Survey Points to Ideas on E-Learning Maturity
E-Skills UK conductied a survey of over 200 companies and 1000 learners using e-learning. They discovered that there are enough organizations using e-learning for a description of maturity in e-learning to be possible.
Stages toward maturity were defined by statements that people were invited to agree with. Novices "know very little about e-learning" and made up 5 percent of the total though this could have been more if it included people who decided not to take part in the survey. The largest number (35 percent) were the "developing users." Only 17 percent claimed that e-learning is "established" and transforming learning and development. Five percent felt able to state that "e-learning is thoroughly embedded within our company -- we have a learning culture which influences our everyday work."
The survey notes that learners see the web as a source of new knowledge.
Informal learning -- for example, access to the Web during meal breaks -- is recognized as a sign of maturity. The learners indicated that 60 percent of new knowledge came from sources such as Web search or conversation. For 40 percent of learners, printed job aids were not used at all.
Also discovered was the fact that pressure from management is not the main driver of e-learning initiatives.
Most of the energy for e-learning projects appears to come from training departments. There is some reported difference in the chances of success depending on the IT department but this is not seen as crucial. Perhaps technology has now reached a stage when it will become available if there is a need for it, whatever restrictions exist through IT policy.
Apart from an implied reserve about IT, there is a surprising picture about the role of senior management. Asked to identify the drivers for e-learning investment, over 70 percent indicated increased access and flexibility but less than 10 percent chose "pressure from senior management."
Posted by: Preetam
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007 9:35:41 AM HKT
Category : Field notes: best practices in enterprise learning
Using Machinima to Create Training Videos
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Monday, February 19, 2007 4:26:42 PM HKT
Category : Technology talk
Evaluate your Training Budgets
Clark Aldrich is offering three simple steps on his blog that can help us evaluating our training budgets.
Posted by: Preetam
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Wednesday, February 14, 2007 12:31:23 PM HKT
Category : Field notes: best practices in enterprise learning
Microsoft Introduces Authoring Tool
Microsoft has been demo-ing its upcoming education product code named Grava.
According to the company
By introducing these new tools, Microsoft hopes to reduce the time and money spent creating educational software for schools. Because developers won't need high-level programming expertise to create Grava-based programs, the tools could eliminate the common software development cycle in which a subject-matter expert creates content, then hands it off to a programming team to write code, which then returns it for more changes, and so on.
From the screenshots, the tool looks slick and seems easy enough to use. Using the Grava authoring tool, the instructor can choose a template and drag n drop, import or paste content on it. The trainees or students need a Grava player on their desktop to view the content. The player component is included in Vista but Windows XP users will have to download .Net 3.0 Framework from Microsoft. Mac users won't be able to play the content immediately but there might be some help at hand with Mono - a project that makes it possible to run .Net based applications on other operating systems.
Microsoft is looking at making Grava a platform for which developers can build more advanced components that the educators can customize for their own use.The focus of the tool seems to be on schools but I think business customers might also want to look at it as an interactive just-in-time training. training content generator.
Posted by: Preetam
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Friday, February 9, 2007 11:56:07 AM HKT
Category : Technology talk
Webinar on Online Synchronous Learning
Rick Nagol at eLearn Campus looks at the two key benefits of online synchronous learning - Immediacy & Strructure and introduces a webinar titiled Going Live: Best Practices in Online Synchronous Training to be held on February 8 , 9 AM Pacific Time.
Rick writes
Purchasing or leasing good web conferencing software is a very small part of the formula for success. As always, great care must be taken in applying the principles of good learning design and facilitation practices. These are some of the themes we will be addressing in our webinar titled Going Live: Best Practices in Online Synchronous Training, to take place on Thursday, February 8th. We have the great fortune of having Jennifer Hofmann, President of InSync Training, as our special guest expert.
Posted by: Preetam
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Tuesday, February 6, 2007 8:26:34 AM HKT
Category : Field notes: best practices in enterprise learning
Online Photo Editing with Piknik
There are times when you want to quickly edit, resize or crop an image but you do not want to install complex applications like Photoshop or download one of those mini photo editing applications from the internet. Picnik is the perfect photo editing tools. It is web based so you don't have have download anything. There is even no need to register, just upload your picture and start editing it. Solution Watch has a detailed review of Picnik.
Posted by: Preetam
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Thursday, February 1, 2007 10:30:11 AM HKT
Category : Technology talk
Teleconferencing Tips
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Tuesday, January 30, 2007 4:01:22 PM HKT
Category : Technology talk
Stories are Flight Simulators for Our Brains
That is a quote from Chip Heath, the coauthor of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The book, written by brothers Chip and Dan Heath, deals with why some ideas stick and why some don't. The authors have come up with six basic principles (SUCCES) that link sticky ideas. In an interview featured at Guy Kawasaki's blog, the authors provides an example.
For example, JFK’s idea to “put a man on the moon in a decade” had all six of them:
1.Simple A single, clear mission.
2.Unexpected A man on the moon? It seemed like science fiction at the time.
3.Concrete Success was defined so clearly—no one could quibble about man, moon, or decade.
4.Credible This was the President of the U.S. talking.
5.Emotional It appealed to the aspirations and pioneering instincts of an entire nation.
6.Story An astronaut overcomes great obstacles to achieve an amazing goal.
Speaking to Dr. Moira Gunn on a podcast hosted by the Conversations Network, Chip Heath had this to say about the sixth point - Story.
Why do firemen tell stories after fires. Why do people who work in the emergency rooms exchange stories about what happened in the Emergency room that day Well, As you are listening to someone tell a story you simulating a course of behaviour, you are simulating what would I have done in that fire situation. Would I have made that same call? Would I have seen that cue that something was about to collapse? And by going through this mental simulation we are in a better position to take action. We are building a database of experiences that we haven't had and that going to make us better at reacting on our own.
Posted by: Preetam
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Friday, January 26, 2007 12:15:13 PM HKT
Category : Home: the business of learning
Learner Centred Informal Learning
Vaughan Waller at the new Drawing Board blog invites discussion on marrying informal learning with learner centricity. Informal learning here refers to learning by life examples. The author makes another point on informal learning that is worth discussion
It is now common to hear that informal learning “is all around us”, that we learn over 80% that way but that we spend almost nothing on it. OK got all that. Could we now start to discuss please how we should spend money on informal learning without making it formal learning like all the rest?
Posted by: Preetam
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007 9:59:55 AM HKT
Category : Home: the business of learning
Great intranet awards/discussion piece
Posted by: jay
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Monday, January 22, 2007 11:18:36 AM HKT
Category : Home: the business of learning
Strong E-learning Growth in South Korea
South Korea has one of the best internet infrastuctures in the world. Way back in 2003, I spotted some of these budget hotels offering rooms with a PC and broadband connections.
And they are developing some impressive applications for their broadband. For example this shopping program where if you like the clothes on your favorite actors, you can just buy it online using your TV remote.
Now South Korea is also seeing a steady growth in e-learning adoption.
The country's e-learning business, measured in total sales, rose 10.0 percent year-on-year to 1.67 trillion won, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said.
It said steady increases in both private and public demand helped the double-digit growth with contents and service areas leading sales. Private demand for e-learning rose 11.1 percent to 697 billion won, with demand in the public and corporate sectors contributing 137 billion won and 752 billion won each.
[1 US$ = 938 Korean Won]
Posted by: Preetam
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Thursday, January 18, 2007 10:54:54 AM HKT
Category : Home: the business of learning
Tutoring Software with Emotion Detection
Researchers in China and the UK are working on a emotion-aware online tutoring software that can detect when the student gets bored with the lesson. The software can then change the pace or presentation to keep the students interested.
To use the new learning software, a student wears a ring fitted with sensors that monitor heart rate, blood pressure and changes in electrical resistance caused by perspiration. This data is then transmitted via Bluetooth to a computer that assesses the wearer's emotional state. It judges whether they are interested and keeping up or bored and struggling.
Posted by: Preetam
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Wednesday, January 17, 2007 3:39:45 AM HKT
Category : Technology talk
Tell me about that Sarbox thing again . . .
This is not a complaint about the expense and burden of compliance. Lots of people have made those points and made them well. This is about something else, namely the law of unintended consequences.
I just got off the phone with a communications executive at a European company whose shares are listed in the EU and US. The US listing means the company must meet US financial and other reporting requirements, for the most part meaning Sarbanes-Oxley, also known as Sarbox or Sox.
This executive has a number of responsibilities, one of which is to set up and maintain company websites. Typically, a website update, for example posting a new job profile, takes about three hours of back and forth work between an authorized requestor and an internal programmer. The Sarbox documentation reporting for that change could take a day and a half however, including a fair amount of senior management time.
So guess what? As nobody senior at the company wants to do the Sox paperwork, the executive decided to outsource the website work and the Sarbox problem with it. The executive explained that under Sox rules implemented by her company, if there's an outside vendor relationship with a framework agreement to handle website changes, then no new paperwork is required for a task performed under the agreement (other than a record of the change request itself of course).
The punchline here is that Sox, in at least this one case, is driving job offshoring to India, not for direct cost savings reasons but rather to help busy executives find a way around the time costs of Sox reporting for trivial website updates.
Isn't that amazing? Congratulations Mr. Sarbanes and Mr. Oxley. Though the Europeans who just lost their jobs probably aren't all that excited, I bet the people of low-wage economies the world over thank you.
The story got me thinking; If corporate communications are so affected by Sox, I wonder how much, if any, learning and development work is offshored in order to bypass Sox requirements?
Does anyone have any idea?
Note: some of the details of this conversation were changed in the interest of maintaining client confidentiality.
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Posted by: jay
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Friday, January 12, 2007 7:49:08 PM HKT
Category : Home: the business of learning
Ideas on driving higher adoption for your e-Learning
Michael Grant and Rick Nigol at eLearn Campus are running a webinar later today titled Driving Higher Adoption for Your eLearning using A "Four A" approach.
The speakers describe the four "A"s as
1. Accessibility: how easy is it for the target learners to access and use technology?
2. Attitudes: what level of comfort do the target learners have with technology that would position them to learn through technology?
3. Ability: how competent are people with technology and with learning through technology?
4. Appropriateness: do people have a preference for accessing learning through technology?
On his page, Michael describes why they came up with these four A's
The management of adoption is really about reaching people who are not particularly self motivated learners. The thing that generally hurts eLearning adoption rates is that it represents a change in the way training is delivered. This gives unmotivated learners an excuse not to adopt eLearning. We hear things like “I can’t access it”, “I don’t like to learn on the computer etc.”. The Four A’s are a way of addressing these types of resistance head-on and to develop strategies for managing them.
Posted by: Preetam
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Thursday, January 11, 2007 10:32:23 AM HKT
Category : Field notes: best practices in enterprise learning
Latest discussions on Blackboard Inc's E-Learning Patent
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Tuesday, January 9, 2007 12:19:34 PM HKT
Category : Home: the business of learning
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