College Graduate Interview

Are you a recent college graduate who is going to be competing for a new job with the rest of the world?  Then you might want to practice conducting an interview.

Click this link to access three different types of job interviews.

How to Handle your Psycho Boss

Here is a fun role-play.  Have you ever had one of those bosses that just seems a little crazy?  Now you can practice having a conversation with them.

Click this link to enter your phone number to begin this role play

Answering Sales Objections

In this RolePlay you can practice handling a series of sales objections

Click this link to enter your phone number to begin

ADDIE Sucks?

I belong to the E-Learning Guild group in Linked-In and one of the most popular discussions right now is on whether or not ADDIE Sucks.  There seems to be a consensus that it is still a good tool for designing and developing training.  I sometimes think of this as the PowerPoint tool.  When PowerPoint was built, it took a look at how most presentation are constructed and then built a template around it:

First - Begin with title
Second - Agenda
Third Section One etc.

What if you were giving a presentation and not only didn't user PowerPoint but started off with asking the audience a series of questions?  Then taking their feedback and then delivering a presentation based upon the input you received from them as it related to the purpose of the presentation?

How might this change the experience and the impact to the audience - I"m guessing it would be something very different.

This is why we have developed the IMPROV model as another approach to designing and developing training, it forces the presenter and audience to approach the process differently.  I'm not saying you through ADDIE out the window but I think sometime it forces us approach a training project in a way that begins to look similar and therefor expect similar results or behaviors vs. challenging how we approach solving a training issue --- that may lead to a revelation that it's not a training issue at all.

Replacing you LMS w/ SharePoint

We teach a lot of live on-line classes for trainers on how to use various rapid e-learning tools, mobile learning etc. Late last year we began to add a class on how to use SharePoint. We noticed a lot of our clients using this as a way to manage scripts, and content reviews but also they began to use folders and libraries to manage training content too.

If you think about it, for the basic functions that an LMS provides, managing user's access to content, scheduling classes, posting discussion boards, SharePoint can do all of this and it allows for a more collaborative exchange in an a platform that most users are comfortable with.

So we thought-- hmmm I wonder if you could configure a plug in of some sort to piggy-back into SharePoint to create a more robust LMS application. Well guess what somebody already has. We found two providers that have this type of product.

One is from eLearning Force and another is from Xerceo

I have not tested either of these but a lot of folks in our class state that they don't have an LMS so why not investigate if this will support the functionality that you need.

If you're interested in our live virtual classes go to this link.

Using Improv Artists to Demo Mobi-RolePlay

We had a blast, we did a live demonstration of our Mobi-RolePlay tool (you can demo this on this link) on Tuesday March 1st. We used professional improv actors to demonstrate poor examples of situations in which using a role-playing tool to practice with would have avoided some bad customer situations.

Then in true improv form, we asked the audience to provide us with input to build a role-play on the fly. The improvisors were given 15 minutes to come up w/ 1/2 of the role-play -- record it--- and upload into our IVR studio. Then a volunteer from the audience would call the role-play simulator when they were done.

This worked great! and the audience had a lot of fun. I think we've created a new art form.

Here are two samples from what was created.

Selling the London Bridge to Donald Trump

Selling babies to Dingos

Needless to say we had a lot of fun but what we were there to demonstrate was getting people involved in a more "human" connection and getting the audience involved at an emotional level was key. How often do we strip out emotions or human interactions with training? Probably a lot these days.

Apps, WAP and All That

There seems to be an “app” for everything these days.  Among some of them you can find are apps for shopping, games and musical instruments.  And although these are fun for the user, the developer community is a different story.  The average e-Learning developer or instructional designer will stop dead in their tracks when asked to develop and app for their organization.  Unlike some of the rapid tool design tools for online training, apps are not easy to build and require a SDK (software developer kit) for each type of mobile device.  On top of this the development costs can range from $25-40,000. 

The alternative has been to develop mobile web content or WAP hosted content.  This is a great alternative but does pose some inconveniences in speed of content moving from one page to the next or downloading times. 

For the last 4 years we have been using the Hot Lava content creation tool LMA (learning mobile author) and a hosted WAP server.  The great thing about this tool is that it allowed us to create content and publish for any mobile device as well a JAVA application.  What this means is, we could create content that devices like Blackberrys could download and install like an app.  We’re not uber-programmers and would go running from anything that was too complicated.  So this has worked out very well.  The only real downside to this was that if you want to create a series of courses or special JAVA applications it required you to install multiple files on your hand-held device which sometimes causes anxiety attacks with IT departments.

But do not fear!  There is a new and improved way to deploy mobile content that really does combine the best of both worlds.  OutStart has just released a Blackberry viewer that installs directly onto the mobile device.  It allows you to create content in PowerPoint (easy) and then publish to a hosted server that will push the content directly to the Blackberry player on your mobile device.  It becomes and app w/ WAP hosted modules that are managed by the user.  All user activity and data collection is managed remotely but the content displays quickly and easily (see video below)  and it a great way to push content to your users that they may need access to on the fly regardless if they are connected to a mobile tower or not.  They will be releasing and iPhone and Android player as well so all of us that are somewhat programming challenged can brag about our abilities to create Apps, from WAP and all that!

Whatever happened to Shorthand

I was chatting with one of my sons over the holidays and was telling him about how one of my sisters (older sister) went to a "finishing school" to learn shorthand and secretarial skills.  He had never heard of shorthand and I had to explain to him why anyone would learn this skill. I recently read in a post by Dianne's Medieval Writing she wrote that shorthand was used by Romans known as Tironian script in the 10th century. 

Can you image some future historian coming across some artifact of someone's text message trying to decipher what is was saying R U on Yr Way 2 My house.  But let's also think about what types of technology has come into play from the time of when we used short-hand to current times. 

Short-hand was replaced by the dictaphone, fax machines, then word processors came around --- personal computers, email,  web conferencing etc.  The recent CES was all abuzz about tablets and more gadgets for video and tele-presence. 

I can't wait to see what the next five-ten years will provide us with tech inventions but something tells me it's going to be ever present in all that we do.  Here is an interesting post by a panel that was at the CES show about what's in store for us.  I'm just tickled that I was able to get a new Android tablet over the holidays for $99.00 -- yes that's right I sourced an Android 7" tablet for $99 and it works really well. The brand is MID from China.  I'm still learning all of the features but maybe in a future post I will be able to share with you some cool tips.

Will Facebook Drive Behavior Changes

I was teaching our class on How to Use SharePoint, the other day and several people commented on the fact that they struggle with getting users to stop sending documents via email and learn how to use SharePoint.  So I thought I would do a comparison of Facebook and SharePoint. 

Here is just a quick comparison of the two.  I'd be curious if any of you have any other observations or comparisons.  I'm going to take a guess that as more FaceBook users come into the workforce, it will be more natural for employees to use SharePoint in a similar fashion. 

Facebook	SharePoint
Allows users to control who has access to information	Allows users to control who has access to information
Files can be uploaded and shared with others	Files can be uploaded and shared with others
Rate items that you like	Create Surveys for feedback
Searchable	Searchable
	Usage reports and data on which documents are used and by who
Users can post links to other sites but no way to create RSS tags for content within your page – but it acts somewhat like an RSS feed for people who are subscribed as a friend	Allows users to subscribe to pages or sites for automation of information updates
Not a lot of customization options other than the image you have for profile	Customization of pages and style built into the platform
Can send message privately or to groups	Tied directly into Outlook for sending messages or calendar posts within SharePoint and vs. versa You can also assign users and security levels to your documents, pages and sites
Can add games, surveys and other activities to share with your friends	Not sure if anyone is using it for posting games to share
Adds are placed on your page without control	No forced advertising on pages

SharePoint Features for Training

I mentioned a few weeks ago on our radio show "Training Tech Talk" that the LMS as we know if today won't be around in 5 years --- yes I said it-- and I dare you to prove me wrong.  What do I think may take its place?  I see a trend around tools like Sharepoint, Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management systems are helping organizations gaining access to content in a more efficient manner with a lot of the content being user driven.

There will be a need to have some knowledge experts or more structured knowledge transfer but a lot of what on-the-job learning comes from each other and information that is shared across the organization.  Here is a nice video lesson on how to use Sharepoint 2010 for adding video, audio, and social media features.

We are going to be offering a new class the end of this month "How to use SharePoint for Knowledge Management" so stay tuned for more on this topic.


SharePoint 2010 Top 5 Features from Michael Gannotti on Vimeo.

Celebrating Back to School

Should I feel bad that I' almost giddy about our last child going off to college?  I can't help it after raising 6 kids I deserve a break.  But as I was packing up this last child there was defenitely an interesting change in what he was packing with him.  With Mac Book in hand, and a box full of movie DVD's I was curious as to what technologies college students were using the most these days.  Besides the obvious cell phone, my older son who is a senior this year decided to buy a net-book instead of replacing his lap top which bit the dust a few months ago.  He didn't see the need for spending the extra $200 for a full laptop and with the use of Cloud computing for accessing programs and storage it made sense.  Plus the battery life is so much longer on these net-books I"m tempted to get one for myself with the communting that we do in the city it would be much easier to carry this around vs. my bigger laptop.

The other big difference I noted was that books are now finally getting into the digital game.  I always thought the college book market was way out of hand -- even though I understand there is a defenite cost to putting these wonderful resources together but the truth of the matter is digital books make more sense for college students.
Also the registration and monitoring of your student records, payments etc continues to become more accessible via digital technologies.

Now let's take it one step further and get it into the classroom or outside the classroom.  Here is a video of how Vassar College is using Tablet PC's in the field

Technology in the Field: Vassar College and Tablet PCs from Meg Stewart on Vimeo.

Here is another resource that speaks to the Digital Technology impact on Education from the Univ of IL (home of Netscape, SpyGlass and other cool ground breaking technologies)

http://www2.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/hardin.html

Training Tech Talk, Caroline Avey

We have been hosting some online radio programs "Training Tech Talk" and I thought our viewers would like to listen to this week's show.  Our guest was Carline Avey,learning strategist and director of innovative learning strategies with ACS Learning Services, a Xerox company. She has over 15 years experience in instructional strategy, design and development, working on custom and generic projects for Fortune 500 clients and public agencies. Currently, she is known for her work on developing strategies and practical applications of learning in 3D-virtual worlds , web 2.0 learning applications and mLearning. Most recently, her teams are working on Kiosk learning solutions for iPad and using mobile tagging for sharing of knowledge objects. In 2009, she won the Innovator of the year award for ACS, a Xerox company.


Click here to listen to this show.

Measuring the Value of Learning

We are getting ready to present our class "Frome ADDIE to IMPROV" at the Chicago eLearning Showcase on Wed. Auguest 11th.  Even though this will be an abreaviated version of what is normally a 1.5 to 2 hour workshop, one element of this workshop we hope people walk away with is a new perspective on how to measure the results of training on the organization. 

Many senior training professionals are asked to measure ROI of training.  This form of measurement ususally calculates the direct costs with delivery of the training vs. the impact that it has on the business.  I think one of the reasons for this is that the impact measurement may take more time or the training executives feel that this is out of their control.  I say Baloney!

In the ADDIE to IMPROV workshop (the I stands for Impact) Instructional Designers and training executives needs to think about how will their training impact the business and then work backwards from there.  I'd like to say I can take credit for this approach but I won't.  This approach has been supported by other highly recognized professionals such as Jack Phillips and Patti Phillips.  They have done significant research using this form of measurement.  They are both founders of the ROI Institute

To demonstrate how this works, think about a time when an organization is making some major change or installing new software applications.  There is an obvious need to create training around this initiative but rather than looking at only the skills need to learn this new procedure, do it in a way that let's you embrace how this new process or application needs to work in order to be measured successfully impacting the business.

Ask these questions
1- Why is this change or software being implemented
2- What is going on in the business to require this change
3- What tangible value will the organization receive as a results of a successful implementation -- i.e. reduce errors, faster delivery times, decrease waste--- put real $'s to this
4- What tangible cost will be incurred if not successful -- lost customers, increase waste- overtime etc.
5- Then start to develop the training to meet these goals

Many times we as designers get caught up in the skills and application side which can derail what the real intent of the training should be. Here is a statement I found as part of a series of interviews from CorpU


"We need to make our evaluation work a critical element of the “front-end” work, never as an afterthought"

So the next training program you become involved with think about the metrics for how this will have tangible measurable impact to the business vs. strictly level one or two evaluations.

Is Training a Commodity?

I was listening to the book "All Marketers are Liars" by Seth Godin and he made a comment about products and services.  He stated that a commodity is something you need not want.  It's like when I'm shopping with my husband who can't turn a bargain down, I say to him "Do we need this or want this" which usually helps him walk away from most impulse purchases.

But it struck me as a new way to try to assess learning and the value that organizations place on training and ongoing access to information.

When does someone go from taking training because they have to (commodity) vs. they want to? This author also pointed out that the non-commodity products were purchased because of the value they provided or the additional perceived benefits the buyer would receive as a result of placing a higher value on this non-commodity service. So what types of training programs do we offer today that are value based vs. a commodity.   So I made a quick list of the more common ones:

Commodity                                      Non-Commodity

Compliance                                        Communication Skills

Product Info                                       Leadership Skill

Policies                                              Business Process

Critical Equipment Instructions           Trouble-shooting of technology platforms

So as I make this list, I can see that there is value in the non-commodity skills that is harder to equate to an ROI and therefor where I think the training community struggles with how to get funding for these higher valued initiatives vs. the commodity initiatives.  To help you communicate the true value of these programs, try to find how the company will be impacted in a tangible way if the higher valued programs are not provided.

For example, a hospital wanted to add a coaching program to their leadership curriculum.  When I asked shat is the goal for this program the answer was "to help them communicate better to their staff."  My response was how do you know that they will actually be coaching at the level that they need to in order to measure the impact of this program --- Blank Stares--- .

Ok so here is what you do.  Ask them " What will have a measurable impact in the business if managers are not coaching staff correctly?  Is there something going on that is new that is causing an increase in the need for coaching?  They said yes, we have a new quality improvement program in place and there seems to be some resistance --- ah ha!  Ok so what happens to the business if the new quality improvement program is not done correctly?  "Well, we wil continue to make errors or slow down our cycle of patient care".

Now we're getting somewhere.   Take this specific business outcome, and tie the coaching program directly to this business situation.  The client could see immediately the difference in the approach to the program and felt more confident that they would receive funding for a more targeted approach to this skill.

If any of you have other examples to share we would love to hear them.

New and Improved Surveys

Is this the face you make when someone sends you a survey or asks you to complete an online feedback form?  We think it's time for a change so we used our creative brains again to use our PhonePodding tool to create a more engaging way of extracting feedback from people.  Due to the fact that almost everyone carries a phone with them at all times, why not use this to collect feedback from training, events, products etc.  You can sample this yourself by clicking on this link--- entering your phone number and then experience a sample of a training survey that will take you by surprise!  This sample has worked so well it's gone VIRAL so check it out for yourself. 

Life of the Content as a Guideline for Development

In a discussion with a client the other day, we brought up the topic of how to decide whether or not training should be considered formal or informal which branched into some thinking about maybe using the volitily of the training as a guideline for which technology to use to develop the content with.

For example, a training program that includes content that might change rather frequently, may be better served as a more informal platform or something easy to update such as a podcast/vodcast, reference document or wiki.  Content that won't be changing frequently such as compliance content could then be build with more stable content tools such as an eLearning course, scripted video etc.

In our past experience, the standard question to ask is "what is the shelf-life" of the content.  If it's going to change frequently, you have to consider the costs of upgrading and modifying compared to the selection of technolgy used to create, distribute and measure the learning.  Here is a chart you may want to use as a guide to help you determin which type of delivery platform should be considered by the frequency of content changes.

3-D mobile

Ok I can't believe this even exists but I recently read an article in Technology Review featuring a 3D software program for mobile phones.  Dynamic Digital Depth has developed a way to display 2D graphics as 3D without the use of special glasses.  It does require a special type of phone to work, the Samsung B710 currently supports this application.  The picture shown in the article (shown below) illustrates a video game being played in 3D so I'm wondering what type of learning or training content would be useful with this type of applicatcion. 

It doesn't mention how much it costs to develop content in 3D but predicts that by the year 2018 there will be 71 million devices that support this type of software application.  I need to do some more thinking on this but if anyone wants to chime in on some ideas pleaes post a comment on what type of 3D training or learning application you would build.

Justification for Mobile

I was giving a presentation for the Chicago Chapter of ISPI last week on mobile learning and one of the questions that was asked was how do companies justify the need for mobile learning.  As I went through my usual response of tying it into a specific business need, we also discussed the fact that the next generation of employees simply use mobile devices for standard day to day communications.  So I thought when were we faced with a similiar situation in regards to conforming a work process based upon technological advancements?

If you think about it, how significant was the PC's impact on work productivity.  In a research paper written in the Journal of technology and management innovation, they examined both the pros and cons of PC's impacted the workforce and business process improvement.

One story that illustrates how the next generation of talent views the use of mobile devices-- we talked about the news story of 2 girls in Australia who fell into a storm drain.  With mobile phones in hand-- rather than calling for help, they updated their Facebook status to inform people of their situation.  This may sound like a ridiculous situation but in their minds, the phone's primary use was for connecting to their social network-- not as a phone.  So when we circled back to the question of justification for putting training or performance support and job aids on mobile devices, the justification will be easy-- because that's where the employees expect to access if from.

Technology was Blogo's enemy again

I was watching the TV show Celebrity Apprentice and observed how the use of Mobile Devices gave the winning team an edge.  The team's project managers were sent on a private jet to find out what their assignment was for this week's episode.  The project manager for the women's team was Selita Ebands, a runway model and the men's team project manager was Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of IL.

Due to the fact that the were not informed of the task when they left, the teams were left to fend for themselves until word came in from the PM what they task was.  Upon finding out what their task was, Selita, sketched a rough drawing of the 3-D Disney display she had in mind for their project, used here phone camera to take a photo and then sent it to the team to print out and get to work.  She also emailed additional details from the phone and computer in order not to have verbal discusssions that might be overheard by her opponant.

Rod on the other hand- is a technology cripple-- unlike our current president who is very tech savvy, this former governor couldn't figure out how to use the phone to make a call let alone send a text or email.

This was a very key factor in why the men's team lost the task.

There are two lesson's here
1- By using mobile devices, teams can learn how to collaborate very effectively and decrease delays in taking action
2- By not teaching people how to use mobile devices properly, it can impact productivity

So when you think about moving into using mobile devices for performance support or as job aids, make sure you provide the users with coaching or hands-on experience on how to use them, not everyone is adept as using the newer technologies but once they see the benefits, they will quickly adapt.

Here's a highlight from the show

 

RSS What is can do for you

Tracking your podcasts/vodcasts and blogs.  I'm sure by now many of you have either visited a blog, listened to or viewed a podcast.  But how many of you that are creating this content really know who is accessing your content?

I'm going to share with you a tip on how to create an email subscription link on your blog or for your podcast files and it's Free-- yes Free.

The first step is to register for an account with Feedburner.com -- which is now part of Google's Tools.  So if you already have a Google account you can easily access Feedburner.

If you are a blogger, you can add blog URL into Feedburner to create the RSS tags.  On Feedburner's main page look for the box that looks like this and copy and paste your blog URL into this blank field

Then hit Next and you will see that Feedburner created an RSS feed URL for you

Then hit Next again to see the full subscription string

Click on Skp directly to Feed Management and click on the Publicize Tab

Click on the email subscription option and click on the Activate Button.  You will then see some html code that you can copy and paste into your blog site or if you are using Typepad or Blogger, it will automatically publish the email subscription tool into your blog or some of you may have blogging tools that allow you to add this feature.

So now not only can you track the traffic but you know exactly who is subscribing to the blog and it does prompt the subscriber to opt in to ensure you are playing by the rules and not spamming your viewers.

You can do this with podcast files too.  This is a little more complicated because of where you may be posting your podcast files.  If you are posting them into a blog that's great just follow the steps above.  If you want advice on how to do this in some other way, give us a call to help step you through how to do this with your podcast content.
630-221-8759