Happy Thanksgiving

I won't be blogging the rest of this week due to spending quality time with my family and recovering from eating all that turkey.

So just, remember to be thankful for all you have, I know I am. Even in these tough times, we all have much to be thankful for...

Enjoy the holiday.

And if it isn't a holiday you celebrate...take some time to just give thanks.

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YouTube Parody

Social media has many upsides but it also has a few downsides as well. Their is certainly value in many people creating all types of videos and you can find all types of good information on YouTube and other video sites but...you can also find some...not so good material and here is a parody of a contest involving YouTube. I rate the video as "fairly funny, LOL" (Contains some potentially offensive language.)


YouTube Contest Challenges Users To Make A 'Good' Video

It makes you think that perhaps you need a few parameters for helping people internal to your organization understand the best way to post Social Media-type entries into your corporate YouTube, Wiki or Blogs.
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CAC Re-Cap

Here are all the posts related to the Fall 2008 Corporate Advisory Council Conference held at Bloomsburg University last week through our Nationally Acclaimed Instructional Technology program.

CAC Kickoff
CAC: Corporate Presentations
CAC: Student Presentations

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Corporate Advisory Council Conference:Student Presentations

As a culmination of our Corporate Track, students are required to answer an e-learning request for proposal (RFP), create a prototype of the proposed solution and give a 20 minute sales presentation to a group of representatives from various positons within the field of e-learning. Describing the rules of the exercise to CAC Members.

This year we had two teams (seven students total) presenting their solutions to the Corporate Advisory Council during the student portion of the event. We had two great presentations with everyone doing a professional and top-notch presentation. This year the Request for Proposal was a fictious request to create training for Traffic Enforcement Officers for the city of Pittsburgh. The students were asked to create a blended approach of online, on-the-job and classroom instruction. The students are then required to provide a 20 minute sales presentation highlighting portions of the 40 page proposal they have written.

Then the 48 members of our Corporate Advisory Council asked them questions for 15 minutes. At the end the teams are judged based on Best Written Proposal, Best Prototype, Best Presentation and then Best Overall. But regardless of which team actually "wins" all the students are trully winners as they presented top-notch solutions and they all particpated in interviews with 9 different companies looking to hire the gradautes.

The first team to present was E-ssential Solutions. Who provided an innovative solution of using Second Life to develop the instruction.
E-ssential solutions present their Second Life Solution.

They also included a large portion of on-the-job instruction. They group of three provided a good presentation with insightful information and ideas of how to use Second Life within the classroom.
E-ssential Solutions presents their budget to the CAC member.

The second team was named E-Tegrity and had four team members. They provided a working prototype using a combination of Flash and Trivantis's Lectora Version 8. The solution included on-the-job training, e-learning and classroom instruction. Here the team of students gives an overview of their presentation.

The team provided a description of their instructional solution and a discusson of how the planned on implementing the e-learning within the existing structure. The E-Tegrity Team answers some tough questions.

John and Robyn of DishingDesign served as the hosts of the event giving students both positive and not-as-positive feedback on their presentations. All done in the spirit of continous improvement as the entire exercise is a learning experience.
John and Robyn provide instructive feedback to students.

Both teams did well and each team captured different awards. Winning written, prototype and overall was E-Tegrity and winning the sales presentation portion was E-ssential Solutions.

Another great CAC and we hope to have 48 attendees next semester as well. Thanks everyone!
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Corporate Advisory Council Conference: Corporate Presentations

The Corporate CAC presentations this fall began with a little snow fall at Monty's but quickly progressed into some great presentations and sharing of information.



Here is a brief re-cap of the presentations.

First Presentation
Christopher Reese discusses Knowledge Management with CAC members.
Christopher Reese opened the corporate presentations with a talk about Knowledge Management and NASA. He indicated that we should think about Knowledge Management to include traditional venues like Training, Education, Workshops and Courses. But also Debriefs and After Action Reviews and newer technologies where soldiers just finishing a patrol are providing "real-time" data for the next patrol so they can learn and be aware of possible issues.

Knowledge Management needs to also include Case Studies, Lessons Learned documents and procedures and even Experience-Based Documentation. He advocated for Pause and Learn, the act of taking time to make sure that you can think about what you are doing. Take just a moment to step back and make sure we are doing the right thing. He talked about avoiding "organizational silence" in terms of the space shuttle accident at NASA.

Second Presentation

Peter Rizza discussing the features of ExpressTrain.
Peter Rizza from the Princeton Center for Education Services discussed ExpressTrain which is a software suite that allows companies to utilize a Microsoft Word-based tool for writing their SOPs and best practices into a database from which they automatically create training and support materials in a wide array of delivery formats -- from PowerPoint slides to web-based training to publishable documents.

Third Presentation
Cliff and Rhonda discuss the Erin Manning scrap booking site development.
Cliff Sobel and Rhonda Dorsett from The Phoenix Group presented some wonderful work thy did on the Cannon EOS-1D Mark III product piece. The piece is located at the Cannon Digital Learning Center where they have done a lot of work on creating instruction for all types of Cannon cameras and equipment. They discussed the development process, the timeline and the considerations that went into creating a visually appealing and educationally inclusive web site.

They also demonstrated the Erin Manning Scrap Booking site they created which features a number of videos and instruction on scrap booking.

Fourth Presentation

David Weatherbee of Weatherbee Media provided an engaging discussion of various methods of working with clients on major projects. He discussed the trade-offs instructional designers need to make in terms of balancing client expectations, time lines and desires with the need to create intstructionally sound materials. He described to the audience the different thought processes that he uses when consulting with clients and discussing the various options they have when creating online instruction. He also discussed how to deal with a conversion of training materials created in an older technology into a new technology.

Fifth Presentation

Bobbe Baggio presenting a lively and engaging presentation.

Wearing two hats, one from La Salle University and one from her own consulting firm, Advantage Learning Technologies Bobbe Baggio provided a lively and engaging presentation discussing the creation of visually effective instruction. She made many good points in a short period of time as, of course, the program was running a little late and she was right before lunch...but she handled it with elegance and grace. She introduced the concept of creating effective visuals by following four key elements:
-Contrast
-Repetition
-Alignment
-Proximity
And, yes, she knows it spells CRAP. She tells the story that when she was teaching high school, she presented this concept and one of her students said "do you know that spells crap" and she said "yes, if you don't consider these elements of visual alignment your images will be "crap." Well said.

Sixth Presentation
John Stone discusses mimicing various layers of skin for the VMT.
To round out the corporate presentations, John Stone from MountainTop Technologies presented a fasinating Virtual Medical Trainer (VMT). The Virtual Medical Trainer is a web-based, SCORM-conformant, medical simulation developed in Flash and XML. The simulation models a peripheral nerve block procedure, and is designed to teach the cognitive concepts underlying psychomotor tasks. VMT demonstrates how web-based technologies can be used as a supplement to traditional training methods to improve knowledge transfer. The software was demonstrated with help from Rebecca Lauper and provided an interesting look at how Flash can mimic 3D environments to provide a realistic simulation.


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CAC Kickoff

Dr. Doll discussing the 3D Internet.
Our bi-annual Corporate Advisory Council (CAC) has started. We kicked off a little differently this year, we had Dr. Doll present a mini-workshop about Web 3.0 and provides great insights into the concept. His blog to support the presentation is available here.

Dr. Doll providing CAC members a glimpse of the future.

Tomorrow are corporate presentations and student presentations. Look for updates here.

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Playing with the 3D Web

Here is my "home page" in 3B.net a 3D package that links the upcoming "3D web" with the current 2D web.

View Kapp Notes E-Learning in 3B!

You have to download the browser but take a moment and check it out at 3B.net.

Google's Lively World




NOTE: Just learned that Google announced that as of December 31st, it is shelving Lively...getting rid of it. Read about it in Death of a Virtual World from Learning in Tandem.
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Seed Company Finds Growth with Online Learning

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Golden Harvest Seeds, Inc. was frustrated with its sales-training program for 250 employees and 2,000 independent crop-seed dealers.

Costs were rising, it was hard to find good trainers and in addition, the sessions took valuable time out of workers’ days. So the company hired a vendor to produce and post online videos for teaching sales reps how to sell Golden Harvest seeds.

The results indicated that not only were employees watching the videos, mostly on Saturdays or Monday mornings but sales increased as a result of the online training. The training has contributed to setting records in new customer acquisitions and new dealer recruitments.

In fact, in the first full year of the online training, the company’s revenue jumped 14% or about $30 million.

Check out the article for yourself...Firms Go Online to Train Employees

The article also discusses how small business are using e-learning. The image below describing how small business use different training delivery methods accompanies the article.

As you can see, e-learning is right up there with print-based learning materials. In this economy with large corporations laying off employees, you may want to consider designing e-learning for small companies (if you are a content developer.)


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A Pharmaceutical Leveraging Web 2.0 --In a Big Way

If you think Web 2.0 can't be used in your company because of legal or regulatory concerns, think about this...

Pfizer, the world's largest research-based biomedical and pharmaceutical company, with its corporate headquarters located in New York, created Pfizerpedia (based loosely on Wikipedia) in 2006 and has been leveraging the interactive-community-based tool ever since.

The site started out as an online encyclopedia but has grown virally and morphed into something far more powerful than an encyclopedia. It has become a user-generated, centralized index of all things R&D across Pfizer's worldwide organization including people, projects, events, blogs, and discussion groups. Integration with the enterprise directory and other data sources greatly enable "people finding." With a simple search, users can quickly locate colleagues doing relevant work—and not only find their contact information, but also recent projects, publications, and seminars.

Pfizerpedia is resource-sharing Web 2.0 site containing information on mechanisms of action, employee and project profiles and Pfizer products and other information useful to researchers and sales personnel within Pfizer.

Pfizerpedia’s popularity has grown and it is fast becoming an on-line resource of first preference for R&D employees, seeking knowledge pertinent to their job role. Pfizerpedia now has over 2500 contributors creating over 5000 content pages. More than 3000 pages have received at least 1000 hits each. In total, there have been over 11 million page views and approximately 100,000 page edits since it was set up.

Bookmarks of interesting information from Pfizerpedia and other sources can be tagged at tags.pfizer.com by individual employees. Those might be bookmarks of a favorite blog page or other information from an internal Pfizer resource and then they can be stored and viewed to determine the information of most interest across the organization. For those of you who wonder about regulatory and legal issues, even Pfizer's ultra-cautious regulatory affairs group is using the wiki to generate ideas.

According to one article, one clever thing that Pfizer did to promote the use of Pfizerpedia was to create a series of small slide shows to indicte how Pfizerpedia would work-so potential users of the site would understand its value. (as shown in the slideshow below.)

meet Jessica

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web_2.0 enterprise_2.0)

In the future…Pfizer plans to launch Pfacebook—a social networking site modeled after Facebook.

Here is an article from InformationWeek on the topic.

Here is an article from ON Magazine called Enterprise Collaboration 2.0: Is it time to jump in and swim? by Christine Kane which contains good information on the topic.

Another interesting article on the topic, Pfizerpedia: knowledge repository at Pfizer

Also see Pfizer launches RSS for R&D and eyes "Pfacebook" social network

Also see Pfizer Case Study.
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The Right Place to Find Help: ASTD's Big Question

This month's ASTD Big Question on the Learning Circuit's Blog is about Social Networking and finding help and expertise if you have a question or a concern for which you need input and/or advice. The basic question is "If you need input from people, where's the best place to ask?"

But, then the question breaks into sub-questions.
-How to reach out and find expertise
-How to use Social Media to Find Answers to Questions
-How to Learn through Conversation

And then the questions are even broken down further into more sub-questions which you can read for yourself at the original ASTD Blog posting Network Feedback.

The assumption seems to be that there is one "best" place for asking a question. One social network for Learning Management System questions and, perhaps another, for a question about learning strategies or business strategies or marketing strategies. If only you could pinpoint that particular location or network then you could be more efficient in finding answers.

I think the question sort of misses the power of social networking and Web 2.0 tools. Let me explain.

In the old days (before Web 2.0) when working a network to find information the whole process was severely constrained by time and resources. Seeking out advice, counsel and ideas from your network or a related network was time consuming and costly. You had to take the time to make a phone call to a friend who, hopefully, knew someone who might be able to answer the question. Then you had to call that person, reference the discussion with your friend and launch into an explanation of the question you wanted to have answered. That person would, possibly, answer your question for free, offer to help for a fee, or refer you to another person.

If they referred you to another person, you had to start all over again with more phone calls, explanations, etc. It could literally take you all day to find the one person who had the specific answer you needed. You really had to "work your network" to find the right person to answer your question. You had to hope the Return-On-Investment for the time you spent finding the answer was worth it. There was really no cost effective way for the average person to "broadcast" a question to a large group of people.

With Web 2.0 and social networks, the cost of asking a question and seeking advice from several different channels simultaneously is so minimal that it no longer matters whether or not you know the right place to ask the question. Ask it in multiple places because you never know who might have the answer and the overall cost is negligible. And once you ask the question, you can then work in parallel until the answer arrives. You don't need to stop working while seeking the answer.

For example, we have an alumni network consisting of professionals who have graduated from Bloomsburg University with a Master's Degree in Instructional Technology (very competent and accomplished folks.) If I need to ask a question or seek input from the field I do the following:

-Send the question to our Yahoo! Group Listserv
-Post a discussion question in our NING network
-Post a question in our LinkedIn network
-Ask a question to the alumni group on Facebook
-Send a group email via our CAC Conference web site which has registered members

Total time to post the question in all five places...about 5 minutes. The ROI for using all five methods is phenomenal. I invest a small amount of time writing the question, copy and paste it into the proper location in the social media spaces and SHAZAM! I have hundreds of folks (maybe even thousands) who have the potential to answer the question. I don't need to pinpoint or target a specific group or person. In this case there is some overlap but if you broaden the concept beyond alumni...even the overlap is reduced.

I think this low cost of "working the network" is the power of Web 2.0 and social media and is what makes it so effective. Therefore, I don't think a whole lot of time needs to be dedicated to finding the "best place to ask a question." Instead, place it out there to multiple networks and wait for an answer.
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Blending Online and Classroom Instruction: At the Same Time

Last night, Scott came to my class to talk about "Polished Presentations" usually he drives up to Bloomsburg for the presentation but last night, due to a mix up on my part, he was unable to make the 120 mile trip. Scott has a theatre background and a great deal of experience presenting in front of groups and he provides great advice and ideas to students as they prepare for their major presentation to our Corporate Advisory Council.

Due the the distance, this semester we leveraged technology and Scott gave an online presentation...so far pretty normal stuff. However, Scott's presentations are typically highly interactive with a lot of physical activity required of the audience. I was curious to see how the combination of online and required classroom movement would work. Would the students choose to participate or ignore his requests for interactivity since their was a large distance?

So first, here is the set up. We used Adobe Connect, two computers and a web cam in the classroom. On Scott's end, one computer and a web cam. In the classroom, I projected my screen showing both cameras to the audience of students.
Notice the small web cam on the podium.

Scott then proceeded to provide his presentation. It worked pretty well, although we did have some lag a couple of times. Scott provided his content and interacted with the students through the classroom mic (students came up and asked questions) and from time-to-time Scott would ask them to raise their hands in agreement or to check understanding. Then he really got them moving and put the students through their paces by having them do some breathing and speaking exercises.

Screen shot of the presentation where the students practice the famous Buh, Duh, Guh exercise.
Then Scott got the students on their feet and had them do even more breathing exercises. He really interacted well with the students over a distance and was a great example of how a person can present to an audience via distance and still engage and keep the attention of the learners.

Everybody stand up.

The class was a great example of how an online presentation to a group of students can be engaging and interactive. Scott stood up to illustrate hand placement and aids like a pen to assist with speaking and breathing and we could still see him on the web cam. He could see if students were raising their hands and he could direct them through exercises. The set up worked well and while the interaction wasn't ideal, it still showed a great deal of interaction and promise. This is especially interesting since Scott provides such movement and physical activity in his talk. Overall I'd say it was a great example of the impact and potential of distance learning.

To top off the class, Robyn from the Dishing Design blog made a guest appearance and spoke to the students about networking which they will need next week when the meet the corporate professionals at the Corporate Advisory Council Event... I'm sure they'd be glad to get any advice...so if you have some, please comment.

Robyn providing valuable networking tips and techniques.
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President Elect Brings Web 2.0 to the People

We all know that President-elect Barack Obama used text messages and his web site to a distinct advantage in the election.

Well, we now know his is going to be using those tools in his presidency as well. He just launched Change.Gov

The web site will be used to revolutionize the way the commander in chief communicates with the American people through online videos and interactivity via the web. For example, Barack Obama could start doing a weekly YouTube video and fireside chats for the 21st century by allowing people to text or email questions to him that he might answer live during the webcast.

Check out the entire article Obama launches Web site to reach public.

Then ask yourself, if its good enough for a president-elect to deliver messages and information via social media and Web 2.0 tools...isn't it good enough for your learning and development department and your company to use these tools? If you want to break down the traditional and artificial boundaries of the learning function within your organization, you can use the web to help do it.

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More Learning from Video Games

Here is some interesting results related to playing video games from the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association that was held in August.

The article, Playing video games offers learning across life span, say studies, does a good job comparing the good and bad of video games and states that:

"The big picture is that there are several dimensions on which games have effects, including the amount they are played, the content of each game, what you have to pay attention to on the screen, and how you control the motions," said Gentile. "This means that games are not 'good' or 'bad,' but are powerful educational tools and have many effects we might not have expected they could."

Similar to other media, there are good and "not so good" aspects of playing video games.
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The Lost Footage...

Several weeks ago my original link to this video was lost. This video is from a local television station that interviewed me about Gadgets, Games and Gizmos for Learning.

Unfortunately, somehow it was deleted. Finally, I found the lost footage and have been able to post it. You can see the original blog posting at Roll The Tape.




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Some Facts about Immersive Learning Worlds

Calling a meeting to order...sort of.

The other day, a blog reader sent me an email asking about Immersive Learning and wanted some information about what it meant and how it is being used. So, here are some interesting facts and figures about immersive learning environments. But first, let's define the term.

Immersive Learning—An umbrella term that refers to an online educational experience which is highly interactive in which the learning engages with the content to facilitate the learning. Immersive Learning includes the concepts of games, online Simulations and Virtual Learning Worlds.

• According to the eLearning Guild, over 93% of Guild members report that their efforts to conduct learning in an immersive learning environment produce results that are either somewhat or much better than other forms of rich-skill practice. Further, 50% of the respondents plan to do more with mini-games in the future, 72% plan to do more with simulations/scenarios and 36% plan to do more with serious games.
  
  
• There is still going to be a steep learning curve for virtual worlds. According to the eLearning Guild 16% of respondents indicated that the were unaware of online virtual worlds, 55% had heard of them but never tied them while 21% have tired them and 7% play them frequently.
  
  
• A survey study by SRI indicated that 58% of the respondents has a strong interest in how virtual world technologies can be deployed in the workplace.
  
  
• Acceptance of virtual worlds seems to be occurring at a rapid rate. According to the analyst firm Gartner, “By the end of 2011, 80 percent of active Internet users (and Fortune 500 enterprises) will have a “second life”, but not necessarily in Second Life.”
  
  
• The use of virtual worlds as learning platforms is hitting the “traditional” business press. The May 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review ran an article titled Leadership’s Online Labs, by Reeves, Malone, and O’Driscoll which highlighted the skills players gain from playing online role-play games, and even suggested changes in business practices according to behavior seen in virtual multiplayer environments.

Examples:

• Swiss construction giant Implenia is working with IBM to test ways to turn off lights in real buildings by flipping virtual switches in the virtual world of Second Life.
  
  
• The University of Maryland simulated a highway emergency and had participants respond in a virtual world. The world was designed by Forterra Systems, which creates a variety of custom virtual world learning spaces.
  
  
• Qwaq, a company that creates virtual worlds, created a zone of oil rigs, refineries and offices to enable energy professionals to walk through their properties and discuss repairs while viewing actual equipment.
  
  
• Several pharmaceutical firms use virtual worlds of one form or another for training and social networking.
  
  
• The Double Happiness Jeans factory allows someone to create a pair of wearable jeans that are "printed" on canvas after the person watches them being manufactured in the virtual world of Second Life. (see Virtual Jeans=Real Jeans)
  
  
• Immersive environments are being used to teach all types of languages (see Immerse Your Self in Another Language.)

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Forget about the politics of this piece...

Ok, I do not want to be political on this blog since today is election day in the US. Really, I don't care who you vote for (just vote) but no matter who you want to vote for...check out this video.

The technique is really awesome. It embeds the name of any person into the video. Look for my name in the newspaper headline, on the cardboard box, on the Facebook page, on the scroll bar on the bottom. Incredibly clever and what a great way to customize online learning...the possibilities are amazing for customizing learning pieces within corporations and schools what child won't want his or her name on a customized piece about algebra or history.

WARNING...they did go a little far in the middle of the piece with bleeped swearing, so be careful watching at work or around others or yourself if you might be offended. The bleeped swearing is really unnecessary but included. Still check out the technique.



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How Widespread is Mobile Learning?

The other day at a presentation, a participant asked me how many companies have adopted mobile learning...was it widespread and if they where behind because they didn't have a full blown mobile learning roll out yet?

The answer is that mobile learning is just now starting to get a foothold but it is not widespread by any means.

In fact, two separate surveys indicate that m-learning is just now starting to become of interest to organizations. Although there are a number of contributing factors to m­learning only recently becoming of interest to organizations, the three biggest seem to be the recent proliferation of multi-functional “smart phones” with multimedia and broadband capabilities, the increasing availability of Wi-Fi connectivity, and the increase in screen size on many of the mobile devices.

Two external reports point to only a few organizations actually implementing m-learning.

One is by the Masie Group and that study revealed that only 3%, or six of the 204 organizations surveyed were deploying mobile learning widely throughout the organization (although 21% did indicate that they have implemented it in some areas of their organization.)

Another study by the eLearning Guild of survey of 940 of its members indicated that only 9% or 84 organizations had actually implemented m-learning.

Of the 9% who had implemented m-learning, 65% use it for less than 10% of their learning initiatives. These organizations are not developing content specifically for mobile devices; 70% of them indicated they create 10% or less of their learning content specifically for mobile devices.

Additionally:

The Masie Study revealed that 38% of its 204 member organizations indicated that they were not planning any Mobile Learning initiatives.

The eLearning Guild found 33% of its members had no plans to implement m­learning.

So now is the time to implement to seize a competitive advantage but the road will not be easy since there are not a huge number of case studies or examples to guide the way.

Here are a couple of books that could help:




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