the last year I have worked with different departments within my organization in support of our off shoring initiatives to India. This posting isn’t about whether it is right or wrong to off shore these are just a few of my observations and what worked for me.


One of the initial items to consider when starting a new process in India is how you going to teach the agents. We decided since it wasn’t feasible to bring all of our new Indian agents to the U.S. for training that we would use a blended learning approach instead. We decided to send a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to India for classroom facilitation and supplement his information with eLearning courses. Creating the assorted eLearning courses is where my assistance was needed. We began this approximately a year before the process was to go live.


I worked with our SME to create eLearning courses that not only included policy and procedures but mirrored system access. One problem we had was this group of agents would not have access to the system until they started their job function; there was no system in place that allowed new agents to practice their skills during the training period.
One challenge I had was taking standard operating procedures (SOP’s) and transforming them into a storyboard. Many people assume that a SOP is already appropriate for learning, but in most cases it is not. In order for our new agents to learn I had to go back to that training theory standby, KISS (keep it simple stupid.) Start at step one and continue. This worked well.


After the storyboard was completed it was time to build the course. I needed this course interactive so using Lectora I inserted radio buttons, transparent buttons and entry fields that duplicated what was in the system they were going to use. I also added a scored assessment at the end of each course. These courses are hosted on CourseMill and what is really great about that learning management system (LMS) is that you can pull interaction reports to know exactly how agents answered each question. This is beneficial when coaching agents on how they can improve their skills.


After the initial review of the courses we decided to add a bit more to them. Because our Indian agents would not be able to see someone performing the skills they were learning we added call examples to the courses. This allowed them to hear how a tenured agent made each call so that they had an example to follow. We also added call scripting to giving them a template of how to have a success call.


A few of the benefits that we experienced with our blended learning approach:
~ Tracking course performance through the LMS.
~As time permitted we were able to un-enroll and re-enroll agents in course so they could be re-taken and new interactions would be scored again.
~Agents felt a greater level of comfort with the system once they began to do the job, i.e. making outbound calls.
~Agents were allowed to practice what they learned without impacting customers.

Overall the project was successful; we had agents who were giving accurate information and comfortable doing the job they were trained to do.


How have others used their LMS to track performance of their courses?