I’m still working on my yearly post that is my eLearning Predictions.  That will be coming out shortly.  In the meantime, I’ve been invited to do a virtual presentation for ASTD DC on this topic.  The organizer will give preference to his local members, but will let other folks attend who contact him.  Here’s the information:

Ten eLearning Predictions for 2010

To kick off the new year, Dr. Tony Karrer is sharing some thoughts on what’s going to be happening in the world of eLearning in 2010. Back in 2006, Tony was talking about eLearning 2.0 and it’s long term impact on workplace learning.  What will be similar kinds of key issues that we need to be aware of in 2010?

Tony promises to deliver a fast-paced, interactive discussion that will look at trends around social and informal learning, mobile, authoring, learning management systems, and others.  Come participate in what promises to be a fun session.

This event will be held via the web on Thursday January 21 from 2:45 – 4:00 Eastern. It is being hosted by the local DC Chapter of ASTD’s Technology Learning Group. If you are interested in attending, please contact Todd Slater at toddslater1@gmail.com for webinar information. 

About the Presenter:

Dr. Tony Karrer is an expert on innovative uses of technology that improves human performance.  He is a sought after presenter on Web 2.0’s impact on knowledge work and workplace learning. He is author of the award-winning eLearning Technology blog, creator of eLearning Learning, and founder of Work Literacy.

Dr. Karrer’s experience is diverse including initial CTO of eHarmony, associate professor of Computer Science, and consultant to Credit Suisse, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, Universal, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, Symbol Technologies and many others. He was valedictorian and attended USC as a Tau Beta Pi fellow, one of the top 30 engineers in the U.S. where he received a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science.

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eLearning Technology

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I received an interesting and probably fairly important question. I believe this person represents a fair number of individuals who work in the world of workplace training / learning.

I am a Senior Organizational Development and Training Specialist based in San Diego, CA. I came across your blog today searching for certification programs in the area of eLearning and/or Web Based Training Design. I have about 6 years of experience of classroom training but my company has been reluctant to give us any kind of exposure to web based training or make any real changes to this effective training medium. I know that to secure my future in this field, I must gain some more knowledge in this area on my own.

So I’m wondering if you have any suggestions on some credible, relatively affordable programs that provide certification in eLearning or Web Based Training Design. Any information you might have would be greatly appreciated.

Kudos to this person for not allowing the limitations of their organization limit what they are going to learn. That said, those limits will certainly make it more challenging to find a good choice around eLearning Certifications. Let’s try to help them out.

When I asked about this last time in eLearning Certification, some of the responses:

• OU (Open University in the UK) does - you can take a full course, or simply individual modules. I think one of my colleagues is doing one. It’s worth a look: http://www.open.ac.uk/. Any of their courses be offered as distance and/or online learning, so the location shouldn’t be an issue.
• We have an online eLearning Certificate that may be of interest. The program uses synchronous technology with a real instructor at the other end so there are time commitments but–and I am only slightly bias in this case :)–it is a really good program.
  Check it out at Bloomsburg University’s Instructional Technology page.
• The University of Southern Queensland offer a Postgrad Certificate in a variety of options:
  - educational technology
  - online learning
  www.usq.edu.au
• Friesen, Kay & Associates - http://www.fka.com/index.asp
• The Allen Academy - (need new link - help?) http://www.allenacademy.com/students/certification.htm
• ASTD eLearning Certification - http://www.astd.org/content/education/certificatePrograms/ELearning
• Clark Training - http://www.clarktraining.com/certification.php
• Professional eLearning Designers’ Association - www.peldaglobal.com
• University of Illinois Global Campus, they have a certificate program. http://global.uillinois.edu/search?keyword=&subject=all&degree_type=all&campus=Global+Campus
• Fairmont State University offers a graduate certificate in Online Learning. Information can be found online at:
  http://www.fairmontstate.edu/graduatestudies/grad_programs.asp
• University of Texas at Brownsville http://www.utb.edu/vpaa/de/Pages/E-LearningCertificate.aspx as part of an online graduate degree in Instructional Technology. The four courses required for the e-learning certificate are Instructional Design, Educational Telecommunications, Multimedia/Hypermedia, and a capstone project course.
• University of MD, Baltimore County (UMBC) - ISD graduate program. This program also offers certifications in Instructional Technology and Distance Ed, if you are not ready for the time involved in getting the MA. http://www.umbc.edu/isd/
• San Diego State University - http://edtec.sdsu.edu/ Full Masters and certificates, online and on campus, for decades. You can’t be engaged in elearning or workplace learning and performance that leverages technology without bumping into many SDSU EDTEC grads.

Also, check out Certification Magazine for many options. http://www.certmag.com

I’m sure there are a lot more programs out there at this point. And a myriad of online degree programs.

I also think it would make a lot of sense to look at some of the recent discussions about certifications and degrees in instructional design. Here are some quick findings via eLearning Learning – particularly I looked at best of pages around: instructional design, eLearning Certification and did queries around degrees, etc. Some really good reading…

• Instructional Design Certificate or Masters Degree
• When Accidental Instructional Designers Become Intentional
• Accidental Instructional Designers
• 10 Qualities of the Ideal Instructional Designer
• We Need a Degree in Instructional Design
• Online Programs that Offer Training in eLearning?
• Still early days for instructional design
• Getting Started with Instructional Design
• The future of certification
• New courses: Certificate in Emerging Technologies for Learning
• The Various Roles of Instructional Design (work in progress)
• Interviews on Instructional Design
• Instructional Design: What’s in a name?
• Instructional Designers with ID Degrees? Survey Results…
• Why an Instructional Design Degree from Bloomsburg University ROCKS!
• The science of learning
• Instructional Design - If - When - How Much
• Do Instructional Design Degrees Get “Wasted”?
• Instructional Designers with Degrees: Survey Update
• Help, I have an Instructional Design Master’s Degree and I Can’t Create E-Learning
• My Response to “…Instructional Design is Dead” - by many people
• IDs - It’s time for some seriously tough love
• E-Learning for Newbies
• List of e-Learning Job Descriptions

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eLearning Technology

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There have already been some great contributions to this month’s big question – Predictions and Plans for 2010.  I was reading Jay Cross’ response and one of his predictions:

Faster, faster, faster, real time. Time-to-performance becomes the new metric.

It’s funny to see that term again.  I thought that Time-to-performance was going to be the key metric back in 2002.  When I was working with various high tech, insurance and financial services companies – a key ingredient was how quickly people could effectively roll-out new products, policies, respond to competitive threats, etc.  It really was about how quickly you can become proficient on all the new stuff.  It was about Time to Performance.

Granted there are still core skills that will need to be developed in other ways (see Does Deliberative Practice Lead to Quick Proficiency for a bit of discussion around that).  Still a lot of what we talk about with informal learning, performance support, etc. is how we can make people perform quickly.  Or at least have the appearance of expertise (see  Expert Level Answers via Social Networks as one way to appear to be expert).

Still since the last time this term and related metrics never really took off, I’m curious what people think.

Is Time to Performance really going to get traction in 2010?

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eLearning Technology

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Harold Jarche posted Business models looking back and forward where he looks at various trends and implications on business opportunities.  One of the main points he makes is:

In early 2010 it is pretty obvious that nobody needs an other Web portal.

I both agree and disagree.  He’s right.  No one really wants another web portal.  We’ve got plenty of information sources already.  At the same time, we need lots of help filtering the flood of information.  Harold is a master of that and effectively uses twitter, RSS reader and lots of other sources to bring across and filter information.

My strong belief is that there is more and more of a need for effective information filtering.  Basically, easy ways to get the information that you want or need.  Heck, a lot of what learning professionals do is filter information.

Harold is comfortable with small pieces, loosely joined as a means of filtering.  My belief is that there’s a fairly large population that will get value from what are essentially portals that take advantage of social signals (a powerful information filtering mechanism).  That’s somewhat the whole point behind eLearning Learning.

Professionals who don’t have time to try to find, subscribe, read all of the various blogs and other sources can look to a portal like eLearning Learning (and particularly it’s Best Of emails) as a means of getting a filtered set of all of this.

Of course, there’s so much more to defining what someone particularly needs.  This filtering is horribly crude and will get much better over the years.  But since a lot of what a portal can bring is information filtering – I’m not quite so ready to sign up with Harold’s assertion.

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eLearning Technology

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Saturday Night Live certainly doesn’t think much of online degrees a subject that I was thinking was going away since I posted about it back in 2006 - Lower Value of Online Degree Programs?

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eLearning Technology

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Happy new year.  I took some time off from blogging over the holidays.  I’m just now getting back into the swing of things.  To help me get moving, I just posted Storyboard Templates and iPhones – Best of December 2009 over on eLearning Learning.  Some great content posted back in December that I need to go back and review.

I’m hoping that folks might be able to help someone who just sent me a question. 

This is a company that sells mostly compliance training to the healthcare market (Hospitals, healthcare practices, individual physicians etc…).  They have a licensed LMS, but want to move away from it and build a custom LMS that meets their specific needs.

Their questions:

1. What are some features that they might not be thinking about that people will be asking for in the near future?  In their words, “what is the need of the hour”?

2. Is it a good idea to start with an open source LMS?  Their team strength is principally .NET, ASP 2.0.  Are there  any open source LMS on those technologies?

And my question:

3. Does it make that much sense to build a custom LMS anymore?  I’ve seen it numerous times, but I feel like some of the low cost LMS or rapid LMS solutions would make more sense?

Appreciate any thoughts you have on this.

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eLearning Technology

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I mentioned in my post 2009 Predictions How Did I Do? that we are seeing more and more about Add-ins & Mashups as a means to build richer learning experiences.  I particularly cited a DevLearn demo of twitter being embedded inside Captivate as the basis of a social learning experience.

They’ve posted on the Adobe Captivate blog - Collaborative learning using Captivate and Twitter.  You can run a demo (18 mins) to see it in action.  The basic idea is that students will be able to have a social learning experience utilizing twitter as a messaging systems within a Captivate course.

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eLearning Technology

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Workplace Learning Today pointed me to a post Ten Common Phrases That Could Soon Be History. I use similar kinds of examples in my presentations (and posts such as Work Skills Keeping Up?). I thought it might be fun for me to catalog some of the ones that I’ve used in my presentations and other places as well as have this ready for future presentations.

So here is a list of technologies that:

• Boomers – used
• Gen X – know what it is (probably)
• Millenial – never used / likely don’t know what it is

If you are a Boomer or an older Gen X, this list is sure to make you feel a bit old.

Pay Phones – Collect Calls

• Where’s the nearest pay phone?
• Call me collect?

Typewriter / Ribbon / Correcting Ribbon

“You need to mute your sound”

Records / Phonographs

• Sounds like a broken record
• Skipping
• Needle

Cassette Drive

Floppy Disk / Floppy Drive

• Dual floppy drive
• Word Star
• Word Perfect

Punch Card

Card Catalog

Microfiche Reader

Rabbit Ears

Overhead Projector

Rolodex

Inbox / Outbox

What we did before email …

“Pen Pals”

“Walkman”

“Carbon Copy” or even “BCC”

What did I miss?

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eLearning Technology

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It’s always fun at the end of the year to go back and take a look at what you’ve been working on, what you’ve learned during the year.  I’ve been doing this the past few years.  And as part of this, I’ve been taking advantage of: 2009 Predictions How Did I Do?, 2009 Top Posts and Topics, Top 125 Workplace eLearning Posts of 2009 and just running through my blog posts for the year.

Knowledge Work Skills / Work Literacy

Having realized in 2007 that there’s a very important Knowledge Worker Skill Gap, I felt the need in 2008 to find ways to help knowledge workers  and organizations build skills like Leveraging Networks, Network Feedback, Finding Expertise, Using Social Media to Find Answers to Questions, Learning through Conversation and searching, scanning, etc. In June 2008, Work Literacy Launched.

2009 has continued that effort.  I’m convinced that we are all struggling to have our Work Skills Keep Up.  And many of my 2009 Top Posts and Topics are related to exactly this.

• Tool Set 2009
• LinkedIn Guide for Knowledge Workers
• Top-Down Strategy
• Better Memory
• Information Radar
• Processing Pages with Links
• Networks and Learning Communities
• Network Skills
• Twitter as Personal Work and Learning Tool
• Search
• Browser Short Cuts
• Work Literacy Workshop
• Collaboration Tools
• Remote Collaboration

Also, a lot of my presentations have been about exactly these things.

When I look at my particular skills, methods and tools for 2009 and compare them to 2008, I would say that it’s mostly a question of degree of use and certainly my use of Twitter has grown.  See also: Twitter Conference Ideas and Twitter and Webinars. I will say that adopting TweetDeck on both my desktop and my iPhone has made it a much better tool for me.

Online Sessions / Conferences / Discussions => Now Visible Networking

I’ve seen during 2009 a real growth in the ability to spark up interesting discussions as online sessions.  During the year, I’ve had fantastic conversations through LearnTrends around SharePoint, Examples and Tour of Different Kinds of eLearning, Social Learning, and the Business of Learning.  Each of these allowed me to fast forward my learning and share knowledge effectively.

However, during 2009, I had a bit of an aha moment.  It came during a presentation when I said:

It’s a much better use of my time to use LinkedIn to spark a conversation than it is to go to networking events.

I realized that a lot of the networking that I had done in person in the past could move online and actually be a much more effective use of time.  And a lot of that networking could be public.  So, why not look to make this more explicit and effective?

I started calling this Visible Networking.  This is still relatively new as a name, but it’s something that I’ve been doing for a few years now.  Naming it allows me to better understand it and move it forward.

If you think about it, Twitter, Blog Comments, etc. are all forms of visible networking.  Instead of networking in private, make it a visible conversation online so that everyone can benefit.  And it can turn into great things like: Discussion Forums for Knowledge Sharing at Capital City Bank.

eLearning 2.0 Morphing Into Social Learning and Informal Learning

In the post, Hot Topics in eLearning for 2009, the top two hottest topics across all the eLearning Learning blogs were Twitter and various forms of social/informal learning, especially as it relates to the use of technology to support this.  eLearning 2.0 was considered a hot term in 2007 and 2008, but not in 2009.  For me, it was still one of my top terms, but I’ve found myself discussing things in other ways as well.  I think as we’ve moved past the idea that this stuff has impact, we’ve begun to discuss it in a different way.

I don’t actually think using the terms “social learning” or “informal learning” is the right way to go about selling this stuff either. 

Instead, during 2009, I’ve decided to always be a “Jack” … if you don’t know what that means or what it means about selling social learning then you should look at: Selling Learning Communities – Not Everyone Will or Wants a Group Hug.

It’s something I’ve said in a lot of presentations – you pick a specific, smart target and it’s a “no duh” decision.  Now I have a better way to say it.  Thanks Jack!

Using Topic Hubs to Speed My Learning

In 2008, I launched eLearning Learning. It basically takes what people in the world of eLearning are already doing and turns it into a resource that helps surface the best stuff.  It was great to help me better keep track of what was going on in a world that I know pretty well.

In 2009, I realized that this same approach is even more valuable for areas where I want to learn more as I described in Learning, Extended Brain and Topic Hubs.  So, I have been heavily leveraging the system and working with partners who are gurus in a space to fast forward my learning on diverse topics such as: Community and Networks, Mobile Learning, Nonprofit Marketing, Nonprofit Technology, HR Technology, B2B Marketing, and Professional Speaking.

There’s something really interesting going on here that I’ve not quite figured out.  It’s very powerful stuff and an important extension to my PWLE.

I’m a little surprised that I didn’t get more response to Curator Editor Research Opportunities on eLearning Learning but it may be that other people learn in a very different way.

Slow Dramatic Shifts in the Business of Learning

I really think we are going through some pretty dramatic shifts as described in the Business of Learning and covered more in posts such as Update on Future of Business of Learning, New Learning Solutions, Marginalized, and Free.

There’s always going to be a need for certain kinds of training and traditional learning.  But the economic realities and environment suggests a pretty dramatic shift going on here.

It’s going to cause us to think about models in very different ways such as how Intuit has Outsourced Training to Customers.

Learning Event?  Work Event?

There was a really great case study by HP during one of the Learn Trends sessions that described how they took marketing professionals from across the organization, taught them some basics about Web 2.0 tools, and then helped them engage in conversation around what it means to HP.  This was hosted by the learning organization, but it looked more like a research, innovation project than a learning event.  The outcomes really weren’t known at the start.  The goal was to actually define some meaningful results for the business.

Grow My Virtual Meeting, Collaboration Skills

I was reminded during 2009, that I need to be in a continuous learning mode around building my skills for effective virtual meetings, collaboration, presentations, etc.  Several of my posts during the year were around this such as Learning from Others in the Room, Narrowing Gap between Face-to-Face and Online Presentations, Presentation Backchannel Multitasking, Twitter Conference Ideas.

Final Aha Moments

Need for more eLearning Portal Integration.

There’s bias around Profile Photos and an Email Address Bias.

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eLearning Technology

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I had previously written about Low Cost LMS and Rapid Learning Management Systems, but I receive an inquiry from someone who had a very constrained budget and wanted to build an eLearning Portal.

Some details of what they want / need:

The portal we need to develop should be able to handle online registration, producing letters of offer, payment gateway, producing letters of acceptance, producing student cards, downloading syllabi, downloading study guides, processing purchasing orders that trigger the distribution of the textbooks by the Publishers’ office to students, communication between mentors and students, organizing forums, notice board, chat rooms, uploading e-Lectures, downloading topic questions, downloading assignments and coursework, posting answers to mentors, mentors grading the students’ work and posting marks, issuing tutorial time-table, posting final exam dates and posting exam results, transcript issuance and degree issuance and graduation.

Because of their very limited budget, I suggested they dive into more depth looking at open source LMS products.  To help get that started, I looked at eLearning Learning and found some pretty good sources around LMS / Open Source and Learning Management System / Open Source.

• Open Source life, LMSs beyond Moodle- Learning Rocks, December 18, 2008
• The Right Way To Go About Open Source LMS- Upside Learning Blog, October 23, 2009
• The Corporate Moodle: A Tipping Point?- Learning Visions, June 26, 2009
• Concerning Open Source, LMSs and SCORM: Correcting Some Common Misconceptions- The E-Learning Curve, October 19, 2009
• To open source or not?- Learning Conversations, December 30, 2008
• Open Source LMS Comparison- The Learned Man, April 27, 2007
• Open Source vs Commercial LMS- Learning Next, April 18, 2007
• ZaidLearn: Any Free Hosted CMS or LMS? (Yes, Obama Says!)- ZaidLearn, May 16, 2009
• Sakai 3 Development Process- Experiencing eLearning, June 9, 2009
• How Big is Moodle?- MinuteBio, June 12, 2009
• Moodle!- The Learned Man, April 28, 2007
• Rapid Learning Management Systems- eLearning Technology, October 20, 2009
• A first look at Sakai 3- Clive on Learning, October 16, 2009
• Gartner: E-learning Market Pushing Toward Open Source, June 7, 2008
• Open source for learning costs less, January 12, 2009
• LMS Selection, July 24, 2009
• Blackboard vs. Moodle, May 7, 2009
• Assessing PLE/LMS systems | nmc, November 11, 2008
• Moving to Moodle: Reflections Two Years Later (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT, December 29, 2008

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eLearning Technology

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