Many Ways to Learn

Social Media Star Contest

2012-01-12T09:04:00.000-08:00

"I'm a Social Media Star."

Well, I'm a nominee at least. Trivanits, the people who bring us wonderful elearning tools such as Lectora Inspire and Snap! are sponsoring a Social Media Star contest running now through February 15.

I have been a fan of their tools and a Lectora user since 2002. Last May, I attended their annual user conference where they unveiled the newest addition to their line: Snap! by Lectora. I had a great time and did a lot of backchannel tweeting while at the conference. Afterwards, I wrote this blog entry about it. I guess that was enough to get me nominated.

Check out the contest here. Vote for your favorite learning professional from among the nominees - or vote for me! I'm a star!

Three Angles of Approach for Instructional Design Reviews

2011-12-16T15:13:00.000-08:00

In a world where most e-learning development is rapid e-learning development, one of the design process elements that could be easily overlooked is the design review. Instructional Designers and Course Developers who are challenged with getting new modules out the door as quickly as possible to meet a business need may be tempted to skip design reviews as they try to crunch their project timelines down by a few days. But this is a risky proposition. Experience shows that the chances the developer got everything right the first time are slim to none. Skipping design reviews might seem like a great way to save time, but pushing modules out without them may diminish learning and create rework.

Design reviews don’t have to cause project delays if they are planned properly. Anyone who is working to develop a course against a tight deadline will have a pretty good handle on what is going to be done by when. The key is to use this information to schedule design reviews as early on as possible. This will lock in the reviewers and also create additional incentives to keep the project on track. Don’t worry about unforeseen circumstances that might jeopardize readiness by the review date. Put a stake in the ground! The worst that could happen is that the review meetings will need to be postponed and rescheduled.

The bigger issue is: who needs to be involved in the design reviews? Ideally, as few people as possible but reviewers have to be able to cover all the necessary angles. There are three key ones to consider:

Content – Subject matter experts should weigh in on whether or not the content covered in the module is accurate. Since most instructional designers will work with subject matter experts while developing a course, this should be the easiest reviewer to secure.

Learners - Even if the content is accurate, it may not necessarily be relevant. A learning partner who is familiar with the target audience can help by answering questions such as: Is there content missing that the audience might need? Is there content included that could be dropped? Is the module coming across in a way that is clear and motivating to the target audience? Getting questions like these answered during the review process will help pilot tests go more smoothly.

Learning – There is more to learning than just communicating content. The module has to be instructionally sound. A peer review by another instructional designer will ensure the objectives are being met and the learning activities lead to intended outcomes.

And of course, any additional set of eyes is helpful for catching errors, typos or technical glitches.

Top 10 Tools for Learning in 2011

2011-11-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

Each Year, Jane Hart founder of the Center for Learning & Performance Technologies invites learning professionals from around the globe to vote on top tools for learning. Voting closes tomorrow November 13. Afterwards, she will publish the final list.

It is tough to limit choices to 10 tools, but here is the list I submitted based on what we have been using inside my company, and what I have been using personally for informal learning, development and collaboration.

Microsoft SharePoint - we have been using this to create learning environments around formal courses to enable informal learning - includes wikis, shared calendars, document repository and many other joyful tools!
Yammer - our enterprise microblogging tool has provided a venue for groups to form and learn from each other. Informal learning, collaboration, social learning, sharing - it all happens here.
Microsoft Office Communicator - share your desktop and video conference using voice over IP in an instant.
Delicious - my personal knowledge management favorite.
Skype - bringing people together - even when they're not!
YouTube - when you want to make a point clear to people, you can usually find a brief video to share that does it for you.
Dropbox - new to me and moving up the list. With the growth of tablets, this tool becomes more important for sharing.
SlideShare - great for researching presentations and sharing your own
Twitter - I've learned more through the connections I've made through twitter over the last two years than through any other means.
Ted Talks - If you haven't seen one, check them out.

If I could have added two more I would have added Evernote, and of course, Blogger.

Branding Learning vs. Learning Brand

2011-10-01T09:14:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months as we have been developing processes for our company’s newly formed Learning Shared Services, we have had many discussions about branding and brands. We have pulled together workplace learning professionals from at least ten separate training departments that were operating independently within the company to create our Shared Services group. As you can imagine, we have quite a hodgepodge of looks, feels, and approaches to providing learning services to reconcile into something that can effectively serve the enterprise both globally and locally.

The team that I assembled to work on our project management and course development processes has had much dialog and debate around branding and brands. One of the first things we needed to do was to draw a distinction between the two - so we could define both for our needs - before we could move forward.

Branding Learning - We agreed that how we are Branding Learning is reflected in the look and feel of the learning materials we produce for Instructor-led, virtual classroom, and e-learning programs. It includes design and placement of logos, color schemes and the like on our materials and program communications. It is a subset of our Learning Brand. To address our branding issues, we took two immediate steps:

(1) Neutralize all old program branding in favor of common company branding guidelines, color schemes, fonts, etc.

(2) Develop a new “family of skins” for our e-learning programs and a standardized approach to creating instructor guides and participant materials for instructor-led training. (Note: special thanks to the elearning brothers for helping us to create the new skins.)

Learning Brand - Our Learning Brand is reflected in the image created by the experiences our learners and business partners have when they interact with us through classes, projects, portals and any virtually any place in which we have a presence. There are three things we need to work on to ensure the brand image we project, is the one we intend:

(1) Brand Alignment – We need to ensure that our brand is aligned with business expectations. Some questions we need to answer for ourselves are: What do our business partners look to us for? What do we contribute to the business? How do we impact business results such as growth and profitability?

(2) Brand Presence – We need to market our services and be visible when and where the business expects to find us. Some considerations here include: What channels are our learner and business partners most likely to use to engage our services? Do our marketing messages convey competence, relevance and credibility as a learning partner? Are our messages and offerings in synch with business needs? Is our branding consistent in all places in which the business will encounter us?

(3) Brand Experience – We need to match the expectations created by our marketing in the delivery of our services. Considerations here include: Are we consistent in our offerings? Do our learners get what they expect out of our classes and services? Do our services meet their needs? Are our e-learning programs consistent in quality, usability, and results achieved? Do we live up to “the deal” when learners attend our instructor-led or virtual classroom programs?

Whether you are operating on a local or enterprise level, these considerations are important to ensure alignment and the right positioning to support your business’s needs.

Two Years and Still Growing

2011-08-07T05:22:00.000-07:00

Today is the second anniversary of the launch of Many Ways to Learn. I never thought there would be much interest in a blog about workplace learning, but here we are two years later. When I talk about my work among friends and family, everyone runs the other way. But this blog does have a modest following, and the connections I’ve made through it have been enriching both personally and professionally. Feedback indicates people are gaining something by reading it, which makes it worthwhile to continue.

Two years ago, I started writing this blog as part of a personal experiment. I was not using social media tools at all. As a learning professional, I felt it was important to understand these tools. I wanted to see if they held any promise for use alongside our formal learning offerings. I didn’t expect they would, but I was wrong. They certainly proved to hold promise. I slowly began to introduce them to my team members. I have a creative bunch so I wanted to see what ideas and suggestions they might come up with for usage in service to our learners. At the time, terms like informal learning, social learning, personal knowledge management, and content curator were not part of our day-to-day working vocabulary. I’m happy to say they are today. In November 2009 I really began seeing the possibilities. I wrote this blog entry: Web 2.0 Learning Shift to describe what I saw happening. Since then we have implemented a number of non-traditional learning solutions at my company to give our learners alternatives to classroom training or self-paced e-learning. Do we have all our learning opportunities embedded directly in the workstream? No, we don’t. Do we have more learning opportunities in the workstream than we did two years ago? I am proud to say yes, we do.

Here are a few more YES/NO situations to describe the current state of learning at my company.

YES – people are having workplace discussions and sharing resources though social media.

NO – not everyone in the company is on board.

YES – we have a formal social media policy.

NO – we don’t block people from using twitter or facebook at work.

YES - we do have our own internal social media network (through Yammer) available to employees worldwide.

NO – our senior leaders are not all active in our social media network.

YES - we do have online discussion groups and virtual meet-ups to promote learning.

NO - we can't measure what people are learning through these groups, but their discoveries are evident.
YES – we are conducting classes virtually.

NO – we are not using virtual reality tools like Second Life.

YES - our virtual classes are interactive discussions.

NO - our virtual classes are not passive PowerPoint webinars.

YES – we do have wiki-based tools and activities that allow learners to build off each other’s ideas.

NO – we don’t have control over what people post or the edits they make – but it has not been a problem.

YES – we have created learning environments in SharePoint to help our employees manage their learning experiences.

NO – they don’t all take to SharePoint like a duck takes to water.

YES – we do offer just-in-time access to workplace answers through our knowledge management system.

NO – we have not retired our learning management system.

YES – our employees are accessing (some) audio and video content through mobile devices.

NO – the mobile content does not mainly originate from the learning department.

YES – we do capture and share best practices through social media tools.

NO – our social media tools are not the most commonly used means of sharing best practices.

YES – we have increased our employees’ ability to learn through informal means.

NO – we haven’t stop designing and delivering Instructor-led classroom training.

YES – we develop a lot of rapid e-learning programs.

NO – our e-learning programs are not all award winners, but they don’t have to be to be effective.

The last two years have certainly been interesting. They have shown me there are indeed Many Ways to Learn. Through writing this blog and interacting with readers, I’ve discovered a lot and grown quite a bit as a learning professional. I’ve used what I have learned to help my department evolve and to help employees in my company be successful. I also hope this blog has led others to make a few discoveries. Thanks for reading.

What Tools Are Instructional Designers Using These Days?

2011-07-29T12:35:00.000-07:00

July has been a busy month for me. One of the things I've been doing is interviewing candidates for an open Instructional Designer position on my team. It is great (and a little scary) to see the wealth of talent and experience that is available. I've enjoyed the interviews. It is such a pleasure to be able to talk about instructional design and workplace learning with other people who are passionate about it. Most people run the other direction when I start talking about these things.

Below is a list of tools created from the resumes I received in response to my job posting. If you're looking for someone to help you with any of these tools, I've got a lead for you.

Virtual Collaboration Is Easy

2011-06-25T10:35:00.000-07:00

There certainly are Many Ways to Learn. One of them is to sit back and observe. That is what I did this week as I watched two tech support people from two different companies troubleshoot a software problem on my laptop. The amazing thing was they did this seamlessly, working virtually, from two different parts of the world.

I recently installed a new software package on my computer. The installation went fine, but I was having difficulty registering it with the company from which I received it. I called their tech support group, based in Cincinnati Ohio to troubleshoot my registration. After attempting to help me register by going through the usual steps (and two alternative methods), the technician determined that something on my computer was blocking communication to my registry. In order to access my registry, I needed to be logged in as a system administrator rather than with my usual user ID. Of course, this was my work laptop and being an employee at a good ole American company that is concerned with data security, I don’t have admin rights for my computer. In order for me to log on as an administrator, I needed to call my company’s tech support team which, being a good ole American company, we have outsourced to another company in India.

So I put the Cincinnati guy on hold while I called India. The India guy helped me get logged on as an administrator, but I still wasn’t sure what I needed to do. Using the conference call feature on my phone, I connected the Cincinnati guy and the India guy at the same time. The Cincinnati guy tried to describe what needed to be done to the India guy and me. Neither one of us was quite getting it, so he suggested setting up a web meeting so I could share my desktop with him and he could perform the required steps for me. It took a minute or two to get the web meeting going, but once it was, he began proceeding through the steps to complete my registration. This was going along fine until he hit a snag. He encountered an unfamiliar setting that was blocking him from completing the registration. The India guy knew what this was, but he had difficulty getting the Cincinnati guy or me to understand what we needed to do to get through this blockage. Fortunately I was able to share my desktop with him to using Office Communicator so he could complete those steps. That freed things up for the Cincinnati guy to complete what he needed to do to get my software registered.

It was fascinating as I sat in my office in Connecticut watching the Cincinnati guy and the India guy take turns manipulating my laptop while the other watched in such a matter-of-fact way. It really brought home the message about how easy it is these days to work collaboratively or to provide just-in-time coaching support at a distance.

3 Ways to Foster Collaborative Learning #LCBQ

2011-06-17T15:12:00.000-07:00

The Learning Circuits Big Question (#LCBQ) for June asks:

How do we break down organizational walls when it comes to learning?

To me, this is really a question about organizational readiness for collaborative learning. As I assess my own work situation, I think about the expectations the business leaders in my company have about what learning is, and I think about the dynamics within the learning group. In both cases, there is some change management needed. Here are three things I focus on to foster the evolution of collaborative learning in my organization:

Help people recognize that formal learning is not always the answer. Business leaders often come to us saying, “We have a training need.” In their mental model of the situation, they envision people sitting in a classroom for a couple of days, or going online to complete a few elearning modules and the problem is solved. Likewise, it is a knee-jerk reaction for instructors who make their living in the classroom, or for course developers who produce and publish elearning, to think of formal learning as a solution first. Sometimes this will be the answer, but in many cases, slowing things down and considering other alternatives can yield creative and effective solutions other than formal learning. The communication tools and connectivity we have today through our laptops, mobile devices and social media create many possibilities for learning through collaboration.

Partner with the geeks. Every company has them. They are the IT people who are always pushing for the latest technology upgrades; the marketing people who blog, tweet and update company events on facebook; the recruiters who do all of their networking and sourcing through LinkedIn. They have made the leap from the traditional ways of doing things in their field to newer approaches. They recognize the power of the community and the relative ease with which people can be summoned and organized through social media at virtually no cost. It is among these folks that you will find champions for change who will help you knock down the walls.

Let communities grow organically. While it may be tempting to try to jump start collaborative learning by requiring people to sign up and participate in social media groups, this really cannot be forced. Collaboration through social media, for learning or other purposes, has to be an “opt in” experience. The most successful communities are built around common interests by people who want to be there because they are passionate about the topics or issues being discussed. That doesn’t mean you have to sit back and wait. As a learning person you should be present and visible on social media in your organization. Model behavior for business people and your learning colleagues. Seed the waters in the conversation stream by sharing resources and links around topics that are of interest to your learners. They in turn will be encouraged to join in the conversation and share as well. We have been doing this for some time at my company. Check out this blog post from January 2010: Social Media Strategy for Learning for information on how we have been doing this using yammer.

Little Green Men Invade the Parking Lot

2011-06-11T12:41:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has ever walked into a corporate classroom, sat down with coffee in hand waiting for the session to begin, has probably looked up and seen a clean white sheet of flip chart paper tacked up to a back wall or taped behind a door with the headline “Parking Lot” written across the top in brightly colored markers. It is usually something the facilitator joyously points out during the beginning of class ritual somewhere among the agenda, the objectives, the what-do-you-want-to-get-out-of-today’s-session discussion and the directions to the restrooms and fire exits. It is the tool of choice to capture those seemingly unanswerable questions and comments that arise during class that must be deferred to, and deliberated over by, the all-knowing but unavailable subject matter expert “who can’t be with us.” It is an old stand-by meant to comfort the class and bring relief to the facilitator. The participants are comforted knowing their insightful questions or challenging real-world situations that takes us beyond the boundaries of what is being covered in class will be acknowledged, addressed, and perhaps even acted upon, by the remote and powerful bigwig who has the knowledge and clout to tackle such things. The facilitator draws relief from the fact that by jotting the issue down on a post-it, and popping it up on the Parking Lot, she won’t have to sacrifice valuable classroom time trying to unravel a seemingly unsolvable esoteric puzzle. Yes, the Parking Lot is a longstanding, battle-tested classroom tradition that is tried and true. But has reached the end of its day?

I recently took over responsibility for a managing a group technical training instructors. They conduct classes to prepare service technicians to install and repair a variety of hardware and software products we sell as part of our customer solutions. Having spent most of my workplace learning career focused on leadership, communication, and other soft skills topics, it is going to take me some time to understand nuances of this baffling world of electro-mechanical wizardry, touch-screen interfaces, and the impact of trying to train 64-bit software on a 32-bit machine (if that is even possible). This week, in a meeting with one of the instructors, we got into a dialog about how he keeps up-to-date on all of the technical knowledge he needs to run his classes effectively. With the amount and frequency of product introductions and updates in our company, I expected he needed to build a “Parking Garage” to capture all the questions I imagine to be unanswerable in this mystifying technical realm. He shrugged his shoulders seemingly to indicate that “it’s part of the job.” Then he admitted that it is impossible to keep up with all the product changes. But even though that is the case, there is no Parking Lot in any of his classrooms. He told me about the long list of engineering and operations subject matter experts he has on his MS Office Communicator instant messaging contact list. At any given time during class, he can scan the list to see who is “green,” meaning they are online and available. So when someone in his class asks, “What was the thinking behind moving the lever to the other side of the unit in the version 4 release of Product X?” he doesn’t reach for the post-its. He taps the keyboard and gets the answer right then and there. And when the service technicians leave class, they pull out of the parking lot not only well trained, but with the list of little “green” men and women in tow as well.

3 New Roles for Learning Professionals Driven by Web 2.0 #LCBQ

2011-05-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

Last month, the Learning Circuits Big Question (#LCBQ) asked, “How can you address the "I want it now!" demand from stakeholders?” You can read answers from those who were asked to weigh in at the Learning Circuits blog, and you can read my response here. To follow up on that question, the #LCBQ for May is:

How do we need to change in what we do in order to address learning/performance needs that are on-demand?

My read of this question is that it is asking us what new elements we as learning professionals need to add to our jobs to support our learners in the on-demand world of instant answers available through web 2.0 search engines, social media, and online collaboration.

I’m not an industry researcher or thought leader so I’m not pretending to an expert on this topic. But as a person who makes my living as a workplace learning professional, I can share my perspective on what I’ve had to do differently to embrace these tools and incorporate them in the mix of solutions available to the learners at my company.

As I see it, there are three new roles I’ve been playing because of web 2.0 that either didn’t exist - or I didn’t need to play - years ago. We as learning professionals need to consider these roles part of our job in today's world:

Personal Knowledge Manager – For years, we talked about capturing and documenting organizational knowledge to enable business continuity in knowledge banks and other places. Now with the glut of information that comes at us each day, we need to think about knowledge management on a personal level too. We can’t possibly keep all the available information in our heads, so we need to come up with ways to organize, store and retrieve content ourselves, for both our own personal knowledge and for use in helping our learners. Online note taking tools such as OneNote or Evernote can help us capture thoughts, ideas and things we hear; while bookmarking tools such as diigo or del.io.cious can help us store and tag web content.

Content Curator – As learning professionals our traditional role has been to analyze a business problem, uncover the learning need, do some research to identify content that can address the need, and then use it to build a course. That was then and this is now. In the on-demand world, by the time we go through that process our learners have already sought out alternative sources to meet their needs using company intranets, Google searches or Wikipedia. So alongside being content creators, we need to be content curators as well. We need to be able to filter through available information and select the most appropriate bits of it, discard what doesn’t fit, organize and sequence what’s left in ways that will tell the story to help learners meet their needs.

Community Manager – Probably the biggest shift for us as workplace learning professionals is embracing the idea that people can learn from each other without much information coming from us. With today’s social media tools, it is so easy for groups to organize, share information and collaborate. We can help them be effective at this by translating our facilitation skills to this environment. Sometimes all that is needed is to provide an online venue and dangle a small piece of content out there for them to organize themselves around. Then pose a few thought provoking questions and let them at it. They can use their collective skills and experience to problem-solve and learn from each other. You may need to do a little coaching from time-to-time to keep them on the right track, but community members will ultimately decide what they want to contribute to, and take away from the experience.

Inspired by the Lectora End-to-end eLearning Solution

2011-05-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

This week two of my team members and I attended the Lectora User’s Conference in Cincinnati. (Lectora is an elearning development tool from Trivantis.) It has been a few years since I last attended this conference. It has certainly grown. There was double the number of attendees at this year’s event, which was a bit surprising. The last Lectora conference I attended was held in Las Vegas, a place that certainly offers more to do in the off hours. But it was the tool, not the location that compelled me to return to this event. Before the end of 2010, I purchased a few licenses for Trivantis’s then new release: Lectora Inspire. The Inspire version of Lectora improved on what was already a great tool for authoring elearning by including the ability to launch and use flypaper, Camtasia and Snagit right from inside the software. My team members and I wanted to attend this conference to get ideas from both the folks at Trivantis and the other conference-goers, on how to take advantage of these great new capabilities. We got that and much, much more.

The Trivantis team put together a terrific event that included captivating keynote addresses from Elliott Masie, on key learning trends, and Tim Ferguson, CIO at Northern Kentucky University, on the explosion of mobile learning. Each day, these were followed by practical, informative sessions and workshops on how to use the new tools built into Lectora Inspire.

But the biggest news from the conference was the four announcements from Trivantis:

They’ve entered into an agreement to acquire flypaper, a tool that allows you to add interactivity to your courses by creating flash animations and effects simply, without having to be a flash developer. This should lead to even more capabilities in future versions of the Lectora tool.
They introduced Snap! by Lectora, a PowerPoint-to-elearning tool to serve the same needs as Articulate and Adobe Presenter at the low cost of $99. From the looks of it in the demonstration, they are going to give the other guys a run for their money.
They launched WeLearn, a new social eLearning network. They tried something similar a few years ago, but didn’t get much traction with it. WeLearn is a retooled approach that is currently in Beta.
They introduced CourseMill Express, a lower end version of their CourseMill Learning Management System that should be helpful for small businesses that don’t have the funds to invest in a full-blown LMS.

All-in-all, this was quite an event. It gives someone like me, who leads an enterprise team of instructional designers and course developers, a lot to think about. The Lectora line up now creates a strong end-to-end solution with Snap! at one end and Inspire (including flypaper, Snag-it and Camtasia) at the other. I could outfit my team members with the tools they need based on their level, but have them all working across the same platform.

Note: To read messages from the conference-goers on twitter, search on #2011LUC.

Use the Six Disciplines to Create Breakthrough Learning

2011-05-08T05:23:00.000-07:00

The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning is a terrific book for anyone who is interested in fostering effective workplace learning. Now in its second edition, it is about time I got around to writing about it. The 6D concepts and the approach outlined in the book have helped me and my team create successful learning experiences that have led to real behavior change and improved business performance.

There are few surprises in the book for a well-trained or well-read learning professional. The magic is in how it has all been put together. Cal Wick, Roy Pollock, and Andy Jefferson have done a great job synthesizing quite a lot of theory and research which they have distilled into a practical, no-nonsense framework for learning design. They create a clear, easy-to-follow road map for learning professionals and business leaders alike. Their company (Fort Hill) has also developed some great tools, such as the Results Engine® (an updated version of the Friday5s® tool that I wrote about in this 2009 blog post), to support the later stages of the 6D model, where the activities required for genuine learning are usually tougher to sustain.

What are the Six Disciplines? Just that: disciplines. What a great word for us in the workplace learning field. Even when we know the right thing to do, workplace issues such as competitive pressure, speed-to-market needs, and budget constraints sometimes tempt us to abandon good intentions or compromise our standards. We need to maintain the discipline needed to create a complete learning experience, one that will lead to desired business results.

So here are the 6Ds:

D1 – Define Business Outcomes – D1 reminds us that we need to start with the end in mind. We need to look upstream to what the business is trying to accomplish, not just look at learner needs in a vacuum.

D2 – Design the Complete Learning Experience – This is my favorite concept in the book. We need to attend to all phases of learning, (Prepare, Learn, Transfer, Achieve) not just create a course or a learning event.

D3 – Deliver for Application – If we truly want learners to do something different as a result of what they have learned, we need to make sure they understand the context of what they are learning, make learning relevant to their needs, and ensure they have the opportunity for practice and feedback.

D4 – Drive Learning Transfer – This is where the rubber meets the road. Can learners repeat what they have learned in the work environment? Will they have opportunity to use the skills? Will they be motivated to do so? Will they have the support of their managers and peers? All of this must be considered in the Prepare phase, so that when learners get to the Transfer phase, the mechanisms to support learning transfer will be in place and working properly.

D5 – Deploy Performance Support – Closely aligned with learning transfer is having the performance support to sustain motivation. At the very least, this means learners have the support of their manager. At best, they have job aids, performance support tools, and receive coaching to help them during the Achieve phase.

D6 – Document Results – Of course, it is important to measure performance. It is important for learners, their managers, the learning department, and business leaders to know what is working, what is not, and what the impact is to the business.

I encourage you to pick up a copy of this book and begin practicing the 6Ds. Also, check out the Fort Hill Company website for more information on the 6Ds and the Results Engine® transfer tool.

Still Learning ... through #lrnchat

2011-04-30T05:36:00.000-07:00

Where do I spend my Thursday nights? Well, between 8:30 and 10:00 PM eastern time, I'm usually online participating in a twitter-based #lrnchat discussion. For those of you who are not familiar with #lrnchat, it is a weekly gathering of workplace learning professionals, hobbyists, academic enthusiasts, and education junkies who get together to discuss learning topics. A very geeky thing to do I'll admit, but it is a lot of fun. It has also been an important part of my professional growth and development since I began participating in - and learning from - these chats in October 2009. I wrote this blog post: I Have Learned ... Socially!!! at the time to share the excitement I had in that experience. I have been returning ever since.

I have to admit, not every topic, every week is a home run, but the batting average is pretty impressive. And even in those weeks when to topic isn't the greatest, it is still fun to talk and share laughs with the other community members. But every once in a while, a thought provoking question, a comment, or a discussion thread whacks me on the side of the head and a good idea penetrates my thick skull. That happened again this week. The topic was "Using Social Media in Projects." The first question of the night was, "What projects are you working on that use social media?" Happily, I was able to contribute a few responses here. I and my team have been incorporating social media tools into our learning design for quite some time now. But it was the second question that hit me upside the head: "How are you using social media to gather formative data about your projects?" This was a simple, straightforward question. It absolutely made sense. But the truth of the matter is I haven't been using social media to gather formative data. I don't really know why. I'm usually very diligent about analysis and data gathering in the early stages of a learning project. In fact, I'm sometimes criticized for spending too much time doing it. It never occurred to me that I could be using social media as part of my data collecting. But as soon as I thought about it, it made absolute sense to do so. I can cast a wider net and likely get a faster response than I can with traditional data collection methods.

The good news is that I can learn. My company has recently re-outfitted our sales and service employees with an upgraded mobile device. The time is right for us to begin deploying mobile learning. We are in the early stages of developing our strategy. So on Friday, I logged onto my company's yammer network and posted a few questions about mobile learning. I asked people to share experiences they may have already had with mobile learning, and to share expectations about topics, tools and support they would like to see through mobile learning. Responses were starting to trickle in by the end of the day. I will continue the dialog next week.

Thanks again to my #lrnchat buddies for the whack in the head. See you next Thursday.

Addressing Stakeholders Who “Want It Now” #LCBQ

2011-04-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

The Learning Circuits Big Question for April is: How do we address the “I want it now” demand from stakeholders?

It is easy to see where this question comes from: Business leaders can mull over strategy decisions for a while, but once they decide on a course of action, they want to move forward as quickly as possible. You, as their learning partner, will want to accommodate the need for speed, but the demand for quick action often does cause some tension. Having worked in corporate learning for 20+ years, this is a situation that I have often faced. Assuming there is a real learning need behind the request, there are usually three questions that need to be answered before you can respond to your stakeholder.

Can the target audience learn what they need to learn quickly? For example, there is a difference between helping a transaction-oriented salesperson to learn a new procedure for processing a sales order vs. helping her learn how to become a consultative seller. You can get started on the latter quickly, but it will take time, practice and experience to fully achieve the learning outcome.
Will you have access to the content, tools and Subject Matter Experts needed for a quick turnaround? Much of the work that instructional designers do is dependent on having what is needed to develop the learning solution. Sometimes training requests come along too early in a project to be actionable. When that happens, the good news is that you are at the table with the team working on the project in its early stages. This gives you the opportunity to influence the development of tools and communication materials in ways that can be helpful to learning.
Can other learning projects be delayed or put on hold while the learning team is redeployed to take care of this urgent request? Most of us work in environments where there are multiple projects going on at the same time. Business leaders and/or learning governance boards will sometimes have to intervene to help the learning team sort out the priorities.

If the answer to these questions is “Yes” then go ahead, tell your stakeholder, “You can have that right away!”

The Last of the 3-Ring Binders

2011-04-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

This week when I return to work, I’ll be packing up for yet another office move. The latest round of transformation projects and real estate strategy adjustments has me going from the fourth to the fifth floor. At least I’m moving up in the world! I have moved many times in my career. During each of these moves, I have winnowed down the contents of my office to just the essentials and a few personal items. So when the move coordinator asked how many boxes I’ll need, I replied, “Probably one, but better get me two just in case.” causing her to raise an eyebrow in surprise.

As I think about packing up next week, I realize that office moves are great milestones for reflecting on how things change over the course of our careers. Each time we move, we throw open the drawers and closets and pull out items we might not have seen in a while. We have to decide what to discard and what to take along with us into the next phase. As a learning professional, one of the staple items in my closet has been a collection of 3-ring binders - the ghosts of training past. Less and less of these end up in the “keep pile” with each move.

Two decades ago, when I relocated from New York to Connecticut for a promotional opportunity, I had a ton of these binders. Some from programs I had designed and delivered; others from classes I had attended. Among them, there was at least one binder from a program that probably had a title like, “How to Cope with Change.” I’m sure I checked to make sure I had it backed up on a floppy disk before throwing it into a dumpster along with many others that would not be making the move with me.

Ten years ago, when I moved from a satellite building into our corporate headquarters a few miles away, I still had many 3-ring binders with me. Among them, there was probably one with a title like, “How to Create and Drive Change.” I’m sure I backed it up on a CD, pulled the out pages and put them in a recycling bin, before offering the empty binder to another department for reuse.

Now as I make the move from four to five, I have only a few 3-ring binders with me from some of my favorite programs, one’s that have helped me greatly over the years. Among them is a program with a title like, “How to Manage in an Ever Changing World.” Since no one is using 3-ring binders these days, I’ll make sure it is backed up to our SharePoint site before separating the paper, plastic and metal parts and placing them in the appropriate bins.

Note: for suggestions on what to do with discarded 3-ring binders visit planetgreen.com.

Three Ways to Use Video with Office Communicator to Enhance Learning

2011-04-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

Like many companies these days, my company uses an instant messaging tool to enable informal communication and impromptu virtual meetings among employees. The tool we use is Microsoft Office Communicator. Recently, our IT department has added the ability to enhance discussions through Office Communicator by using webcams. Last week, our Innovations in Learning group (a yammer-based Community of Practice group inside my company devoted to workplace learning) discussed our early experiences with the new capability and its potential uses for learning.

In early explorations with the tool, group members tried out and described three different uses:

Connecting additional participants into a classroom ILT session from a distance – while overall it was perceived as a plus to be able to bring in participants through video who otherwise would not have been able to attend, the experience as described was challenging for both the participants and the facilitator. In a course that was designed to be led by an instructor with a live group, there were elements that did not work for the people joining from a distance (no surprise there!). Also, the facilitator reported needing three laptops and cameras to make the session work (one trained on the facilitator, one on the group, and one on the materials being shown or discussed in the room). This meant that a second person needed to join the facilitator in a “producer” or “moderator” type role.

Conducting small group virtual training sessions using desktop sharing – one of the great things about Office Communicator is that you can have instant meetings by sharing your desktop. Adding webcams makes the meeting experience a little more engaging. Office Communicator is limited to only showing one person on screen at a time. The software displays the image of the person who is speaking. So while you can't see the whole group at once, you can see the facial expressions and body language of the person who is speaking. And since it is easy to quickly set up a virtual classroom without a lot of preparation using Office Communicator, this can be practical for small group sessions, post-training follow-ups, and distance coaching.

Using Office Communicator for virtual break-out rooms - Many virtual classroom training sessions are conducted using software that was designed for meetings and do not provide break-out capabilities. Office Communicator can be used as a virtual break-out tool with or without webcams. The webcams add a little more intimacy to the small group discussions, which can help groups keep their attention on the task at hand rather than distractors they may be facing in their home office or at their workstation.

Webcams used with Office Communicator do increase the sense of "being there." In this day and age of agile workers and virtual teams, any capability that can help shorten the distance between learners is welcome.

Informal Learning through Social Media - the First Ripple

2011-02-24T15:39:00.000-08:00

From just a few drops, you can create quite a ripple effect.

It may sound cliche, but it is an appropriate metaphor for what happened last week:

If you have been reading Many Ways to Learn over the last year or so, you know that one of the topics I frequently write about is the use of Yammer for learning purposes. I have made a deliberate attempt to get people in my company to recognize the value of using this internal microblogging tool to connect with people informally, to share information, and to collaborate with one another. Two key things I and my team members do to foster Yammer usage are:

Post messages and links on topics that are important to our learners. Some of our most popular topics are #leadership #managing #change and #remote-teams. We have been particularly focused on managers. We encourage dialogue around these topics and each of my team members has a growing base of followers as a result of the messages we post.
Participate in a Yammer-based community group called Innovations in Learning. This group discusses a different workplace learning topic every other month on Yammer. At the end of the two-month cycle, we have a virtual meet-up to discuss the questions and messages that were posted about the topic for that period. It is a public group inside my company that is open to anyone, but the majority of the members are instructional designers, course developers, classroom facilitators, and the like. My goal in forming this group was twofold: to start a community of practice on workplace learning, and to have the learning professionals in my company see how we could help others use social media as a complement to formal learning.

Last week I received this message from one of our managers:

"You were the first person I followed on Yammer and you seem to be very experienced on group and/or subject creation. Could you spend 10 to 15 minutes on the phone with me to help me facilitate a group dedicated to the competitive channel for dialogue starters and info sharing?"

I was so excited to receive this message. After all the efforts we have made over the last few months, it was nice to see that someone had recognized the power of what we were doing and wanted to replicate that for another topic. He has since set up a Yammer group and already has 24 members. Unlike other Yammer groups that exist in the company, this one is not just about shared interests, it is focused on creating direct business success by being a forum for sharing ideas on how to sell against the competition. I think this is an important milestone in our evolution towards embedding informal learning in the workstream. I'm looking forward to many more groups like this sprouting up.

Social Media at Conferences, Revisited

2011-02-13T07:54:00.000-08:00

In September 2009, I wrote this blog entry: Tweeting at Conferences: Etiquette vs. Impact about whether or not it was rude to tweet at conferences. As someone who was new to social media at the time, my perspective was that when listening to a speaker at a conference, the polite thing to do was to put your handheld device away and give the speaker your full attention. What a difference a year and a half of experience can make. Now my view is that, as long as you are discreet and don't create distractions, it is not only complimentary to the speaker to share messages about what is being presented it is also valuable to do so, in a number of ways.

This week I attended a kick-off meeting in Dallas for my company's most important business unit. Business leaders, managers and people from key staff functions spent four days together discussing strategy and tactics for 2011. This was a business meeting not a learning event, so my team members and I mostly had time to experience the conference from a participant's point-of-view. I had the good fortune to be able to listen, absorb, and share a lot of what I was experiencing through our company microblogging tool: Yammer, which is very similar to Twitter, only access is restricted solely to my company's employees.

Over the course of the four days, I posted messages that included direct quotes from business leaders, summaries of presentations, my thoughts about the implications of some of the things I heard, and general updates about what we were doing, the atmosphere, and the mood in the room. I really had four goals in mind as I was doing this:

Share information with other team members - I manage a remote team that is scattered about the US. Not all of them were able to attend the conference. I wanted the team members who weren't able to be there to get as much real-time information as possible about the strategy so they could begin thinking about how it would impact their work.
Exchange thoughts and impressions with other conference goers - Using social media is still relatively new in my company. There were only a few other people at the conference who were also posting updates on Yammer. But it was nice to connect with others in the room this way and jointly share our thoughts through discussion threads.
Share information with others in the company - One of the conference goers who is also one of my yammer followers saw my yammer posts and came up to during the conference to say, "What a great idea: actually sharing our strategy with as many people in the company as possible, as early as possible."
Create an archive of notes - I attached the hashtag (#) "Dallas" to all of the messages I posted during the conference so that I - and anyone else who might be interested - could easily retrieve them when needed after the event.

On all counts I was successful. And the messaging was not just one-way. Team members and others who were not at the event responded to my posts with questions and comments that encouraged me to share more information, provide clarifications, and go into more depth on the topics that were of most interest.

Skype to the Rescue!

2011-01-30T08:56:00.000-08:00

Here is a winter-time scenario that is probably familiar to many learning professionals:

You have a group of employees participating in a learning program.   As part of the program, they are scheduled to attend a classroom learning event. Participants, instructors, subject matter experts and senior leaders are scheduled to fly in from different parts of the country to converge at the training location for three-days of discussion, instruction and action-planning for the days that follow. Then the weather strikes. One or more of the key players for this event can't make it on time, or worst case scenario, at all.   Instead of a smooth-running, well-planned event, now you are faced with using a less-than-ideal contingency plan.

This week my team facilitated a program for a group of supervisors from our service organization at our training center outside of Atlanta. The topics mainly had to do with people management issues. Everything went as planned on days one and two, but winter weather threatened to disrupt the agenda on day three. One of our key subject matter experts (SMEs), an employee relations specialist, was scheduled to join us for a three-hour segment on day three.  Since that was the only time he needed to be there, his plan was to fly in Wednesday night, join us for the positive employee relations segment on Thursday morning and fly back home Thursday afternoon. He was coming from the northeast, where I live, and flew in from just a few days earlier.   I've lived in Connecticut for fifteen years.   We have had more major snowstorms this year than in any other year since I've lived here.   On Wednesday night, we had another one. There was no way our employee relations specialist was going to be able to get to Atlanta for our session. Time for plan B.

Now we had used this particular gentleman as a subject matter expert for similar training sessions in the past. He facilitates discussion about treating people professionally and in a manner that is in line with our company values.   He also covers important information about legal aspects of the supervisor/employee relationship.   Needless to say, I was disappointed that we weren't going to have him with us in person. In the past, when things like this happened, we would often have the SME join us via conference call and through Microsoft Live Meeting. This works well when the SME has a lot of written or visual material to cover. But our employee relations SME doesn't use PowerPoint slides. He doesn't have a three-inch binder loaded with printed materials.   He relies on group discussion and storytelling to deliver his message - and he is a very animated storyteller.   He is a dynamic and engaging speaker who adds a lot of value to the topic with his style. His messages come through clearly and powerfully, and he makes a memorable visual impression. I didn't want our supervisors to miss out on the advantages created by that style.

Fortunately, I have recently become familiar with, and comfortable using Skype - which is software for making voice and video calls over the Internet.   Both of my kids are in college. My wife and I have been using Skype in our conversations with them.   It is one thing to talk to them on the phone and ask how they are doing, It is another to see their faces. Are they smiling? Do they look happy/sad/worried/tired/etc?   Using Skype with them has made us feel that we are all a little closer. The conversations feel more intimate. The visual information tells us much more than their voice and words alone ever could.

Knowing our employee relations expert's speaking style, I thought, "why not try to connect him into the classroom via Skype?"   I knew it would be risky.   Would the technology hold up for a three-hour segment? Would the one-to-group dynamic work as well as the one-to-one conversations that I've had with my kids? But in the end we decided to try it.   I called him on his cell phone to ask if he ever used Skype. He said that he had it on his computer but had only used it once or twice over a year ago, but he was willing to give it a try. Next, we had to find a large monitor and speakers to connect to my laptop so that the group could clearly see and hear him.   Fortunately, we were able to find everything we needed to make the connection.

On Thursday morning, I huddled the group in closer together so that they would be in camera range and dialed up our SME through the computer. There he was, smiling and ready to go.  He was very comfortable with the set-up. Even though he was sitting at a desk at home, he was still able to be as lively, animated and engaging as I knew him to be in person.   He could clearly see everyone and he responded to their body language, gestures and facial expressions as if he was in the room. The one challenge we had was that our audio feed to him was through the microphone built into my laptop. So there were some times when he could not hear comments or questions from the group.   I acted as moderator repeating/paraphrasing questions for him. At his direction, I also drew a few diagrams on the flip chart and captured comments from the group during some of the discussions. All-in-all it was incredibly successful.

Afterwards, I was thinking, "If we were this successful with this impromptu effort, imagine what we could do if we had actually planned and designed this as a distance learning segment."   Now my head is filled with possibilities.   I think we will be doing more distance learning using video calls in the future.

The Inevitability of Social Learning

2011-01-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

This fall, I read two books on learning and social media: Social Media for Trainers, by Jane Bozarth which I wrote about in this blog on September 25, and The New Social Learning, by Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner, which is the subject of this post.

Both books are excellent, but they tackle the subject from two very different angles. In Social Media for Trainers, Jane Bozarth shared practical examples of specific applications of social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and wikis in learning situations. It is a very tactical book, and I ended up buying copies for my team members so they could get some ideas on how we can better leverage these tools in our work.

The New Social Learning takes a different approach and is targeted to a broader audience. It tackles the topic from a more strategic point-of-view. I have recommended it to a few of our business leaders (outside of the Learning & Development function) who expressed an interest in how social media can be used for learning, innovation, and idea exchanges among our employees, business partners and customers.

The authors view the use of social media in organizations as inevitable. Millions of people are using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools outside the office as an effective and efficient means of communication and information sharing, why would they not want those same advantages in their work? They express the choice we face as: do we want embrace and leverage social media and integrate it into our work, or - as many companies do - do we want try to ban or restrict social media usage in some way? Obviously, they advocate embracing it and encourage their readers to put social media tools to use in their organizations citing greater shared knowledge, richer learning experiences, and an enhanced corporate culture as some of the payoffs.

Mr. Bingham and Ms. Conner take a relatively "tool-neutral" approach in this book. Their position here is that specific tools come and go quickly these days, so rather than discuss them in the book, they provide a companion website: http://thenewsociallearning.com/ where information about specific social media tools can be shared and updated as needed. Rather than discuss specific tools, they discuss usage by categories (such as microblogging and immersive environments) and the value created by each. They do this by providing specific examples and success stories. My favorite parts of the book are the "Respond to Critics" and "Recommendations" sections of each of the main chapters. It is obvious that the authors have heard all the objections and criticisms typically raised by skeptics, and that they have inoculated themselves against them. In this book, they are passing on the vaccine to us.

L&D Strategy: Report to HR or Operations?

2010-12-23T06:34:00.000-08:00

Last week I came across this post: An operational attitude towards learning on Karyn's erratic learning journey blog. In it, Karyn Romeis expresses the point of view that Learning & Development departments should be moved out of HR and report up through operations. This got my attention because at my company we are currently doing the opposite. Our Learning & Development functions are being consolidated and moved from the business units into a Shared Services model that will report up through HR. While I agree with Karyn's point that,  "L&D's job is all about performance, and performance is an operational thing."   I don't think it is necessary to report up through operations to be an effective business partner to them. Throughout my career I have moved back and forth from reporting to HR to reporting directly to the Line of Business leaders that I support. Having these varied experiences has made me a better all around learning professional. I understand my business leaders' concerns and priorities and I am able to leverage the development resources available through HR.

In characterizing HR, Karyn makes a point that I don't agree with when she states, "HR is responsible for looking after people: their payroll, their working conditions, their treatment under employment law, etc. and has no direct accountability in terms of the organisation's business objectives."   In my company, the most most important aspects of the HR function are Organization Design, Talent Development, and Workforce Planning.   These are critical to achieving our company's business success.

I do believe that learning should be embedded in the workstream. I don't see any reason why my department can't accomplish this while we are plugged into HR rather than our business unit leaders.   We are becoming an HR shared service, but we will still be part of our business leaders' extended teams.   Our business is rapidly transforming. With the amount of change we have going on right now, we are in need of some major talent upgrades, new ways of managing, and there are many new work tasks to be performed. I think L&D will be better resourced and well-positioned to help address these needs on a global scale operating from within Human Resources where we can easily partner with our Strategic Talent Management and Organizational Development counterparts. Plus, since all of the learning professionals are coming into this department from the business, we will retain the operational perspective and networks.   Also of note, there are no geographical changes planned. We will be consolidating into one department under a federated model, but the field based team members will still be embedded in their current locations.

Right Here in Our Own Little Community!

2010-11-25T05:36:00.000-08:00

It has been just about four months since our formal instructional design standards committee morphed into the broader and less formal Innovations in Learning Community of Practice. We are an internal company group that discusses different learning topics through Yammer each month. At the end of the month, we have a virtual Meet-up to discuss the Yammer posts. The core of the community is still made up of a handful of instructional designers from within my department, but we've grown modestly (29 members!) as we have widened our focus from instructional design, to workplace learning. We have been joined by course developers from other learning groups within the company, classroom facilitators, marketing people, and line employees who have no formal role in workplace learning at all.

As a result of our recent growth, three exciting developments have occurred:

The center of the community is shifting - I am pleased to say that community members from outside the original group from my department are taking an active role in the community. For the first time, the topic discussion at our next virtual Meet-up will led by a community member from another department.
The "rules" and norms are changing - Not surprisingly, as other group members take an active role in the community, new rules and new norms are developing. Timelines for discussions are extending and we are changing the format of our next virtual Meet-up a bit. I couldn't be happier about this. I was afraid that this was going to be viewed as "Mike's group." Now I'm beginning to envision a day when I can step back to the fringes and let others take the lead. I think it is still a ways away, but this is encouraging.
We've attracted "hobbyists" who may want to turn "pro" - This is the most exciting development so far. Two community members from line positions have reached out to me to discuss possible career opportunities in learning roles. One of them is an enthusiastic hobbyist who has done a lot of communications work. She was attracted by our discussions about Articulate Presenter and has even gone as far a purchasing a software license so she can practice what she is learning. The other is currently in a sales role. He is also in the final stages of completing his Master's in Adult Education. Besides adding new flavors to our community, both of these individuals are now on my radar screen for succession planning.

If you are interested in reading about our development up to this point, review these two previous posts:

Deciding between Formal and Informal Learning Approaches
Community Building with Yammer

And of course, tune back in a later date for additional updates.

Guilty of Learning Malpractice

2010-10-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

Last week's #lrnchat discussion was on learning malpractice. I love to join these Thursday night chats as often as I can. Unfortunately, I was unable to make this one. What a pity. From the looks of the transcript it was a lively discussion. I definitely would have been able to contribute to this one.   After 22 years in workplace learning, I have seen just about every form of learning malpractice imaginable. And I have to admit, that I am guilty of a few transgressions myself over the years.   Let's face it, at times Corporate America can be a tough place for a learning professional.   Business leaders often expect you to take their underperforming employees and run them through a training session as if it was a car wash. They want them to come out on the other side all squeaky clean and ready to go. In this type of environment, it is hard not to commit a few sins.

I wish I could say that after 22 years, I no longer commit learning malpractice. But the best I can do is tell you that I no longer commit felonies. I'm still guilty of a few misdemeanors now and again. Sometimes I do things that I know I shouldn't, just to please my internal clients.   My rationale is that if I commit a minor violation to appease a few key stakeholders, it creates some goodwill that helps us build our relationship. This way I can get closer to them, their problems, their business issues, and their employee development needs.   I'm willing to make small trade-offs to be able to consult with them on the bigger issues where we can really help them with their business.   Some of you might be cringing as you read this. You might be thinking, "As learning professionals we should never compromise our standards." But others of you will relate to what I'm saying.   With the competitive pressures, pace of change, and depletion of resources through downsizings we all face, we do have to pick and choose our battles.

So here I write my latest confession:

Our flagship program is a three-month long onboarding for new sales executives that we first implemented in 2009. I'm very proud of the work my team has done on this program. It is well designed and well-facilitated. The metrics for program graduates have consistently been in the desired performance range. When we first introduced this program, we did all the right things. We thoroughly analyzed the audience, work tasks, and expected outcomes.   We were thoughtful in how we set up our virtual learning environment. We were diligent in our approach to developing and selecting learning activities. We had lively discussion and healthy conflict among our stakeholders that helped to strengthen our decision-making.   All of this paid off as the program proved to be both effective, and cost-effective.   That is until this summer when we began rapidly transforming our organization and our workforce.   Suddenly, the number of participants enrolled in each new class began to jump through the roof. And now we are seeing quite a variety of individuals many of them with very different skills and experiences than that of our original profile. We had to make quite a lot of adjustments on the fly.   We've made changes to content and activities. We've increased the maximum class size from 15 to 22 and added 25% more classes to the schedule. Even with the additional classes we are still hitting our newly raised ceiling of 22 every time. We've pressed new people into service to facilitate the additional classes with less preparation than we would like them to have had.

On all these counts, I'm guilty of learning malpractice. But I throw myself on the mercy of the court.   I stayed as closely aligned to my business leaders as I could.  I wanted to stay alert and prepared to make changes as needed, but they just came too fast and too furiously this year. Our onboarding program now resembles one of my local roads after a Connecticut winter: broken up with cracks and pot holes. We've been filling them in as best we can, but it is still a bumpy ride for our learners right now.   In November, we are reconvening the team to discuss repaving the road for 2011. I hope I'll be done serving my time by then.

Must Read: Social Media for Trainers

2010-09-25T07:02:00.000-07:00

Jane Bozarth recently published a new book called Social Media for Trainers. I would put it on the list of "essential reads" for anyone in the workplace learning field. Social media and Web 2.0 tools are too important into today's world for the learning community to ignore. Most true learning takes place informally and through peer-to-peer connections. Social media provides a platform to make that happen more easily. If you are really interested in helping people be successful at work or move forward with their development needs, you cannot ignore the power of these tools and their potential for learning.

The book covers how to use social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and wikis - and a few others - for learning purposes. Each of the key tools is given its own chapter. Each chapter begins with a description of the tool in a nutshell, a deeper look into the tool, advantages and disadvantages of selecting one tool over another, how and why you might use some of the tools together, and why you might choose one tool over another. Then the chapters provide a barrage of ideas and practical ways the tool being covered can be used for learning purposes. There are suggestions on how to use the tools as primary vehicles for learning and how to use them to supplement or extend programs or courses (that are delivered in the classroom or through other media) by using the social media tools for pre-work, intercession work and post work.

If you are not a social media user already, the book will help you get started. If you are a familiar with social media tools, but haven't used them for learning, you will be amazed at how many learning activities are possible. Of course, not all of them will be right for every learning situation or workplace culture, but there is enough here to choose from so everyone can come away with at least one or two practical ideas.

Here are a few quick hits I picked up about some of the tools:

Twitter - Learners can use Twitter to talk to an expert. You can follow anyone with a Twitter account and if you reach out to an author or expert about their work, many are happy to respond.

Facebook - For me the biggest surprise in the book is how versatile Facebook is. I generally have only used Facebook for personal connections and favor other social media tools for work purposes, but Facebook has so many capabilities that it can be used to for everything from communication to course management.

Blogs - These can be great tools for learning reflection. But you must keep in mind, blogs are heavily dependent on writing skills. If that doesn't match your audience profile, blogs may not be the way to go.

Wikis - Unlike the other tools which are primarily set up for comment and response interactions, wikis allow true collaboration. Learners can jointly create pages such as shared class notes for FAQs.

There is so much more in the book. Get it. Read it. Use it.

Thinking too much...about Personal Knowledge Management

2010-09-15T17:24:00.000-07:00

I came across this comic today while exploring links on Twitter. It captures how I feel some days very well. There is so much knowledge sharing going on in the web 2.0 world that it seems impossible that anyone could keep it all in their head without it exploding.

Head Explode

Thank goodness for bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg, and diigo that help us with personal knowledge management. Although - I find that the people in my del.icio.us network alone have enough to share to keep me overloaded for the rest of my life.

Community Building with Yammer

2010-09-07T16:32:00.000-07:00

I always have to remind myself that whenever we try new approaches to learning at work things start slowly, build gradually, eventually gain momentum, and ultimately become institutionalized. Right now I am in the "starts slowly" phase with my attempt to create a Community of Practice out of a loosely formed group of people who are interested in workplace learning at my company.

But isn't that the way an online community is supposed to form? An individual shares some content online that is of personal interest. Others with common interests discover it and share similar content of their own.  Conversations begin to flow about it.  After a while one person puts up a flag and calls it a group. That is exactly what is happening with our Innovations in Learning group. What is the Innovations in Learning group?

It is a Yammer-based Community of Practice group open to anyone in my company who is interested in workplace learning. The group primarily comprises learning professionals but we encourage anyone interested in learning to join the conversations. We decided to focus on a new topic each month using Yammer for discussion and sharing resources, links, and articles. At the end of each month, we have a virtual Meet-up using Microsoft Live Meeting. Our topic for September is Video Conferencing. We will discuss the topic asynchronously throughout the month. Our Meet-up is scheduled for September 24. A week before the Meet-up I will send meeting invitations to all group members through Yammer.   I'll include the discussion questions that we will go through during the Meet-up.

We had our first Meet-up in August. Only six of our 23 members participated in the month-end discussion. Despite the low turn-out, I'm encouraged.  This is new to everyone. It was only our first meeting. As I said earlier, we are in the "starts slowly" phase.  I know the momentum will build and that ultimately our community will thrive.   Once the members of our group get comfortable with the process, I envision us replicating it to foster learning communities around other topics that are important in our company.

The Pros and Cons of Podcasting

2010-08-31T16:58:00.000-07:00

I have never been one to get too excited over podcasts. I know there are a good number of people who like to listen to audio content on their mobile devices or while driving in the car. Me? I prefer to listen to something like Pink Floyd or the Grateful Dead when I have a little down time, so podcasts have never been my thing. That being said, they do have their place among delivery media. And since most of my learners are sales and service professionals who do spend a lot of time in their cars, I have had my team create a podcast library of downloadable resources for "learning on the go."

This week in the class that I'm currently taking at FSU, we discussed the benefits and limitations of podcasts as a medium for learning. As good collaborative learners do, we created some very nice lists. I thought they had a lot of good points, so I'm reprinting them here:

Potential Benefits of Using Audio Podcasts

Portability e.g. easy to load on an iPod or similar device and consume content on the fly
Well suited for distributing content that doesn't require visual support e.g. facts, opinions, and the like
Good for audiences who need information on the fly - salespeople and service people who spend a lot of time in cars can listen as they drive
Good for content that is audio-oriented, such as learning a language, subtle or sensitive communication topics, learning how to play music, or create sound effects
Make better sense of computer images when accompanied by audio by providing an explanation
Encourage deeper thought when providing audio instruction by asking questions. (Not a benefit unique to audio podcasts?)
Audio-only podcasts can be fairly inexpensive to produce (microphone, software)
Audio-only podcasts allow students who have dyslexia the opportunity to learn material without being hindered by the challenges of reading words on a page (this was from our reading of Harris and Park, 2008)
Can Provide specific customization of information to be learned by the learner as a stand alone, or in addition to original instruction
Audio materials can be presented in multiple languages, to target a larger, more diverse audience of learners
Podcasts can be used to reinforce lecture concepts
Students can work at their own pace, starting and stopping when necessary, and replaying key points of the lecture/podcast as they deem necessary
Good for relaying repeated information, leaving teachers more time for higher level instruction (i.e. podcast library or museum tour, as mentioned in the Harris and Park article)
Podcasts are a medium that teens/younger students can identify with and be motivated to use
Because sound effects are accessible in the public domain, you can create a unique environment that matches the sound and feeling of the content being taught fairly inexpensively vs. trying to create a classroom or video experience
Hearing a voice and providing an "eye" break is a huge benefit to online learning. With all the book, article, online reading, sometimes it is nice to have a voice and a "eye" break
Provides learners the opportunity to review and re-review information an unlimited number of times

Potential Limitations of Using Audio Podcast

Not well suited for complex subjects that necessitate visual support to fully comprehend e.g. mathematics for example
Violates Mayer's multimedia effect when not designed correctly
Can only be effective for short topics
Passive medium
Does not support learning if students are not attentive, therefore the audio must keep the student involved, e.g. asking questions (similar to & elaboration of item 4)
The loss of non-verbal cues (body language, supportive material)from the speaker may affect the intent of the message/speaker
Aural memory is limited in the retention of information, but this can be overcome in audio-only instruction by the learner being able to control the audio presentation by pausing and replaying the information
Audio files take up a lot of space on a computer's hard drive
Some people are visual/kinesthetic learners, that is they learn primarily by seeing someone do something or doing it themselves
Audio output quality is only as good as its weakest component, which is often the system's speakers. It was pointed out that high quality sound it a necessity for us aging listeners and for those with other hearing losses
Lacks feedback. Learner is unable to ask questions or clarify information being presented
If targeted toward a specific audience, some previous knowledge of the subject matter is assumed(Difficult to gear toward a universal audience)
Does not allow for multiple representations of the material, only auditory
Audio only podcasts may be longer than necessary if using words to describe a concept that a picture could teach faster
Requires an audio output device, which may not be present on all computers (no speakers on some public-access machines in offices, libraries, etc.)
If the learner is not as proficient in the spoken language, it could be limiting especially when accents and territorial dialect are added in to the mix
Does not allow for nonverbal cues (already listed in item 6)

This list comes to you courtesy of the Fall 2010 EME6415 class at Florida State University.

Instructional Design is Not Dying

2010-08-16T19:27:00.000-07:00

Instructional Design has been on mind lately. Having just finished reflecting on my first year experiences as a blogger and as a member of the web 2.0 learning community, I realize that a lot of my focus over the last year has been on informal learning topics. I started this blog as a way to explore web 2.0 tools, partly to educate myself, and partly to contribute and share what I could with others about my experiences as I attempt to integrate these technologies into workplace learning. This got me thinking about how little of my explorations have been focused on instructional design for formal learning. Then I read this blog post Is Instructional Design Dying? over at the eLearning Authority this morning which compelled me to write this tonight.

I’ve been working in learning & development roles for a number of years. First and foremost I consider myself to be an instructional designer. And while I admit that I no longer spend as much of my time involved in rigorous design these days, it informs everything that I do. Yes, we are in the non-linear age of elearning programs and informal learning but does that mean we should abandon systems thinking? Just because we develop elearning rapidly, it doesn’t mean we have to do it poorly. Don’t we still need to analyze tasks and learner behavior to know what needs to go into a rapid elearning course? And even though we may not be able to prescribe the path our learners take as they pursue their learning goals through informal means, can’t we still be thoughtful and creative about what we place in their path?

Like many who are using rapid elearning tools today, early in my career my approach to instructional design was based on intuition. Trial and error was my course development process. I remember my excitement when I first encountered the Dick & Carey model. It allowed me to be more deliberate in my approach to design and my results were consistently better.

Some people criticize the Dick & Carey model for being too rigid and inflexible for learning in today’s world. To those people I would say, “It’s a model.” It is a representation of our reality, but it is not our reality. It is up to us as learning professionals to bring insight, flexibility, and creativity to the design process.

A few years ago, I gave away my copy of The Systematic Design of Instruction - a great reference book on how to apply the Dick & Carey model - to a new staff member in my department who was just beginning her career as a course developer. Earlier this year, I bought a new copy for myself because even though things are changing, it is still important to my work. But if I come across another enthusiastic novice course developer, I just might give this copy away too.

Happy Anniversary to Many Ways to Learn!

2010-08-07T04:14:00.000-07:00

Incredible as it may seem (to me anyway) today is the one year anniversary of the Many Ways to Learn blog. I posted my first entry on August 7, 2009. At the time, every training journal, magazine and newsletter was loaded with articles about social media. (It seems they still are!) Up until then, I had been indifferent to social media. My only experience with it was a half completed profile and a dozen connections on Linkedin, and watching my kids connect with their friends on Facebook. But after being bombarded and bludgeoned with articles on how social media was the biggest thing to hit the training industry since the advent of elearning, I thought I’d better investigate it. So I simultaneously started this blog, created a Twitter account, completed my profile on LinkedIn and began reaching out to people to see what would happen. It was going to be my own mini social experiment.

Not knowing what to expect, I approached all of this with a bit of skepticism. My perception of social media was that people were wasting time tweeting things like, “I’m taking a shower now” or “I’m moving from the couch to the loveseat.” At that time, I had no understanding of the value it could bring. I enjoyed writing the blog entries, but I never thought anyone would actually read them.

Here it is one year later. As I reflect on my social media experiences over this last year, I’d have to say they have been both fruitful and satisfying. Here are a few things, I have learned:

People are interested in what I have to say – incredible as it may seem to me, people do read my blog. Not by the thousands, but a by the hundreds each month. Each time I publish a new post, I get a spike in readers so I know I have a few subscribers out there. It is good to know that I can contribute to other people’s learning and enjoyment in at least some small way.
There are many thriving virtual communities – whatever you may be interested in, there are people out there who are interested in the same things. I love instructional design. I’ve been lucky enough to find a community of people who are interested in workplace learning. Many of them now are my Twitter and LinkedIn contacts. It is great to have people to talk to who are genuinely interested in what I like to do. My family and friends are bored to death by the things I write about in this blog.
Hobbyists, not professionals, make up the heart of virtual communities – within each community you will find experts, enthusiastic novices, and everything in between. And while there are many professionals on line, they are not the ones who do the bulk of the information sharing. Since they sell their content and expertise, they can’t really give it all away. On the other side of the coin, the hobbyists have no profit motive so they are free to share whatever they like.
Social media enables you to connect directly to thought leader and experts – the amazing thing about social media is that you can connect with just about anyone. Thought leaders, authors, and even celebrities (if you so choose) will not only accept you as a follower, but in some cases will follow you back. It is great to be able to discuss a topic with the person who originated the idea or wrote the book. Prior to social media, this ease of access was not possible.
There are no geographic boundaries on the connection possibilities – this is an obvious one but it is still worth mentioning. I live in Connecticut but I have social media contacts that I regularly engage with all over the country, in Canada, the UK, Germany, India and Australia. How wonderful is that?
Twitter can lead to real business opportunities – Some social media contacts can be converted into face-to-face business contacts. I recently hired a vendor to deliver Virtual Team Building training for a group of our managers who I met because she was following me on Twitter. I’ve had other contacts deliver proposals for services I might consider using in the future.
There are a myriad of web 2.0 tools out there, and many of them are free – there is way more to the Web 2.0 world than just blogging and tweeting. Thank goodness for people like Jane Hart, who aggregate lists of tools to save the rest of us the leg work.
It is possible to effectively collaborate at a distance – I manage a virtual team. I’m in Connecticut. I have two team members in Georgia, one in Ohio and one in Florida. We are able to work together at a distance by sharing our desktops, storing files in shared workspaces, and using online collaboration tools.
Real learning does take place through social media – I’m living proof of that. A year ago I knew nothing about social media. Now I use several different tools to regularly to connect with people inside and outside my company. I’m doing things inside my company that I learned from my external social media connections and experiences. The informal learning that takes place online is real and powerful.

There are probably a million other things I could list here, but I won’t - at least not now. One year into this “experiment” I am convinced that I’d be crazy to give it up. The connections I’ve made through social media are too valuable to cast aside. I contribute to the online learning community and I get a lot out of it too. Plus, I’m having fun!

Using Social Media for Learning

2010-08-04T19:32:00.001-07:00

I put together this presentation for a Web 2.0 class I'm taking at Florida State University. It presents a process for learning through social media, an example of how the process works based on my personal experiences, and an invitation to connect with me to share bookmarks on del.icio.us. Check it out and let me know what you think. If you want to add me to your network on del.icio.us you can find me here.

Using Social Media for Learning

View more presentations from Mike Petersell.

The Leader of the (not too distant) Future

2010-07-29T17:51:00.000-07:00

One of the books on my summer reading list was The 2020 Workplace by Jeanne C. Meister & Karie Willyerd. As many books have done before, it focuses on the changing demographics of the workplace. What is different this time around is that the focus is not on differences of race or ethnicity, rather it is on generational differences. Much of the book is based on two global surveys: one conducted with working professionals; the other with employers. One of key points highlighted in chapter 2 is that the 2020 workplace will host five generations workers at the same time. Millenials (those born between 1977 and 1997) will comprise the bulk of the workforce (47%). They will be sharing the workplace mainly with Baby Boomers (1946-1964) and members of Generation X (1965-1976), along with a handful of Traditionalists (born prior to 1946) and Generation 2020 (born after 1997).

My daughter is working as an intern at my company this summer. In two years she will graduate college and join me in the full-time work force. Two years later my son will graduate and join us as well. The two of them have very different thoughts and expectations about work and learning than I do. As I watch how they interact with their friends, I try to imagine what it will be like when their generation becomes the dominant presence in work place. The implications for how we will need to prepare for generational differences in approaches to learning, communication, and working together in general are profound. This got me thinking, "how managing is going to need to change?"

In chapter 7 of the book, titled Accelerated Leadership, Meister & Willyerd provide some answers. They present an integrated model of leadership and management that describes the kind of leader that will be needed and some of the behaviors that will be required in the course of managing. The five leadership areas they identify are as follows:

Collaborative Mind-set - leaders will need to be comfortable engaging in inclusive decision-making, networked leadership and soliciting feedback.
Developer of People - leaders will need to mentor and coach their teams, provide honest feedback, career guidance and learning opportunities.
Digitally Confident - leaders will need to be able to use technology to connect to employees - and customers.
Global Citizen - leaders will need to have a diverse mind-set, be able to work well cross-culturally, and exhibit social responsibility.
Anticipates and Builds for the Future - leaders will need to champion innovation and build accountability across levels to bring about the desired future state.

With many Boomers exiting the work force over the next decade, and the relatively small number of Generation Xers that there are in the first place, many of the 2020 leadership positions will need to be filled by Millenials. So not only will we have to figure out how to lead this generation, but we will have to figure out how to be led by them.

Social Media Tools within Social Media Tools

2010-07-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

I recently came across a Twitter post from @simbeckhampson which brought me to this Youtube video. It is a video of Paul Simbeck-Hampson in Bavaria demonstrating Amplify which is an autopost tool that automatically posts something you've written in one social media to another, or several others. For example, you can post something on Amplify and have it simultaneously (well nearly) posted to Facebook, Twitter and other networks.

But the really cool thing about this demo is how many social media tools are being used here at once. Paul is demonstrating the power of Amplify connectivity in Second Life by showing how a post made there can get across to multiple networks with one hit. He shows us his Twitter feed and Facebook feed and a few others along the way. He then posts the whole thing on Youtube, and now you are reading about it in a blog. Pretty cool stuff!

A Good Read: Here Comes Everybody

2010-07-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

This summer I'm taking a class on Web 2.0-based Learning and Performance at Florida State University. As part of the course requirements, I'm currently reading the book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, by Clay Shirky. So far it is a great read. I wish I had it on my radar screen sooner. The first few chapters are interesting. Shirky uses sociological and economic points-of-view along with common sense examples to explain the growth of online communities. I'm not even half way through the book yet, but what I've read so far has really brought into perspective how large an impact Web 2.0 tools have had, and will continue to have on how we organize and interact with each other in online communities. A few key points, I've found interesting so far:

Levels of involvement in the Web 2.0 world can be viewed as rungs on a ladder. The first rung is sharing, the second is cooperation, and the third is collective action. Collective action empowers communities to bring about change.
Groups grow in levels of complexity faster than they grow in size. The more people there are in a group, the more relationships there are among those people.
The growth of personal publishing and communities in the Web 2.0 world can be largely attributed to the drastic collapse of costs that have previously made it impractical. Think about the effort it would take to organize photo sharing around a specific event. Now people take their pictures and post them and by using common tags they can all be brought together.
Social media used in the workplace fosters a knowledge sharing that is neither directed by management nor driven by profit motives. Instead it is driven by personal interest, which may sometimes benefit a company economically.
Personal communication and formal publishing are blurred in the Web 2.0 world. I'm a huge hockey fan, I get a lot of my news from following hockey writers on their blogs and on twitter along with reading their articles published through formal media outlets.
In the past, organizations could only do what was practical. There options were limited to taking institutional action on something or no action. Social media tools provide a new alternative; action by loosely structured groups.
Web 2.0 tools have enabled the mass amateurization of fields such as journalism and photography. Someone who is in the right place at the right time may be able to capture a great picture or a story to share even though they are not a professional.
Sharing proceeds gathering in the Web 2.0 world. Traditionally it was the other way around. Communities were formed by people gathering together and then sharing information.

Some of these points may seem obvious, but I find a few of them to be quite profound. They are helping me reframe my thinking around how I might foster online communities and informal learning opportunities in my work. Although I haven't finished the book yet, I was too excited not to share some of what I read so far.

Learning vs. Recruiting: Who Would Win a Social Media War?

2010-06-17T15:47:00.000-07:00

As someone who is focused on management development, I spend a lot of time thinking about how to capitalize on social media to promote informal learning inside my company. With many of the other learning people in my company focused on formal course development or delivery, I sometimes feel like I’m alone in this endeavor. This caused me to reflect on where the learning community in general is in the cycle of social media adoption. As a point of reference, I thought about this question in comparison to our HR counterparts, particularly those who are involved in recruiting. Here is what I’ve concluded:

"If learning people faced recruiting people in a social media war, the learning people would lose."

We would lose because we don’t have the numbers and because it is not in the forefront of our minds as we approach our work.

Although this is not scientific, here is the evidence on which I base my conclusion:

Point #1 - I recently attended the Technology Assisted Learning Conference in Chicago. It was co-located with the Social Media for Recruitment Conference. The conference organizers set up a monitor and a special twitter hashtag (#socialrecruitment) for the recruiter conference, but did not do this for the learning conference. Granted, the title of the recruiter conference was “Social Media for Recruitment”, but the title of the learning conference was “Technology Assisted Learning.” Shouldn’t it have at least been a consideration that a social media hookup would be needed or wanted by learning conference attendees?

Point #2 - I occasionally post questions on the Chief Learning Officer discussion forum. When I have posted questions about traditional topics such as learning metrics, I’ve gotten at least a few responses. But when I asked the questions, “Are you using web 2.0 tools for learning?” and “Are you using microblogging as a learning tool?” I got zero responses. I posed a similar question on an ASTD discussion forum. After five months the post finally garnered a reply. It was someone commenting how disappointing it was that I had no replies to date. He further went on to say, “The lack of response here seems to show that in general we as a population are a little behind the times.”

Point #3 - I am a member of several LinkedIn groups. On occasion when I write blog entries that I think will be of interest to members of those groups, I share the links to my blog posts. Two groups that I belong to are called, “Social Media and the Learning Function” and Social Media in Organizations” (which was formerly titled Social Media in HR). I get a lot of comments and traffic from HR group, but rarely if ever have I seen a comment on one of my posts from the Learning Function group.

Point #4 - As a final kicker, not long ago my local ASTD Chapter hosted an excellent and informative meeting on social media usage. Our guest speaker who led the discussion was… a recruiter.

I know there is a solid core of learning professionals who are active in social media who I would gladly follow into battle. But there are many others who have yet to take up the sword.

This Week at the Technology Assisted Learning Conference...

2010-05-29T14:15:00.000-07:00

I spent the first half of this week in Chicago at Corporate University's Technology Assisted Learning Conference. The conference was small, but impactful.  It provided a nice mix of presentations by industry thought leaders pointing out near-horizon future directions, and case examples from practitioners who are making good use of currently available technologies for their learners today.  As an added benefit, the conference was co-located with Social Media for Recruitment. Both conferences' schedules were aligned to allow for networking.   And although the conference was small, it did attract a wide range of attendees, including participants from a variety of industries (Finance, Real Estate, Technology) and geographies (Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands).  I was proud to be listed among a great group of speakers that included Allison Rossett, Tony O'Driscoll, and Charles Beckham each of whom delivered presentations that lived up to expectations to be the highlights of the event.

Dr. Rossett started things off with a keynote address on creating engaging elearning. She shared practical advice organized into a list of "5 Essentials" which I summarized in my notes as: The Right Stuff (relevant content), Guidance (providing certainty through clear navigation and instructions), Active (setting the level of challenge in the zone of proximal development), Relationships and Connectivity (capturing the power of the social experience), and There When Needed (clear, accessible, nothing unrelated). Shortly afterwards, Tony O'Driscoll took the podium to bring us all into the immersive world of Learning in 3D as described in the book he co-authored with Karl Kapp (who's pre-conference workshop I unfortunately missed.) Towards the end of the day Charles Beckham walked us through applications for the new social learning community platform, Jambok.

These were the expected highlights of the event.   However, sandwiched in and around these presentations were case studies highlighting technology applications in learning from a variety of companies. I got to kick things off in the opening slot on day two with a case on our virtual approach to onboarding. It was such a pleasure to be able to share the work we are doing with others in the learning community. With that out of the way, I enjoyed presentations highlighting practices at The Nielsen Company (global learning community of practice), Harley Davidson (global elearning translation and deployment - and very high on the cool factor), excellRx, Inc. (using avatars - without making them too creepy!), AIMCO (creating cheap, effective, viral video) and others.

All in all, it was a blast.  This was Corporate University's first Technology Assisted Learning Conference. I have a feeling it is an event that will grow in popularity over time.

Using Yammer for Learning

2010-05-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

If you are a reader of this blog, you know that I have written a few posts about my experiences with Yammer and how my team uses it to encourage and foster informal learning in my company. Having read a few of my entries, the kind folks over at Yammer invited me to take a turn as guest blogger.

Check out the post over at the Yammer blog: Try Yammer; Maybe You'll Learn Something

You can also review my previous entries about Yammer in this blog: @dorothy there's no place like home #oz, Social Media Strategy for Learning, Formalizing Informal Learning and Yammering On; Others Yammer Back .

Yammer is increasingly becoming an important part of the way we work in my company. It has also challenged us to think about how people learn in a hyper-connected world.

Coaching Remote Employees Can Be Quite a Ride

2010-05-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

My son just got his driver's license.  I was nervous when he went out to take his road test because it was a rainy day with wet road conditions. But no matter; in the weeks leading up to his test, we spent plenty of time in the car together, so he was ready.   I'd done the same thing with my daughter two years earlier. I used the same approach with both of them but the experience was very different.   When my daughter was learning to drive, she verbalized everything she was thinking and feeling and asked me a lot of questions. I always knew where should stood and what help she needed from me.   With my son, it was just the opposite.   We would get in the car and drive together in silence. Every once in a while I would ask him, "How is it going?" or "What questions to do you have?"   Most often he'd reply by saying, "I'm good" and would continue driving.

One day as we drove a long in silence, I started to think about work. In the last few months, we have been doing a lot of work helping managers who are leading virtual teams.   This is something that I think about a lot. I've written about it twice before: in January and again in April of this year. On this particular day, I was thinking about the challenges managers face in trying to coach remote workers. Coaching employees in general can be a challenge, but being separated by distance (and perhaps time) adds another level to the challenge.

I began to think about what it would be like for a manager who had to coach remote employees who had personalities like my two children.   A manager coaching someone like my daughter would probably welcome the feedback.  She certainly gives you enough to work with, but there is always the danger of getting off track. On the other hand, a manager coaching someone like my son might find his silences difficult to interpret from a distance. This got me thinking about how important it is for us to continually reinforce the advice we provide to our managers who coach remote employees.   Here are some of the key points we try to drive home with them:

Use a Combination of Scheduled and Impromptu Coaching Sessions - It is important to have regularly scheduled coaching sessions with remote employees. But don't pass up an opportunity to pick up the phone in between sessions when there is something important to discuss.
Use Technology Tools to Keep You on the Same Page - In this day and age, there are a lot more technology options than just using the telephone. Use web conferencing tools, wikis, or blogs for shared note taking. If possible, use webcams with a service such as Skype to allow a more "face-to-face" type interaction.
Start, but don't Stop with Results - You probably have metrics and performance indicators that will make discussing work outputs with your employee feel very natural, but don't stop there. Use performance results as a jumping off point into a deeper discussion about work activity and resource needs.
Listen Carefully to Your Employee - It is important to stay focused on your employee during remote coaching sessions. Busy managers must avoid the temptation to multi-task. Use active listening techniques such as clarifying, paraphrasing and giving feedback.
Probe Silences - Don't allow silences, hesitancies or unreturned phone calls to go unexplored. Unlike driving lessons with my son, managers of remote employees don't have the advantage of actually seeing what is going on to compensate for what is not being said.

Deciding between Formal and Informal Approaches

2010-05-08T05:53:00.000-07:00

Our department has recently gone through - let's call it a bit of a "refresh."   As a result of this, we have been lucky enough to fill three positions with people who have instructional design skills and experience.   This is a nice supplement to the folks who are doing course development work in the department already.   Now we have a nice mix of experienced and novice developers. We have some full-time instructional designers. We also have instructors and facilitators who do some part-time course development work.   In any event, with the three new additions I'm excited by the capabilities we now have on the team.   Now I'm trying to figure out the best way to help the new people learn about our company and our processes. At the same time, I need to consider how we can do more to develop our novice course developers.

When our department was first formed (a few transformation projects ago!), we set up an instructional design standards committee.   I chair this committee. Our work thus far has focused on outlining a course development process to ensure quality, consistency and efficiency for the learning programs that are produced in our department.   To that end we created a Course Development Map which breaks down our internal instructional design process into four phases: proposal, design and development, implementation, and course maintenance.   The map outlines the steps in each phase and includes links to tools that can be used to complete some of the steps.   Along with the Course Development Map, we also created an Instructional Design Standards performance support tool to help specifically with developing instruction. It includes guidelines for writing and evaluating objectives, suggestions for activities and interactions, skins for e-learning, templates for ILT workbooks and leaders' guides, and guidelines for fonts and graphics that align with our corporate branding and color schemes.

Okay, so here is my dilemma:

Our new instructional designers are all enthusiastic about contributing to the team. All three have asked to join the committee.  We already have sufficient representation from each of the sub-teams in our department. I'm concerned that if these new people join, the committee will become too large an ineffective. This got me thinking: our process and standards are already in place. We do tweak them from time-to-time based on feedback collected during various design projects, but we haven't made any major process changes in a while. Perhaps we no longer need the top-down approach.  Instead of the committee, we might form a Community of Practice that would allow everyone to contribute and share best practices around instructional design and learn informally. Our novice designers could learn from our experts; our new employees could learn from our tenured ones.

But is this really a better approach? The new employees and novices might need more structure and defined learning goals.

It seems that my situation mirrors the discussions about whether or not to use formal or informal learning.   Similar to the tools created by our committee, formal learning is a great way to help novices learn the ropes. It is structured, with clearly defined outcomes, timelines, and measures. With this approach we can be sure our new designers will learn the things we want them to know. On the other hand, the Community of Practice approach promotes informal learning. It is natural, fluid and voluntary. The outcomes are not as clearly defined but that may encourage deeper investment, learning beyond our minimum requirements, and creation of new knowledge.

So, if you were in my place what would you do?

Exploring the Elements of Online Communication

2010-04-26T18:40:00.000-07:00

Although we are all connecting with each other online through one medium or another, there is really a small, finite set of content elements that make up the core of what we communicate. Over at his excellent blog Clive on Learning, Clive Sheperd writes that "all online communication, whether that’s published content, live online events or social media, make use of the same key media elements: text, audio, images, animation and video." He has put together an e-book of some of his blog posts that cover these media elements to help e-learning designers, virtual classroom facilitators, and online communicators in general to know how and when to use each of these elements to construct effective online communication.

For each element he describes what it is good for, what it is not so good for, how it should be optimized for online delivery, how it combines with the other elements, and how it is represented online.

It makes a handy little reference tool. And if you are not into e-books, don't worry. He has assembled the original blog posts with links on a single page so you can access the information that way as well.

Follow the link to Clive's blog below to check it out:

Clive on Learning: Media Chemistry – exploring the elements of online communication

Who Leads Workplace Collaboration?

2010-04-21T17:35:00.000-07:00

Last week a cancellation in my calendar afforded me the opportunity to attend the Chief Learning Officer webinar titled, Enterprise Collaboration: Can You Connect Social Learning and Business Performance? As with most lunchtime webinars, I approached this one with tempered expectations. I go into these things with the hope that I might pick up at least a gem of an idea, or something that sparks my thinking. This session delivered both. Presenters Eric Bruner and Butler Newman of RWD alternated taking the lead on describing the culture shift taking place (or that should be taking place!) in learning and organizations related to the use of social media for business performance.

After walking us through a slide reminding us of Josh Bersin's Evolution of Corporate Learning, from the 1990's through today, they uncovered the gem of the day as they began describing what a collaborative performance workplace looks like. The description contained three key components:

Process Centered Collaboration (PCC) - characterized as taking place directly in the workflow, where workers can get persistent, formal and informal help, in context, to create transparent knowledge - but, in which participation is optional.

Communities of Practice (CoP) - described as being business-driven groups, formed across organizational boundaries that have a common focus, performing measureable, process-related work.

Communities of Interest (CoI) - described as interest-based groups, formed around an area of common focus for the benefit of the individuals or the community - again, in which participation is optional.

So if you wanted to draw this up as a formula, you could say:

Collaborative Culture = PCC + CoP + CoI

As the session continued Eric and Butler went on to talk about key roles in the collaborative work environment. The two obvious ones are community manager and technology steward. Then they followed up the gem, with the spark: They began talking about the leadership needed to sustain performance in the collaborative work environment. They stated that the CLO is in the best position to think about social media integration and therefore has to be the vanguard leader for collaboration in the business. I thought that was interesting. I had always thought someone in Marketing or IT would be best suited to take the lead in the social media arena, but after they said it, it immediately made sense. Who could be better than a learning person to grasp the necessary organizational context, process performance, and people readiness needed to launch and sustain a collaborative work environment?

As the webinar wound down, the presenters shared how the CLO would fulfill that role. It would be done by:

providing strong communication
becoming the community builder
embracing user-generated content (still a tough one in many organizations)
managing top-down; engaging all stakeholders along the way
making sure that process-centered collaboration is in the work flow; not appended on to it.

For those of us who work in corporate learning organizations, it certainly does throw a challenge our way.

Virtual Team Leadership

2010-04-12T17:32:00.000-07:00

One of the topics that has become an important component of the management training we conduct at my company is Leading Virtual Teams. With the growing trends of agile and mobile workers, it seems to be an issue that comes up in every management training needs analysis we do these days. Ultimately, it ends up as a key component in the training we deliver and the follow-up coaching we provide.

I am constantly browsing for resources on virtual team leadership that I can share with managers in my company. I recently came across the presentation below on SlideShare. It is from Camille Preston at AIM Leadership. It is more of a mini-eBook than a presentation. The core content is built around four things that virtual leaders need to do:

Care to Collaborate
Connect to Communicate
Filter to Focus
Pause for Perspective

The gist of the message is that "to be effective, virtual leaders learn who they are working with, what matters most to that person, and how to set that person up to be successful." They do this through focus and reflection. Check it out:

Leading Virtual Effectiveness: Four Strategies for Effective Communication

New Skills for Instructional Designers

2010-04-03T17:58:00.000-07:00

The annual Learning Solutions 2010 Conference put on by Learning Solutions Magazine and the eLearning Guild was held this week in Orlando. Think of it as sort of a "spring break for elearning geeks." Unfortunately it was not in the cards for me to attend. But no matter; in this age of social media, it is pretty easy to pick up the highlights of an event through twitter, YouTube, SlideShare, etc. So the only thing you really miss is the opportunity to say hello to friends that you haven't seen in a while, or colleagues that you have only met on line.

One of the sessions that caught my attention was titled New Skills for Instructional Designers presented by Cammy Bean, Koreen Olbrish, and Ellen Wagner. They introduced a fresh take on the skills used by instructional designers depicted in the four-quadrant diagram above. It incorporates Learning & Performance, Creativity, Technology, and Business Insight to describe the role. Essentially, their message is "to be an instructional design professional, you need to attend to all four quadrants."

I was able to piece together a few items related to their presentation:

Here is a description of the four quadrants, courtesy of Claudine Caro's blog:

I = Learning, Pedagogy & Assessment

Adult learning theory
Instructional Design theory
Assessment and quizzes
Curriculum Design
Defining learning objectives

D = Creativity & Production

Facilitation/ instructors
Writing
Video Production
Audio
Graphics Design
Games Design
Animation

I = Business Intelligence

Business needs assessment/analysis
ROI
A seat at the C-level table
Project Management

T = Architecture & Implementation

Authoring Tools
Programming
SCORM / AICC
Learning Management Systems
QA
Tracking and Reporting

Check out the presentation deck from their session, courtesy of SlideShare:

New Skills for Instructional Designers

And check out Ellen Wagner delivering her segment of the presentation on the Secret Handshakes of Instructional Design, courtesy of YouTube.

I thank these folks for their great presentation. I think we are going to be seeing and hearing more discussion about this set of skills in the near future.

Horizon Report: Technologies to Watch

2010-03-31T17:48:00.000-07:00

In my last blog entry, I wrote about the trends described in The Horizon Report (2010 Edition) that are driving the technology adoptions that are anticipated to rapidly increase over the next five years. In this post, I'd like to share a few thoughts about the six emerging technologies that, according to the report, will be entering the mainstream in that timeframe.

The report places the six technologies along three adoption horizons: near-term horizon (within one year), second-adoption horizon (within two to three years), and far-term horizon (within four to five years).

Technologies to Watch over the Next Year

Mobile Computing - Oh, those smart phones!  The masses can now connect to the internet wirelessly from virtually anywhere. They are cheaper and easier to carry around than laptops.   These portable devices have tremendous implications for workplace learning.   I know people have been talking about them for a few years now, but I truly believe the report is on the money by predicting this is the year we will start to see mobile learning move beyond a handful of trendsetters and into common usage by training departments. And of course, within a few days we will start to see people who don't mind shelling out $500 toting around the new heavily hyped iPad.

Open Content - I would think this trend has probably made many college administrators very nervous. Why enroll in an expensive university program when information is everywhere for the taking? But since many prestigious institutions are fostering this trend, they must know what they are doing.  The Horizon Report lists this as one of its less-than-one-year-to-adoption technologies, but I don't think it will impact the workplace so quickly.   I think it will take corporate learning departments a little bit longer to figure out how to harness and repackage of all the free content that is out there in ways that will make sense for their workers.

Technologies to Watch over the Next Two to Three Years

Electronic Books How about these things? I'm a train commuter. I used to love to read over people's shoulders. Books and newspapers articles always seem more interesting when someone else is reading them. But every day more of the train crowd is switching to Kindle readers and the like. It's just not the same. You have to be at just the right angle to see the screen. So, there goes one of my hobbies! But seriously, what a great tool for workers to use to carry around reference material, policy information and anything else they might need for just-in-time performance support.

Simple Augmented Reality - Simple, huh?   A few years ago, I had a training vendor come in to demonstrate their capabilities with augmented reality. They had done a lot of work creating training programs for the Navy to help people learn various functions on nuclear submarines. Very impressive stuff!  I was thinking we could use the same approach to create virtual models of our products to train our service department on installation and equipment repair. It seemed pretty advanced for its time. Since the Horizon Report lists mainstream use of augmented reality as two to three years away, I guess it was.

Technologies to Watch over the Next Four to Five Years

Gesture-based Computing - Imagine what version 7.0 of the Nintendo Wii will be like. Imagine us doing away with keyboards and mouses (mice?) as input devices for our computers.   Interfacing with our personal computers will probably be very much like Tom Cruise's experiences in Steven Spielberg's film Minority Report.  The computers will respond to our natural movements and facial expressions.   It gives whole new meaning to the idea of a workplace training simulation.

Visual Data Analysis - According to the Horizon Report, visual data analysis is characterized by "its focus on making use of pattern matching skills that seem to be hard-wired into the human brain" and by the way in which it "facilitates the work of teams working in concert to tease out meaning from complex sets of information."    And, "it allows for the interactive manipulation of variables in real time." - Nuff said. Call me in five years on this one!

A Look to the Horizon (Report)

2010-03-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

I recently picked up a link to The Horizon Report (2010 Edition) from one of the people I follow on Twitter. Each year the report identifies and describes six emerging technologies that are predicted to have an impact on the academic world and/or the learning industry within the next five years.   The report further divides this adoption period into three phases: near-term horizon (within one year), second adoption horizon (within two to three years), and far-term horizon (within four to five years). It also identifies key trends that drive adoption of the emerging technologies that are predicted go mainstream in the five-year period.  I found this section of the report interesting. Clearly, the trends they describe are upon us now.  In this blog entry, I'd like to share those trends, and some thoughts on their impact.

Key Trends Driving Technology Adoption over the Next Five Years

The abundance of resources and relationships made easily accessible via the internet is increasingly challenging us to revisit our roles as educators in sense-making, coaching, and credentialling.

This statement was obviously written with the context of academic institutions in mind, particularly when thinking about credentialling. Getting a college degree has been the baseline requirement for any career-minded individual for decades. Yet, when graduates arrive in the workplace, they are often in need of additional training. In the world of instructional design, there is an ongoing debate that pops up from time-to-time about the value or necessity of having a degree in the field. I wrote about this issue back in December. A year earlier in her wonderful blog Learning Visions, Cammie Bean, speaking about a gathering of instructional designers at DevLearn '09 wrote:   "Of the 25 plus IDs in the room, only two had advanced degrees in ID. Most people found themselves in the role of ID somewhat by accident – by 'discovering that I had a knack,' demonstrating an affinity for ID, by being a good teacher, etc." Many people who support the position that a degree in instructional design is not necessary make the argument that a motivated individual can learn everything they need through hands-on experience coupled with an informal education provided by books, articles, blogs and other internet sources. The ability to get that kind of education in almost any field is rapidly increasing. In the workplace, employees no longer look for a company training catalog when they have knowledge gaps. They turn to Google or Wikipedia as a jumping off point to quickly find the resources they need.

People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.

Telecommuting, virtual teams, and agile worker programs are becoming commonplace. My company has had telecommuters for a long time. I have been managing a virtual team for a few years now.     Last year, my company began piloting an agile worker program in several places. This program is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years. It is only logical that employees who work virtually will expect to learn virtually. Our focus has to be on creating virtual learning environments to support this need.

The technologies we use are increasingly cloud-based, and our notions of IT support are decentralized.

A few years ago, there was great concern in the corporate world over hackers getting behind our firewalls. Now, with cloud computing, we don't seem to care where our information is stored as long as it is protected and it is accessible when we need it. This drives more people to access information from mobile devices, which in turn drives our need in the learning industry to be able to capitalize on mobile learning. While this has been talked about for some time, there have only been a handful of "wow" examples of mobile learning in wide use.  I believe this is the year we will move beyond those few "wow" examples and start to see some mainstream usage which will accelarate this trend.

The work of students is increasingly seen as collaborative by nature, and there is more cross-campus collaboration between departments.

I think everyone can agree that the synergy created by collaborative efforts is a great payoff of working in teams.   However, I personally find this trend maddening in the academic world.   When I started my distance learning graduate program a few years ago, I would occasionally have group activities or projects as part of my classes. Now it seems that each class is one long group project from beginning to end. I feel like a victim of this trend. I don't have the flexibility in my life for this type of commitment. The reason I chose to be a part-time, distance learning student in the first place was so that I could fit in my classwork according to my schedule and availability. It is a nightmare trying to coordinate schedules with other working professionals who like myself have jobs that involve travel and are trying to balance that with school and family obligations.   On the plus side, this has made me more sensitive as to how we construct and conduct collaborative learning in our training programs.

What Was the Question?

2010-03-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

In my last blog entry, Obsessing over Assessment, I recommended choosing question formats that make sense for the level of learning you need to assess. I then went on to discuss the most popular form of test item: the multiple choice question. However, there are other options, and some of them may be more appropriate for use, depending on what you are trying to assess.

Here are five common question types along with a few guidelines as to how and why you would use them.

Short Answer Questions - also known as fill-in-the-blank - are best used to assess basic information that learners need to commit to memory. They are helpful for testing terminology, facts and simple computations. Short answer completion items should have only one brief correct answer. Typically, the blank for completing the statement is placed at the end of the test item. Blank spaces for all items should be equal in size, and should not be any larger than necessary.
True/False Questions – are second in popularity to multiple choice questions. Like multiple choice questions, they require the participant to select a response. In this case, there are only two options: True or False; Yes or No; Agree or Disagree. They are useful when there is a black and white distinction between two alternatives. There can be no gray areas. Well-written True/False questions are usually stated as declarative sentences that focus on a single idea. A common mistake that test writers make is to put two ideas in one statement, requiring both of them to be true in all cases. Another common error is to tip off the answer by including words such as “always” or “never” in the statement, which usually means it is false. And of course, on the downside test participants always have a 50-50 shot at the answer, so they may be likely to venture a guess.
Matching Column Questions - are used to assess content knowledge and associations between ideas. They fit into the category of selection items along with True/False and Multiple Choice. They are constructed by stating the premise for each test item in the first column, and listing options or responses in random order in the second column. Typically, the items in the first column are identified by number, and the response choices in the second column are identified using letters. Some test makers are reluctant to use matching columns because they seem harder to construct than other question types, but they are really very similar in to multiple choice questions. The format of premises and responses is very clear for the test taker, and they are easy to score.
Multiple Choice Questions - are everyone's favorite, and rightly so because they are so versatile. They give you the ability to go beyond testing for facts. You can write multiple choice questions to measure learning outcomes that test for knowledge, comprehension, and application and, to a lesser degree, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. A good multiple choice question includes a clear, well-written premise, and a list of reasonable response choices, one of them being the correct answer (which should not always be choice C!). You can also couple them with reading passages, tables or charts that include the correct answers to assess your test takers ability to interpret important information.
Essay Questions – are useful for assessing how well test takers can analyze, compare, contrast, evaluate, interpret or integrate ideas. The obvious downsides are that they rely heavily on writing skills and they are a challenge to score. Those issues can be minimized by attending to how the questions are written. If the essay question is too open-ended, it leaves it up to the test taker to decide on which direction to go. Instead write questions that ask specific questions. The person participating in the assessment must be able to clearly identify what it is you want to know from them. Give them parameters, by using phrases such as, “provide five ideas on how you would…” or “give three reasons why you would…” You can also provide direction by asking the test taker to “consider the following factors…” when writing a response. Consider identifying word count minimums and maximums so the person will be able to gauge the level of detail expected. Also, for every question you write, make sure you create a model answer to aid scoring.

For more detailed information, check out Tests & Measurement for People Who (Think They) Hate Tests & Measurement by Neil J. Salkind. Part III of his book is called The Tao and How of Testing. It is a great resource for anyone who needs to construct assessments.

Obsessing over Assessment

2010-03-06T06:28:00.000-08:00

The law of attraction is at it again. Testing and assessment is running through my mind and it seems to be running through my life as well. There is a certification project currently being implemented in my company that involves training and testing. I am taking a course on Inquiry and Measurement that also involves testing. And, during this week’s #lrnchat, I was drawn in by a discussion thread in which the pros and cons (well, mostly cons) of assessment were being discussed. Why am I so preoccupied with Level 2 of Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation? It is mostly because of the certification project at work.

Certification is a term that gets thrown around a little too loosely in training departments these days. Put someone through a course and a post-test and BANG, you are certified – or worse, you are not. It is a tricky thing to put together a certification process that is valid and reliable. Very few companies can stand to wait out validation process, so they jump right in and begin training and “certifying” people.

Certifications do not guarantee that the person being certified has learned more than he or she would in a regular training program, but business leaders often feel it is operationally necessary to validate a level of knowledge or skill required to meet goals and targets. If certification is needed or required, here are some things to consider for the assessment process:

Test items should be directly related to learning objectives, which should be directly derived from performance requirements. This may seem obvious but I have seen many tests that have included filler material alongside valid questions.

Test only on important items, not obscure ones. It is not necessary to test someone on small details unless they are critical. Very few corporate employees are doing life-saving work that needs to be tested at a granular level.

Test items should be straight-forward. Don’t try to be tricky. What is the point? It only serves to confuse the learner and adds no value to the assessment.

Choose question formats that make sense for the level of learning you need to assess. Multiple choice questions are commonly used on knowledge tests because they are easy to score and easy to tie to outcomes – but they are not always easy to write. Good multiple choice questions will have a clear premise in the stem of the question, a correct answer, and reasonable alternative choices. There should not be any throw away responses or convoluted choices such as “a and b, but not c” or “a and c” only. If your test item has more than one correct answer, then rethink the question format. Consider short answer questions or a matching column.

If possible, use randomized test questions. Most learning management systems have this capability. They allow you to create a bank of questions that can be drawn upon at random so that test-takers will be deterred from sharing answers. But don’t make the bank of test questions so large that everyone feels like they are taking a completely different test.

Pilot your test. This is the hard part, because it takes time and patience. You need to let a few people complete the learning experience and take the test to give you the opportunity to analyze the questions. You will want to take a second look at questions that everyone got right, or everyone got wrong, or questions for which many people chose the same incorrect answer.

Create rubrics for skills assessments. Skills assessment usually requires direct observation. It is important that all of your assessors are using the same criteria and weights when judging performance. Validate the process by having multiple assessors review the same performance. If they are more than a few points off from each other, either redesign the rubric or re-train your assessors.

Doing It Right: Instructional Design without Cutting Corners

2010-02-28T16:32:00.000-08:00

What a pleasure it is when you are able to do a learning project the "right way."    This week, my team and I finished training for a group of managers in one of our business segments.   This was a project that we initiated in the fall. It was carried out according to plan and within the next few weeks, we will have our final set of measures on its overall impact.

When I say we did this the "right way," what I mean is that we were able to follow our instructional design process without having to cut corners along the way. You might be thinking, "Well, don't you always do that?" But in truth, we are often forced to make compromises on our projects to meet business deadlines, work within budget constraints, or cater to the expectations of a particularly influential business leader.   But on this project, we were not constrained by any of those things.

The project was to provide training to approximately 35 managers who were mostly long-tenured and experienced, but who have recently had to deal with significant changes to their job. Here is how it went:

Analysis - We originally approached the head of this business unit to get an understanding of the outcomes that were expected from the changes that were put in place, and to get his perspective on the impact he thought these changes would have on his managers. Next, we had two rounds of discussions with four managers who were part of the target audience. After the first meeting with them, we drafted an analysis report to feed back to them our understanding of the audience characteristics, the job, and the key tasks that were changing. In our second meeting with the managers, we validated and fine-tuned the information gathered in the first meeting. After that, we presented our analysis findings and a training design proposal, including a draft of the agenda and objectives, to the business unit leader and the Vice Presidents into whom the targeted training audience reported.   They provided some additional insights that we incorporated into our agenda and we were ready to begin designing the program.

Design & Development -  We chose a blended approach including two online assessments and an e-learning module as pre-work, a three-day classroom learning event, and follow-up learning opportunities made available through a SharePoint site set up specifically for this class. The design process for the classroom event was relatively quick and easy. Most of the training needs could be addressed with existing material that had been used for other programs. There were a few key segments that would be new, but they were all on topics that were easy to research. Finding appropriate content was not an issue. Designing learning activities that would be effective at making the learning points was a little more challenging. But that is certainly a part of the job that my team enjoys doing.

Pilot & Revisions - Since our total audience was relatively small (at 35 managers) we did not really have the opportunity to conduct a full blown pilot. We broke the audience into three delivery groups and viewed our first delivery in December as a quasi-pilot.   Overall it went well, but as with any new program for a new audience, there was room for improvement. We huddled up afterwards, examined our level one feedback, talked to a few of the participants and observers, updated our design document, and made some adjustments for our second and third deliveries.

Implementation - By the time our second delivery rolled around, we were confident that we had the right program to meet their needs.   We were clear on which segments needed the most support and which would meet with resistance, and we prepared ourselves accordingly. For all three classroom events, we had one of the Vice Presidents with us during delivery.  We carved out a small but important segment for them to specifically deliver, and for the rest of the time they were with us, they were able to provide clarification or join in the discussion as we covered the other items on the agenda.   Their presence and involvement was a key factor in the program's success.

Evaluation & Follow-up - For this program, we used level one (participant reaction) and level three (behavioral change) measurements. The level one measurements were taken directly at the end of the classroom sessions. For the level three measurements, we use the Friday5s goal management system over a ten-week period after training. Each participant was asked to set two specific goals at the end of their classroom session. These goals get input into the Friday5s online tool where the class participants can go to receive online coaching and track their progress. Also, we continue the momentum created in the classroom by allowing participants to connect with each other after the event through a SharePoint site that was set up specifically for this program.

On the whole this was a very satisfying project. We got to help our managers and help our business by doing what we do best: creating a learning opportunity that met specific needs for a specific audience.   And, we got chance to do it right!

Yammering On; Others Yammer Back

2010-02-17T14:38:00.000-08:00

"This morning, for the first time ever, I checked Yammer before I checked my email. Should I be worried?"

This quote came from a post on my yammer feed on Friday.   It was from an employee in my company who I never met and don't even know by name or reputation.   According to his profile, he is an engineer. I don't know why this post showed up in my feed. We must have both joined the same group. Or maybe we are just following the same topics.   That is the way it goes with social media. You are able to connect with people who you might otherwise never have met or spoken to in the course of your work day. Anyway, I am grateful to him for capturing my attention with this post. Now I am one of his yammer followers.

I've been thinking about this quote a lot over the last few days.   It says so much about how I have been feeling about social media these past months.   The first part of the quote tells me that my new friend in engineering has turned a corner.   Instead of waking up and checking his email to get a pulse on what is going on that might impact his day, he turned to our social media network first.   What a simple but profound change that is.   Social media displacing email in this man's daily routine.   I still check my email before yammer, but I spend a lot of time during my day thinking about how we can reach people through yammer to provide information that might help them with their jobs or personal development needs.

The second part of the quote is also fascinating. Clearly, he is questioning whether or not this new change of routine is a good thing or a bad thing.   I go through the same feelings of cognitive dissonance when I think about trying to promote yammer as a tool for informal learning.   When I first proposed the idea to my staff of using yammer as a learning medium to reach our target audience,  my suggestion was greeted with a long silent pause and a few rolling eyes.   But I convinced the team to humor me for a while, and in the short time we have been implementing our yammer strategy, we have each been able to report back on some interesting events that have occurred.

My staff member who has been posting information on dealing with change reported that one of her followers replied to her that she was finding comfort in the messages. They were helping her to see that she was not alone in what she was going through in dealing with change. This prompted further dialog that gave my team member the opportunity to share additional resources with her and other followers.

Another staff member caught the eye of the corporate communications department with a thread of her posts about managing virtual teams.   They contacted her about incorporating her posts into an article for the company newsletter, giving her messages greater reach and impact.

A third staff member has been posting messages about project management. He recently got a reply from a VP who is very influential with key stakeholders for many of our projects.  His reply enhanced the credibility of the project management messages and helped to increase the number of followers on this topic thread.

When faced with skepticism from others in my organization, my belief about the viability of social networking as a learning tool inside my company sometimes wavers. But the instances cited here provide reinforcement that tells me to keep pressing on with our plan.   The number of participants on our social network is growing every day. As more users join in, we want them to find content that will be of value to them, and that will encourage them to share some of their own.

Formalizing Informal Learning

2010-02-07T13:18:00.000-08:00

As stated in my blog post from January 16, I have rededicated myself to using social media for learning at work. Following the strategy I outlined on January 24, each of my team members is now actively engaged in managing various topics on the corporate social media network (yammer). This marks the end of the first week of us using yammer at work. So far we are off to a great start.

I have three staff members on my management development team. Here is a sample post from each of them. These posts were collected from my yammer feed from this week:

Team member #1 is the topic leader for the discussion on #remote_teams. As discussed in last week's blog post, remote management and virtual teams are fast growing trends in my company. We have included remote management as a topic in all of our recent management training programs. It seemed only natural to continue the discussion through our social media network.

Team member #2 is the topic leader for the discussion on #project_management. As I'm sure is the case in all companies, project management is an important topic. A few years back we began to take an enterprise wide look at how projects were managed inside the company. We have been gradually migrating different departments to take a uniform approach to projects. Our current approach is aligned to the PMBOK guidelines.

Team Member #3 is the topic leader for the discussion on #change. Our company is transforming the way we do business. This has meant large and small scale changes taking place in every business unit and every department. Each day this week team member #3 has shared some of the myths and realities about workplace change from The Employee Handbook of Organizational Change by Price Pritchett.

In addition to these topics, I personally lead the discussion on the topic of #managing. All four of us participate in each other's discussions and we also post to disucssions on #leadership, #engagement and #growth. Besides managing these topics, we are active in several newly formed yammer groups. Our goal is to deliberately create an information pipeline around important management topics that can be captured as informal learning through the social media network.

To help us get a jumpstart on building our followers, I created the flyer shown below. This week I participated in a management kick-off meeting that was attended by over 300 managers. Our Learning & Performance group had an "expo-like" table set up at the event. I handed out many of these flyers and talked to a lot of managers about our new social media network. Very few of them were aware that yammer was available inside the company. Most of them had never even heard of it.

Although it is new, I'm confident that our social media network will grow quickly. There are only a handful of users today, but I'm sure there will be many more very soon. I want my team to be active and ready to guide others how to take advantage of this tool for informal learning when they get there. From these small beginnings, I expect great things to occur.

Gradually Going Virtual

2010-01-31T15:53:00.000-08:00

This week I joined my team in delivering training to a veteran group of managers in my company. It is always a challenge when you have to conduct management training for an experienced audience. Clearly, this was a successful group with very few skill deficiencies for the jobs they are doing.   But despite their experience and previous success, it is important that they keep their skills aligned with the current and future direction of the company.

Without a doubt, things have been rapidly changing at my company. Our managers need to make sure they are adapting their management tactics to keep up with the changes in our operating approaches. Their failure to do so could put us at a competitive disadvantage.   One growing phenomenon in our work place is the increase in remote management situations.   While this is not new at our company, it is happening on an increasingly larger scale than in the past. More managers have remote staff members, while some (including myself) have completely virtual teams.

Needless to say, managing remote teams was an important topic in this week's training program. We reiterated the importance of using traditional leadership skills to help teams successfully meet their business goals. In addition to that, we discussed new skill requirements that are specific to managing virtual teams.   Two key topic areas were approaches to building trust and maintaining strong communication while managing people at remote locations. Below are items that were explored during these topic discussions.

Building Trust with a Virtual Team

Conduct Face-to-face Meetings - If possible, it is recommended that virtual teams have at least one in-person meeting so that people can put names and faces together. Studies show that meeting in-person helps teams overcome communication and trust barriers during those times when they must meet virtually.
Maintain Transparency - Team members should always be aware of department goals and priorities and how well they are performing against those goals. Additionally, managers must make it a habit to continually inform remote team members about issues that impact their work.
Be Accessible - Remote team members must feel they have access to their manager (and other team members). Managers must take extra care to make sure they are being responsive to remote team members. While team members who are co-located with their manager will see the things that my be preoccupying the boss, remote team members could interpret silence as disinterest, which might make them hesitate to reach out to the manager when they should be doing so.
Share Team Member Profiles - The more team members know about each other, the easier it will be for them to be open and candid during remote communication. Sharing photos, interests and areas of expertise will go a long way towards bringing team members closer together.

Communicating with a Virtual Team

Establish Communication Routines - Make it a point to get to know when each team member is most easily accessible by phone, email or other means. Set up specific days and times for one-on-one and team meetings.
Share Good and Bad News - Provide status updates to remote team members on a regular basis whether the news is good or bad. While managers may be tempted to reach out to remote workers only when the news is good, remaining silent when it is bad leaves things open to interpretation which can create tension and misinformation.
Take Advantage of Available Technology - There are great tools available for conducting virtual meetings, engaging in instant communication, file sharing, and capturing group input. Many of these tools are intuitive and can be used with little or no training. Others do require investing some time to learn how to use them. But the payoff for this investment is usually well worth it.

In addition to discussing these topics, our training included demonstrations of some of the technology tools available in my company that are helpful for remote management. We also gave managers the opportunity to sign up for one-on-one or small group coaching sessions to help them get the most out of these available tools.

Social Media Strategy for Learning

2010-01-24T08:01:00.000-08:00

In last week's Many Ways to Learn blog post, I wrote about how I was rededicating myself to building learning communities inside my company using yammer. This week I took the first steps toward that goal by outlining a strategy and placing a few posts to generate some activity.

Here is the approach I am taking:

Use hashtags (#) to create threads around specific topics - Since my primary role is management development, the hashtags I have started with are: #leadership #managing #change #engagement
Join groups - The department that runs our annual employee engagement survey has already set-up an engagement group, so I have joined that. There is also a group dedicated to promoting social media usage inside the company. I have joined that as well, along with a few others.
Create "Topic Managers" to lead specific threads - I am going to have each of my staff members specialize in a topic that is important to management and create groups and/or discussion threads for those topics using hashtags.
Promote usage - Since yammer is a relatively new tool in my company, my team and I will take every opportunity to introduce it and promote it during face-to-face or virtual training sessions and at company events.

It takes time to build a following, so I recognize the need to be patient. So far, I am encouraged with the trickle of activity created by my posts during the week. Here are few examples of what I have been doing:

Example 1 - Providing quick tips and identifying resources that could be helpful to managers

The post below includes some brief thoughts about building trust from the book, The Carrot Principle. Notice that four people indicated that they "like this." It may not seem like much, but I am just starting out. I started the week with only 17 followers.

Example 2 - Promoting learning and performance support tools available to managers

One of my staff members recently interviewed five managers who had very high scores on our last employee engagement survey. He created a podcast series to help managers develop action plans for increasing employee engagement from those interviews. The day I posted this, I received a reply from a manager saying she had listened to all five, she thought they were great, and that she was passing them on to her friends. Hooray for small victories! (Note: I removed the link from this example for confidentiality purposes.)

Example 3 - Sharing quotes (and again promoting available resources)

The quote below is from In Praise of the Incomplete Leader, a Harvard Business Review Article which is available to our employees through Harvard ManageMentor (an excellent learning and performance support tool by the way) which they can access through our Learning Management System (branded internally as My Portfolio).

This is outlines my strategy. I have added a trickle of followers this week so I know it is getting some attention. But as I said, it will take time to build a community. I will post a follow-up on this blog at some point to let you know how things are progressing. In the meantime, I welcome any feedback, comments or suggestions you might have to help me accelerate the process.

@dorothy - There's No Place Like Home! #Oz

2010-01-16T04:47:00.000-08:00

"Oh, but anyway, Toto, we're home. Home! And this is my room, and you're all here. And I'm not gonna leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all, and - oh, Auntie Em - there's no place like home!"

When it comes to social media and my company, I feel a little bit like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Prior to August 2009, I was not really a social media participant. Yes, I had a facebook page and a LinkedIn account, but I was not really present or active in either space. In August, I simultaneously started this blog, opened a twitter account, and logged on to yammer at work. I made a decision that as a learning professional, I needed to embrace social media so that I could learn how to help others use it to capitalize on the informal learning that takes place through these tools every day.

I was excited that my IT department had recently made yammer available inside our organization. It made me feel that my company was being forward-thinking and innovative. But sadly, as I went on to yammer I discovered there were only a handful of users there, mostly from IT and Marketing. I invited others to join me as tried to make some connections and start a dialog around topics that were important for learning, but people mostly responded in ways that made me feel like I was annoying them. Much like Dorothy in Kansas, I felt unappreciated and misunderstood, so I clicked off yammer and went out in search of people who would listen to me. Dorothy left Kansas with a small basket and her dog Toto, and landed in Oz; I sat down at my computer with a cup of coffee and my dog Smokey at my feet, and landed on twitter.

When I arrived, I found it to be a strange and wonderful place. Like Oz, it was a little disorienting at first and it certainly had its perils, but after a while I found a few kind souls in the learning community to help me navigate my own yellow brick road. So for the last few months, I have been out there tweeting and bookmarking links with these fine folks. The list of people who I follow, and those who follow me, has grown at a modest but steady pace. I'm learning new things every day but lately a feeling of melancholy has set in. I have a longing to "get back to Kansas" and share these experiences with my own "family."

So today I decided to click on the yammer icon that has lately been sitting idle on my desktop. And there was Aneta from Marketing and Steve from IT (and not much of anybody else), just as I had left them. It was no glorious homecoming. Not much had changed since I'd been over the rainbow. But of course, now I am different. I've learned so much about the possibilities of social media on my trip through Oz/twitter. One thing I learned is that it takes patience to build a community. So I will yammer on, joining groups, posting quotes and comments, sharing links, and gradually I will build a community of learners - right in my own backyard.

I welcome any comments or suggestions on fostering informal learning and building communities through yammer.

Tips for the New Year Part 2: Train-the-trainer

2010-01-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

Last week in Many Ways to Learn, I discussed how Learning & Development departments that are operating in a “leaner and meaner” mode after 2009 will need to get creative this year about how to handle tactical functions such as course development and delivery. Last week’s blog entry covered tips on how to manage an outsourced e-Learning project. This week’s topic is how to conduct a train-the-trainer session for new or occasional trainers.

Train-the Trainer

Throughout my career, I have managed a number of projects in which it was necessary to have people who were not training professionals deliver training. Without proper preparation, projects like these could be a disaster. But by taking appropriate steps to prepare individuals who are selected to be trainers on how to deliver the training, these projects can be both successful and rewarding.

Fortunately for me, a number of years back I had the privilege of earning the credential of Master Certified Instructor from Achieve Global. This means I have been deemed qualified to certify others to deliver programs from their leadership development line. Over the years, I have conducted a number of Achieve Global certification programs. The techniques I learned from the training they provided me and through the experience of delivering these certifications has been invaluable to me. I have used them over and over again on projects in which I have had to rely on a contingent group of inexperienced facilitators to deliver training.

Here are some of the key activities that have helped me to make those occasional trainers successful:

Establish Criteria for Identifying Trainers – This will have a huge impact on the success or failure of your project. People who you are relying on to deliver training must be willing, able, and available to do the job. Being able means hey have appropriate subject matter expertise, presentation, and facilitation skills. Being willing means they are enthusiastic about the role. (There is nothing worse than attending training delivered by a reluctant trainer.) Finally, being available means that they can commit to delivering the number of programs you need them to deliver within the timeframe identified for your project.

Provide a Solid Package of Course Materials – Expert trainers who have knowledge of a given topic can often get away with “winging it.” That is not the case with novices. They will need a complete package of training materials that are clearly written and easy to follow in order to be successful. This should include an instructor guide, participant materials, handouts, job aids, and other media as appropriate.

Conduct a Modeling Session – One of the best ways for people to learn what is expected of them is to provide them a good model of successful delivery. Your train-the-trainer candidates should first experience the program they will be asked to deliver from the point-of-view of a participant. This will give them a good frame of reference for understanding the expected outcomes of each activity or discussion so they can figure out how best to manage them.

Review Facilitation Techniques – In addition to understanding the content they will be delivering, it is just as important for your new trainers to be able to create a comfortable learning environment. Cover techniques such as how to establish and uphold ground rules, how to question and listen to participants, how to provide verbal and non-verbal feedback, and how to control distractions that may occur during delivery.

Provide Practice and Feedback Opportunities – Train-the-trainer candidates should have at least one opportunity to practice delivering a segment of the training and to receive feedback on their practice delivery. Ideally, they should have a second opportunity so they can hone their skills and address any issues uncovered during their first practice. Typically, for a program that could be delivered in one day or less, I would structure a train-the-trainer session as a three-day event: On day one I would conduct the model session and go over all the materials in the training package. On day two, for the first part of the day I would have each candidate deliver a brief segment from the program. The focus of their delivery would mainly be on getting across the program content. They would receive feedback from me and from each other. For the latter part of the day, I would focus on facilitation techniques. On day three, they would be expected to deliver a longer segment of the program incorporating some of the facilitation techniques covered on day two. This approach usually works well, but can be challenging if you have a large group. The alternatives are to eliminate one practice or to break the candidates up into smaller groups and conduct several train-the-trainer sessions.

End by Scheduling Deliveries – The last thing I do before ending a train-the-trainer session is to get the new trainers to commit to deliveries. Depending upon the parameters of your project, this can be done by assigning them delivery dates, presenting them with a list of dates to sign up for, or giving them a window in which to schedule their own delivery dates. This approach capitalizes on enthusiasm before momentum for the project wanes.

I have found these train-the-trainer practices to be very effective in preparing non-trainers for classroom delivery. A variation of this approach can be used for preparing people for virtual classroom delivery as well. One significant difference would be to replace the practice deliveries with one-on-one or small group online coaching sessions. It is difficult for a large group to stay focused on line as each person tries out polling features and annotation tools on your virtual classroom delivery platform. It is much more effective when this is done with only one to three people at a time.

If you have additional suggestions on how to structure a train-the-trainer event for new or occasional trainers, please add your comments below.

Tips for the New Year Part 1: Outsourcing e-Learning

2010-01-03T11:46:00.000-08:00

2009 was a tough year for most of us in Learning & Development. The economy forced us once again to do some belt tightening. It seems that every time we are absolutely sure we can’t possibly do any more with any less, we end up finding a way to do just that. But with the New Year having arrived, there is again reason to be optimistic.

Predictions indicate the economy will regain its strength. This means business leaders will be shifting their priorities from reducing operating expenses onto strategies for developing profitable growth such as driving innovation and renewed customer focus.

Learning & Development and Talent Management departments will be called upon to devise and execute the Human Resource component of these business strategies. But with these departments operating in a “leaner and meaner” mode after 2009, tactical functions such as course development and delivery are more likely to be outsourced or temporarily handled by other members of the workforce. So this week and next, Many Ways to Learn is offering some practical advice on how to approach these situations. This week’s blog entry will cover tips on how to manage an outsourced e-Learning project. Next week’s will address how to conduct a train-the-trainer session for new or occasional trainers.

Outsourcing e-Learning

Whether you are considering outsourcing e-Learning development for the first time or looking to supplement in-house development in order to keep up with demand, here are a few things that I have found to be critical to keeping a project on track:

Assign Internal and External Project Managers – In order to have the project run smoothly, you want to make sure you have a single-point of accountability with your e-Learning vendor. They should assign a “go to” person who will accept your input, answer your questions, address your problems, and provide status updates at regular intervals throughout the project. Alternately, your e-Learning vendor should have a similar “go-to” person inside your company to coordinate internal resources and manage communications on your end. Ideally, this person should be an instructional designer.

Hold a Project Kick-off Meeting – Once you have accepted a proposal and agreed to work with a particular e-Learning vendor, you should hold a project kick-off meeting. The meeting should be attended by all parties who have a role in the launch of the program. On the vendor side, this should include the project manager, script writer, graphic artist, course developer, and technical support person. On the customer side, meeting attendees should include the project manager, subject-matter experts, Learning Management System administrator, technical support person, and any other relevant parties who need to provide input to the vendor.

Agree on an Interface at the Beginning of the Project – The skin or shell in which the e-Learning program will be deployed may not be the first thing on everyone’s mind, but once development work starts, making changes to the interface could cause a chain reaction of changes to other program elements leading to project delays. Some e-Learning vendors will have preferred templates from which you can choose a particular look; others will provide a custom-designed interface. Either way may sure the look is right for your company and your culture before development begins in earnest.

Identify and Distinguish between “Reviewers” and “Approvers” – Once the project gets underway, there will be a series of milestone review points during which your vendor will need to receive approval to move on to the next stage of the project. Typically, approval will be needed for the interface design, overall concept, objectives, script, storyboard, graphics, interactions, narration, and content tests. In my experience, internal reviews with stakeholders and subject-matter experts can often be the cause of project delays. That it is why it is important to clearly identify who must approve each element before moving onto the next phase of the project, versus who are “nice to have” additional reviewers. Don’t lose valuable time waiting for input from someone who is only marginally interested in the outcome of the project.

Schedule and Communicate Your Internal Review Schedule – Expect there to be at least four reviews during the project:

Script & Storyboard Review
Graphics/Interactions Review
Narration/Audio Review
Final Review

A good e-Learning vendor will provide a uniform template for collecting comments and feedback which should make this process easy. But it is important that anyone who must provide approvals is aware of the deliverable dates so they can set aside ample time for review.

Plan for Testing and LMS Integration – It is a great feeling when you have proceeded through all your project reviews and your vendor delivers the final files for deployment. However, sometimes modules that have functioned perfectly throughout the development process will act differently when published on your Learning Management System. That is why it is important to involve technical support people in your kick-off and to build steps into your project plan for testing and LMS integration.

Use Written Change Orders If Needed – Sometimes the shared vision of the concept that everyone seemed to have after the kick-off meeting does not always hold its course throughout the project. When that happens, it will necessitate changes that are above and beyond the scope of the original project. Your internal reviewers and approvers need to understand the implications of requesting large-scale changes. In those cases, you should have your e-Learning vendor prepare a written change order informing you of what new work needs to be performed, what additional costs it might involve, and an updated project timeline.

I have found that attending to these items can save a lot of time, money and headaches for all concerned. If you have additional advice to share on outsourcing e-Learning, please add your comments below.

Developing Managers with Everything DiSC®

2009-12-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

On August 30, I published this blog entry: New Take on an Old Standard. It is about Everything DiSC®, which is a style assessment tool that allows users to gain insight into their behavioral preferences at work. At the time, I had just purchased the Everything DiSC® package so my team could administer it and incorporate it into some of our management training programs. We have used it several times since then, and as promised, I wanted to report back on our experience using this tool.

The Training Approach: We have incorporated Everything DiSC® into several of our management programs. Participants go online prior to their scheduled class and complete the DiSC® profile as pre-work. It takes them approximately 30 minutes to complete. Once they are finished, they are able to immediately generate a very rich feedback report which we ask them to bring to training. During training, we define what the different DiSC® styles are and we help the participants identify the implications of their style preferences. We also cover how to read other people to determine what their likely DiSC® style is, and how to apply DiSC® in various management situations such as delegating work and developing employees. Essentially, Everything DiSC® enables us to cover some aspects of Emotional Intelligence (Self Awareness and Social Awareness) in training without calling it that. In my experience, managers sometimes get uncomfortable when emotional intelligence is mentioned, so this gives us a way to address their learning needs in this area in a non-threatening way.

(The four basic DiSC Styles surrounded by eight corresponding management behavioral preferences)

The Participant Take-aways: We purchased the management version of Everything DiSC®. The profiles generated for the participants and the feedback they receive on their style preferences is presented in a very practical context for the jobs that they are doing. Although there are only four DiSC® styles, there are many potential combinations of responses to the profile questionnaire, so each feedback report is unique. The reports contain personalized feedback on how DiSC® style preferences influence behavior in the following areas:

Management Style (priorities, preferences and implications for time management)
Directing and Delegating
Motivation
Developing Others
Working with Your Manager (influence without authority)

The Measurement Results: The DiSC® segments of our management training programs are receiving some of our highest level 1 (participant reaction) ratings. I know level 1 metrics are nothing to get excited over, but considering that the discussions that take place during the DiSC® segments of our training are really discussions about topics such as delegating and motivation, I think this is noteworthy. Many “seasoned” managers attend our training sessions. To have them rate these segments highly tells us that they are adding new insights to topics that might otherwise seem like a retread to them.

We are also seeing positive results in our level 3 (behavioral change) metrics. Evidence that our managers are incorporating DiSC® style information into their management approaches can be seen in the goals they are setting in their post-training action plans and in their follow-up progress reports.

The Added Bonus: In addition to the personalized profiles and feedback reports the participants receive, Everything DiSC® also gives us the ability to generate composite and comparison reports. The composite reports plot DiSC® styles for a given population such as everyone in a particular job or an intact work team. We have been conducting DiSC® training separately for managers in our Sales and Service organizations. The composite reports for these two groups show that very different patterns of behavior have emerged within each group. It provides us great information for performance consulting and change management. The comparison reports plot two individuals on a continuum for the same categories in the individual profile reports. They provide feedback that is helpful for coaching and conflict resolution.

On the whole, Everything DiSC® has been a very positive addition to our management development programs. Each time we have used it we have been asked by at least one member of the class if we could administer it for their work group. So it looks like it has franchise possibilities as well!

Tweeting at Conferences: Etiquette vs. Impact

2009-12-12T05:30:00.000-08:00

I had an epiphany during this week’s #lrnchat. Participating in these discussions has been tremendously helpful in my quest to understand the value social media tools provide for learning.

This week’s chat started off with questions about how media sharing tools (such as Youtube) and collaborative content creation tools (such as wikis) are impacting corporate learning. As this discussion ran its course, the next question that appeared in the chat scroll was about the role of social media at in-person conferences. In response to this question, one of the chat participants made the suggestion that we should “bring the backchannel forward” in conferences. He stated that, "social media does not have to be a post-event activity; instead it should be an attendee."

After reading his post, I pictured a speaker in front of a room full of people with Blackberries in hand, eyes down and thumbs flying as they twittered messages back to the members of their respective online communities. The next image that came to mind was of my teenage children pulling out their cell phones to respond to text messages from their friends at inappropriate times. Being a relatively new social media user (I started blogging and tweeting in August) I viewed these two situations as much the same, so I naively typed in this question in response to his post: “Isn’t it rude to tweet during conference events?”

My question garnered some interesting responses, such as: “Not at a good one,” “It’s engagement,” “These days it seems like an insult not to,” “It extends the conversation,” and “Is it rude to take notes?”

Reading these responses made me realize that I need to change my frame of reference. My “pre-social media” point-of-view was that it would be disrespectful and disruptive to do anything other than give the speaker my full attention. But as I thought about it some more, I thought, “Of course the speaker would want people to share his or her message beyond the conference-goers.” Then, I began to calculate the impact:

Imagine a conference presenter speaking to an audience of 100 people. Let’s say half of them are social media users. And out of that half, half of them were interested enough to tweet the speaker’s message back to their online communities. That would be 25 people extending the message beyond the in-person audience. Now let’s say that each of those 25 people had 100 followers on twitter. The speaker’s message has now potentially reached 2500 people. Even if only a small percentage of those 2500 people retweet the message it still extends the impact even further. And these are very conservative estimates. I currently have 88 followers and I have only been a twitter user since August. Factor in long time users who have huge followings and the numbers grow exponentially.

As a result of this, I have revised my mental model of social media activity at conferences. Far from being rude, it is actually complimentary to tweet during presentations. And never mind about about it being disruptive, it actually helps the speaker be more productive. So, next time you are at a conference, don’t be surprised to see me in the audience at with my mobile device in hand. I promise it won’t be because I am texting home to find out if we are having meatloaf or chicken for dinner.

Instructional Design: To Degree or not to Degree

2009-12-04T18:39:00.000-08:00

While cruising through the blogosphere this week I stumbled upon a debate about whether or not people who practice instructional design should have an advanced degree in the field. The two points of view are well represented in writings by Cammy Bean - Learning Visions (not necessary) and Karl Kapp – Kapp Notes (should have it).

Reading their arguments caused me to reflect on my own career path and choices. I have held a variety of positions in learning & development over the years. On my blog, I identify myself as a “Learning Generalist” but at heart I am an Instructional Designer.

Early in my career I began writing training programs using instincts and intuition. I made instructional design choices that made sense to me about how one would learn and internalize new information or skills. For the most part, I made good choices and my learners were successful. Publications such as Training magazine, T&D (as it is now called) and the InfoLine provided me with an informal “101” education. Later on I supplemented those readings with books on instructional design and courses from Darryl Sink & Associates, Langevin Learning and Bob Pike’s Creative Training Techniques. Through these vehicles and a lot of trial and error I sharpened my skills.

When e-learning appeared on the horizon and I was scared to death. I never was much of a technical person and I was sure my career was over. Eventually, some user-friendly tools came on the market and I was able to avert this crisis by learning how to use Lectora and Articulate Presenter software. It was a new medium but still required sound instructional design.

As my career progressed, I found myself wanting to know more about my chosen field. I decided to pursue a graduate degree in Instructional Systems at Florida State University. Participating in the program had its pros and cons. On the pro side, it opened doors to new resources, sharpened my course development skills, and deepened my understanding of how people learn. I gained a better understanding of what motivates learners and how I could attend to their needs and motivations through instructional design. On the con side, I was a victim of the learning trends. I had to endure every new learning trick, tool and pet project my professors threw at me. But in the end, I am better off for this experience.

The bottom line is that the program has made me a more competent and confident learning professional. What I once did on intuition I now do deliberately and my results are consistently better. My company (which is paying for my education) has benefited greatly. I have success stories to tell about learning projects that I don’t think I would have even attempted prior to participating in the program. I am sought after as a learning strategist inside my company and my career satisfaction is much higher now.

But here’s the thing: Would I have had this success if I jumped right into graduate school early on? I don’t think so. Years of self-development and practical experience helped me to get the most out of the program. So I don’t believe it is necessary to have an advanced degree to be successful in this field… but it sure helps.

In Praise of SharePoint

2009-11-27T11:07:00.000-08:00

Recently, we have made some great strides in my company in our quest to convert training from event-based to ongoing. We made a deliberate attempt to reframe training by thinking in terms of “learning environments” instead of “learning events.” Rather than simply setting up training programs as two or three-day instructor-led events, we have been viewing each class as an ongoing community of practice. Participants still gather to attend a learning event but then they continue to work and learn together virtually after the instructor-led segment of the training is completed.

To enable ongoing collaboration, we use Microsoft SharePoint. For those of you who may not be familiar with SharePoint, it is an integrated suite of tools that provides content management, discussion, and information-sharing capabilities. It can be used organization-wide or scaled down for small groups. In our case, we set up an individual SharePoint site for each class we conduct. Our training program participants, facilitators, and subject-matter experts connect through their SharePoint sites to build on topics discussed during their learning events and to capture and share new informal learning. SharePoint helps us do this in several ways:

1. Ongoing Dialog – There have always been options available for participants to use to stay connected after training, but few classes usually sustain their momentum for long. Because SharePoint offers so many capabilities, participants seem more motivated to stay connected through this tool than other means we have offered in the past.

2. Job Aid Sharing – When we conduct training, inevitably, someone asks a question and the subject-matter expert will respond saying, “I have already worked that out,” or “I have a spreadsheet for that.” The SharePoint site provides that subject-matter expert – and anyone else in the class – with a place to share documents that are relevant for class members.

3. Best Practice Sharing – Typically when we conduct training, we generate lists of best practices for the topics that we cover. We post these lists on the SharePoint site after class. This provides real value for the participants. They go back to the site to get this information. While they are there, they are able to build on those ideas or add new ones to the lists.

4. Action Planning – It is also customary for us to have training participants commit to specific actions they will take after they leave a training class. We challenge them to put what they have learned to use in the business. To do this, we distribute and collect back action planning worksheets during our classes. We post these commitments on the SharePoint site so the class members can see what each person has committed to doing. We also use the SharePoint calendaring function to set up milestones for tracking progress. This has been a great benefit to our class members. They offer each other tools, ideas, and suggestions on how to meet the goals they set during training through the SharePoint site.

5. Program Evaluation – The SharePoint sites provide us with another means to collect level 3 (behavioral change) and level 4 (business result) evaluation data. We mine completed action plans and general dialog in discussions on the SharePoint site for each class for evidence of applied learning and business impact.

One obvious usage I haven’t mentioned here is for program pre-work. At this stage of the game, most of our collaboration work is post-work. The reason? SharePoint is still new in our organization. Our training classes seem to be the first place our employees are encountering it. Also, my team is new to it too. We are still working out how best to introduce it on the front-end. Our goal is to begin using it for pre-work in 2010.

Web-based Learning: The Missing Piece

2009-11-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

Last week I made a cross-country journey from Connecticut to California to conduct training for a group of managers from our offices on the west coast and in the southwest. All the way out on the plane, I kept thinking, “Everything on this agenda could be handled through virtual classroom training.” That thought was also on my mind during training as we pushed through our first day’s agenda. With each new topic or segment, I was mentally redesigning the program for web delivery:

When our knowledgeable subject matter experts were speaking, I was thinking: they could be reaching more people through a web-based virtual classroom session.

When the managers in the training were sharing best practices, I was thinking: this discussion could be more in depth and have a longer shelf-life if we were doing this in a wiki.

When we covered some of the necessary static content through PowerPoint presentations, I was thinking: this could be repurposed as e-learning and assigned as pre-work.

When we broke the participants into groups for activities in which they had to tackle real business problems, I was thinking: they could have received these as case study assignments, worked on them, and submitted them by uploading them to a class SharePoint site or to our LMS.

In short, at every turn during the day I was reinforcing my belief that by using sound instructional design principles, this whole learning event could be delivered as an equivalent – or even improved – learning experience using web 2.0 tools and virtual classroom technology. Redesigning the program for the web would transform it from a single learning event into a program that could engage the learners for a longer period of time. It would also be scaleable and repeatable for other audiences. The day’s events just reaffirmed that what I have read in the Virtual-ILT research, and what I have experienced in my own web-delivered programs, really can be effective.

Then we went out to dinner.

There were eighteen of us: training participants, facilitators, and subject matter experts. We had a round of drinks at the bar before moving on to our oversized table for dinner. The conversation was lively. Some of it was personal, some of it was job related, and I'm happy to say some of it recapped key learning points from the class that day. At one point I sat back in my chair just to look around and listen to the group. I heard their laughter, their casual remarks, and their informal conversations. I saw the pleasure of relaxed camaraderie on their faces. At that moment I thought, “This is the piece we are still missing.” Our current generation of online learning, collaboration, and web 2.0 tools doesn’t do enough to replicate this part of the learning event. I’m sure they will someday soon. But will they serve beer?

Web 2.0 Learning Shift

2009-11-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

A fundamental shift is taking place in the world of corporate learning. Training departments that were primarily focused on developing knowledge and skills by pushing course content out to their target audiences face direct competition from Web 2.0 tools. Many would-be learners no longer wait to sign up for a course to get the information they need. Instead, they turn to the internet using search engines such as Google or Yahoo! (and now bing), or to Wikipedia for quick answers. A number of other factors also point to this being a time for change:

Do More with Less – This has been a corporate rallying cry for decades now and it is not going away. Just when you begin to think that you can’t cinch the belt any tighter, you are asked to punch another hole in it. This is both a budget and a manpower issue, so even if running training courses could still meet the need, this just isn’t feasible.

ILT and eLearning are not the Answer – Been there; done that. People are no longer getting excited by the traditional corporate university model with its catalog of instructor-led training and eLearning courseware.

Remote, Mobile and/or Agile Workers – Offering training in “the office” doesn’t have the same meaning anymore. The number of people working from home, from the road, or from other remote locations continues to increase each year. For these people virtual learning is a natural extension of the virtual workplace.

Social Media Explosion – Like it or not, employees are using social media tools. They are connecting to people outside of their companies and sharing information freely on facebook, twitter, and personal blogs. User created content has become a powerful source of information through these tools.

So where does that leave us?

Well, providing solid content that meets our learners’ needs will always be important, but instead of “courses” or “programs” being central to what we do, we need to think in terms of “environments” and “enablement.” We need to help learners connect to the right resources quickly when they need them – and to each other. Instructional designers and course developers have to make the leap from producing instructor-led training and elearning courseware to embracing a new platform, one on which they can create virtual collaborative learning environments that allow their company’s employees to learn both formally and informally. Learning needs to combine real world experiences with opportunities for reflection, sharing, questioning and refining. Improvements to virtual classroom tools in recent years now allow this to be done effectively.

For many, it is a struggle to make the leap. Creating an environment that enables informal learning requires giving up some control over objectives and measures. By its very nature informal learning will produce its own unintended outcomes. But isn’t it a good thing if people learn more from our design efforts than we put into them?

The Importance of Learning about Your Learners

2009-10-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

I just got back from the CLO Summit at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas. It was a long trip from Connecticut, but well worth it. Red Rock is a great place for a conference and this one was exceptional. There were approximately eighty Chief Learning Officers, Talent Management Vice Presidents, and other development professionals in attendance. It was an intensive three days, focused on key issues impacting the learning industry. There were presentations on organization structure, learning trends, and strategies for managing a learning function during these challenging economic times.

One CLO from the insurance industry presented a case outlining how she built a comprehensive program to raise performance levels among independent agents. It was in support of her organization’s strategy to meet growth targets. This required the independent reps to double their two-year productivity. It was an impressive success story that provided an example of the power of solid instructional design. But what particularly struck me, was the emphasis the CLO placed on learner analysis in the instructional design process. All too often we take this step for granted, instead relying on competency models to tell us what we need to include in the training. In truth, as this CLO well knows, competency models tell only part of the story. Her learner analysis went much deeper, using what she referred to as a waterfall approach to analyze required behaviors at cascading levels.

Listening to her describing her work reminded me that my most successful projects were the ones in which I employed all parts of the instructional design process, including a thorough learner analysis. By that I mean an analysis that explores as many characteristics of the target audience as is possible. In addition to reviewing required competencies, here are a few questions I have found helpful to include in my learning analyses:

What entry behaviors do the learners already possess? In other words, what required skills have they already mastered? This is what the insurance industry CLO was trying to determine in her waterfall approach to learner analysis.

What prior knowledge of the key topics do the learners already have? Usually, learners will have at least some familiarity with the proposed training topics. By answering this question you can determine which topics to emphasize and which topics to downplay. You may even discover topics that can be discarded altogether.

How do the learners feel about the proposed topics? Are they interested, motivated, or indifferent to the proposed topics? Answering these questions will help you size up how much of a challenge it is going to be to capture and hold your learners' attention, and whether or not you will have to make a case to them about the importance of reaching the learning goals.

How do the learners feel about potential delivery approaches? What are their expectations regarding how training will be delivered? Are they expecting live classroom training, e-learning, or something else? You may have the flexibility to choose a delivery approach that is favorable to your learners, or you may not. Either way it is best to know what you are getting yourself into as you develop the program.

What general characteristics do the learners possess as a group? Are you training a homogenous group, or are they very diverse? Group variables should be considered when developing objectives, instructional strategies and motivational approaches. Ultimately, you want to give yourself every possible advantage in knowing what learning activities are most likely to be successful.

This is just a sampling of some of the questions that could be included in a learner analysis. Many others will be specific to the program being developed.

I wish I could say I was always thorough in all my analyses. But at times, I have been guilty of relying on competency models and cutting corners. This mostly happens when I'm short on resources and under deadline pressure. However, like the insurance industry CLO who presented her case at the summit, when big issues are stake I will push back on those deadlines in order to do the right thing.

The Media Is Tuning In to You!

2009-10-21T21:56:00.000-07:00

On Monday I attended the ASTD Southern Connecticut Chapter’s monthly meeting. The topic was, what else: Social Media. The speaker was Jennifer Scott, of HireEffect LLC. She specializes in talent acquisition and career coaching. She helps her clients use social media for recruiting and/or job searches. She had great advice for both the people in the audience who are currently in career transition, and for the small business owners who are trying to reach more customers with their training/consulting services. Currently, I’m in neither of these categories, but certainly could be some day. Nevertheless, as someone who just recently began immersing himself in social media, I found her presentation to be valuable and helpful.

She focused on three key social media tools: LinkedIn, facebook, and twitter and made good points about each. But her main point was that we would be crazy not to take advantage of the networking opportunities afforded by social media. Years ago, companies had to work hard and pay dearly to get their name out there. Now, through these tools, the media is tuning into you! Social media tools provide free targeted advertising for your business, your job search, or your personal brand.

She gave some advice on how to develop a social media presence. Here are a few of her key points and my takeaways.

Clearly define your value proposition. Before you jump in and start appearing all over the web, know what your niche is. What do you want to emphasize? What do you have to offer?
Be consistent. Your web presence should make sense overall. In other words, your headline on LinkedIn and your Bio on Twitter should tell the same story about you – and it should match your overall value proposition.
Optimize your profile. Take advantage of all the real estate offered on social networking sites to describe your offering or your company. Carefully consider keywords for your profile that are job, business, and industry specific for the audience you most want to reach. Remember, this is free targeted advertising!
Don’t just show up; Participate! - Submit news articles. Initiate and join discussions. This is social media. Contribute to the groups that you join. Forward articles or people’s profiles to others who you think might benefit from them. When you make good points in a discussion, people naturally become curious about who you are and will want to link back to your LinkedIn profile or your company’s facebook fan page.
Convert social networking into direct connections –Where it makes sense, call a social network contact to offer your services, or to find out more about what it is they have to offer. This is really what it is all about isn’t it?

I am about three months into my explorations with social media tools. Each day as I learn more I become more encouraged by the possibilities for using them for learning inside my organization. I really feel that we are on the cusp of a new evolution in corporate learning that will see us becoming more focused on creating environments to capture informal learning rather than being content and course deliverers.

Five Examples of Learning Metrics that Matter

2009-10-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

This week I participated in a discussion on learning metrics with my new friends at #lrnchat. What a pleasure it is to be part of these weekly events. Where else can you say things like, “if we start analyzing the problem using the Six Boxes® model based on Thomas Gilbert’s theory, we are sure to make some progress” without people running away to see if someone refilled the punch bowl?

The questions that were tossed around this week were:

Are learning metrics different from business metrics?
What are you measuring in your organization?
How do you tie organizational learning to business performance outcomes?
What else besides metrics do you use to show impact?

I was excited and a little bit surprised as I watched the responses roll by. I get so caught up in what I’m doing at work that I lose sight of what is going on in the rest of the world. Some people seemed to be struggling with measurement basics, while others seemed to have a strong grasp on the topic. This got me thinking about what we are doing at my organization, which probably falls somewhere in the middle.

I thought a lot about this discussion after it was over. Really, the heart of the matter is: What value do we as learning professionals bring to the organization? How do we show it? The short answer is that we do this by helping business leaders meet their goals.

I have been fortunate throughout my career to have been involved in a number of projects that made a huge impact on the business. But I can also recall times when it was difficult to see connections between the work that I was doing and the impact it was having on the organization. These are the times when we all fall back on measures such as, “butts in seats,” level one evaluations, and elearning completion rates. These are important feedback indicators for the training department, but they usually don’t mean very much to business leaders. That being said, I can think of examples in which these measures alone have been important to the business. What it comes down to is that sometimes the measures associated with learning success will be obvious and glamorous, and other times they will not. Here are a few examples of both from my experience:

Sales Training is one of those cases where the metrics are obvious and easy to align to the business. We run a class on how to sell against our competitors effectively. The natural metric associated with this is the number of competitive takeaways. We have clear evidence that sales reps who take this class have a higher rate of competitive takeaways than the general rep population.
Equipment Service Training is another example with obvious metrics. Well-trained service reps fix problems more quickly and are able to tackle more service calls in less time.
Operations Training can have a variety of metrics. We ran a class on how to write work instructions for a part of the business that was very procedurally oriented. Every time they had people leave the department due to promotions or turnover, processes broke down. Our metric was the existence of well-written work instructions in the departments that participated in the training. This helped the business leader keep continuity when there was turnover.
Compliance Training metrics are not very glamorous. This is a case where counting up completions works to serve the measurement need. Our legal department wants to reduce or eliminate ethics violations, or failing that, be able to prove the company did its part in making employees aware of their responsibilities and the consequences. We make sure everyone goes through our business ethics course and provide a report shows that this has been done.
Soft Skills Training metrics are of course the fuzziest area. Yes we conduct level three evaluations to show behavioral change, but most people don’t get too excited over these. However, our Chief Human Resources Officer is very interested in employee engagement. She knows that offering soft skills training helps people with personal development which is important to engagement. She also knows that managers and supervisors who use what they have learned in soft skills courses are going to receive higher engagement scores. So yes, we count “butts in seats” for these courses.

The point I’m trying to make with these examples is that the metrics have to match the need. When we help our organization’s leaders meet their goals by identifying and addressing the learning component of their business problem, we are truly adding value.

What's in Your Instructional Strategy?

2009-10-14T19:30:00.000-07:00

So here I am at the latter stages of a rather hectic day trying once again to gather and process my thoughts about social learning. Why is it such a popular topic in the learning community right now? Why have I been nearly obsessing over these tools for the last few months?

My October 3 post on the topic has gotten some attention, including a comment from John Darling who reminds us, "...it is also important that we not confuse the "tools" (e.g. twitter, forums, linkedins, etc.) with the process. These technologies are simply one part of the means we can use..."  Of course John is right. Social learning tools just provide another media option for consideration when developing your instructional strategy.   A good instructional designer considers the learning goal, learner characteristics, performance context, objectives and measures, and then considers delivery options that might be appropriate for the situation. Costs and practicality issues help to narrow down the choices and ultimately drive the final decision.

So why all the fuss?  Unlike other delivery systems, social learning tools hold the promise of capturing and sharing informal learning.   That is a valuable prize for those of us who have devoted our careers to helping others improve their job performance.

At the beginning of this year, my team launched a redesigned onboarding program for our newly hired sales representatives. As part of our analysis before the redesign, we interviewed participants from the older version of the program.  A few months after their graduation, we asked them what their most valuable learning experiences during the program were. None of the people we interviewed cited the formal elements of the program (such as the elearning modules or webinars) as most valuable. Instead, they said their most valuable experiences were, "riding along with seasoned sales reps" and, "listening over the cubicle wall when experienced sales reps were on the phone with customers."  Armed with this feedback my team was determined to find a way to capture these experiences and build them into our new program.   For the most part, we have succeeded. We developed activities that foster these interactions and we use a wikispace to allow program participants to share and learn from each other's experiences.

Ultimately, we would like to allow this type of learning to take place in all of our programs.  The bottom line is that people learn a lot from each other. Social media tools can help us to harness some of those individual experiences and spread them around to benefit more people. That is why I continue on this mini-quest of mine.

Hats Off to Fort Hill: Driving Business Results through Learning Transfer

2009-10-10T06:58:00.000-07:00

This week I had the pleasure and privilege of participating in the Fort Hill Company's 2009 Best Practices Summit. It was a gathering of learning professionals who had come together to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the learning community in today's economic climate. The folks at Fort Hill did an excellent job as hosts, facilitators, and subject matter experts at the event which featured keynote speakers David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity, Sue Todd, President and CEO of the Corporate University Xchange, speaking on branding learning, and Jim Kelly, COO of ING Direct, sharing his perspective on what business leaders want from learning and development. There were also more than a dozen best practice presentations by Fort Hill customers and business partners. I had the opportunity to talk about the training program I run at my company to develop high-potential sales managers.

Fort Hill's primary focus is enabling learning departments to deliver business results by driving learning transfer. This has to do with learners being able to transfer the knowledge and skills acquired in the training setting back to the job. When wearing my instructional designer hat, the three main things I try to attend to in course development to aid learning transfer are:

Clearly specifying conditions of performance when writing objectives - these are often those "givens" you see written into objectives such as, "Given a list of terms about leasing, write a definition for each one." There is something a little unnatural about the rhythm of this type of statement so I don't always include objective statements that are written this way in the training materials that my participants see. However, behind the scenes, this is how I prepare my instructional objectives.
Using authentic tools or situations when designing learning activities - for example, when training new sales associates on how to uncover customer needs, instead of using an artificial form created for training purposes, supply them with the actual needs analysis tool they will be expected to use on the job.
Building mechanisms for follow-through right into the training - get learners to commit to specific actions they will take after training has been completed.

In support of item three on this list, The Fort Hill Company has an excellent line of products and services that do just that. I use their Friday5s® tool in the program for our high potential sales managers. Our goal is to prepare these managers for promotional opportunities at the next management level. We want to develop their problem-solving and decision-making skills now to make sure they can handle the business challenges they will face at the next level. To that end, each program participant is asked to set two specific goals during the later stages of the training program. These goals are entered into the Friday5s® tool. Through the system, participants are prompted to spend five minutes each Friday for a period of time to plan actions and update activities to follow through on these goals. The training participant's manager is also able to access the system so he or she has line of sight into the goals and actions for coaching and feedback. Using this system helps our participants sustain what they have learned and put it to use back on the job. As an added bonus, it gives me the ability to identify evidence that items learned in training are being applied and that they are leading to business results. This makes reporting on the impact of the training clearer and much more effective.

The Fort Hill event itself was a great model for learning transfer. Their team pulled together a knowledgeable group of learning and development professionals who shared real experiences and applications of learning tools. There was something that each of us could transfer back to our jobs. It truly was a best practices summit.

I Have Learned...Socially!!!

2009-10-03T06:29:00.000-07:00

After two months of blogging and tweeting, I have actually begun to learn something through this experience. Here is my story:

On Thursday night I participated in a #lrnchat session on Twitter with other people interested in learning. The theme of the chat was, "learning from each other socially in different ways." I logged on a few minutes early and was politely greeted by a few others who were already there. At the appointed start time, the chat leader began tweeting the rules. They appeared on screen one by one, interspersed with greetings from other chatters who were just arriving. There were seven rules in all. The gist of which I have repeated here:

Introduce yourself and your location
Share your favorite topics
Write complete thoughts so those seeing your tweets outside of the chat will understand them
Play nice (but sarcasm was welcomed!)
Periodically retweet so others will understand the context of your responses (I didn't get this at first, but I got it now)
Remember to include #lrnchat in all posts (Putting this at the end of your tweets includes your post in the chat stream)
Five minutes before the end of the session, let the group know if you need anything from them and then close by reintroducing yourself

After all the rules were read, several threads of discussion took place.   I paid attention and participated in a few, but there were several others that went right by me.

The first thread I followed had responses to a prompt asking, "What have you learned this week?"   Some learned about instructional design, some about twitter; I typed that I learned there is a community of learners that meets through Tweetchat on Thursday nights.

Then we began to discuss social learning. One person suggested social learning is the convergence of ideas. Someone else suggested that all learning is social. Several people refuted this with examples and testimony. I asked, "How does social learning fit into the corporate learning world with its security restrictions and data privacy concerns?" One person sent me a direct response saying, "It doesn't...it's the very antithesis...uncontrolled by "the man" and self/group constructed."   I thought that was interesting, since one of my goals is to learn how to bring these tools into the corporate learning environment. I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

Someone asked, "If Socrates coulda' tweeted...would that be social learning?" This garnered the response: Socratweets!

After all of this, a good discussion thread got started on learning measurement. Certainly it is difficult to get a handle on the impact that learning through social media could have on a business. It was clear that this issue creates a barrier for acceptance in the corporate learning world.

In all, the chat lasted ninety minutes. I had fun participating in it and afterwards - as a good learner should do - I took time to reflect. So here is a brief summary of my thoughts about my experiences with social learning this week:

I have been blogging for about two months now. During that time I have been reading and connecting with other bloggers. It is through one of these connections that I discovered the existence of the #lrnchat group
By linking back to another blogger who read and commented on one of my blogs, I learned some of the vocabulary and syntax used to make tweeting more effective
Through #lrnchat, I learned that there is more to twitter than just isolated tweets
I learned that twitter can be effective for learning if you have people with common interests all tweeting together at the same time
I learned you can make your tweeting more meaningful by using techniques like retweeting, direct replies, and writing complete thoughts

So I think I'm beginning to get the idea of social learning. I'm not ready to include it in my instructional strategies at work yet, but I'm hopeful that I will be able to at some point.

For you curious social anthropologist types, here is a link to Thursday's #lrnchat transcript. Be warned, you have to navigate through the zigzag nature of the discussion threads. As a matter of fact, someone in the group suggested coining a new term for this: Zigzag Learning. You can also see my contributions to the discussion in isolation by going to http://twitter.com/mpetersell and viewing my posts dated Thursday, October 1.

No Thanks, I'd Rather Manage

2009-09-30T17:23:00.000-07:00

Today while munching on a veggie and goat cheese Panini, I participated in a lunchtime webinar offered by the American Management Association (AMA). This is not something I normally do but the title of today’s session was The Inescapable Conundrums of Managing. How could I pass that up? In it, Ed Reilly, AMA’s CEO, interviewed Henry Mintzberg, renowned Professor at McGill University in Montreal, about his new book Managing. Professor Mintzberg has been researching and writing books on management since the 1970s. In discussing his latest one, he made some interesting points about leadership and management.

His main points were that there has been too much emphasis on leadership and that it is time to get back to management. In discussing the relationship between the two, he said, “a manager who can’t lead is discouraging, but a leader who can’t manage doesn’t know what’s going on.” He described a problem he called macro-leadership which seems to be the polar opposite of micro-managing. People who are macro-leading are too removed from how things are done. They need to get on the ground to help people grow and get results. He felt that this was more important in getting businesses through tough times than leadership.

Among other things, he discussed how to develop managers. He said, “You can’t create managers in a classroom.” By this he meant, that you can develop some skills such as coaching or negotiating in the classroom, but that it takes more than that to become a good manager. Instead of traditional management training programs he felt we need to recognize that successful managers learn from experience, so we should build learning around managerial experiences. He described a learning approach where you have managers work on a business problem in small groups, you supply some conceptual information, but the solution to the problem will be worked out by using the collective experience of the managers in the group. They solve the problem and in the process, they learn and grow. You can learn more about this approach at CoachingOurselves.com.

Tweet, Tweet, Tweet, What Does It All Mean?

2009-09-26T06:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, I woke up this morning thinking about Twitter. I know, scary isn't it? I was thinking, "I should Tweet something, but I really don't have anything meaningful to say in 140 characters or less." In this week's Learning Consortium call, Elliott Masie stated that we were in the "hype and experimentation stage" with Twitter. Last month, the CLO-Network posed the question, "Is social learning the hope for the future or just hype?" Yesterday's entry in the Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development Blog began with, "If you haven't jumped on the Twitter bandwagon because it seems stupid..." So I find that I am not alone in seeking learning value in this tool that is gaining 10 million users per month.

Bill Sherman is also searching for that value. He wrote an article in the August issue of Chief Learning Officer titled, "When the Bird Tweets Does Anyone Learn?" One segment of the article I found particularly interesting discusses the conditions that need to be present for social media to serve as a valid learning delivery medium. Here are his points along with some of my thoughts:

The use of social media must organically fit with the program's overall instructional design, rather than be thrown in as an afterthought.

This is one of the things I fear most right now: people throwing these tools into a program just to be trendy. A good instructional designer knows the choice of delivery media should be driven by the learning design. The media chosen has much less impact on a program's success than the instructional strategy.

The organization's technology strategy must support social media to fully leverage the just-in-time learning capabilities the platform offers.

I have to give credit to my company's IT department. They have recently introduced Yammer (Twitter's corporate cousin) into our organization. We are beta testing it. We are also using a software tool for forum discussions to capture ideas for innovation and for holding customer forums about happenings in our industry that impact their business. So, once we can figure out the best way to leverage these tools for learning, I think we will have the IT support we need.

The organization's culture must intelligently embrace and practice the use of social media.

There are a handful of regular Yammer users in our company. And, like Twitter, there are many people who have signed on and said, "Hello! I'm here." and were never heard from again.

Learners must be receptive to social media, and alternatives must be available for those who feel uncomfortable with social media.

This raises yet another challenge for working with multiple generations in the workplace. My thought here is that if we start by designing the use of social media into programs where it makes sense we can gradually build acceptance. When I introduced the idea of using a wiki in our onboarding program, at first my senior course developer and the program facilitators were skeptical and resistant. But after a while, they began to see it was easy to use and added value to the program. They began to suggest replacing some of our activities with new ones centered on using the wiki. I'm hoping that in the near future, we will be doing the same with tools like Twitter. I don't think this bird is just going to fly away.

Discussing Podcasts and Social Networking with the Learning Consortium

2009-09-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

Today I participated in one of Elliott Masie’s monthly Learning Consortium calls. For those of you who have not had the pleasure, this is a valuable way to spend an hour each month. Mr. Masie hosts the calls which address topics of interest to the consortium membership. Members submit questions ahead of time and he provides a brief response from his point of view (usually citing research he has done or read) and then opens the line for other consortium members to share their opinions. Two topics of interest to me came up on today’s call: podcasting and social networking tools.

We have tried to do a few things with podcasting as a learning tool in my company, but in truth all we have done is create audio learning programs. The distinction being that audio learning programs are posted on a website and made available for download, whereas podcasts are delivered to a device such as a cell phone or a laptop through a subscription feed. In any event, the process for creating them is the same. One of my team members is currently working on an audio learning series for managers. It will cover ideas for increasing employee engagement. So, when podcasting came up on the call, it caught my interest immediately. Here are a few of the key points that were shared about creating successful podcasts:

Keep them focused - the most effective podcasts cover only a single topic
Keep them short – don’t overproduce them with long introductions or irrelevant segments
Use two or three voices to create interest – like successful radio shows, podcasts work better when there is a dialog between two or three people rather than just a single voice talking to the listener. If possible, use a mix of male and a female voices.

If you read my earlier blogs on wikis or microblogging, you know web 2.0 tools are of interest to me. I have been experimenting with several tools to try to determine their practical uses for learning. This is one of the reasons I started blogging. The question that was addressed in today’s call was about which tools are making an impact on workplace learning. Mr. Masie described wikis as belonging to the category of “collective intelligence” tools. He stated that these tools have caught on and are making a strong impact. He noted that because these tools are mainly for sharing “user created content” that rating pages or entries has become important. Ratings help sort out the good from the bad content to bring key learning points to the forefront. I have included a “rate my blog” gadget and a “Digg It “ button on this blog so I can get feedback on what people find most valuable when reading Many Ways To Learn.

The discussion about microblogging was right on the money. Mr. Masie described us as being in the “hype and experimentation cycle” with tools such as Twitter. This is absolutely true for me. I have no idea what people expect me to write on Twitter and, quite frankly, I haven’t found many people who are compelling enough to “follow.” Our in-house tool (Yammer) is showing some promise. I have witnessed a few key connections take place through discussions on Yammer. Also, I received a reply to one of my posts from a VP with whom I wanted to make a connection. A lot of my work aligns with what she is doing in her department. It was nice to see she recognized that as well.

For what it’s worth you can follow me on Twitter if you want to: http://twitter.com/mpetersell. Better still, you can follow Elliott Masie: http://twitter.com/emasie.

VILT = ILT Part 2: More Than Just the Medium

2009-09-19T05:16:00.000-07:00

My last blog entry about the VILT survey conducted by Skillsoft PLC received a comment from Hank Riehl at Skillsoft - Thank you Hank. In his comment, Hank outlined some of the elements that have made the Skillsoft Live Learning courses successful. He also provided a link to a DOE study of online learning that reports on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction. This reinforces the Skillsoft survey result.

The researchers who published the DOE study performed a meta-analysis (combining the results of multiple experiments to obtain a composite estimate of the effect) of 51 learning studies in which they could find useful effects. The studies were conducted between 1996 and 2008, most of them being from 2004 or later. The studies were typically conducted in an academic environment, mostly with older learners in college or graduate school.

The report asserts the researchers consistently found advantages in online and blended learning programs over face-to-face instruction. This statement provides great support for anyone trying to make a case for converting a classroom program to the virtual world, but the researchers caution online and face-to-face conditions in the studies examined differed on multiple dimensions, including the amount of time that learners spent on task. So the advantages observed may be the product of those conditions rather than the delivery medium.

This is what I was getting at in my previous blog entry: VILT can be successful, but it takes more than simply switching the medium from ILT to the virtual classroom. It takes rigorous and thoughtful instructional design to create the right conditions for learning. The Skillsoft PLC survey and the DOE study provide support for the notion that it is worth it to put that effort into designing an online or blended learning program.

VILT = ILT...or Does It?

2009-09-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

Last week, SkillSoft PLC (a leading elearning provider) published the results of a survey showing that learners feel virtual learning is just as effective as face-to-face instructor-led training. They randomly polled 1800 learners who previously attended a SkillSoft Live Learning course within the prior year. 70% of the respondents rated virtual instructor-led training (VILT) as either the same, better, or much better, than traditional classroom-based instructor-led training (ILT). Granted, this is just a survey, not a study, so it does not prove effectiveness, but the findings do not surprise me. We have had great success and acceptance with VILT as a component of our courses at my company . However, I caution anyone from just swapping ILT programs in favor VILT without doing anything else.

It was difficult to get people bought into a virtual classroom approach when it first became available. But after the tragedy of 9/11, and the anthrax scare that followed shortly afterwards, our workforce was reluctant to get on planes for training classes. They became much more open to the idea of virtual learning.

We capitalized on that acceptance and started conducting basic webinars, but we quickly evolved from there. Webinars created a very passive learning experience which we found to be insufficient for most of our needs. We shifted our thinking away from VILT being viewed as a replacement for ILT by itself. Instead we began to view it as only a single component of what is needed to replicate a successful ILT experience. This was around the time that “blended learning” became an industry buzzword. In any event, we began to develop integrated distance learning programs that incorporated elearning modules, readings, self-paced activities, and testing. The virtual classroom component was used to bring in the interactive discussion element, but it was not being relied on solely to create an equivalent learning experience to ILT.

Today, we run several successful programs this way, including our 3-month long onboarding program for sales new hires. In the 3-month period, they complete nine training modules during which they participate in a total of 17 VILT sessions. Test results and work performance indicators show that our program is equally successful (and in some areas superior) to its ILT predecessor. So again, while I’m not surprised at the Skillsoft survey results, I find it usually takes more than just a VILT session to create a successful learning experience.

The Power of a Well Placed Question Mark

2009-09-12T04:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, my team hosted a webinar as part of an ongoing training program. We were fortunate that our Subject Matter Expert also had excellent facilitation skills, so we really didn't have too much to do. But that is not always the case.

Has this ever happened to you: You are invited to attend a webinar about a topic that is relevant and important to your work. You add it to your calendar. At the appropriate date and time you log on, eager to discuss the topic and have a few important questions answered. The webinar begins. About 15 minutes into it you realize this is going to be a "one way street." That the Subject Matter Expert (SME) will be doing all the talking, while you listen. Gradually you feel the energy drain through the phone line. You begin to hear the muted clicks of someone typing at their keyboard. You start to think about other things you have to do too. Before you know it, you and half of the other participants have tuned out and are politely hanging on waiting for the session to end.

This is often happens when there is no learning person available to host the webinar and facilitate the discussion, or when you don't have someone like the guy we were lucky enough to have leading our session yesterday. Many of us have had to rely on Subject Matter Experts to lead their own sessions at some point in time. In those cases, we prepare and coach them as best we can, and hope for the best.

One technique I have found helpful in these situations is to go through the presentation slides with the SME before hand and place a question mark on the lower right corner of the last slide for each topic. In a typical 60-minute webinar, there may be three or four key topics being covered, so there would be three or four slides containing the question mark. This serves as a visual reminder to the SME and the participants that they have reached the end of the topic and this is a good time for questions before moving onto the next topic. I tell the SME to let the group know at the beginning of the session that when they see the slide with the question mark, that is their opportunity to ask questions. Then, when they finish covering the points on a slide with the question mark, they simply need to ask something like, "What questions do you have about {topic x} before we move onto the next topic?"

This is helpful in both creating and managing the level of dialog in the session. Participants recognize the opportunity to ask questions when they see the question mark and they also recognize that the question and answer period for that topic is over when the SME moves to the next slide.

So before I move onto the next topic in this blog, what questions do you have?

What Makes Us Tick?

2009-09-09T13:57:00.000-07:00

Today I downloaded the Career Factbook for HR and Learning Professionals published by Bersin & Associates in June 2009. Essentially, it provides the results of a study conducted in the Spring about what drives success, motivation, job satisfaction, etc. in the HR and Learning industry. Below are the key findings from the study, with my two cents added as commentary.

1. The HR and L&D Profession Is Largely Comprised of People Who Enjoy and Value Serving Others, Training and Coaching, and Engaging in the “People Side” of Business.

No surprise here. These values are core to the job.

2. There Is a Distinct Break in the Development Needs, Desires and Key Skills of Practitioners, and That of HR Directors and Executives.

The study shows that people who go onto higher level roles in HR and L&D (Directors & VPs) generally have some line experience at some point in their career, and usually develop a deep level of expertise in one or more functional areas within HR along the way.

3. HR and L&D Professionals Are Most Frustrated in Their Careers by Two Factors – Lack of Resources and Lack of Executive Engagement.

Tell me about it. Our skills and good intentions as learning professionals are not enough by themselves. I have always said that the single biggest success factor in any of my major projects has been executive sponsorship.

4. HR and L&D Professionals Are Not Highly Motivated by Compensation.

There you have it. We’re not in this for the money. Although a little more never hurts!

5. The HR Profession Has Highly Specialized Disciplines – And, within Each of These Disciplines, Individuals Take Great Pride in Their Expertise, Experience and Understanding of Solutions.

Hence the reason we are often willing to do this for less money than we really deserve.

6. While the Various HR Disciplines and Domains Require Different Unique Skills and Knowledge, People Regularly Migrate between HR Disciplines.

This is true for me. I have had roles in training, organizational development, talent management, instructional design and leadership development throughout my career – and I have dabbled in other areas of HR through project work along the way.

7. Career Satisfaction Grows with Age and Tenure.

This is good news. There must really be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

8. HR Professionals Are Highly Educated, with More Than 80 Percent Obtaining College Degrees and More Than One-Half with Advanced Degrees (participants in this study).

I possess a Master of Science in Industrial Labor Relations and I’m currently working towards a second Masters in Instructional Systems. And I still can't figure out how to use all the new learning technologies that are available today.

9. HR and L&D Professionals Greatly Value and Appreciate Education, Research, Collaboration and Formal Training for Their Own Careers.

Well, we are a development-oriented bunch. We take advantage of the opportunities we offer others. Why not? Its good stuff!

10. HR Professionals Today Are under Tremendous Stress.

Is that so? The economy, compliance, downsizing, cost reduction, performance management, corrective action, onboarding, compensation, retirement, severance, health care costs, succession planning, filling open jobs, filling training seats, e-learning, distance learning, blended learning, mobile learning, Employee Free Choice Act, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, EEOC, OFCCP, AB1825, H1N1…

The Promise of Seamless Collaboration

2009-09-06T04:28:00.000-07:00

My company has invested in Microsoft tools as the common platform for all of us to use. We have been using software packages such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access for years. Fairly recently, we've add Outlook (for calendaring and time management), Live Meeting (for virtual meetings), Sharepoint (for project collaboration) and the newest addition, Communicator (for instant messaging and instant meetings). The idea behind this strategy is that all of these tools work together and integrate seamlessly to allow virtual work groups to collaborate effectively. This also creates many new possibilities for synchronous (real time) distance learning.

I decided to run a project team meeting through Communicator this week as a test run to see how this might work for learning. It was a three-person meeting in which we were scheduled to revise a training proposal that we are scheduled to present to an internal client group next week. My intention was to invite my two team members to share my computer desktop through Communicator so we could discuss and edit the document together.

One of my team members was able to connect right away. The other, had difficulties. We could get him connected inside our virtual meeting, but every time he tried to take the final step to view the shared document he would get bounced out of the meeting. After 15 minutes of the three of us trying to troubleshoot, we decided to try another meeting approach. My second approach was to launch Microsoft Live Meeting from inside Communicator (since we were already there) and collaborate that way. I was excited because the team member who we could not connect with got right into the meeting, but my other team member, who had no problem with the desktop sharing in Communicator, was being blocked in making the jump from Communicator to Live Meeting. Again, we spent 15 minutes troubleshooting before we abandoned this approach as well.

After wasting 30 minutes of our meeting time, we went back to our usual meeting approach which was for me to set up a meeting directly in Live Meeting and send them email invitations to join me. This worked just fine and we were able to complete our proposal.

While I am encouraged by the promise of these collaborative tools, right now it is just a that: a promise. I can't imagine trying to use these tools with a training group when we can't even get a three person meeting off the ground. That being said, I am excited and encouraged by the possibilities. I know, one day soon, we will be designing learning activities that involve these tools and conducting learning sessions through them. In the meantime, we will just keep practicing so we will be ready when they are.

Horton Hears a Who...On Youtube!

2009-09-02T07:55:00.001-07:00

One of the things we here at the MWTL blog (a.k.a. me) are interested in is how people use the Internet and web 2.0 tools for learning. I have been exploring learning websites, blogs, twitter, yammer, etc. to figure out how people use these things for learning. Once again I found a great example right at home with my son Andrew.

Andrew has been bitten by the acting bug. Recently he was invited to audition for a local production of Seussical! a musical based on those lovable Dr. Seuss children's books. One of the books that is central to the story is Horton Hears a Who. Inexplicably, this book was not among the many Dr. Seuss (Now he understood learning!) books we read to our children in their pre-school years. (Their favorite was Fox in Socks. The kids loved to laugh as I messed up this tongue-twister of a book.)

Andrew wanted to try out for the part of Horton, so he needed to do some research. He downloaded the Broadway soundtrack to his Ipod and then went onto wikipedia and looked up Seussical! to get an understanding of the plot. Next, he went to Youtube where he found many clips from local productions of the musical. By the time he went to audition, he was ready, having viewed and heard several different takes on the songs he needed to sing to impress his director.

Andrew quickly learned what he needed and got the part. As his father, I'm happy for him and I'm looking forward to his performances in November. As a learning professional, I'm fascinated - and a little bit scared - by all of this. The people I am tasked to train in the corporate classroom have access to the same tools and resources that my son used to research his part. With that much information at their fingertips, we as trainers are no longer asked to fill the role of information provider. Our job is to help people embrace and use these tools to their best advantage. At my company, we have just begun to incorporate tools such as sharepoint, wikis, etc. into our learning programs. In a few years, my son and his friends will be entering the work force. Imagine what their expectations around learning will be.

New Take on an Old Standard

2009-08-30T04:37:00.000-07:00

This week I had my team together for a working session/meeting. There are four of us and since we all work in different places, we only get together in person about 5-6 times a year. Our focus has been on instructional design and course development in past years, but due to some changes in our department our primary responsibility is now leadership and management development. Since that is the case, I thought it would be beneficial for us to explore style assessment tools that we could incorporate into the management training programs we offer. I wanted to find something that would provide rich, practical feedback for our managers, was cost effective, and easy to administer.

I asked my team to research some products and we decided to test drive a tool called Everything DiSC. DiSC has been around for many years. It is a simple tool that offers information to help people understand why they act the way they do - and to some extent - why others do too. It maps behaviors into four basic styles: Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S) and Conscientiousness (C). The idea is that we all use a blend of these four styles, but most of us strongly gravitate toward one or two of the styles (My profile is CS). We purchased the "starter kit" for the management version. For a reasonable price, we were able to outfit ourselves with everything we need to administer this tool, and some pretty good follow up training to provide managers on how to apply it in work situations.

The package we purchased included a thumb drive with everything we need to run a DiSC workshop including a leader's guide, printable handouts, and a Powerpoint slide deck with embedded video clips. The slide deck is overkill at 122 slides, but it is easily configurable. The embedded videos are short and to the point. They provide good examples of the styles, with just enough ambiguity to make the behaviors portrayed credible. The profiles are taken online. Participants get their results immediately, with a back up notification going to an in-house administrator (in our case, one of my staff members). The reports are easy to read. They provide feedback on the styles. Since we purchased the management version, they also provide feedback on the impact DiSC styles have on how managers delegate work, develop others, and on the motivational climate they create. My only criticism so far is that instead of direct pricing for profiles, you have to purchase "credits." The number of credits needed to purchase a profile varies based on volume. This is a minor annoyance, but the tool seems great. Our plan is to have a few of our training colleagues take the online profile to give my team a chance to practice debriefing it. We will then incorporate it into a few of our upcoming classes. Check back for updates.

Yammering On About Nothing; Kudos for Dr. Gupta!

2009-08-27T18:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I joined my company's Yammer beta site. My goal as a learning professional is to see what kind of learning possibilities there are through this tool. I wanted to see what kind of dialog is going on in my company. What are the hot topics being discussed? How is knowledge being spread and shared to build a better future for us all?

What did I find? Everyone on Yammer was discussing - Twitter. There was a running thread of yams(?) about this article from Information Week stating that 40% of "tweets" were pointless babble. Up to this point my quest for learning through Web 2.0 tools hadn't been very fruitful.

Back on Twitter, George S and Weird Al weren't providing me much, but I found a ray of hope for learning in a few threads started by Dr. Gupta. He is using "twitpics" to share xrays of various conditions and asking people if they can spot problems. It appears that he has a lot of followers who are medical students and professionals. So Twitter can be used for mini coaching sessions with online followers. Hmmm...

Let's All Microblog!

2009-08-22T03:55:00.000-07:00

This week I signed up on Twitter and Yammer and I really have no idea why! These are two popular "microblogs" that "everyone" is using these days to write short snippets about themselves. Twitter is a public microblog that asks the question, "What are you doing right now?" Yammer is its corporate cousin. It has the same basic concept except that it is only open to members of the same company. So instead of asking, "What are you doing?" Yammer wants to know, "What are you working on?" I figure I would give both of these a go to see how they might be useful for learning. The way they work is that you that you sign up to write your snippets (on Twitter these are called tweets; on Yammer are they yams?), you choose people to "follow" if you feel they have interesting snippets, and people choose to follow you.

When I joined Twitter I was presented with an array of choices on people to follow. Not being sure how this was going to work, I chose three people as a starter kit: George Stephanopolous, Weird Al Yankovic, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Shortly after I tweeted (do I really have to call it that?) I immediately had three followers: sexytoytwiter, bitchymyall710 (who is having a lingerie party - I guess I'm invited!), and some guy named Vernon. If you are interested in joining my new posse, you can find me at http://twitter.com/mpetersell.

I'll let you know how Yammer is working out in a few days.