Rapid E-Learning online symposium

E-learning is increasingly popular, however, the cost of developing it has kept many away, as a result, the concept of Rapid E-Learning was born. This week the E-Learning Guild is holding an online symposium on Rapid E-Learning. Some of the speakers include well known e-learning author, Michael Allen but the practitioners/presenters are the force behind the success of the symposium. In the 90 we needed E-evangelizing; today we need E-productivity.

You will find the session schedule here. You can click on each session to find more about the presenter, and see an abstract including the objectives of the presentation.

While all the sessions I participated in today were good, the effect of the suggested practices on Rapid E-Learning appear to vary broadly. Still, the session make us think and hopefully that will be the key to each one increasing the production speed in ways appropriate for each organization. The key is that Rapid E-Learning should not be less quality e-learning!

Join in if you still can or see if you can get access to the recordings. All sessions are online and recorded (audio and slides).

The Guild’s URL is www.elearnngguild.com

M-Learning and sales

M-Learning seems to be the new buzz. Here is an article that addresses it and points some nice uses of the technology. Some of what is described, however, is the delivery of information on demand rather than education yet, m-learning has great potential to serve educational, training, and information needs.

A course (traditional or online) can be extended into the field of practice. Through m-leaning one can appeal to different learning modalities, provide motivation, provide varied experiences as methods of reinforcement, and increasing relevance to the learner. These are powerful enhancements to the traditional learning modes.

Issues that still remain to be addresses are the cost of extra development needed to add m-learning to the educational or training mix; measures of effectiveness, and uptake by end users.

This ASTD article will get you thinking about the possible uses of m-learning to your organization.

Optimizing Your Sales Workforce through Mobile Learning

Hype or truth about the iPod as a learning tool?

Recently there have been a number of articles and blog postings about how great the iPod is as a learning tool. Most of this was triggered by Apple’s own statements. But is it true or just hype?

What does the iPod offer me as a student? It offers me the ability to record lectures, class discussion and my own comments or speech/presentation delivery practice. It also enables me to load things (photos and data) to it for me to read or take from school or the training site to my home. Finally, it keep me n schedule.

Could I have done the above in the pre-iPod era? Yes. The iPod in that sense has added little. So then, what has the iPod added? It has added convenience. No longer do I have to use cassette tapes winding and re-winding, or for those that aren’t that old, you no longer have to worry about handing MDs.

The iPod is not so much about something new. It’s about making what we could do much more practical. This is not an inconsequential thing! People are much more likely to record others or themselves now than they were in the pre-iPod era. They’ll do that not only because the iPod is handy but because it’s easy to use and, it’s cool! This is what makes it powerful.

For e-learning the iPod can be an important tool as we can do Podcasting or simply add MP3s to our instruction that can be downloaded to be listed to on the way to work, for example. The iPod or other MP3 players can become efficiency tools for e-learning. They are not a drastic breakthrough but a valuable addition.

Comments on the creative use of iPods or MP3 players in e-learning are welcome!

Cases are powerful e-learning tools

Cases are commonly used in traditional education. In medical school they see them as they do hospital rounds, in law school they study from them extensively, and in training it’s common to use cases in built simulations. We, however, don’t see them used enough in e-learning and when we do, we do not take full advantage of the capabilities of the online medium.

Taking advantage of the medium does not mean using complex technology or large amounts of bandwidth. One takes advantage of the online medium when the user can interact effortlessly and is able to make decisions that affect the outcome of the case.

For example, I have worked on medical online cases. The learner is presented with a patient complaint, the learner can then inquire about the patients health, social, and family histories. The learner can follow up by referring the patient, performing tests (blood, scans, etc.). Then the learner is provided feedback not only of the test and consultation results but also the relevance of the test performed. This is followed the ability to select a diagnosis and once that is correctly done the learner can determine the treatment.

The above is done successfully with html and some java script. In the near future we will switch to flash. The point is, cases and be very effectively carried out with the technology we have at hand.

Why are they successful learning tools? Because they keep us engaged, involved in an interactive exchange, and thinking creatively to resolve the problems. In addition the resemblance of cases with real world situations keep us motivated as we truly feel we are preparing to confront our future challenges.

If as an educator you have not used cases do take time to consider using them, you will be glad you did.

What is Podcasting and can I used it in education and training?

Podcasting consist of the use of audio over the internet. The term comes from the iPOD and broadcasting but it can be done with any MP3 player. It is fairly easy to do podcasting and it enables users to not just listen to audio while at their computers, a capability we all had for some time, but it also enables download and payback in MP3 players and iPODs.

Why is podcasting important in e-learning? Simply because it is one more form of media to use. This can be used to enhance what is already delivered online, for example. Not only will the leaner read your web pages, interact with software or simulation online, watch streaming video, exchange posts with classmates, and go to live chat, but now they will also carry your comments or lessons on their iPod or MP3 player. This provides grater time exposure to your content and reinforces what was learned by other means or provides significant learning in auditory learners.

In certain training situations an audio guide of how to do a certain task could be provided. This would enable the learner to play the steps while performing a job, for example, extending the learning into performance support.

Think creatively, podcasting has huge potential for e-learning and e-training.

Power Point for E-Learning: a faster way to deliver it

PowerPoint is a good tool for e-learning. In an earlier post in this Blog we provide links to a tutorial for learning how to make interactive PowerPoint presentations. While those presentations are nice PowerPoint has the drawback of producing large files difficult to deliver online but there are solutions.

1. You can transform your PowerPoint presentations to Flash. In this way you can deliver it as more efficiently. You can even divide large presentations into several smaller Flash movies that are linked. In this way each one doesn’t take so much time to download. Computers will need the Flash player.

2 You can use Impatica which compresses PowerPoint presentations by 90%. Impatica allows for presentations to have images, video, and audio. You can see samples of the presentations delivered via Impatica a their web site. Computers will need to be Java enabled to play Impatica files.

What is Voice XML and why should I learn about it?

“Voice XML is a w3c endorsed markup language that allows developers to write advanced telephony applications with simplicity undreamed of until recent years”.* It is almost like writing an average HTML web page.

“As VXML is a tag-based markup language, its structure is very similar to HTML in many ways, but instead of being a primarily visual medium, Voice XML is an auditory medium that allows the end user to navigate through his 'telephony page' by using voice commands, rather than by clicking a button on a web page.”*

Why should you learn about it? Because in the future you can have people access your e-learning or e-training while they perform other activities. Imagine someone driving to work while listening to training they will need later that day and being able to navigate around the training as if they were in front of a web page but through the using voice commands.

So the reason why you should learn about Voice XML is the flexibility it might add to your offerings. No its not an answer to all our e-learning problems, its just another tool a your disposal, one that has a lot of promise.

Voice XML Tutorial

* Quotes from Voxeo.

Are you willing to pass-up e-learning?

There are plenty of doubters about e-learning and e-training. You hear them all the time saying “we are not there yet”. They allude to lack of bandwidth, willingness to go study from a screen, and barriers to communication. I do not argue those things aren’t true. I would even add a few things to that list such as lower then expected enrollments and higher than expected dropout rates. Yet, we still need to prepare for the new reality.

Think where you and your organization want to be two to five years from now. How competitive do you want to be? Do you really think you can get there without e-learning or e-training? Today I heard that there are students, including, some medical students, that have gone almost entirely digital. These products of the digital age think different, acts different, learn different. If this is true about some medical students today, it will be a trend, if not a reality, two to three years from now almost everywhere.

Based on the above, are you willing to pass up e-learning? If so, what will you use to reach and teach and train these digitally minded individuals? I suggest we should move with care but do so with urgency, developing learning approaches and anticipating the technical trends for 2 to 5 years from now. While this is a challenge, weigh the alternatives and decide if passing up e-learning and e-training is something you can afford.

Interactive PowerPoint

PowerPoint has been a useful tool for presentations in the traditional classroom. Now you can take advantage of PowerPoint to engage learners after your classes or those taking courses at a distance. By using PowerPoint’s screen linking feature you can sequence and even have alternate paths creating a basic (basic from a technical standpoint) interactive educational program. The PP presentation can be saved so it cannot be altered and you can place it for download from the web.

Here is a link to a site with PowerPoint tutorials.

Some say, if one is going to link PowerPoint slides one might as well do web pages. Well, this is useful for those that have mastered PowerPoint and want to extend its use without taking the time to learn web page creation.

Back to the Future… with the e-book

In a move that would seem appropriate to the Hollywood move title “Back to the Future”, e-book technology is moving forward by moving backwards. For some psychological, emotional, or yet to be determined reason, we find the old printed book format appealing. Perhaps this is due to the fact that we had such an exposure to them in school so, we are now emulate that successful paper and ink approach.

Unlike the e-books of a few years ago, today’s e-books are doing a great job at emulating the old paper and ink features. MS Reader offers a reader optimized page size, great highlighting, note taking, and bookmarking. MS Reader is enhanced by ClearType which makes reading MS E-books much more comfortable than this page.

Another great format is Xplanabook. It has many of the features of MS E-books and is not so format restricted.

Here is more on e-books. The new formats might make a real difference in your next project and they are really easy to produce. They do have a place in “Rapid E-learning”.