A Pallette of Places for Learning

This week I had an opportunity to attend the ASTD Forum Spring Lab, hosted by Steelcase Inc. in their Steelcase University training facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As a new member of the Forum, this was my first time attending a face-to-face event. It was great to meet and network with other learning leaders in such a concentrated way. We were together for a few days with very little to distract us. So the conversation was lively, engaging and productive.

But today, I want to talk about the experience of being at Steelcase University. Steelcase is in the office furniture and office space design business. I was expecting to see some exciting new designs from Steelcase, and they did not disappoint. Like many companies of today, Steelcase has been transforming their business model. They have moved from being a traditional manufacturing company, to one that is insight driven, focusing on innovation to improve the customer experience. They are much more about “design” than they are about “build.” This was apparent when the Steelcase learning team took us on a tour of the facility. We were able to see evidence of some of the insights they had gained about designing work environments that were conducive to learning. They shared some of those insights with us as we strolled through the building marveling at the interesting places and spaces they created for people to use as they move about their day.

Here is how they expressed some of those insights:

Democratic Access – many of the Steelcase workspaces were designed to promote a sense of inclusion and community. This was evident in spaces that had no particular front or back, no “seat of power” and in which everyone had easy access to tools such as whiteboards, and monitors for projecting and sharing information.

Flexible Spaces – much of their furniture design is modular, foldable, storable and scaleable. The training room that we were in the first day, miraculously doubled in size the second day. The room did not look or feel make-shift in any way on either day.

Generative Spaces – Steelcase recognizes that people gather for different types of work and meetings. They have many spaces designed specifically for idea generation. These spaces are characterized by having long white-boarded walls, table heights for standing and thinking, and reduced barriers so people can move about freely and see everything that is going on from any position in the room.

Before, During and After Spaces – at every turn there we ad-hoc spaces that gave people the ability to gather in small groups for break-outs or intimate conversation. There were also places to easily plug in a laptop for quick email checks and the like.

Informal Learning – in general all of the designs were sensitive to the fact that we learn while work and we work while we learn. There were a variety of rooms, alcoves, and open work spaces that were comfortable, inviting and often casual looking, providing an environment that encourages thinking, idea sharing and collaborative work.

Steelcase is ready to help us say goodbye to the outdated work setting made up of offices, cubicles, and conference rooms.

Praying for the Right Answers

A few months ago, the Catholic Church decided to make text changes in some of the hymns, prayers and responses in the Sunday Mass. Apparently the intention of these changes is to have the English translation of the Mass more accurately reflect the Latin from which the Roman Missal was translated.

Now as a life-long Catholic, I am pretty much on autopilot when it comes to delivering my responses during the Liturgies of the Mass. The new word changes just don’t feel normal or natural, so it will probably take the second half of my life to commit them all to memory.

As I was looking around in church today, I could see that my fellow parishioners are pretty much in the same boat. Many of the devoted have been at this much longer than I have, so I can imagine the challenge of breaking away from the old habitual responses and replacing them with new phrases is even tougher for them.

Of course, the Church has updated the prayers and responses in the Monthly Missalettes that are scattered about the pews, but that alone is not enough to help people through this change. To provide additional support, the Church has created a double-sided laminated card that you can pick up and quickly scan when you find yourself getting tongue-tied or out-of-synch with the rest of the congregation during those moments when your voices should be joined together harmoniously.

Today, it was obvious our parishioners are relying more heavily on this card than the Missalette. As a workplace learning professional, this just reinforced for me the importance of helping the employees in my company to get simple answers to work issues into their hands when they need them. For quick answers, a good job aid beats a good manual any day. Similarly, using instant messenger or other social media tools to quickly connect with subject matter experts at the point of need, beats sitting through a formal class that is disconnected in time and space from the moment real answers are needed.

The bottom line is that we in the workplace learning industry need to continue to capitalize on the social media tools and technology that allow us to imbed learning into the workstream so that our workers are getting the right answers when they need them and we are all singing from the same hymnal.

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!

Three Angles of Approach for Instructional Design Reviews

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

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.

1. 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!
2. 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.
3. Microsoft Office Communicator - share your desktop and video conference using voice over IP in an instant.
4. Delicious - my personal knowledge management favorite.
5. Skype - bringing people together - even when they're not!
6. 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.
7. Dropbox - new to me and moving up the list. With the growth of tablets, this tool becomes more important for sharing.
8. SlideShare - great for researching presentations and sharing your own
9. Twitter - I've learned more through the connections I've made through twitter over the last two years than through any other means.
10. 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

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

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.