5. It's less expensive to produce -- Using xxxxxxxxx’s authoring software to produce your own asynchronous training programs, e-training is virtually free once you reach the break-even point. Synchronous programs will have continued costs associated with the instructor managing the class, but will still be lower than traditional courses. It's self-paced -- Most e-learning programs can be taken when needed. The "books" that you set up using xxxxxxxx create a module-based design allowing the learner to go through smaller chunks of training that can be used and absorbed for a while before moving on. It moves faster -- According to an article by Jennifer Salopek in "Training and Development Magazine," e-learning courses progress up to 50 percent faster than traditional courses. This is partly because the individualized approach allows learners to skip material they already know and understand and move onto the issues they need training on. It provides a consistent message -- E-learning eliminates the problems associated with different instructors teaching slightly different material on the same subject. For company-based training, this is often critical. It can work from any location and any time - -E-learners can go through training sessions from anywhere, usually at anytime. This Just-In-Time (JIT) benefit can make learning possible for people who never would have been able to work it into their schedules prior to the development of e-learning. (If you manage a corporate learning program, however, be careful about requesting that workers learn on their own time from home.) It can be updated easily and quickly -- Online e-learning sessions are especially easy to keep up-to-date because the updated materials are simply uploaded to a server. CD-ROM-based programs may be slightly more expensive to update and distribute, but still come out cheaper than reprinting manuals and retraining instructors. It can lead to increased retention and a stronger grasp on the subject -- This is because of the many elements that are combined in e-learning to reinforce the message, such as video, audio, quizzes, interaction, etc. There is also the ability to revisit or replay sections of the training that might not have been clear the first time around. Try that in a crowded auditorium! It can be easily managed for large groups of students -- xxxxxxxx Manager allows corporate training directors, HR managers and others to keep track of the course offerings, schedule or assign training for employees and track their progress and results. Managers can review a student's scores and identify any areas that need additional training. want to learn when and where you want, at your own pace have commitments which make it harder for you to attend a regular course have mobility or health problems that make travel or attendance difficult live a long way from a training provider work irregular hours or shifts Less expensive Self paced Faster Consistent message Any location, any time Updated easily Increased retention Easily managed to a large group of students Elearning is amazing Elearning is amazing elearning is amazing
9. eLearning as a Business Strategy Integrated eLearning Suites Blended Learning From Discrete to integrated Learning The Disappearing LMS Rapid eLearning
Good afternoon I am Mark Bradshaw Employed as Electronics Performance Support Dev for Avon and Somerset Constabulary 20% of my role is eLearning Dev 20% retained as ILT teaching investigators & analysts how to use Internet as a crime investigation tool Despite first realising that I became
Good afternoon I am Mark Bradshaw Employed as Electronics Performance Support Dev for Avon and Somerset Constabulary 20% of my role is eLearning Dev 20% retained as ILT teaching investigators & analysts how to use Internet as a crime investigation tool Despite first realising that I became
Despite first realising that I had become an elearning developer shortly after retiring from my previous job as a reconnaissance troop sergeant in the British Army in 2001 I am still a relative novice at this game. I spent a few years creating some quite complex multi-lingual software simulation type learning products for a small software house in my adopted home town of Weston-super-Mare, I am not sure I’d like to see that product now, its almost certainly not very good… I qualified as an Advanced Macromedia Authorware Developer (just means I spent more money than a standard Authorware Developer) and built the product along the lines of how I had been teaching soldiers in my regiment for the past few years - recreating the classroom on a CD. It is only very recently that I have been looking at how elearning is developed and delivered, and therefore it is only very recently that I have become very annoyed with some elearning!
Perception So I say I have become very annoyed with elearning, a bit of a blanket statement but nevertheless its true in many cases, or for many products I’ve seen. Sometimes because the standard of development is poor, but more often because it is poorly conceived, poorly delivered or poorly supported. What is our perception of elearning? I would think, and hope that we would get very different responses to that challenge in this room than we would in many, but maybe not!
We KNOW elearning is great, without even scratching the surface we can reach people who are otherwise too busy or unable to enter a physical classroom, people who have to take their learning in small chunks, we save phenomenal figures by removing the need to travel and accommodate learners, not to mention the environmental benefits for the same reason, although I just have! want to learn when and where you want, at your own pace have commitments which make it harder for you to attend a regular course have mobility or health problems that make travel or attendance difficult live a long way from a training provider work irregular hours or shifts Less expensive Self paced Faster Consistent message Any location, any time Updated easily Increased retention Easily managed to a large group of students It's less expensive to produce -- Using xxxxxxxxx’s authoring software to produce your own asynchronous training programs, e-training is virtually free once you reach the break-even point. Synchronous programs will have continued costs associated with the instructor managing the class, but will still be lower than traditional courses. It's self-paced -- Most e-learning programs can be taken when needed. The "books" that you set up using xxxxxxxx create a module-based design allowing the learner to go through smaller chunks of training that can be used and absorbed for a while before moving on. It moves faster -- According to an article by Jennifer Salopek in "Training and Development Magazine," e-learning courses progress up to 50 percent faster than traditional courses. This is partly because the individualized approach allows learners to skip material they already know and understand and move onto the issues they need training on. It provides a consistent message -- E-learning eliminates the problems associated with different instructors teaching slightly different material on the same subject. For company-based training, this is often critical. It can work from any location and any time - -E-learners can go through training sessions from anywhere, usually at anytime. This Just-In-Time (JIT) benefit can make learning possible for people who never would have been able to work it into their schedules prior to the development of e-learning. (If you manage a corporate learning program, however, be careful about requesting that workers learn on their own time from home.) It can be updated easily and quickly -- Online e-learning sessions are especially easy to keep up-to-date because the updated materials are simply uploaded to a server . CD-ROM-based programs may be slightly more expensive to update and distribute, but still come out cheaper than reprinting manuals and retraining instructors. It can lead to increased retention and a stronger grasp on the subject -- This is because of the many elements that are combined in e-learning to reinforce the message, such as video, audio, quizzes, interaction, etc. There is also the ability to revisit or replay sections of the training that might not have been clear the first time around. Try that in a crowded auditorium! It can be easily managed for large groups of students -- xxxxxxxx Manager allows corporate training directors, HR managers and others to keep track of the course offerings, schedule or assign training for employees and track their progress and results. Managers can review a student's scores and identify any areas that need additional training. Lower costs Faster delivery More effective learning Lower environmental impact
Share some figures from feedback one of our officers collected as part of her Cert Ed. How useful? 4.8% thought it was very useful 28.6% A little useful How would you compare elearning with face to face training? 68.8% Face to face is much better 4.7% thought elearning is better 26.6% thought they were both as useful If elearning were to disappear tomorrow what effect would it have on you? 77.8% said Little or No effect at all!
Have we lost our focus? Has the way individuals learn changed significantly since we started to communicate using the spoken and written word? Or is it more of a case of US in the L&D field coming up with, and clinging to new, and sometimes much better theories around how people learn. And if it is the case that things have not changed that much in as much as 1.8 million years why do we search for, and cling to the new great thing?
Firstly we are incredibly tribal when it comes to what we use to produce our learning material Powerpoint vs Keynote Captivate vs articulate Moodle vs the world! Went to the W Midlands Police HQ a few weeks ago to see their new ‘Video Box’ – short (5 minute) videos covering learning needs. Good & bad, a watered down, centralised version of BT’s ‘Dare to Share’ But because it was theirs & they loved it they were using it for things that were just not suitable for video – 5 minutes of talking head is too long unless it is a v strong message! If the only tool you are willing to consider in an MC Hammer, every problem looks like an MC Nail!
Trends. Definitely not saying that trends occur – of course they do! But ‘at the coal face’ that shouldn’t make that much different to my day to day content. People learn by sharing, new ideas and theories will come along that as a developer I need to be aware of – but I should be very cautious before fundamentally altering what I do because the new great thing has been discovered!
Very closely linked with trends in learning, trends in elearning specifically are the buzzwords that we all hear, in fact we probably use them from time to time. I have found that they can come back to haunt us though, the whole point of a buzzword is that it is simple and easy to hang on to – so we get customers, colleagues who will then quote them back to us as essentials for the product they are asking us to create. Its our own fault. Not saying that any of these things is wrong per se, just that they can’t all be right all the time, or at the same time. Military example
So over the next 10 or so slides I am going to tell you exactly what you all need to do to improve everything you do with regards to elearning. I’ll impart all the knowledge I have gained by studying the tools, trends and buzzwords and after seeing that, and writing it down of course, you will be able to do your job better, I hope… Of course I am not going to do that, I hope you were feeling a little uncomfortable hearing me say that, just as our learners must feel when they start, and sometimes even finish, our product.
What I absolutely can do, and have to do really, is put what I do under the microscope and concentrate on a few things that I hope will improve how the elearning we are producing is perceived in the force. There is a parallel with how we are judged as a police force, it used to be on detected crimes – a deeply flawed way of measuring performance, now we are judged on public perception, a deeply flawed way of measuring performance. Sabirovthomas
Engagement not Interaction – Interaction for the sake of it Every book you have ever read has been a ‘page turner’ that hated category of elearning! Most, I hope, have been engaging despite their lack of interactivity. Despite the rise of ereaders, Kindles and iBooks ‘normal’ books are here to stay – there is still room in our courses for text provided it is engaging.
Engagement not interaction This is an example where interaction, and indeed the entire premise of the learning was misguided. Click on the solicitor – What???
Knowledge Checks A great idea generally, like all the potential elements of an eLearning course – used correctly, not just because one _should_ go at the end of a module or chapter. If it is genuinely important either formatively or summatively to check that knowledge has, temporarily, been transferred from the collective to the individual then great, use one. BUT use the correct one, most subjects or learning objectives will naturally suggest a question type, don’t shoehorn a drag & drop into the frame just because you’ve spent a few £ on a new widget.
Think about how my organisation uses information and knowledge and how it tries to equip people to do the job. When and why people learn – Mosher & Gotfriedson – 5 moment of learning need, only one (occasionally 2) of the moments of need are really served by formal e or classroom learning. If I am teaching in class I monitor peoples skills and abilities at the beginning and throughout the session, why don’t I do that in elearning? Ask then teach, don’t make people sit through x minutes of content if they already know it, shake their hand electronically, give the opportunity of digging deeper and then send them on their way with an offer that they join the super-user program or similar.
The principle is often inaccurately summarized as "the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one Distill potential content down to that which is needed to change behaviour stop pushing knowledge for knowledge’s sake
I do think I’ve gone to sleep when it comes to creating learning, and that applies to a certain degree to what I have been doing in class as well as in e content. While I’ve been dozing I have been happy to count sheep, my LMS counts how many people have completed, how long they took, how well they scored answering all those carefully crafted knowledge based questions. It’s not really important is it? I might as well have been invited people into class, providing a pillow and blanket and just popping back in at 16:30 to make sure they are not leaving early!
Where are we starting from How on earth can we get any measure of success if we don’t first measure how well people can do the task or job in the first place? How do we get to the point of creating learning without knowing, with data to back us up, that some skill or behaviour needs to be improved? Arrogance?
When we do evaluate an intervention we tend to ask opinions, which is not a bad thing if we also measured what had actually happened to performance. I wouldn’t mind (too much) if someone hated a module if they also saw that they were better at a task or behaviour. I’d prefer that they improved AND enjoyed but I’d take the former over the latter anyday. On the odd occasion our evaluation unit does try to measure success they do just test knowledge, better than nothing? Maybe. I want to see how the bad thing (that triggered the event in the first place) had moved towards being a good thing!
So in summary, I summarize… If I can do one thing when it comes to elearning going forward from today it will be to do all those things! Engage Empathise Simplify Measure
