Five Questions to Ask when Translating Learning Content

Are You Translating Learning Content?

Over the last two years, my company has evolved its operating structure from being a multinational corporation into a true global organization.   As a result of this, our L&D services have changed in scope and scale.   In addition to developing and delivering training for our employees in North America, we are now tasked with supporting all of the markets in which we do business.

Needless to say, we have developed our capability to deliver learning services in multiple languages.  In fact, our internal translation management group recently told us that we have pushed ahead of marketing and communications to become the number one consumer of translation services in the company.   We have now taken on somewhat of a spokesperson role inside the company to help other departments who have translation needs.

We have learned quite of few things along the way – some of them the hard way.   Now when faced with a learning project that has to be produced in multiple languages, here are a few questions we must get answered in order to move forward:

1. Who pays?   This is the biggest issue we face.   We do not carry a budget to cover the cost of translations as part of our learning design process.   We must ask this question to the project requester.   Most often the response is, “I hadn’t thought about that.”   We do our best to provide an estimated translation cost.  Then the project sponsor must decide how to proceed.  In most cases, the cost ends up being borne by whoever is trying to push the content out to a particular audience.  But in some cases, the costs are covered by the countries that require the translations.   Either way, we do not move forward until it is clear who will be paying the bill.
   
   
2. Who will review this?   We work with some wonderful translation vendors.  They are reputable and reliable, but they are not part of our company and don’t know our culture.  Before we can finalize any learning material, we require sign-off on the translation from someone inside the company.   It can really derail your project if you don’t have your reviewers lined up ahead of time and ready to go when needed.   Our L&D team doesn’t have the language skills or resources to evaluate the translations, so we require whoever is paying for the translations to identify who the reviewers will be.
   
   
3. What is unique about your content?  The world would be a great place if there was one translation vendor who could do everything we needed, but unfortunately, that is not the case.   Just as different vendors specialize in different languages, many of them specialize in different content types.  We provide learning services to all parts of the company.  This means that we deal with content that can sometimes be very technical in nature (such as product training), very nuanced (such as soft skills training), very marketing oriented (such as training aimed at external audiences), or very heavy with legal implications (such as compliance training).  Different vendors specialize in each of these areas.   It is good to have relationships with a few vendors to cover the whole content spectrum.
   
   
4. What is unique about the target audience?   Straight translation from one language to another can be a dangerous thing.  It is important to understand a little bit about a country and its culture before publishing translated learning content to them.   Some countries expect more formal language than others.   Idioms don’t translate well.   And there are host of other differences that need to be taken into consideration.   A good translation vendor can help with some of these issues, but it really falls on to your in-company language reviewers to let you know what will and will not work for their audience.   A few years back, I worked on a new orientation program that we titled, “Get Connected!”  It had to be translated into several languages.  One of my in-country reviewers told me that the way our vendor had translated the program title it came out as, “Let’s Hook Up!”  That is certainly not what we meant to convey.
   
   
5. What type of learning approach are you taking?   Different languages say things in different ways.  Some languages require more time and space to say something that may have been short and quick in the language of origin.  This has implications for text size, placement of graphics, synchronization of narration, and a number of other things.   It can create some complex problems for integrating translated content back into your source files.   Some translation vendors can do this for you, but they don’t do it for free.

Three Considerations for Global Learning

I have been working in Learning & Development for many years.  Until now, I have only occasionally had to support projects that were global in scope.   Most of the time, that meant creating something here in North America and then shipping it overseas to be translated.

But recently my company has been evolving from a multi-national operation to one that is truly globally integrated.   This has meant that my team has been asked to develop learning solutions to support our employees in all markets in which we do business, not just those here in the US.  So now we are working to scale up our operations.   We are trying to develop curriculum that is appropriate for broader audiences, and to create design processes that take into account that we need to work with stakeholders and subject matter experts that may be in other parts of the world.  We are clearly on a journey here.  We have a long way to go, but we are learning a lot along the way. 

Here are three observations so far about creating global learning solutions.   They may seem simple and obvious to those of you who have been operating this way for a long time, but for those of us who are in the early stages of our global journey, their implications are profound.

Culture is more important than language.   It isn't enough to do word-for-word translations of your learning content.  Localization is just as important.  You have to make sure that the context, style, and learning examples are consistent with the beliefs, values and expectations of your audiences. Also, people have different expectations about what constitutes a learning experience.  This impacts how they interact with instructors and peers in class settings.

Technology must be tested.  Technology is not the easy answer.   Technology deployment is uneven around the globe.  Bandwidth issues exist in many places.  If you plan to use virtual delivery tools or elearning, my advice is test and retest the technology before going live with it.

Local resource support is critical.   You can accomplish a lot more with active local support than you can on your own and at a distance.   We have engaged our  Human Resource Business Partners and key local business leaders to help us create the right conditions for learning and help us minimize the pitfalls. So far, this has proven to be the most critical factor in helping us to be successful.

There is certainly more to the story than these items, but they make a big difference for us.

Create Playful Characters for eLearning

Watch as @eLearningJeff (Jeff Kortenbosch from Serious Learning.) demonstrates how to create playful looking characters for your eLearning programs in PowerPoint, by using PowerPoint's drawing tool.

He uses basic circles for heads and bodies, and PowerPoint's freeform shape for hair, jewelry and other details.

If you can envision the shapes, it looks the freeform tool can be very helpful in creating a variety of characters to add a playful element to your eLearning courses.

Thanks Jeff!

Creating WOW Learning Experiences in Compliance Training

One of the goals I share with my instructional design team this year is "to create WOW learning experiences." It is part of our 2013 continuous improvement effort.  Last year was our first year operating as an Enterprise Learning and Development group.   We spent most of the year building the team, introducing tools, and developing the processes we need to support the lines of business with learning services.  This year, we want to make the most of the capability we have created.  

An area in which it is especially challenging to find ways to create WOW learning experiences is in compliance training.   This is often considered the "necessary evil" of the learning world.  It poses the instructional designer with an uphill battle in that the content is usually not core to the target audience's work, and it is not generally compelling by nature.  It is certainly not easy to make "lock out, tag out procedures" or "record retention policies" come to life in an eLearning module, but there are ways to do it.   I have challenged my team to look for more opportunities to use story-based or game-like approaches, and to take advantage of our in-house graphic designer to include images, animations, or videos that can add visual interest and make learning points clearer.

I just came across this slideshare presentation from Cammy Bean at Kineo: Cammy Bean's Learning Visions: Compliance Makeover!   In this presentation, Cammy provides 10 tips for giving compliance training a makeover.  These tips represent the kind of things I'm asking my team to do to create WOW learning experiences.  Thanks Cammy!

The Perfect Storm: HTML5, Tin Can API and Mobile

Having just endured the powerful forces of Hurricane Sandy here in the northeastern United States, my heart goes out to the people who lost homes and loved ones during the storm. Meanwhile in the learning industry, another storm is brewing. If you haven’t been paying attention to topics such as HTML5, Tin Can API, Learning Records Stores, and developments on the mobile front, then you better batten down the hatches. These things are upon us now. They represent a climate change that can create super storms, ones that have ability to disrupt daily life for those of us in the workplace learning industry if we aren't prepared for them.

I work in a corporate learning department for a relatively large global company. We have been providing high quality learning services to our employees for years. I’m proud of the work my team does and the impact we have had on our organization’s success, particularly during the tough economic times of the last few years. We have never been what I would consider “cutting edge” but we have always managed to be creative and innovative in our approaches to learning. We have not only embraced change, but we have driven it through our organization. We are doing this once again as we have launched a project to introduce mobile learning as part of our mix. While I am excited by the possibilities, I feel like I’m walking through a storm. We seem to be in a time and place where so many things are swirling around us at once, so it is hard to know where to step next. Here are some of the challenges that we need to weather over the next few months:

Everybody’s Going Mobile – Smartphones and tablets are wonderful productivity tools, aren’t they? These days everyone has one…or two… or three. But they are all different. Yes, we have some company issued devices, but our learners are going to expect to be able to access learning content from their device of choice. This means designing and publishing multiple ways.

Gone in a Flash – I’m talking about Flash output. Up until now, all of the e-learning content we have produced has been published as Flash output. Of course we all know that that is coming to an end. To be able to publish engaging learning that can be accessed on a mobile device, we are going to have to produce HTML5 output now. Of course HTML5 Standards aren’t finalized yet, and none of our current course development software tools publish to HTML5, so there are those little things to deal with.

I’ll trade you an “M” for an “R” - That is as in LMS vs. LRS. We have thousands of learning objects on our Learning Management System (LMS). But of course, our LMS can’t handle content published for mobile devices (Yeah, I know that capability will be coming out in a future release of our LMS software… Q1 of 20xx). Our LMS is looking for SCORM standards, whereas mobile learning will mean using Tin Can API. (Yes, we are all learning about Tin Can.) If we want to record and track mobile learning, we’ll need a Learning Record Store (LRS).

As I said, I’m excited by this new direction we are taking. Mobile learning will be a real game changer for us. But I have to admit, figuring out how to fit all these things together is keeping me up at night almost as much as Hurricane Sandy did.

Capitalizing on 7 Learning Modalities

Last week I had the opportunity to get into a dialog with my company's learning council about the future direction of our approach to workplace learning.  My goal was to get them to support the idea of using tools and technologies to foster more informal learning opportunities. Our learning council is made up of a group of senior leaders from each of our business units and some key functional areas.  They are all savvy, successful business men and women in their areas of expertise, but their knowledge of what makes learning effective is uneven.   My approach was to write and present a white paper to them on how to capitalize on the learning modalities that are currently available for use in our organization - including mobile learning and learning through social media.

I wasn't sure how they would react to this.  Like many companies, our approach to workplace learning has mainly been focused on using traditional delivery methods such as classroom training, webinars, and self-paced elearning. To set the stage in the paper and in our discussion, I started by talking about the 70:20:10 Learning Framework.   This was a good choice as it comes across as rational, logical, and easy to understand.  Next, we talked about the proliferation of mobile devices and the explosion social media usage over the last few years, drawing the conclusion that our employees are already engaged in these arenas and that to provide effective learning support, we need to be in there with them.

After setting the stage, we moved the dialog into discussing how we would use each of the seven learning modalities I included in the paper.  I arranged them along a continuum from most formal to least formal (as shown in the image above).  You could argue with my sequencing, but this worked for the purposes of my discussion.  In the paper, I covered each modality by describing its current use, benefits, drawbacks, and recommendations for usage in our future learning offerings.

Here are the seven modalities we discussed, with a brief line about how we plan to optimize each:

Instructor-led training (ILT) - to optimize ILT we need to make sure our courses are learner-centered and discussion-oriented, offering ample opportunities for practice and feedback.

Virtual Instructor-led training (VILT) - to optimize VILT we need to design full, facilitated learning experiences that may include multiple sessions, pre-work, assessments, interactive exercises and post work (not just have a subject matter expert talking over PowerPoint slides).

eLearning (CBT or WBT) - to optimize elearning we need to use story-based, character-driven, and game-based approaches that are interactive and engaging to motivate our learners to stay with them through to completion.

Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) - to optimize EPSS we need to provide relevant tools and place them (physically and contextually) where our learners are most likely going to look for them.

Podcasts and Videos - to optimize our use of podcasts and video we need to create short burst learning objects that address a single topic or specific objective.

Mobile Learning - to optimize mobile learning in the short term we need to post .pdf, audio and video files and take advantage of two-way communication opportunities; longer term we will work with an external partner and our IT team to create and support a mobile learning app.

Social Learning - to optimize social learning we need to create groups and/or topic archives based on areas of interest to our learners, focusing on information sharing, collaboration, and content co-creation.

All-in-all we had a great dialog.  Our learning council members were excited about the possibilities of mobile and social learning.   They recognize the power of embedding learning directly into the workstream: minimizing disruptions to productivity while our employees grow and develop their skills.

Social Media Star Contest

"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!

What Tools Are Instructional Designers Using These Days?

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.

Inspired by the Lectora End-to-end eLearning Solution

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.