Thursday, December 31, 2009

Top 10 Posts of 2009

Looking back at my top posts of 2009, it is obvious what I spent most of the year working on. 2009 was all about Moodle and Project Based Learning for me. Many of my most popular posts in 2009 were about Moodle which is not only a reflection of my year but also a reflection of the increasing popularity of Moodle. I look forward to another year of Moodle and increasing the amount of posts I write on other topics such as Blended Training Solutions, Instructional Design, Adobe Captivate and Training and Development in general.

What was your year like? I'm curious to hear about your hot topics of the year and what you see in the year ahead. Being that my most popular posts were about Moodle, I'm guessing it was a busy year of Moodling for many of you as well.

Top Posts:

  1. Why Moodle?
  2. Moodle Reporting and User Management - Is Moomis the answer?
  3. A Corporate Example of Project Based Learning
  4. Project Based Learning in 3 Steps
  5. Adobe Captivate - "Continue" or "Go to Next Slide?"
  6. 3 Steps to a Driving Question for Project Based Learning
  7. Moodle eMail Notification Problems
  8. Designing Assessments for Project Based Learning
  9. What is Project Based Learning?
  10. Telecollaboration and Project Based Learning

Monday, December 14, 2009

Why Moodle?


Why Moodle?
One of the most frequently asked questions I get from blog readers is "Why did I choose to go with Moodle" over other Learning Management Systems. The answer is simple; Moodle gives you the most bang for your buck, especially if you don't have a lot of bucks. A huge factor in my case is that I had zero budget to implement eLearning in my organization so I didn't have many options. However, when it comes down to it, Moodle met most of the requirements I had listed out and met those requirements at the lowest cost by a long shot. I spent a lot of time researching LMS systems that added on a lot of expense for bells and whistles that my organization didn't need so why pay for it when with Moodle all you need is a little hard work.

However, Moodle is not all rainbows and unicorns. Although Moodle is turning out to be a good fit for my situation, it is not the ideal solution for all organizations. It is important to do your research and testing before making the leap to Moodle or any Learning Management System. Below are some factors I took into consideration and some tips that may help you in the LMS selection process.

Making the Decision
Thinking back on my LMS decision making process there were 3 key steps I took which helped me narrow down the huge amount of options and make a final decision. This is just a high level description of the steps I took to come to a decision that works for my organization. There are many more details to drill down into but I could go on all day with the small stuff.
  1. Write an RFP - Writing a request for proposal (RFP) really helps you to analyze what exactly you need in an LMS. Starting out by describing everything you want to use the LMS for in an RFP helps to ensure that you take everything into consideration before making a final determination. If you go straight into the research without listing out your requirements it can be easy to get swept away in LMS features that you may never have use for and end up overpaying for a system that you don't need. You also want to make sure that you don't make the mistake of going with an LMS that doesn't meet your requirements and end up having to go with something else down the line. For more information on RFP's and samples to help you get started, check out this blog post about LMS RFP's by Tony Karrer.
  2. Research - Plan on spending a lot of time with Google researching the wide array of LMS options. Don't get stuck in the research phase forever but make sure to talk to plenty of LMS vendors and take the time to view their Demo's. A great resource that got me off to a good start was eLearning Guilds 360 report on Learning Management Systems. This gave me a good starting point of LMS's to begin researching. Because there are so many options with subtle differences it is a good idea to put together some kind of tool to take notes while viewing demos so that later on you can easily compare the key differences and narrow down your options. I put together a simple excel spreadsheet that later turned into a great tool for narrowing down my choices. Once you have your list of contenders narrowed down you can send them your RFP and start testing out their trial versions.
  3. Get your hands dirty - This is the most important step of the LMS selection process. Don't make any decisions until you dive in and test out the trial versions of your finalists. This can be a little time consuming but actually putting together a sample course and testing out administration features tells you a whole lot more about the LMS then any demo will ever tell you. Many LMS vendors provide trial versions and in Moodle's case it is a free download anyway so you can test out the full version at no risk. This is how I ended up deciding on Moodle. I was able to easily get it up and running on my own and it met most of the requirements I had described in my RFP.

Going through these steps helped me come to the conclusion that Moodle would fit the needs of my organization at the lowest cost. You may come to the conclusion that you would be sacrificing too much by going with Moodle. Either way it's important to do the work involved in selecting an LMS before you go too far down the wrong path and waste money. Do you have any suggestions that will help others decide whether Moodle is the right choice? If so, please leave a comment with your suggestions, tips, or questions.

In this post I brought up that there are a lot of pro's and cons to Moodle that are helpful to know about when trying to decide on whether Moodle fits your needs. In a future post I will be asking for contributions to a list of Moodle pro's and cons that will help others in the decision making process. I hope you'll contribute your opinions of Moodle for the sake of others struggling with the decision.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

PBL Cheatsheet featured in eLearn Mag

The "Best Of" the information from my series of posts about Project Based Learning in a business environment was published on eLearn Mag today. With the help of Jill Duffy from eLearn Mag, I boiled down the key steps and tips for developing project based learning into one article covering it from head to toe. If you liked the PBL posts on my blog you will like how this article brings it all together. Check it out and leave a suggestion, tip, question or just a comment with your thoughts on project based learning.

Click Here for eLearn Mag Article

Monday, November 30, 2009

A Corporate Example of Project Based Learning

Enough talking about how to design project based learning, let's get down to the brass tacks and look at an example of a PBL lesson. If you would like more information on project based learning before looking at an example please review my series of project based learning blog posts. This example is titled "Selling Sleep Disorder Relief" and was designed to help sleep products sales people improve their sales with customers suffering from sleep disorders. Most of the process is designed to be completed over the course of 6 days by groups of sales professionals within their store location during free time in between customers.

The process begins by the facilitator communicating the guidelines through email and will conclude with the participants meeting to perform the presentations. The email sent to participants at the beginning of the project will outline the guidelines of the project and provide access to the project web site which serves as a resource to participants throughout the project. The details of each step of the process are described in the table below.

Day
Milestone
Description
1
Project Begins
Project facilitator groups participants according to their store location and assigns each group a sleep disorder. This step of the process is initiated through an email from the facilitator describing the guidelines of the project and providing access to the project web site. Once groups are formed and assigned a sleep disorder, they can begin working on the project and contact the facilitator for assistance when needed. Because the project is able to be facilitated online there are less expenses associated with travel and time in a classroom.
2
Research
Groups begin researching symptoms of their assigned sleep disorder using multiple internet resources. Potential links are available in the Resources section of the project web site to help get participants started. However, they are encouraged to extend their research beyond the sites listed on the Resources page of the project site. Learners will develop a greater understanding for the information by conducting research on their own rather than being spoon fed the information.
2
Develop Outline
Groups develop an outline highlighting the key findings of their research and possible solutions for the customers sleep disorder. The outline will be submitted to facilitator for feedback. This allows the facilitator to provide formative feedback to the group before they potentially go too far down the wrong path.
3Develop Handout
Groups will begin developing the handout after receiving feedback on their outline from the facilitator. The handout will be designed to summarize the key points and distributed during the presentation. This will serve as a job aid to other participants of the class who will be learning about the sleep disorders presented by the groups.
4
Develop Presentation
Groups develop their presentation including the role play sales presentation simulation. There will be an opportunity to receive feedback and practice the presentation in front of the facilitator. The opportunity to practice the presentation in front of the facilitator provides another opportunity for formative feedback to ensure they are headed down the right path and are grasping the instructional objectives of the lesson.
6
Perform Presentation
The groups will perform their presentations for the other groups and the facilitator. The handouts will also be distributed at this time. Performing the presentation in front of other class participants provides the opportunity for participants to demonstrate the performance described in the instructional objectives and for other participants to learn about the specific sleep disorder.
6
Debrief and Discuss
The facilitator will debrief and discuss the key points of each groups presentation using the handouts provided by each group of learners. These handouts will then be assembled by the learners to be used as a reference/job aid helping them take advantage of what they learned from other groups presentations. This and the final project grade are where summative feedback is given based off of the culminating project.

This is just one example of Project Based Learning in a corporate environment. Hopefully this example will give others ideas of how to get started and my series of project based learning posts will fill in the details of each step along the way. Do you have any examples of using project based learning in a corporate environment or suggestions of how to improve upon this example? If so please leave a comment with an example, suggestion, or have anything to say about project based learning.

Related Posts:
The posts listed below provide many more details regarding designing project based learning in a corporate environment.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Moodle Reporting and User Management: Is MOOMIS the answer?

Moodle does a lot of things great, but site wide reporting and bulk user management are definitely not included in those great things. If you are a Moodle administrator for an organization I am sure you know the pain of having to go into each course site to produce grade reports for multiple courses. In my case, I have to send out a weekly report listing every users grades in every course they have taken on Moodle. This means I have to go into each course site and export a grade report to an excel spreadsheet and then merge all of those separate spreadsheets into one big grade report. To complicate things even more, I have to maintain separate groups within each course site so that users can be sorted by position or location. To my horror, if a user changes positions or locations I have to move them to a new group in each course site. When you have a lot of users and a lot of courses this can become a very time consuming process. This puts me in the position of desperately needing a Moodle plugin that will make it easy for me to export site wide reports, and manage site wide user groups rather than having to complete these tasks repeatedly in each course site.

What is MOOMIS?
My Moodle administration despair lead me into a search for some kind of plugin or modification that will help me overcome these challenges. I was surprised to find that there aren't a whole lot of options out there until a conversation with Barry Sampson led me to the open source option called MOOMIS by aardpress. Keeping in Moodle style MOOMIS is open source and an acronym for Modular, Object, Oriented, Managed, Intelligence, System. It's not just one plugin but a suite of the business tools listed below:
  • Communication - Moodle already has messaging and email capabilities but it's nothing special. Moomis' communication tool adds a few bells and whistles so you can do things like send emails to groups and add attachments.
  • Competency Manager - This looks like a great tool for regulated markets such as insurance or health care. The competency manager allows you to setup "competencies" that can be linked to job titles. Users then complete coursework to work toward achieving these competencies. When they do reach the competency level for their position they have verified that they are competent for their position.
  • CPD (Continuous Professional Development) - This tool is key for creating site wide reports with Moomis' "Report Creator." Every course on Moodle needs a CPD which is awarded to the student for completing a course. When the user makes it to the end of the course they have to click on the CPD activity which will then award them a CPD for either achieving a certain score on a quiz or by clicking a box verifying that they have completed the course.
  • Events Manager - The "Events Manager" allows you to allocate "Real World" events such as instructor led training to users without having to create a course site specifically for that event. This is a nice feature which makes it easier to integrate instructor led training with eLearning and track it all in one place. As a big advocate for "Blended" training programs this is a feature that intrigued me.
  • Groups - The "Groups" feature had me drooling when I first started researching Moomis because of it's ability to create site wide reports. In my situation I am dependent on groups so that I can sort users by region or position when looking at the gradebook. This tool allows you to create site wide groups so that you can then create site wide reports sorted by those groups. I was hoping that this feature would save me from having to manage separate groups in each course site on Moodle.
  • Performance Manager - The "Performance Manager" is appealing to us corporate folk because of it's ability to tie learning objectives in with business objectives. We all know that the key to proving ROI in training is to tie learning objectives to what the overall business is trying to achieve. The performance manager allows you to setup business objectives in Moodle and then link users and courses to those objectives. This tool makes it obvious which courses or learning objectives are contributing to achieving business objectives.
  • Report Creator - This is where the rubber meets the road. The main goal I am trying to achieve is to find an easy way to create site wide grade reports and that is what the report creator is designed to do. The report creator allows you to produce reports in a variety of different formats listing CPD's awarded to users in all courses they have taken on the site. I was hoping this would save me a lot of time by not having to go into each course site to export a grade report and then merge all those together to create a site wide report
What MOOMIS doesn't do
Before diving in and installing MOOMIS so that I could take it for a spin I thought it was going to be the answer to all my problems. In particular, I was drooling over the "Groups" feature and the "Report Creator." Unfortunately these features don't quite work the way I was hoping for so I am going to have to continue my search for a plugin that will address my issues. However, MOOMIS does have potential and with some enhancements I think it could take the corporate world by storm. Here are my suggestions for MOOMIS that would make it the Moodle add on of my and I am sure many other Moodle administrators dreams.
  • Groups - The idea of being able to manage groups site wide rather than course by course is fantastic. However, MOOMIS groups do not cascade down to the course sites. MOOMIS groups are great for creating MOOMIS reports but if you need to use separate groups for any course activities or to sort through the gradebook then you will still need to manage those groups on a course by course basis. MOOMIS groups are only helpful for MOOMIS tools such as the report creator and communication tools. I would love this tool if the MOOMIS groups automatically imported into each course site so that I could manage all groups from one spot instead of in each course site. Unfortunately, MOOMIS groups do not address the problem I was hoping to overcome because I still need to manage groups in every single course site.
  • Continuous Professional Development(CPD) - Here's another great idea that just needs a little tweaking. CPD's work a lot like units for college courses. Students are awarded a specified number of CPD's for completing a course. My problem is with how course completion is determined. The only options for awarding CPD's are to automatically award the CPD for passing a certain moodle quiz or by having the student click a box verifying that they completed the course. This isn't ideal for me because I try to avoid quizzes and usually use other graded activities in courses such as Moodle lessons and SCORM modules developed with Adobe Captivate, but none of these activities are recognized by MOOMIS. If you are going to use any graded activity to determine completion it has to be a quiz on Moodle and can only be one quiz. Or else you can use the verification option where learners click a box to verify that they completed the course but I don't really trust my learners to not just scroll to the bottom of the course and click it no matter how engaging the eLearning course is. MOOMIS could overcome this option by awarding CPD's based off the "Total Score" in the course. This way you could ensure that learners completed all activities in a course because all of the activities contribute to the total score. It doesn't make sense to me to determine completion of a course solely on a final quiz rather than the culmination of everything the student has done in the course.
  • Report Creator - I think the Report Creator would be great if CPD's were based off the courses total score. The report creator produces reports based off of CPD's, enrollments, or quiz scores, so really your only producing a report of what users have done on quizzes in each course. I was hoping that the report creator would produce reports based off of all activities including SCORM and Lessons but it does not. All MOOMIS needs to do to overcome this problem is to award CPD's based off of the courses total score.
In the end, MOOMIS isn't the answer to my issues at this time but I am happy to hear that they will be continuing to make enhancements and are actually coming out with a new release in January. If you are thinking about implementing MOOMIS you might want to wait until the new release in January. In fact, if you want to test out MOOMIS try doing it on a test version of Moodle or at least make sure you back up your database before installing it. Luckily I tested MOOMIS on my test version of Moodle which now has CSS problems. My columns are all over the place after installing it. I've included links below to the aardpress site describing Moodle and to the download on SourceForge. If you decide to try it out please let me know what you think of it or if you have any suggestions for overcoming the hurdles I described in this post.

Resources:
Related Posts:

Monday, November 16, 2009

Project Based Learning in 3 Steps

An Instructional Designers "Cheat Sheet" for Designing Project Based Learning
Four blog posts ago I set out on a long strange trip to dissect project based learning in a corporate environment. Along the way I have received some great comments on this blog and through Twitter with insight and examples of how to take advantage of project based learning. For the last post of the Project Based Learning series I'm going to boil down the key points of the four posts and the comments I received into a "cheat sheet" for instructional designers getting started with project based learning. This "Cheat Sheet" is designed to be used as a job aid summarizing the project based learning design process and does not include all of the details you may be looking for. For more information please click on the links throughout the post or in the "More Information" section.

What is PBL and why should I care?
Based off the name "Project Based Learning", it's not so tough to figure out that it's all about learning through the development of a project. Although it is simple to understand the premise of Project Based Learning I believe there is a lack of resources available because many instructional designers are designing it but don't realize there is a name and method to it. So, what is PBL anyway? The textbook definition provided by the Buck Institute for Education in the "Project Based Learning Handbook" described PBL with the quote below:
A systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.
In my opinion it's a flexible term that boils down to scaffolding a lesson so that learners construct their own solutions through the development of projects rather than being told what the solution is through formal instruction. Project based learning's focus on the learner constructing their own solutions using available resources is what makes it ideal for the corporate world. In the workplace, employees don't have their training facilitator there to give a lecture any time they come across a problem they don't know how to solve so it is important that employees learn to use available resources to solve the problem on their own. Project based learning achieves what a lecture cannot by providing the opportunity for the learner to practice using the necessary resources so that when they do come across a problem they are prepared to solve it on their own.

Step 1: Dream up the Big Idea

Before you can begin constructing the driving question you need to develop the "Big Idea" that the project will be based on. This is where you need to be creative and dream up an idea or theme for the project that is intriguing, complex, problematic, and most importantly requires the learner to demonstrate the outcomes of the instructional objectives being taught in the lesson. When it comes to project based lessons in corporate environments it's best to come up with a big idea or theme based off of problems that the learners face in the workplace. A big idea that matches what people do in their daily work makes it easy to design a project based lesson that will improve the learners performance on the job. A great way to stay focused on authentic concerns is to enroll the help of learners in the brainstorming process. Engaging the learners in the process of developing the big idea not only makes it easier to develop a "real world" concern, but it also ensures the learners "buy in" on the lesson.

Step 2: Develop the Driving Question
Once you have the big idea or theme for your project based lesson you are ready to develop the driving question. In this step you will be taking the big idea you dreamed up in step 1 and forming that into a realistic scenario requiring the learner to demonstrate the performance described in the instructional objectives. A great way to capture the "big idea" into the form of a problem is to present it as a realistic scenario that learners come across in the workplace. Think about what is going to happen on the job that will trigger the performance being taught and capture that in the form of a question or multiple questions. The driving question does not have to be told in a storyline but a good story is a great way to engage the learner while communicating the driving question(s) and guidelines of the project. Once you have an idea of what your driving question is going to be, ask yourself the questions below before committing to your final draft of the driving question(s):
  • Is it open ended?
  • Is it challenging?
  • Is it realistic?
  • Is it complex?
  • Does it require a performance or project?
  • Is it consistent with instructional objectives?
If you can answer yes to the questions above then your driving question may be ready to put into action. Once you have polished your driving question you are well on your way to a quality project based lesson.

Step 3: Design the Assessment
The project based learning design process concludes by developing a plan to assess whether learners are able to demonstrate the instructional objectives you set out for to begin with by completing one or more projects. You could say that this step puts the "Project" in "Project Based Learning." I consider this to be the most important part of the design process because it is where you evaluate whether the lesson was successful or not. The best practices described below will help you ensure a successful project based learning assessment.
  • Demonstrates Objectives - A great way of ensuring that the assessments demonstrate the objectives is to design an assessment where learners complete the actual task or project that they will be required to complete on the job.
  • Scaffolded Assesments - Scaffolding the project so that it builds up to a final assessment that represents a blend of all the content covered in the project ensures that the learners have improved over time and achieved the instructional objectives.
  • Able to Score - Some of the greatest assessments for project based learning can also be the most difficult to assess. A great way of overcoming this obstacle is to create a rubric to use as a scoring guide. A well written rubric not only helps the facilitator score the assessment but it also helps the learner understand what is expected of them and serves as a guide for their project.
More Information:
As mentioned earlier, this post is only a summary of the design process. The links below will take you to more information regarding each step of the PBL design process.
References:
  • Buck Institute for Education. (2003) Project Based Learning: A guide to standards focused project based learning. Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education.

Monday, November 2, 2009

Designing Assessments for Project Based Learning

You have developed your big idea and polished the driving question, now for the most important aspect of Project Based Learning - planning the assessments. The project based learning design process concludes by developing a plan to assess whether learners are able to demonstrate the instructional objectives you set out for to begin with by completing one or more projects. I consider this to be the most important part of the design process because it is where you evaluate whether the lesson was successful or not. In this post I highlight some best practices that will help you ensure a successful project based learning assessment.

1. Demonstrates Objectives
It seems obvious that your project based learning assessment must require learners to demonstrate the performance described in the instructional objectives but it can be easy to become carried away with a creative project and lose sight of your goals. A great way of ensuring that the assessments demonstrate the objectives is to design an assessment where learners complete the actual task or project that they will be required to complete on the job. Yeah, it may seem boring to just have learners simulate what they have to do on the job but this is a great way to ensure that they have learned something that will truly improve their performance. If the learner comes back to work from the lesson with a task completed then you already have a return on investment to point to.

2. Scaffolded
It is often more effective to scaffold project based lessons to include multiple assessments or projects. I recently designed a project based lesson that gradually built on the learners skills by including an assessment at the beginning, middle, and end of the project. The assessments at the beginning and middle of the project provided the opportunity for a formative assessment where the learners can be given feedback as the project progresses, while the assessment at the end provided the opportunity for a summative assessment where the learners can be given a culminating appraisal of their performance. Scaffolding the project so that it builds up to a final assessment that represents a blend of all the content covered in the project ensures that the learners have improved over time and achieved the instructional objectives.

3. Able to Assess
Some of the greatest assessments for project based learning can also be the most difficult to assess. It's easy to give a test where each question is worth a certain amount of points but when it comes to assessments where learners are completing a project it can be difficult to measure exactly how well the learner performed. A great way of overcoming this obstacle is to create a rubric to use as a scoring guide. A well written rubric not only helps the facilitator score the assessment but it also helps the learner understand what is expected of them and serves as a guide for their project. Rubrics are a great tool that I think may be underutilized in the corporate world. There is a lot of information available that will help you create rubrics so I am not going to dive into the details here. The links below will take you to a couple of sites that will help you get started creating rubrics and to an example of a rubric I created for a project based lesson.
  • Creating Rubrics - This link takes you to teachervision.com which has a variety of resources for creating rubrics.
  • My Example - This link will take you to an example rubric that I created for a project based lesson.
  • MS Office Template - This link will take you to a template for a rubric on the MS Office site.
These are just a few of the best practices that I have developed in the short amount of time I have been developing project based learning in a corporate environment and should by no means be considered an all inclusive list of best practices. I would love to improve upon the tips I have in this post with your suggestions. My next post will conclude the project based learning series by summarizing the posts into a "quick guide" for developing project based learning. If you have any ideas or tips that will help others maximize the effectiveness of project based learning please leave a comment so that others can benefit.

References:
  • Buck Institute for Education. (2003) Project Based Learning: A guide to standards focused project based learning. Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education.
Related Posts:

Friday, October 16, 2009

3 Steps to a Driving Question for Project Based Learning

In the last post of the Project Based Learning series, I introduced what project based learning is and the benefits of using Project Based Learning in corporate environments. Now that we know what PBL is and have seen an example of it's use in a corporate environment, let's dive into developing Project Based Lessons for corporate training. Project Based Lessons begin with what I believe to be the most critical aspect of the instructional design process, the Driving Question. Houghton Mifflin's "Project Based Learning Space" defines driving questions as;
"A driving question or problem that serves to organize and drive activities, which taken as a whole amount to a meaningful project."
The driving question is both the foundation and the blueprint that gets learners started and guides them throughout the project. A well designed project is based on a driving question that sets off an inquiry based learning process where the project activities, and objectives are all determined by the driving question. It's obvious that the driving question is make or break to the project based lesson, so how do you create a quality driving question that achieves all of this. This post breaks down the process of developing a driving question that organizes and drives activities in a project based lesson.

Step 1: Develop the Big Idea
Before you can begin constructing the driving question you need to develop the "Big Idea" that the project will be based on. This is where you need to be creative and come up with an idea or theme for the project that is intriguing, complex, problematic, and most importantly requires the learner to demonstrate the outcomes of the instructional objectives being taught in the lesson. While it's important to create a driving question that is intriguing, the main focus is to design a question that elicits the performance required of the learner upon completion of the lesson. When it comes to project based lessons in corporate environments it's best to come up with a big idea or theme based off of problems that the learners face in the workplace. A big idea that matches what people do in their daily work makes it easy to design a project based lesson that will improve the learners performance back at the workplace.

It can be all too easy to get carried away with an elaborate driving question that ends up having nothing to do with the performance described in the instructional objectives. The"Project Based Learning Handbook" suggests staying focused on the performance by asking yourself;
"Where is the content I am trying to teach used in the real world?"
A great way to stay focused on authentic concerns is to enroll the help of learners in the brainstorming process. Engaging the learners in the process of developing the big idea not only makes it easier to develop a "real world" concern, but it also ensures the learners "buy in" on the lesson. This is particularly helpful with adults in a corporate environment where the training facilitator may not necessarily be an expert on the subject at hand and the learners can add perspective that makes the lesson more effective.

It's helpful to see examples of driving questions to get you started but there is really not many examples available. The Selling Sleep Disorder Relief project based lesson is a corporate example that may help you get started especially if you are developing a project based lesson for sales professionals. Please leave a comment if you have any other examples that you can contribute.

Step 2: Rough out the Driving Question
Once you have the big idea or theme for your project based lesson you are ready to rough out your driving question. In this step you will be taking the big idea developed in step 1 and forming that into a realistic scenario requiring the learner to demonstrate the performance described in the instructional objectives. The "Project Based Learning Handbook" describes the goal of developing the driving question with the following quote:
"Once you have a project theme or a "big idea" for a project, capture the theme in the form of a problem or a question that cannot be easily solved or answered."
A great way to capture the "big idea" into the form of a problem is to present it as a realistic scenario that learners come across in the workplace. Think about what is going to happen on the job that will trigger the performance being taught and capture that in the form of a question or multiple questions. The driving question does not have to be told in a storyline but a good story is a great way to engage the learner while communicating the driving question(s) and guidelines of the project. In the Selling Sleep Disorder Relief project based lesson, I communicated the driving question through a story that caught the learners attention and was actually fun for me to write. The "Project Based Learning Handbook" has some great tips for developing driving questions with the guidelines below:
  • Driving Questions are Provocative
  • Driving Questions are Open Ended
  • Driving Questions go to the heart of a discipline or topic
  • Driving Questions are challenging
  • Driving Questions can arise from real world dilemmas that students find interesting
  • Driving Questions are consistent with standards (Objectives)
Once you have roughed out a driving question you are ready to put it through the final inspection to make sure it meets the goals you set out for in the instructional objectives. In the final step of the driving question design process you will improve upon what you started with by refining the driving question into a complex, engaging issue that requires the learners to demonstrate the performance described in the objectives.

Step 3: Polishing the Driving Question
Before considering your driving question complete there are some important factors to take into consideration that will help you polish the driving question you roughed out in step 1. The list below describes some questions to ask yourself before finalizing your driving question.
  • Is it open ended? If your driving question can be answered with a "Yes" or "No" then you will need to go back to the drawing board and ensure that it does not lead to an easy answer. Driving questions require learners to demonstrate higher level thinking.
  • Is it challenging? If the driving question does not challenge learners they will not learn as much from the experience. Give them a challenge that will allow them to confront difficult issues.
  • Is it realistic? A driving question depicting a realistic scenario that learners come across in the workplace will keep them engaged and help to ensure they retain skills that will actually be used on the job.
  • Is it complex? A broad driving question requiring multiple activities and open to many possible solutions will keep students engaged and allow them to demonstrate the higher level thinking required to achieve the instructional objectives. Ensure that your driving question is broad enough to require learners to make a number of different decisions.
  • Does it require a performance or artifact? This is the "Project" in "Project Based Learning." What will the learners be doing as a group or individually to demonstrate that they have achieved the instructional objectives. Do your best to make the performance or project that learners are completing as realistic to what they will experience in the workplace. Whether it be creating a business proposal or simulating a sales presentation the project should mimic what will be required on the job. This provides a fail safe opportunity to practice what they will be doing at work.
  • Is it consistent with the instructional objectives? Are you asking a question that requires learners to demonstrate the performance described in the instructional objectives. Don't get caught up over complicating your driving question and forget about what you are trying to achieve in the first place. Achieving the instructional objectives is your focus at the start of the project and needs to remain the focus through the end.
If you can answer yes to these questions then your driving question may be ready to put into action. Once you have polished your driving question you are well on your way to a quality project based lesson and are ready to finalize the details for the project or artifact that learners will be developing as a result of the lesson. In the next post I will cover the details of the project or artifact but before getting into that, what are your thoughts on developing driving questions for project base lessons? Do you have anything to add or modify that contributes to a successful driving question? If so, please leave a comment with your thoughts on driving questions for project based learning.

References:
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Monday, September 21, 2009

What is Project Based Learning?

In my last post I set out on a quest to dissect Project Based Learning in the corporate world by starting some conversations and writing some blog posts. I believe that project based learning is ideally suited for adults in corporate training but sadly there is not much information available. I am hoping to shed light on some best practices that will improve the effectiveness of my project based lessons and hopefully help other instructional designers out there looking to get started with project based learning in a corporate organization. Part of the reason why there is not much information available may be that many instructional designers are creating project based lessons but they haven't put any label on it. I know I was already doing it but until I took a recent instructional design class, I did not realize there was an actual name for it. For this reason I'll start out my series of posts by covering what project based learning is and why there should be more of a focus placed on it in the corporate world.

So, what is project based learning? The textbook definition provided by the Buck Institute for Education in the "Project Based Learning Handbook" described standards focused project based learning with the quote below:
A systematic teaching method that engages students in learning knowledge and skills through an extended inquiry process structured around complex, authentic questions and carefully designed products and tasks.
In my opinion it's a flexible term that boils down to scaffolding a lesson so that learners construct their own solutions rather than being told what the solution is through formal instruction. In project based learning students use a variety of resources such as the internet and books or even better, resources used to perform their jobs such as company intranets, software, job aids, manuals, and wikis to construct their own solutions to the problem they are being asked to solve. Project based learning helps learners to gain a deeper understanding of the instructional objectives by engaging them in an interactive lesson requiring them to perform the objectives in a safe environment.

Project based learning's focus on the learner constructing their own solutions using available resources is what makes it so ideal for the corporate world. In the workplace, employees don't have their training facilitator there to give a lecture any time they come across a problem they don't know how to solve so it is important that employees are trained to use available resources to solve the problem on their own. Project based learning achieves what a lecture cannot by providing the opportunity for the learner to practice using the necessary resources so that when they do come across a problem they are prepared to solve it on their own.

By now, I am sure you are well aware of what project based learning is so let's take a look at an example. Hopefully sharing my example will inspire readers to describe or post a link to their examples as a comment to this post. For my recent instructional design class I designed a project based lesson called "Selling Sleep Disorder Relief" which required participants to research a sleep disorder then create a presentation of how to make a sales presentation to a customer with the sleep disorder. By designing a project based lesson for this topic participants were not only better able to retain the information but they were also required to practice applying this information in a realistic "fail safe" situation. Hopefully this example will help others understand what project based learning is and hopefully spur some ideas or best practices for using it in the corporate world. Do you have any examples or insight you are willing to share? I am by no means an expert and would love to hear what others have to say about project based learning in the corporate world. Please continue the conversation by posting a comment with examples or just your thoughts on project based learning.

References:
  • Buck Institute for Education. (2003) Project Based Learning: A guide to standards focused project based learning. Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education.
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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Project Based Learning - Are you doing it?

Are you implementing Project Based Learning in a corporate environment? If so, I would like to hear about it. In an instructional design class I took over the summer we focused on "Project Based Learning." What I learned in this class inspired me to make it more of a priority in my work as an instructional designer in a corporate environment. I love the principles behind project based learning because they focus on the learner performing the instructional objectives being taught in a realistic situation. All fired up to do more with project based learning I set out on a Google search for examples of it being used in corporate environments. To my surprise there is a severe lack of information available about implementing it specifically in the corporate world. Just about every search result has to do with project based learning in K-12 education. So, I am going to try and help do something about that.

I am going to try and make a small contribution by writing a few posts about implementing "Project Based Learning" in a corporate environment. I'll cover important topics such as developing the "Driving Question" and "Artifact" of the project while citing specific examples of it being used in a corporate environment. After writing a few posts highlighting the key points and receiving your insight I'll put it all together into an article covering the project based learning design process from start to finish.

Before diving into project based learning in more detail I would love to hear about your experiences implementing it in a corporate environment. I was hoping to find insight with a Google search but as mentioned earlier there's really not much information available. I can't be the only one with something to say about it so help contribute by posting a comment with your thoughts or experiences with project based learning. I look forward to hearing your ideas and sharing them in upcoming blog posts.

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Thursday, August 20, 2009

Telecollaboration and Project Based Training

I just finished another course in the Ed Tech program at San Diego State called "Advanced Teaching with Tech." Being that the class is called "Advanced Teaching with Tech," I thought we would dive deeper into using technology but unfortunately we didn't dive much deeper than Google Apps and Questgarden. However, I did pick up some new instructional design skills that I will be able to apply at work right away. This post describes a couple of projects I developed for this class and what I learned from them.

Early in the semester we were assigned to develop a Telecollaboration lesson using Google Sites. This was the first time I had heard of a telecollaboration lesson so I was curious to hear about something with such a fancy name. A telecollaboration or telecollaborative lesson is an educational project where participants learn by sharing information with other groups of people over the internet. This is an ideal project for me because a large part of my responsibilities at work involve developing eLearning courses and I am always looking for new ways to facilitate collaboration with others through eLearning. A common hit on eLearning is that it does not have the benefits gained through face to face interaction and collaboration with others that ILT can provide. However, telecollaboration lessons can help eLearning courses overcome the challenge of facilitating interaction and collaboration online.

The telecollaboration activity I designed for this project is called the "Handling Customer Objections Showdown." I wanted to develop something that I could also use at work where the majority of my learners are retail sales professionals. Participants of the showdown will improve their ability of overcoming customer objections by competing to post the best solutions to customer objections on a discussion board. Not only will this facilitate the sharing of best practices but it will also contribute to a database of solutions to customer objections that can be used as a job aid. I've been trying to come up with way's to take advantage of forums in Moodle and this will be a great lesson to do so with. Check it out and let me know if you have any suggestions.

Another focus of the semester was designing project based lessons where participants learn through working on a project in a group or individually. I love this type of lesson because it focuses on learners demonstrating the performance and generally there is not much lecture involved. To sum it up there is less telling and more doing. Project based lessons are definitely something I can take back to work as they work well as part of a blended training approach including both instructor led and eLearning solutions. In the past I have had success using eLearning to teach the pre requisite information that learners need to know before attending an Instructor Led course where they will apply what they learned in the eLearning with a project based lesson.

The Project Based Lesson I created is called "Selling Sleep Disorder Relief" and is designed to help sleep products salespeople improve their performance with customers who suffer from Sleep Disorders. The lesson is designed so that participants are broken into groups according to the retail store or region they work in and are assigned to research a sleep disorder then deliver a presentation about the disorder to the rest of the class. The presentation must include a "Role Play" simulation of an ideal sales presentation for a person with the sleep disorder. This improves learning due to the fact that they are going out and researching the information then forming a hypothesis on their own of how that information can be used back on the sales floor to improve their performance. This lesson personifies the notion of "more doing, and less telling."

Although the class didn't cover as much technology as I was hoping for I did learn a lot about instructional design. Learning about Instructional Design may not be as fun but we have to take our medicine in order to use technology effectively. I look forward to implementing these lessons at work and please leave a comment if you have suggestions.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Personal Learning Network 3

An assignment for my "Tech for Teaching" class at SDSU requires us to follow Ed Tech related blogs on our reader than write up a summary of what we learned from reading these posts and how these lessons apply to our professional goals. This is the third of 3 Personal Learning Network reports on some lessons I have learned lately through blogs I follow in Google Reader.

Over the past year, I have been working on the major project of transitioning my organization from only instructor led training to a "Blended" training approach consisting of eLearning, Instructor Led Training(ILT), and Job Aids. The blog posts highlighted in this Personal Learning Network (PLN) report provide valuable information that will help improve the effectiveness of my organizations training solutions by transitioning to a "Blended" approach. The first article, "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom" tells the story of a school that is maximizing the potential of a "Blended" approach by banning power point from the classroom and the second post titled, "Best Moodle Modules and Plugins" provides information on useful ways to customize Moodle. Together, these posts provide ideas for improving the effectiveness of a Blended training approach and the tools to help make those ideas happen.

I believe that there is no one best way to deliver training, and that in most cases, a blended approach is the most effective. ILT, eLearning, and job aids have different advantages that when used in combination can result in a more effective training solution. The article "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom" featured on "The Chronicle of Higher Education" website describes what a Dean at Southern Methodist University is doing to push instructors towards a blended approach. I found this article intriguing because I think it hits the nail on the head of the best way to take advantage of ILT in combination with eLearning. By removing power point from the classroom and taking advantage of computer based resources, instructors are given the freedom to facilitate a more interactive session resulting in an improved learning experience.

A valuable tool in implementing a blended training approach is the learning management system, Moodle. As a Moodle administrator, I am always looking for customizations to help Moodle fit the needs of my organization. The post, "Best Moodle Modules and Plugins" describes tools that can improve the effectiveness of elearning. By using modules discussed in this post such as "Book" and "Questionnaire" we are improving the effectiveness of our ILT courses by making them more interactive. In the past, a portion of the ILT course would be reserved for lecture to introduce the topic. This type of information is now delivered via Moodle prior to the ILT course so that learners are familiar with the topic and ready to practice the skill they are learning when they arrive at the instructor led course.

Migrating to a "blended" training approach from nearly 100% ILT is a difficult battle and the posts highlighted in this PLN report are helping my organization's training dept reach it's goal. By taking advantage of tools such as the modules and plugins described in the blog post, "Best Moodle Modules and Plugins," while embracing the theories discussed in the article, "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom" we are improving the effectiveness of our "Blend" of training solutions. I can't wait to see how what I have recently learned from my PLN helps my organization get closer to our goal of a blended training approach.

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Thursday, August 6, 2009

Moodle 1.9 Multimedia


A new book just arrived on my doorstep that I am excited about reading. Much of the reading I do about Moodle has to do with administration tasks I am struggling with so I am looking forward to learning some content development tricks from "Moodle 1.9 Multimedia" by João Pedro Soares Fernandes.

As a Moodle administrator and eLearning content developer, I am always juggling the behind the scenes Moodle tasks while looking for more effective ways to present content. It looks like this book provides a little of both by covering how to make the most effective use of multimedia in Moodle. I mainly use eLearning tutorials developed in Adobe Captivate for my Moodle courses so I am curious to see what other tools are discussed in this book.

I am amazed at the amount of options and tools available for customizing Moodle content to your learners needs and am eager to dive into this book to learn more. I am also amazed at the variety of different methods Moodlers around the world are using. How about you? How are you presenting multimedia in Moodle. Please share by posting a comment.

If you would like to read more about Moodle 1.9 - Multimedia check out the Packt Publishing site. They also have some other good Moodle books

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Monday, July 27, 2009

Adobe Captivate: "Continue" or "Go to next Slide."

I have a confession to make. I was making a stupid mistake in Adobe Captivate 3 that was seriously affecting the performance of my eLearning tutorials. When I first started using Captivate I was under a tough deadline for my first project and did not have the time to take any classes or tutorials. I bought a book and dove right in. I was confident in my skills with Powerpoint and Captivate's not that much different, right? Wrong, Captivate has different options for advancing the tutorial with action buttons and thanks to the power of Twitter, I found out I was using the wrong option. Here's the story...

I was having a hard time figuring out how to reduce the bandwidth requirements for published flash files. My projects didn't have a lot of bells and whistles but when I used the "Bandwidth Analysis" option, I was finding that the KB/Sec were through the roof on every slide. In a few tweets about this with @JFDragon, he recommended to simply extend the length of my slides. The problem I had with that is that I didn't want to make the user sit around and wait for the timeline to finish out. @JFDragon pointed out that I don't need to make the user sit around if I have the slide advance using the "Go to next slide" option rather than "Continue." I was making the simple mistake of using the "Continue" option when I should have been using "Go to next slide."

The big difference is that the "Go to next slide" option advances to the next slide when clicked, no matter where the slide is at on the timeline. The "Continue" option will play out the rest of the timeline before advancing to the next slide. By using the "Go to next slide" option you can extend out the length of the slide but the user is still able to advance when they are ready. This allows more time for each slide to load in turn reducing the KB/Sec of each slide and the overall bandwidth requirements. Because I was using the "Continue" option, I had to make each slide only a few seconds long and pause at the end of each one so that the timeline would finish out before the user clicked on whatever they needed to click to continue. This means that each slide only had a few seconds to fully load which really ramped up the bandwidth requirements.

This small change has made my Adobe Captivate tutorials run much smoother and has dramatically reduced any kind of performance problems such as freezing. Now I am spending time going back and making this change to Captivate projects I have put together over the last 6 months. Hopefully this blog post will prevent another Captivate user from making the same mistake and having to waste time revising old projects. This problem was solved thanks to the power of Twitter! Follow me @joe_deegan so that we can learn from each other.

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Friday, July 24, 2009

Email Subscription

Being a Google Reader junkie it never crossed my mind to set up an email subscription option for this blog. A couple of day's ago I received an email from a follower of this blog wishing to subscribe by email. That email made the light bulb go on! Classic case of not putting myself in the audiences shoes. Although feed readers are more popular than ever, there are still a lot of people who subscribe to blogs by email. If you are one of those people I highly recommend trying out a feed reader such as my favorite Google Reader. It really makes it much easier to follow many blogs without junking up your inbox.

But it's all personal preference so if you prefer email subscriptions than that is now possible on this blog. If you look at the side bar on the right you will see fields for email subscription along with the icon to subscribe with a feed reader. Hopefully you are already subscribing but if not, try it out. I dare you, click on the RSS button or subscribe by email : )

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Personal Learning Network 2

An assignment for my "Tech for Teaching" class at SDSU requires us to follow Ed Tech related blogs on our reader than write up a summary of what we learned from reading these posts and how these lessons apply to our professional goals. This is the second of 4 Personal Learning Network reports on some lessons I have learned lately through blogs I follow in Google Reader.

This Personal Learning Network (PLN) report highlights two blog posts found through Google Reader covering different subjects that have been catching my interest recently. The first post titled "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" provides information on how to add interaction to eLearning based training solutions while the second post, "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" covers how to make yourself more marketable by building your personal brand. The lessons learned from these blog posts will help me improve the quality of my work and help me to do a better job of marketing the results of my work.

One of the most difficult aspects of eLearning development is creating a course that is interactive and engages the learner. A great way of doing this is to build game playing into eLearning courses. While I have dabbled with online "Jeopardy" and "Who wants to be a Millionaire" type games, I have been intimidated to create anything more advanced due to the time and technical knowledge I thought was needed. Upside Learning’s "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" has helped me to realize that I may be overcomplicating game development and that with the resources they have listed; it can be easy for someone like me to easily build game play into eLearning courses.

I am currently employed with a great company but have hopes to someday become self employed or take advantage of better opportunities in the corporate training industry. An important part of reaching this goal is marketing my skills through online services such as Twitter. With roughly 6 million users and a predicted 18 million by 2010, Twitter is plentiful with opportunities to network with other professionals which can potentially lead to career opportunities. Mashable's blog post "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" by Dan Schawbel provides great tips for showcasing your brand on Twitter in an effort to create career opportunities. As a relatively new "Tweeter," I had no idea there were so many apps available specifically designed to help you build your brand. One app in particular that I found interesting was the Twitter Grader which ranks your influence in the Twitter world using an algorithm. This post inspired me to dive deeper into Twitter not only to improve the effectiveness of my personal learning network, but also to create career opportunities by building my personal brand.

The blog posts described in this personal learning network report have inspired me to go out and build fun into my eLearning courses, and excited to create career opportunities on Twitter. I used to steer away from including games in my eLearning courses out of fear it was too complicated until Upside learning's post "Top 100 Learning Game Resources" gave me the courage to increase interaction in courses by building in game play. Mashable’s post "How to build your personal brand on Twitter" has convinced me that it is worth spending time on Twitter building my personal brand in an effort to create future opportunities. After learning these valuable lessons I am excited to jump back in to my PLN to learn more about each topic.

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Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Moodle: Quiz Scores not Saving

Oops, where are the scores! I recently learned a valuable lesson after implementing an eLearning course on Moodle where quiz scores did not save. It's not a great feeling when someone put's out the effort to complete a course but you have no record of their completion. Here is the situation and solution, hopefully it will help another frantic Moodler with missing quiz scores.

The Situation:
The course consisted of multiple assignments and quizzes that needed to be completed by a large group of people. Because it was a large group and some of the assignments needed to be manually graded, I enrolled Supervisors as "Non Editing Teachers" so that they could grade their subordinates assignments. I was under the assumption that if I enrolled supervisors as "Non Editing Teachers," they would be able to both complete the quiz and grade their subordinates. I soon found out the hard way that if you need a users quiz score to save, then they can't be a "Teacher" of any kind. Unless, you override permissions like I describe below.

The Solution:
Turns out I am not the only Moodler to have come across this problem. A quick search in the Moodle Forums turned up several pages of answers to my problem. From my research in the Moodle Forums, I learned that "Teachers" and "Non Editing Teachers" have permissions to "Preview" quizzes instead of "Attempt." When a quiz is previewed in Moodle, the scores are not saved in the gradebook which is why my supervisors scores did not save. They were all "Previewing" the quiz instead of "Attempting" it. All, I needed to do is override the "Preview Quizzes" and "Attempt Quizzes" permissions and the "Non Editing Teachers" scores will save. Here are the steps of what you need to do if you come across this rare problem:
  1. Go to the course site.
  2. Click on "Assign Roles" in the Admin menu.
  3. Click on the "Override Permissions" tab located towards the top of the Assign Roles screen.
  4. Click on "Non Editing Teacher" or whatever other role you want to override from the Override Permissions tab.
  5. Scroll down to the Quiz section of the override permission screen and locate the "Preview Quizzes" and "Attempt Quizzes" permissions.
  6. Set the "Attempt Quizzes" permission to "Allow" and the "Preview Quizzes" permission to "Prevent."
After overriding the permissions my problem was solved but there is no way to retrieve the quiz scores that occured before making the change. Supervisors were not stoked that their quiz scores didn't save but at least I learned from rookie mistake : )

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Monday, July 6, 2009

eLearning Learning Upgrades

Dr. Tony Karrer strikes again with more improvements to the eLearning Learning site. I've mentioned in previous posts how useful the eLearning Learning site is as a research tool and it just got better with a few nice upgrades.
  • Best of - I used to subscribe to the "Full" RSS feed for eLearning Learning but that can be difficult to keep up with. Now there is an RSS option for the "Best Of" feeds which according to to Tony, "consists of feeds that are limited in number and point to the content that is the best stuff based on social signals." Now, I subscribe to the "Best of" feed so that I can keep up with the hot posts and don't have to do as much skimming.
  • eMail Subscription - If you follow RSS feeds through email, I highly reccomend you stop the madness now and switch to a reader like Google Reader. If you still want to stick with your emails then you can now subscribe to eLearning Learnings feeds through email.
  • Wordpress - The site is also now integrated with Wordpress which opens the door to more improvements in the future.
Thanks Tony for making it a great site and I hope you all find it useful as a one stop shop for eLearning research.

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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Personal Learning Network

An assignment for my "Tech for Teaching" class at SDSU requires us to follow Ed Tech related blogs on our reader than write up a summary of what we learned from reading these posts and how these lessons apply to our professional goals. This is the first of 4 Personal Learning Network reports on some lessons I have learned lately through blogs I follow in Google Reader.

As an Instructional Designer and eLearning developer, many of my personal development goals revolve around improving my visual design skills. While “the look” of an eLearning course is a crucial element, it is also one of the areas I am weakest in. This PLN report highlights a couple of blog posts found through Google Reader that are helping me to improve my visual design skills.


The first blog post is from the “Rapid eLearning Blog” by Tom Kuhlman who provides great advice for creating effective eLearning, rapidly. His post “5 Common Visual Design Mistakes” reviews some of the common mistakes committed by eLearning designers and how to avoid making them. One of the common mistakes that I learned from is the third mistake, “Graphics Don’t Match.” In my own work, I have found that sometimes it can be difficult to find a graphic of what you visualized in your design. Often I will find my self searching through several different resources resulting in a variety of graphics in the eLearning course that don’t necessarily match. The graphics add to the content and help to reach the objectives but some times they don’t match the overall theme of the course. This blog post helped me to realize the impact of matching graphics so that they are a part of the whole. Tom does not go into detail about how to do this but he does provide a link to another great post for custom designing graphics that match. With Tom’s tips I will be able to improve the effectiveness of my eLearning courses by using graphics that add to the course as a whole.


The second blog post is from Cathy Moore’s “Making Change” blog. I’m a long time follower of Cathy’s blog and have learned a lot from her posts about creating engaging, lively eLearning. In a recent post titled “Could Animations Hurt Learning”, Cathy reviewed the results and implications of recent research which studied the results of eLearning courses that use animations versus the results of eLearning courses which use static images. The results of the study showed that students who used the eLearning course with only static images had significantly better test results than the students who used an eLearning course using animations. This post has reinforced that often fancy animations can distract from the content of an eLearning course and in many cases you are better off using static images and in some cases you may be just as effective using a solution as simple as a PDF document.


These posts taught me valuable lessons that contribute to reaching my professional goal of improving my visual design skills. The “5 common visual design mistakes” post taught me how to use graphics that appeal to the learner while the “Could animations hurt learning post” taught me not to over use animations as they can distract the learner from the content. I look forward to learning more about visual design and creating effective eLearning from these blogs.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Early Tweeting Experience

I reluctantly jumped on the Twitter bandwagon about 3 weeks ago and while I am experiencing a little information overload, it has been fantastic. I was reluctant to start using Twitter because of the amount of information I am already consuming through Google Reader and on LinkedIn. Although I am already taking in a lot of information I was looking for a better format for discussing this information with other corporate training professionals. Turns out that Twitter is a great format for discussions and I am also finding other benefits that I was not expecting.

Twitter is known as being great for engaging in discussions but I am also finding it works as a great filter for the overwhelming amount of information I am taking in through Google Reader. I spend a lot of time skimming through blog posts in my Reader and only read the posts that catch my attention. I have noticed that with Twitter people in your network help reduce the amount of skimming needed by posting links to the great posts they have already found. Because of this I am spending less time skimming through my Google Reader and more time on Twitter looking at links passed on from people I am following. It will be interesting to see how my time spent reading blogs from my Reader is affected by finding all the juicy information without the skimming on Twitter.

While Twitter is helping me find great information easier, the downside is that there is a constant stream of information flowing down my Twitter page. To deal with this I am using Tony Karrer's "Skim Dive Skim" approach. When I first started with social media I felt the need to read every post and RSS feed as if they were all an important email. In my short experience I have learned that you really shouldn't try to read everything and you'll get more from the experience if you scan through and find what is important to you. While skimming can be a dangerous habit I am finding that I am able to find a lot more valuable information and waste less time reading information that is not important to me.

Now that I am sold on the benefit of Twitter I am working on creating a larger following so that I can get even more value from the experience. It is obvious that by having a larger number of followers, it is easier to engage in discussion and create a larger network. But, it is also as important to have a quality following of professionals with common interests and challenges. I'm starting to get annoyed with the spammers who follow me in hopes that I will automatically follow them back and I am only following people when there is a potential for us to engage in conversation and learn from each other.

I'm looking forward to seeing the value of Twitter increase as I connect with a larger network of people. If you're on Twitter, let's follow each other. If you're not on Twitter, jump on the bandwagon because you're missing out. You can find me on Twitter @joe_deegan

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