Let me tell you about...Excuse me, what were you saying?

Killian & Company have a fascinating opinion piece about the public's attention span and what it means to marketers which I think can also hold true for training and development individual. The article, The Post-Literate Era: Planning Around Short Attention Spans, when viewed in the perspective of learning initiatives would seem to argue against the lengthy (read 60 minutes or more) elearning initiative.

Brand holders need to be aware of the implications of this phenomenon, including such practical applications as starting a White Paper with a paragraph that consists of one short simple declarative sentence. Welcome to the Post-Literate Era – a period which began decades ago but which has gained momentum in the 21st century. The evidence is everywhere: we can even draw the graph of sustained attention, from a 19th-century reader willing to read David Copperfield over several weeks, to long-copy magazine ads of our grandparents' generation, to today's web pages that are given 4.5 seconds to show themselves relevant.

As an avid reader my initial response is to rail against this apparent turn of events, but, being a reader, I continued on from the initial proposition and found some guidance, guidance that had been fermenting in my brain already.

In today's age learning content can no longer be just facts on a page. They must be engaging which requires strong storytelling. Now this is nothing new and I've heard it said before the advent of shorter attention spans that successful learning events need to engage the learner, but I think this concept has often been given lip service while the focus of most learning is on how to save dollars by using software that will allow rapid development of e-learning courseware by the subject matter experts who know their materials. Unfortunately the subject matter expert may not be the best story teller.

Nobility, elected officials, and celebrities know that while they may be good at what they do, they may not be the best at telling their own stories. So they hire writers to tell their stories for them. Likewise the training industry sprang up to tell the stories of subject matter experts. I think as an industry we need to reflect on how we tell these stories and remodel them to reflect how society wants to absorb these stories.

Hour-long clicking of Next buttons to read course content and maybe see an animation or two will no longer work. We have to streamline presentations to be absorbed in smaller chunks and can be developed and delivered in multiple means: on-line courseware chunked into small (10 screens and no more) sections that can stand on their own; audio podcasts using narration developed for the courseware; transcripts of the podcasts for reading; online forums in which people can discuss the matter with one another.

It's a new age and we need to start thinking in terms of how our customers want to consume our product rather than force customers to try and swallow what we produce.

Fiber Optic Cable Cuts Isolate Millions From Internet, Future Cuts Likely | Threat Level from Wired.com

So there was a major Internet outage yesterday. We often worry about  electrical outage, but as we rapidly take to using our wireless devices as web access vehicles you have to wonder if we need to start worrying about network outages when we think about expanded use of e-learning and m-learning.

Given the desire by telecoms and broadband customers to keep costs low, situations like the current cuts will continue to happen, according to Todd Underwood, a Vice President at Renesys, which provides internet information analysis to the majority of the world's largest telecoms.

"Part of the lesson here is that there will always be outages," Underwood said. "This is all about money -- how much money do we want to pay to make sure the network doesn't go down? We are used to thinking of the internet as being a thing that goes down."

We take a great deal of our technology for granted until we lose it. Maybe we need to start thinking about redundancies in the training world as well.

Fiber Optic Cable Cuts Isolate Millions From Internet, Future Cuts Likely | Threat Level from Wired.com

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Further thoughts: Is this occurring at the same time that the economy is tightening up and corporations will be looking towards cyber alternatives to traditional classroom training? Could we be seeing a perfect storm for the training world brewing?

Skunk works, ahhh, the smell of success

Jay Cross posted an interesting and quck video interview he did with Nigel Paine about what learning and development folks can look forward to in the near future as the economy seems to be stumbling. The interview occurred at the beginning of Learning Technologies 2008 in London, England.

I like the idea of running skunk work operations, in fact where I work we have been doing this right along. The big question is, after we flesh out these efforts, how do we take our skunk work products and convince the corporate IT departments to take the leap? That is an informal learning effort that has to be undertaken along with the formal proposal process.

As these tools  (wikis, blogs, social noteworks) become more familiar to the decision makers it should become easier to integrate them into the corporate workplace.

Reasons for podcasting

I was recently cleaning out my inbox when I came across the Jan. 16, 2008 edition of Campus Technology's Smart Classroom newsletter and the lead item was an interview with Rice University's Jeffrey Daniel Frey about podcasting and education. Mr. Frey offers some sound advice for individuals who are looking to get into the podcasting.

Two of his observations jumped out at me.

Campus Technology: Let's start by talking generally about podcasting in education. You've done a lot with podcasting, and you write and speak and consult on the topic. What do you see happening out there?

Jeffrey Daniel Frey: One of main thrusts is people who say that they need to podcast, but why? Doing something for the sake of technology doesn't work. The first thing I look at is the "why?" I ask people, what's the benefit? What are the metrics out there? What are you trying to say?

This is definitely an important question to be asked, not only for podcasting, but also for the use of any communications tool. Too often people want to jump onto the latest fad especially in the learning world.

His other comment is also something that gets lost in the rush towards the latest trend in content delivery.

CT: So it goes back to one of the basic rules about Web sites: it's really about content, not the medium.

JDF: Yes, know your audience, and start with the content. That's what we tell people when we're building a web site for them. Once we know that, we can figure out what the architecture should be around the content, then we can figure out what the delivery method for that content is.

Food for thought during this lunch hour posting.

Some would have us think we are all mentally ill...

It has been observed recently that the list of mental illnesses cataloged by the American Psychiatric Association has been increasing in step with the number of new pharmaceuticals that have been coming on the market.  But now here comes the claim that we are becoming addicted to technology.

Reuter's New Service posted a report Wednesday, Jan. 23,  quoting John O'Neill, the director of addictions services at the Menninger Clinic in Houston, that the public's use of cell phones and email is approaching "addiction-like behavior."

"We can become overloaded by technology and suffer consequences in our relationships," [O'Neill] added.

O'Neill's observations are backed up by psychologists who have classified technology addiction as an impulse disorder that can be as socially damaging as alcoholism, gambling and drug addiction.

The Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Washington, which runs treatment programs and provides therapy, estimate that 6 to 10 percent of the approximately 189 million Internet users in the United States have a dependency on technology.

O'Neill said it's all about teaching people how to manage their behavior in a healthy way.

O'Neill claims that warning signs of  "an unhealthy relationship with technology" are:

• using text messages, email and voice mail (presumably the writer meant telephone) rather than face-to-face interaction
• limiting time with friends and family to tend to email, return telephone calls or surf the internet
• An inability to leave home without a cellphone

Anyone who reads my blog (and I thank all two of you, especially you mom!) knows that I have a love/hate relationship with technology in learning, but even I see a high-priced cure looking for a problem.

First off I think O'Neill is demonstrating his lack of understanding of technology by using the  term to define only electronic communications devices. Technology is broadly defined as the usage and knowledge of tools and crafts [by a speceies] to control and adapt to its environment.   Our automobiles that we use to get around are technology, as are the appliances in our kitchen that we use to store and prepare our meals, and the televisions, radios and books we read to keep us entertained when we are not driving or eating, or using communication devices.

We depend on all of this technology to survive. According to O'Neill we must all be heavily overloaded causing a ripple effect through our relationships. I think Glenn "Instapundit" Reynolds gets it right when he says: I think that yammering on about addictions is the habit that some people need to kick...

Eye-openers from eLearning Guild's Authoring & Development Tools Webinar

I'm sitting in listening to the e-Learning Guild's 360 report on authoring and development tools and I was surprised at the top three tools their survey uncovered. The order is:

1. Adobe Captivate - 66%
   
2. Microsoft PowerPoint - 58%
   
3. Microsoft Word - 47%

I guess I am either niave or blinded by the fact that people use some very basic tools for elearning development.

More surprising was the typical way teams train on authoring tools.

• 81 % reported teaching themsleves
  
• 70% learn from peers
  
• 34% learn from formal external training

December 2007 Issue :: Global Learning Resources

Jay Cross has a fascinating take on corporate learning that is closely in tuned with where my thoughts have been going regarding the corporate learning world. Of course, Jay, being the master and I the poor grasshopper (apologies to Kung Fu fans everywhere), has distilled the essence of my thoughts much better than I could hope in an article titled Don't Call them Trainees in an article posted in the Dec. 2007 issue of Human Capital & Corporate Universities Newsletter. Money quote:

Instead of training, tell the worker what she needs to know how to accomplish the job. Offer a variety of ways to get up to speed, from treasure hunts to finding information on the company intranet. This makes the learner take responsibility. There's no longer an excuse for not learning.

He then proceeds to tell the story of Hans Monderman, a Dutch traffic engineer who argues that the a big problem with motorists and the way they drive are the number of street signs telling them what to do. Monderman has discovered that if you remove street signs, especially speed limit signs, drivers take more responsibility for their actions. In communities in The Netherlands where Monderman practices his craft, traffic accidents are down 30% and the average motorist's speed has dropped to 50% of what it had been originally.

Monderman says that if you treat people like fools, they act like fools. Take off the training wheels; they drive like grownups.

Being told to take a training course is like driving on a road with signs, stripes, and bumps. If a worker takes a training course but doesn't learn, what's her reaction? "The training wasn't any good."

Given the way people drive here in the northeast, I'm a bit hesitant to do away with street signs right away, but I do think we are overly paternal/maternal in the way we approach providing the knowledge adults need to know to do their jobs.

December 2007 Issue :: Global Learning Resources

Copyright Wars

Canada seems to be fighting back against the government-sponsored, corporate-driven copyright digital copyright rules that already exist in the United States. This short video explains the issue to Canadians in a brilliant 5-minute mash-up of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol and a compilation of science fiction movie and television standards by Galacticast.



As the recording industry sinks deeper and deeper into the DMCA quaqmire by now claiming that U.S. citizens cannot rip CD content onto your computer from legally purchased CDs, it seems clear that the downside of being an information economy is the push to lay legal claim to all sorts of information for the purpose of exacting a price for the use of that information. From a learning perspective this scares me to the bones.

Despite the best claims of businesses that their subject matter experts have all of the data necessary to develop the training they are buying, as an instructional designer who is often required to fast-track training development in the name of rapid instructional design, I and others like me often turn to the Internet to fill in gaps because the SME is not available and time constraints require us to produce content.

As information becomes more proprietary we run into another time hurdle in which we have to survey the site to determine if the information posted there is available for public consumption or is proprietary.

Electronic flash cards - wave of the future?

So I had a coworker send me a link to the video about the use of mobile phones for learning about a week ago. The first time I watched this something about it did not sit right with me. Take a look and see what you think.

I just re-watched it and it became more apparent what disturbed me. While the UCF Report attempts to position the use of testing via cellphones as something new and exciting it appears to me to be the same old "drill and kill" approach that traditionalists have been demanding a return to for years now; it's just dressed up in new clothing. Replace the cellphone with flash cards and you have the same approach to learning.

I guess the argument could be made that the cellphone approach makes it more appealing to the children and it engages them outside the classroom, but it bothers me that the cellphone delivery is also used during the class. Where is the teacher in all this? Primary engagement in the classroom should be between the teacher and his or her students? If the students are staring at their cellphone screen how does the teacher know they are engaged in learning and not IM'ing a friend?

While I think mobile learning via cellphones, PDAs, and other mobile devices have great possibilities, I'm a little leery about the approach put forward in this video. I think it is directing mobile learning initiatives down the same old path that education has traveled already. And if we have learned anything from the push towards learning on computers, once we start down that path it is extremely difficult to reverse course.

Another thing that bothers me about the UCF approach is the extension of the corporate concept that employees should be available 24-7 thanks to computers, cellphones, and blackberries to children and formal education. Parents already complain about their children being overburdened with homework and now they are going to receive more homework by way of cellphones? And their responses must be in by 6 p.m., not the next school day. This is a bit disconcerting.

Don't get me wrong I believe strongly that learning never stops, especially not once you walk out through the doors of the schoolhouse. But learning outside the schoolhouse is informal learning. It should not be about answering a cellphone and responding within a time frame dictated by a teacher.

Could this be the future of mobile learning?

After spending the past two days attending the eLearning Guild's mobile learning forums and listening to people wonder about the future of smart phone usage I came across this gadget this morning.

This is the Sony VAIO VGN-UX490N/C 4.5" Notebook PC. It is a personal computer packaged with Microsoft Vista Business edition, 1GB of RAM and a 48GB of Flash hard drive space. It offers both wifi and ethernet connectivity as well as bluetooth connectivity. It's price tag is only $2,400. This would be a great little package for mobile learning.

Future of mobile learning

The closing session of the eLearning Guild's Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Mobile Learning session was presented by Brent Schlenker, a research and emerging technologies evangelist for the eLearning Guild. His topic was the Trends and the Future of m-Learning. Rather than focusing on individual elements of mobile learning Brent looked at the bigger picture and had the participants thinking about the implications of information transfer to mobile devices.

Hinging his talk on the appreciation that technology does not stand still, Brent noted that "yesterday" technology (i.e. the internet) was about consuming – the read-only internet. Today we can interact with our cellphones by sending messages, sending images and video, etc. In the future a server will send information that it thinks we need.

This last concept is one that was touched upon in one of yesterday's sessions, a new "push" learning concept. I suppose the one area that scared me came from the chat pod where people were suggesting a workaround to the small screen in most mobile devices would be projection technology. The question is will businesses want their people to project their information in public? Does that then defeat the purpose of mobile technology? do we want to risk projecting the wrong kind of information in public? Do we want to be inflicted with other peoples videos? Its bad enough that we have to listen to their cellphone conversations.

Selling the Value of Mobile Learning

The second session of today's e-Learning Guild's Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Mobile Learning today was titled Selling the Value of Mobile Learning presented by Joshua Byrne of Adayana. The main message that Joshua delivered was twofold: 1) make sure that the learning opportunity you are proposing to address with mobile learning is an appropriate venue for mobile learning, and 2) It's easier to implement if you are only creating for a consistent (which I take to mean a single) platform.

He talked more about the shortcomings of m-learning, such as:

• the difficulty of deploying to multiple platforms because of their inconsistency in how they render the end product
• need to keep visual elements to a minimum and time to interact with the learning short because of the difficulty of staring at the small smart phone screen for a long time.

The key to selling m-learning is to identify the "killer app" that will make learners migrate to using mobile learning. He defined killer app as that element of a technology that people will adopt because of its convenience. Examples he offered included spreadsheets within the desktop computer environment and the ability to make phone calls anywhere drove people to quickly adopting cell phones.

And when you recognize that killer app you have to be sure it solves an important problem; and then you explain the solution using an anecdote that will make it understood. He also recommended having a proof of concept so that the person you selling the idea to can actually try it. Not only does this demonstrate the usability of the m-learning tool, but it allows the customer to see the hardware that would deliver the learning in action.

Day 2 of eLearning Guild's m-learning forum

I started the second day of the eLearning Guild's Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Mobile Learning forum by sitting in on the Anita Rosen's of ReadyGo, Inc., session on "Effective Mobiel Learning User Interface Design" and it was an intriguing cold shower in the warm glow of mobile learning juggernaut. Anita put it in perspective by noting that m-learning is the "bleeding edge" of learning. She noted that her success story revolved around her customer "Telefónica" which is a telephone provider and so they had the technology in place.

She cautioned that you really have to be sure of what you want to do and what your goals are because there are a number of limitations that must be overcome especially if you want to send your learning engagement out to a range of smart phones. Limitations include:

• Different operating systems support different levels of html and streaming animation
• Consider the environment that the learner will be taking the course it will be probably in a public area where there are distractions. Will the learner be able to stay focused

What she said works best is limited graphics and the graphics you do use should not have any embedded text because it will not be possible to read it. She cautioned against embedding too much audio or animations because of download speeds which she argued was around 19kbps. I found that a bit dubious and googled smartphone data transfer speeds and discovered that newer smartphone networks now boast of data transfer speeds equal to low-cost DSL connections.

Session 3: Learning at large: Mobile e-Learning Design

The final session for the day: Learning at Large: Mobile e-Learning Design presented by Clark Quinn. Clark was encouraging us to think outside the traditional learning paradigm and think about m-learning as performance support.

Things that he said that struck me as important:

M-learning is all about Learner's rights

• The right information
• to the right person
• at the right time
• in the right place
• in the right way
• on the right device

This was not original Clark Quinn, he was quoting Wayne Hodgins. He did offer some good advice when approaching m-learning beginning with "It's not about learning" it's about performance improvement; it should be brief and delivered in incremental amounts not a brain dump.

He also offered a new view of "push vs. pull" in that push is an intelligent learning engine supplying just-in-time information pro-actively to a learner in the field. He offered the example of a sales person who would automatically receive information on his cell phone or blackberry concerning the client he or she is visiting and the services they may already be buying or may be interested in buying.

Session 2: Investigating and Proposing Mobile Learning

So for the second session Investigating and Proposing Mobile Learning was ok, I guess you always have a little let down after the first session. The presenters – Andy Petroski and Sandy Hack from Highmark – were handicapped early on by audio problems. There presentation focused on their efforts to introduce m-learning capabilities into their company.

They seemed to be approaching m-learning from a traditional training view in which you have to make the learning interactive. As I noted in my posting after the first session, my observation is that if learning content is less than 10 minutes (and granted that is an arbitrary number not based on any research that I know of) it can be a passive presentation.

That said they provided a great laundry list of areas ripe for m-learning:

• Current company or product announcements (video, audio, or email)
• Product and inventory updates
• Just-in-time training or practice
• Any location-based and contextual learning
• Text-based (or simple animation) simulations and games
• Social learning
• Spaced practice
• Coaching or mentoring
• Case studies
• Job aids
• Audio or video
• Decision Support
• Tests and quizzes
• Charts and graphs

They used the phrase mobile learning library as a name for the repository for their m-learning content. It's a catchy name, that could catch on, although I think most content will end up residing in a LCMS so that it is accessible by both portable devices and computers.

They did note that challenges of initiating an m-learning initiative, starting with security. How do you deliver proprietary information to mobile devices in the field? If devices are distributed to employees preloaded with content how do you ensure they are not lost or stolen? While this is a problem with laptop computers as well as mobile devices, mobile devices being smaller can be more easily forgotten.

The other key issue is usability. Not everyone has great vision and the tiny screens on some multimedia cell phones could be a problem for people to view streaming video or text content. The duo did not have all the answers, but what they offered us was rough map of the terrain that the rest of us can use to explore m-learning in our environment.

eLearning Guild's Mobile Learning Forum

We just finished the opening session of the eLearning Guild's Strategies and Techniques for Implementing Mobile Learning forum and I wanted to record my thoughts before I enter session 2. The first presenter was David Metcalf from the University of Central Florida.

Dr. Metcalf provided a broad overview of the environment that m-learning inhabits with examples of how m-learning is being applied. There was a whole lot of information delivered in 75 minutes. The big concepts I came away with are:

Content is still king. Metcalf built his whole proposal around the concept that mlearning for learning purposes is an integral part of performance support. Knowledge needs to sit separate from learning modules and performance support systems so that both can pick and choose from that knowledge base.

Long and short of it. My thoughts during elearning sessions is that long learning interactions (more than 10 minutes) need to be interactive while shorter sessions (10 minutes or less) can be more passive because you are not asking learners to sit still for a long time.

Topics to follow up on. Transcoder as a device to send content to a variety of mobile devices in fashion that the device can read; and vXML as a programming tool to deliver mLearning.

Learning Must be Set Free!

Leave it to Larry Lessig to re-awaken (if only for a moment - I'm over 50 you know) my revolutionary zeal. But I challenge any corporate training organization to watch this video and still endorse the idea that training (and learning) be delivered via a learning management system.

LMS's represent the pinnacle of push training vs. pull learning. The learner can only access the material by registering for a course and getting permission. They cannot add or revise the materials that exist in the LMS, but must go underground and spread their ideas and concepts unofficially until they are either squelched or finally come to the attention of a management suit who likes the concept and adopts it as his or her own. That management type then takes the glory for an idea that was germinated by someone further down the organizational chart.

Second Life/Real Life

I know the learning world is slowly going ga-ga over the possibility of migrating learning to a Second Life environment, but I have to confess that I have my doubts that the environment is ready for prime time. But it is ready for lampooning. This video I think really hits upon what most people experience when they first enter Second Life.


via videosift.com

Whither Goes eLearning?

This article by AP (PCs Losing Their Relevance in Japan) may bear watching and considering its impact on the future of learning via technology. We have already begun the discussion about how to position elearning for mobile systems, but perhaps we should accelerate the discussion.

I wonder if anyone has explored how the learning management systems that corporations use to track learner progress will play with these devices.

Information R Us

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the Kansas State University – the same man who provided us with the thought-provoking video "Web 2.0...The Machine is Us/ing Us" – is back with a new video about how the Web is changing how to archive and find information.


This piece has given me a lot to think about on a Sunday morning. Since I received my primary schooling before the public received access to the Internet and the World Wide Web, I recognize that I am still partially constrained by the concepts that Mr. Wesch presents in this new video.

Sure, I have made inroads into using the break-out concepts he records in this video, but I still find myself being pulled back to my roots and the need for some form of hierarchy. The need for organization, for structure, and for some form of expert to monitor and control information still exists. Not so much to tell us what to do or what to think, but to try and control the flow of information. Something like a traffic cop.

I could accept his suggestion that the hierarchy is no longer needed – that links and search engines are all that is required (or expected) – if I had some confidence that our schools are teaching our children how to search the web. There is a science (or maybe its an artform) to composing a finely-tuned search phrase. A means of getting around the commercial clutter that is returned on many search requests for information.

Maybe that needs to become the next phase in making our children computer literate. With computers common and freely available in schools and public libraries, the next big push in our schools must be teaching our children the language of the search engine so that they can find the information they need without being bombarded with useless information or commercial websites.