Free Webinar on Webinars

"Understanding Webinar Technologies: A Basic Introduction" is a two-part Webinar sponsored by Interwise and Intellor Group, an event management company with lots of Webinar experience.

Part I will take place on November 30th at 12 p.m. EST and will focus on visual and audio content, including

--visual content basics - starting with static content
--mixing-it-up - adding dynamic content
--audio options - phone? streaming? VoIP?
--pitfalls, recommendations, questions & answers

Part II will be held on December 1st at 12 p.m. EST and examine "Webinar interfaces, network, server architectures, and their relationships to performance." Topics will include

--interfaces - client, browser, and Java based
--networks and servers - points of failure
--firewalls and what you need to know
--performance considerations and questions & answers

Best you might've missed: TechLearn, pt. 3

Here are notes from a couple of other sessions I attended.

The Buck Stops Here (Chief Learning Officers Panel)
Panelists: Ted Hoff, CLO of IBM; Jill Smart, CLO of Accenture; Steven Teal, VP of Learning Services, Mariott International; Bill Wiggenhorn, Vice Chairman of GEM Corporation; Daisy Ng, VP of Hewlett Packard. Moderated by Elliot Masie.

--Create credibility between the learning organization and senior executives so execs see learning as a way to move the business forward. The measures of success are effectiveness and efficiency metrics, how revenue grows, whether leaders are developed. (Hoff)

--But how do I personally measure success? How senior executives speak about learning (Hoff).

--You can go wrong by not staying aligned with the business strategy and long-term vision, by being too tactical and not long-term strategic enough (Teal).

--Two other areas to contribute: Helping the business go into new practice areas and markets. Learning officers are scouts; they see the world differently than others in the organization (Wiggenhorn).

--Measure the leadership team on whether they allow their people to get training (Smart).

--Measure the cost of ignorance: What did it cost the organization when someone didn't know something (Wiggenhorn).

--Move from classes to collaboration to learning embedded in work. Learning is 80 percent informal; IBM is trying to make training reflect that (Hoff).

--Trainers need to understand the business drivers and issues (consensus).

--Lean what kind of people, teams, skills, are needed. Be proactive (Hoff).

--Make sure learning is positioned as an investment, not a cost. Have senior leadership sponsorship (Smart).

Gaming & Learning: An Expert Dialogue
Panelists: Ron Edwards, President, Ambient Performance; Mark Prensky, CEO, Games2Train; Mark Oehlert, Manager, Booz Allen Hamilton; Robert Gehorsam, SVP, There, Inc.

I came in late so I didn't catch which faces went with which names. Here are thoughts in general from the panelists.

--When do we use games? Game is a language, so when do we want to speak game? When we have an audience receptive to listening.

--You can implement a simple learning game and get game learning accepted in the organization before doing anything elaborate and expensive.

--If you embed the ability for *users* to make modifications within the learning like some games do, the effect is very powerful and lasting.

Best you might've missed: TechLearn, pt. 2

The most fascinating session I attended was Virtual Humans as Online Mentors and Role-Playing Actors, presented by Dr. Renee Stout, consultant to the Joint ADL Co-Lab.

ADL is helping create extremely sophisticated avatar-based simulations. These are not like any you've seen before. They incorporate voice, gestures, facial expressions, and locomotion using standards developed for humanoid animation.

These let you create libraries of mouthshapes (international), gestures, and poses that enable reuse and transfer of animation from one course to another.

The simulation we saw was developed to help U.S. soldiers interact with civilians in Iraq. This is a situation when non-verbal cues are absolutely crucial, so the animation has to be sophisticated.

Not only are the characters avatars, but there is a virtual mentor who is an avatar as well. She guides you through the simulation giving advice and asking questions.

Wonderful stuff. I may cover this in more depth in an upcoming article.

Best you might've missed: TechLearn, pt. 1

Hi, all. I'm back from TechLearn and worn out. I was working hard in the ASTD bookstore, which is why I didn't get time to blog.

But my best-of-the-week this week will be the information I found most interesting from the conference sessions I did get a chance to attend. (Especially because I'm behind on my reading.)

Next week I'll do a best-you-might've-missed on Wednesday with links from this past week and the first few days of next week.

Outsourcing Visions and Organizational Realities: A Panel Discussion
Speakers: Sam Herring, Executive VP of Intrepid Learning; Dave DelMonte, Supplier Account Manager, The Boeing Company; Steven Teal, VP of Learning, Mariott International; Glenn Oclassen, Learning Solutions Strategies, Autodesk, Inc.

--You see a lot of selective outsourcing, for example courseware development (Herring).

--Defining terms and responsibilities, not assuming, is crucial. Different companies define things differently (consensus).

--You need a partner relationship with your supplier (DelMonte).

--If training is viewed as a commodity, then you haven't done a good job of showing your value to execs (Teal).

--But you can have some aspects of the training function that are a commodity and outsource those (DelMonte).

--Look for where the opportunities are to create value for the organization. One place might be knowledge management or performance consulting. If you stay solely in the training and learning space, you might be outsourced (Teal).

--Training has been involved in the means, not the end, which is strategy. Only you can tell the organization what the strategic goal is and how to get there and what success looks like. The means can be outsourced but never the goal or strategy (Oclassen).

--Strategy *can* sometimes be outsourced (guy in the audience from Accenture).

--But you're working together, not taking it over entirely. Whose job is on the line? That's the person who owns strategy and it's usually someone internal. (Oclassen).

--There's still a lot of gray area, not yet clear lines what's outsourced and what's not (Teal).

Extreme Times Require Extreme Approaches to Learning
Speaker: Elliot Masie

--Extreme on-boarding: Consider rearranging the prcesses and have orientation before hiring. People would be more likely to stay.

--Rapid e-learning: Get the approval process under control. We are victims of out-of-control content review and approval; this is the number 1 problem. Too many people to review.

--If you change the approval process, you can reduce development time to 25 percent of what it is currently. Use experts as informants, not approvers. The person who just learned the skill last week is a good reviewer.
--A major problem with content: It all looks equally important. In a course on Antarctica, the content about hypothermia and death looked the same as content about fog in binoculars.

--Rapid e-learning = helping people know which is the content that's most important to do first/fast.

Free Webinar on creativity and innovation

In this Webinar on Wednesday, November 17th at 1 p.m. EST, you can learn how to
- understand the relationship between creativity and innovation
- stimulate employee creativity
- develop a business case for innovation
- build an innovative culture

The Webinar is put on by Presentation Excellence and Dr. Jerry Cahn, an "entrepreneur, psychologist and attorney who advocates the unleashing of people's creative energies to produce innovative companies."

At TechLearn

I'll be attending the TechLearn conference in New York Monday through Wednesday next week, so depending on my schedule I may be absent from the blog. (I'll be working in the ASTD bookstore and also attending some sessions--not sure how much I'll be able to get online.) I'll check in at the end of next week if not before then. Have a good week, everyone!

Best you might've missed

Here are the articles and other Web resources that I found most interesting this week.

E- or e-mergent learning

Prensky Weblog. Mark Prensky of Games2Train has a Weblog and writes about new articles he's posted to his Website. Check out "Interactive Pretending: An Overview of Simulation" and "The Seven Games of Highly Effective People."

"Group as user: flaming and the design of social software." An informative post that can provide some ideas on designing and monitoring online discussion boards.

Whitewater editing. A great blog entry about writing and editing for the Web. Might help in e-learning development.

Traditional training/business

"Resources Needed to Make Evaluation Work." A Learning Circuits article adapted from the new ASTD book, Make Training Evaluation Work. Both are written by the well-known evaluation gurus Jack and Patricia Phillips.

"The do's and don'ts of virtual team emails." From the Fast Company blog, drawn from The Driving Force: Lessons in Teamwork from Saturn and Other Leading Companies.

"Work groups perform best when expertise is judged from task-relevant cues." Reports on a study from the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Sleeping on the Job." The nap room trend revisted: Companies in London are installing sleeping pods. Is it a helpful option or a way to get employees to work longer hours?

"99 Ways to Cope With Stress." A fun Friday article that reminds us how to cope when life (and work) is getting us down.

"Lifelong Learning: Citizens' Views in Close-up"

This free report is available for download from the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop).

Cedefop lists these highlights from the report:

--Only a minority of European citizens judge scientific and technological skills as very useful.
--European citizens recognise a significant skills gap, but do not always recognise a language skills gap.
--North-South "new skills" divides are closely linked to education levels.
--Work-related learning environment preferences differ greatly between countries.
--Mobility as a learning tool is very much a minority pattern.
--Twice as many respondents did not recently participate in education and training as those who did.
--Motivations to participate in learning are mixed, but personal motives tend to dominate.
--Lack of time for learning is the main obstacle – and within this, family commitments.
--Women are more highly motivated to learn, but experience more obstacles.
--Non-participants and the de-motivated are more likely to be older, low educated and female.

Only Connect

That's the theme of T+D's November issue.

The free cover story (requires registration) is on Robert E. Knowling Jr., former head of Covad and now CEO of the NYC Leadership Academy, which is using best practices from businesses and the military to turn school principals into change agents.

There are also feature articles on outsourcing, consulting, and mobile tools; a survey on blended learning; a review of The Hidden Power of Social Networks: Understanding How Work Really Gets Done in Organizations; a column on managing difficult participants, and more.

My Intelligence column this month is entitled The Future of Meetings and discusses some cool tools under development as well as some available right now.

A lot of these articles are available free if you register or are an ASTD member. Check out T+D November!

Best you might have missed

Here are the articles and resources I collected this week.

Technology

"For Your Viewing Pleasure, a Projector in Your Pocket." Someday soon projectors will be tiny attachments to cell phones or laptops, and trainers will rejoice.

Traditional training/business

"Using Far-Flung Virtual Teams for Managing Knowledge in Global Companies." This topic could deal with a lot more examination, but this short piece is a good start.

"U.S Adults Search for Info On Colleagues and Employees." Workers are using search engines to find out info on their colleagues. Reasons include researching a job candidate's background, preparing for a job interview, simple curiosity, checking out a rumor, and more.

E-mergent or e- learning

"M-Learning 4 Generation TXT?" As this article says, "Blogs and wikis were yesterday. Moblogging is today. Tomorrow, Alexander anticipates the arrival of sensor networks, digitally tagged objects and places, augmented reality, location-based knowledge, and something Alexander calls 'swarm learning.'"

"The Future of Learning Technologies: An Interview with Chris Dede." Dede discusses three types of learning technologies he's researching: "world to the desktop," multi-user virtual environments, and ubiquitous computing.

"Digital Community Colleges and the Coming of the 'Millenials'." Contains some interesting info about distance learning and technology at community colleges.

Tips to reduce ramp-up time

These tips for reducing the learning curve for new hires come from the Center for Effective Performance, based on the Criterion-Referenced Instruction (CRI) approach:

"1. Clarify the explicit expectations for performance for the position. What does a performer need to do, and how well is he expected to do it in terms of accuracy, speed, etc. These expectations often remain in managers’ heads and can vary from one executive to the next.

2. Identify the detailed best practices for performing each job task. At the same time, consider what barriers the new employee might confront in performing the task -- are there motivational or operational obstacles that might get in the way of desired performance?

3. Make certain training maps directly to desired job performance. New hires should spend approximately 75% of training time actually practicing all the critical tasks they will be asked to perform, and be able to demonstrate the ability to meet all performance criteria before training ends.

4. Have new employees practice the job tasks in the most likely situations they will face on the job. For example, a new call center employee would practice customer calls with an abrupt or unfriendly customer. A new sales person would practice negotiating with a difficult customer. In each case, the new employee receives immediate feedback and coaching until he or she can meet required performance levels during training."

The CRI approach is recommended by Dr. Seth Leibler, the CEO of CEP, because it's based on behavioral science and the way people learn, think, and remember. It also takes into account three factors needed for performance: "skills, motivation, and operational supports like tools, systems, and information."

CEP says that research shows skills alone aren't enough and for performance requirements to be met, all three components must be in place.

Two free online seminars

First, a brief public service announcement. I know you're all probably tired of people telling you to vote, but just in case you're one of the people in the United States who's been living in a dark tunnel--don't forget to go out and do your civic duty today!

Now, for our regularly scheduled programming.

1) On Thursday, November 6th at 2 p.m. Eastern time, Centra is sponsoring an online seminar entitled "A Lesson in Success: Implementing Virtual Classroom Technology at Northern Virginia Community College."

Dan Alford, instructional technologist at Northern Virginia Community college, will share best practices for implementing virtual classroom technology within a college or university, for 1) traditional courses, 2) distance courses, 3) blended (or hybrid) courses, 4) instant meetings. If you can't make the live session, you can still register and then receive a link to the recorded session afterwards.

2) On Wednesday, November 10th at 1 p.m. Eastern, a seminar on "Competencies in Performance Management: Supporting the Manager's Mission" will be presented by HR.com.

Paul Storfer, president of InScope Corporation and Joaquin Gonzales, former analyst for SRG, will "explore how competencies can be used in the improvement of talent selection, development, organizational effectiveness and overall corporate performance."

(You'll have to register to be a member of HR.com but registration is free. Also see their event archives at http://www.hr.com/events/HRSeminarsArchive.cfm.)

Best you might've missed (boo!)

Happy Halloween everyone!

Here are the articles and resources I collected this week as particularly noteworthy.

Training

"Customer Training is Outsourcing's Hottest Trend." Another great article (but I suppose I'm a little biased since I work on this Web zine) on Learning Circuits.

"Non-Formal Learning: Mapping the Conceptual Terrain." An in-depth consultation report from the United Kingdom, with a request for comments.

Radical sabbaticals. A company lets customers try out their dream jobs and gives them a personal mentor to do so, reports the Fast Company blog.

E- or e-mergent learning

Workflow learning family tree. This helpful map shows how workflow learning fits in with e-learning, content management, EPSS, business process management, and other practices and concepts.

Learning Online: Models and Styles. This chapter from an online tutoring e-book discusses constructivist learning, collaborative learning, experiential learning, and problem based learning.

E-Learning Future: With or Without Teachers. Heike Philp predicts that live e-learning will increase and teachers will return to their (virtual) classrooms.

Business

Are you afraid to blog? This blog entry discusses the importance of blogging as a way for businesses to connect with customers.

"50 Ways to Save Money in Your Business." If running your own training or consulting company, some of these tips for small businesses might prove helpful.

Women want feedback

Honest feedback from management is the most important element in aiding women's careers, says a recent survey of 1800 human resource executives by Novations/J. Howard & Associates.

Feedback (96 percent) was chosen over flexible scheduling (94 percent), a strong mentoring program (91 percent), an aggressive diversity program (91 percent) and employee support groups (81 percent).

Said Audra Bohannon, Novations/J. Howard senior vice president, "Today women know what it takes to succeed and don't wish to be patronized....[They] want to be treated in a way that ensures their success. This means giving them constructive, pertinent feedback as to how they're doing by the standards needed to do the job well."

She continues, "Management must listen more closely to what women are looking for, and not pull punches when their performance falls short, especially in areas that are not tied to a specific task, such as collaborating, influencing, building strategic relationships and so on. To whatever degree management does this for men employees it owes such honesty to women as well."

Future outlook from The Futurist

One of the resources I use to research and write about learning and work trends is The Futurist, a magazine published by the World Future Society. It's a great magazine that can help you stay out in front.

In the most recent issue (November-December), the editors provide an outlook for 2005, gleaned from past issues of the magazine and the society's electronic newsletter. Here are some relevant tidbits:

--Distance learning grows. By 2008, distance learning (including learning via the Internet, email, and other means) will be the primary delivery mechanism in 30 percent of training programs. By 2014, it will be the main method in 30 percent of university courses.

--Telecommuting increases. The number of people in the U.S. who are telecommuting will grow to more than 50 million by 2010 (from 15 million today). That trend will be driven by better communication technologies and companies' search for low-cost labor.

--"Me generation" winds down. More and more people are focusing on spirituality, caring, and time with family over materialism and getting ahead. These people are known as "cultural creatives" and they make up 26 percent of U.S. society now, over 5 percent in the 1960s.

--Older workers could help lengthen business day. This demographic tends to wake up early and be more alert in the morning. Early risers could work 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and expand business hours of companies.

--Knowledge work will decrease. As farming and manufacturing have dwindled, the growth of information technology could make infotech and service jobs dwindle. By the end of the century, jobs in that sector may comprise only 2 percent of the workforce.

--Skills that can't be automated will be in demand. Employers will put more emphasis on these "hyper-human" skills, including caring, judgment, intuition, ethics, inspiration, friendliness, and imagination.

Best you might have missed

Here are the articles and resources I picked out this week. Have a great weekend, everyone! I'm doing the AIDS Walk here in D.C. tomorrow with several other ASTD'ers. Wish me luck.

Traditional training/business

"Less for Success." Knowledge management initiatives may work best if they're started off small rather than begun as large, enterprise strategies.

"Managing the Gamer Generation." A short interview with the authors of the book Got Game: How the Gamer Generation is Reshaping Business Forever.

Sloan School of Management at MIT OpenCourseWare. MIT's groundbreaking OpenCourseWare project offers materials from most MIT classes free on the Web. These are the materials from Sloan School of Management courses.

A (business) week of the Wall Street Journal free. Starting November 8th, you'll be able to read the WSJ for free for five days, reports the Business 2.0 blog.

E- or e-mergent learning

"Decentralization of Learning Resources: Syndicating Learning Objects Using RSS, Trackback, and Related Technologies." A wiki of the presentation at Educause on Tuesday.

"Cell Phone Lessons Prompt Students to Prepare for the SAT." This is mobile learning in action. High school students are doing now what adult learners might be doing in the near future.

Technology

"Can You See Me Now?" Videoconferencing is coming back, thanks to voice-over-IP technology. (Look for my Intelligence article "The Future of Meetings" in T+D's November issue.)

Quality in e-learning: European survey

CEDEFOP, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, is sponsoring an e-learning survey in collaboration with the European Quality Observatory. The results will be co-published in January 2005.

The survey will examine how quality in e-learning can be improved in your organization, country, or in Europe in general. Which strategies are working and to what extent are they successful?

Survey questions are available in English, French, German, and Greek. To participate, visit http://www.eqo.info/survey.

New CLO Dashboard collects and reports learning data

I received a press release today about CLO Dashboard, which "provides tools that align an organization's goals and objectives with key learning
indicators and their supporting measures, then collects data and
reports progress through a graphical dashboard."

Business dashboards aren't brand new. They've been popping up in the last year or so, but the ones I've seen have primarily been focused on general business metrics and have been for CEOs and other top executives. This is the first one I've seen focused on learning. CLO Dashboard is an indicator of the increased importance of the CLO role and CLOs' need to keep on top of learning metrics.

More info on the product:
--includes predefined indicators, such as learning efficiency, effectiveness, compliance, and readiness
--contains a library of industry measures such as training cost per student day, completion rates, and Kirkpatrick Evaluation Levels
--data is collected from LMSs, LCMSs, human resource, and financial systems (the dashboard will integrate with THINQ, Pathlore, EEDO, and Questionmark platforms)
--the system includes alerts that provide immediate recommendations for corrective action when measures are higher or lower than set thresholds.

Gauges are odometer-style and then CLOs can drill down to see "underlying objectives, key measures, historical and projected trends, and comparative industry benchmarks." The system can also monitor timelines, resources, and milestones on learning projects.

Want to buy it? You can't yet--the CLO Dashboard is still in beta testing. You can, however, apply to be a tester. Go to the Zeroed-In Website to submit your application, or just to learn more.

Fast and efficient: update on Google's new personal KM tool

Last week I wrote about a few of Google's new offerings. I've been using the new Google desktop search tool for the past week, and I can report that it works quite well as a personal knowledge management tool.

The desktop search is fast and efficient. It integrates seamlessly with standard Google search so that for any keyword that you type into a Google search box (whether at the Google homepage, on the Google toolbar, or in the Mozilla/Firefox browser), results returned are not only Webpages but also items stored on your computer--emails, documents, copies of Web pages browsed, and so forth.

Some people have voiced privacy concerns with this, saying it might create issues if you're using a shared computer or if there is a chance other people would be using your computer. The key is that if there's a chance others might be on your work computer, don't keep anything on it that you wouldn't want public. That's a good rule to follow in general, not just with the new Google desktop search.

The results Google returns are always on target, unlike the Blinkx tool that I reviewed previously. For additional KM benefits, I could see the Google desktop search tool being extended to include what's on the computer of your work colleagues. That would in effect create a large knowledge base without the work of inputting information.

That of course brings up more privacy concerns. Perhaps there could be a feature added that would let you mark certain items as private and not to be shared. This feature exists in Furl: As you input a Webpage into your archive, you can mark it private. Then, if others subscribe to your archive, they can't see the items you've marked for-your-eyes-only.

Upcoming free Web seminars

Click here for the list of upcoming Web seminars offered for free by Interwise. Choices include "Collaborative Tools in the Learning Continuum," "Leveraging Learning for Business Impact," and "The Challenges of E-Learning Content Integration."