A “T” shaped professional development plan

 

I think 2012 could be an interesting year for my pro-d. I’ts almost like that “T” shaped skills from IDEO.  The concept isn’t terribly new, but I think it’s useful, for me anyway. You have deep expertise in your core competency (the vertical bar), but complement it with adjacent skills (the horizontal bar).  I think I’ll focus on the adjacent stuff this year.

Web development:

I have signed up for the year of coding via Codecademy as I’d like to extend my instructional design skills to a broader range of e-learning development tools. I am also on a beta for a popular tool-in-waiting for the e-learning set (no names mentioned), which is fun even if I don’t have enough time to really play with it! I am also debating the acquisition of another new tool, which would add a new dimension to my skillset. If I find myself with extra time this year I might take on Flash too. I thought about trying this online option (Treehouse), too. It is a different way of learning (video)…

Speaking of Video

I’d also love to learn about more video shooting and production and wonder if a project might be in the works for later this year. Green screens, framing, etc…I’m super intrigued by the interactive video idea. Building in choices to video snippets, which sounds a lot like branching scenarios to us in the e-learning field!

 

User design

I would love to get more exposure to graphic design and user experience – how to make things look good – while I read and watch continuously and know the C.R.A.P. stuff - here’s a nice article describing it. I’d love to know what works with interactions from a learner perspective. This kind of behavioural thinking is really compelling to me. I signed up for the Human Computer Interaction course from Stanford, but it doesn’t start until Jan 30th.  I am loving Julie Dirksen’s book Design for How People Learn (still savouring it).

 

Storytelling

I would also love to write fiction, storytelling from a personal & professional perspective is really appealing to me. I’m an avid reader (I’d like to say voracious, but that’s only what I aspire to!). Thinking about how to engage people in learning through stories seems like a natural fit, so will see what kind of resources might fit for that.  Still thinking about this one.

Leave space for Serendipity…

I like to just find things that are interesting, and of course working freelance means that each new client and industry I engage with provides me with new learning opportunities, so that keeps me on my toes. Ironically, the two things that caught my attention this week – @busynessgirl’s TEDx video and this post by @Callooh

Wish me luck…oh, and if you have any suggestions for me, pass on a comment or tweet me…@sparkandco

Learning Lessons from “A Christmas Story”

OK, I admit it, I’m one of those people that watches A Christmas Story annually and can quote dialogue from the movie. It’s legendary in my house, in spite of the fact my English husband doesn’t get it (but then again, he watched Benny Hill and I don’t get that). As I watched it this year, I found myself wondering why it has such appeal and thought there must be some real parallels to life.  If this were a parenting blog, I’d put in my parenting lessons, but it is a learning blog, so I’ll put in learning lessons!

Lesson #1: Persistence pays off – Ralphie tries many ways to convince his parents that the BB Gun would be the ideal gift and in the end, he gets what he wishes for.

Even when everyone tells you that you’ll shoot your eye out, don’t give up. Remember, Ralphie *does* shoot his eye out in the end, but it isn’t a disaster after all.

Lesson #2 – Multiple roads to success – Ralphie realizes that there are people in his ecosystem that may influence gift buying beyond his parents – his long-suffering teacher and of course the big man himself: Santa.

When dealing with a learning challenge, remember to not put all your eggs in one basket, but include multiple methods. You never know which one will prevail.

Lesson #3 – Rewards are motivating – now we can’t all win lamps for a Major Award like “The Old Man”, but he sure was pleased with himself when he won

Provide your learners with something meaningful for their efforts, but remember not everyone likes the same thing (that lamp was deemed “the ugliest lamp I have ever seen in my entire life!” by Mother), so try to provide more personalized options.

Lesson #4 – Gimmicks fizzle – Ralphie was so excited to decode his first secret message from Annie’s radio broadcast only to discover it was a thinly veiled marketing ploy, or what he says is “a crummy commercial”.

Don’t do that to your learners, lure them in with something exciting only to deliver boring commercials, it’ll backfire in the end.

Lesson #5 – Planning doesn’t always work out. Remember when the 785 Bumpus hounds from next door somehow get in and eat the turkey and the family has to go out for Chinese food on Christmas?

If your best laid plans are destroyed, do something different and embrace it. That Chinese turkey turned out to be pretty memorable after all.

Regardless of whether your watch the movie or not, I hope the lessons are useful and I wish you all the best for 2012.

Instructional Design Nightmares

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I’ve had a couple of situations happen in the last few days that made me think “this could end up a real nightmare”. After the  2nd one, I had the “and, this would make a good blog post” thought, and well Halloween is coming up, so here we are…my nightmares

Nightmare #1

End-user training for a new HR system: the system is easy to use, the vendor has put in good on-screen help and they told the client: “it doesn’t really need training, it’s like Amazon”…Filling out the fields is easy to do, there’s the little calendar widget, and helpful pop-up messages when you’ve got the format wrong. BUT, the process is not user-friendly, mainly because there were assumptions made about how certain out of the box functions work and then the request is “Can you add this to the training materials?”.

It’s too late to change the whole system. I have no control over the usability of the system (or what has happened in User Acceptance Testing – UAT) I’m just an independent contractor (although that is irrelevant, I’ve also been in this situation as an internal “trainer”). Regardless of all the shoulda, woulda, couldas, I have to figure out a way to help the end users knowing full well I am attempting to put a band-aid on an open heart surgery patient.  I bet there are others out there reading this who are nodding profusely. It’s reality for many of us.

Nightmare #2

I’ve recently met with a potential new client who wants to enter the world of e-learning, with a small part of their new hire training. It’s very process-centric and they want employees to understand the whole process and their part in the process. They’ve got all the processes well-defined and organized in the biggest excel spreadsheet ever. Slide-deck arrives and is fairly text-heavy presentation. Potential client has asked for proposal but has “no budget” allocated to this.

There is a good structure to follow, but quite a bit of re-design work, which I think is going to be more than they are looking to spend. So, I am worried that this is going to end up as a price discussion, when I really think it needs to be an investment discussion. It’s not just a matter of converting the slides to e-learning, but re-engineering a lot of existing content and designing instruction. Currently, it’s a presentation.

Nightmare #3

I’m working with a client who has asked for a re-design for a (primarily) classroom-based training course, to a blended (my term, not theirs) learning product. All going swimmingly, but in recent discussions with client, they mention: “the website upgrade”, and new CMS, additional changes to related programs and upheaval with their partnerships. These may have significant impact on the design process of my deliverables.

Now, I love this client and project and have a very good relationship with them, so it really is just a matter of educating them and putting in some communication lines, but it is a common thing. Clients think they should only dole out the information that they think is relevant to the project and while you can’t do a forensic investigation on everything with the client/organization, there are always assumptions of “I didn’t really think that mattered” or maybe even reluctance to share information for whatever reason. But, it can cost hours of redesign or hours of wasted time which could have been used elsewhere. Project communications can help, but honestly this arises in every project, so I know it is common.

Should I go on?

Do these situations give you nightmares as well?

What ID nightmares do you have?

Infographics – love ‘em or hate ‘em?

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In my previous post, I was grappling with marrying graphic + instructional design, and kept finding myself thinking about infographics.

They aren’t really new, this is the classic military loss infographic produced for Napolean by Charles Minard in 1869. But nowadays, we can’t seem to escape them, and they are beginning to have a bit of a polarizing effect. Have they jumped the shark? Are they useful? Do they contribute to the dumbing down of complex issues? Are they a democratic way of explaining complex issues in simpler terms?

I’m speculating that graphic designers are squeamish about non-graphic designers creating appalling ones and foisting them upon an unsuspecting (internet) public. Instructional designers are seeing more ways of communicating visually that they hadn’t before. While instructional designers (like me) may not produce the best infographics out there, the fact that we are trying to use them to convey information and help people learn is a good thing. Whether or not all the good intentions are flattened by poor execution remains to be seen.

As a freelancer, I’m often asked to “convert” existing face-to-face courses to online and sent the obligatory “slide deck” (how’s that for a retro-phrase). And, I have to help them understand that the info dump may be fast, but not necessarily effective. We need to ask how infographics can help people learn. I, for one, am hoping to create more and better e-learning because of infographics. Thinking visually, as in: “how can I convey this instead of 10 bullet points of text?”. Can I use an infographic as a navigation framework instead of a linear approach with a next button?

Here are just a few infographic related tweets that I saw this week:

Why infographics matter. Examples and best practices as well as here. And more samples from visual.ly, and at xplane on this site. Many seem to say this is infographics at it’s best, while this site needs no explanation (click and you’ll see why), it shows infographics in a less than positive light. And if you are curious about whether or not they have staying power…the future of infographics.

Are you using infographics? If so, in what way? How do you approach them? What are your do’s/don’t's?

Storyboarding, prototypes and e-learning design

Have you heard of The Toolbar? It’s a podcast by Brian and Judy on e-learning. And beer. Why not?

(Although I’m not a Mac user, I hope that doesn’t completely eliminate me as a target listener).

This week they talked a bit about storyboarding. During the listening of the podcast, I found myself wanting to ask questions, jump in, get clarification, etc. Which is a great thing. I think it’s a sign of an engaging program.  Turns out, others were listening too! As a matter of fact, it seemed to be a bit of a trend. I saw this post on the Captivate blog as well.

Kevin Thorn (aka learnnugget) was the guest and he said he is not a fan of showing any kind of graphic to client in the initial stages, as the client can become fixated with that element and derail the higher level instructional framework. He starts with the storyboard and maps it out. Judy talked about prototyping, referencing Michael Allen’s approach (alluding to this, but not necessarily endorsing).  It made me think about my design process, more specifically marrying the graphic or visual design with the instructional flow. I’m not sure what to call my approach, because I don’t think it’s strictly storyboarding, nor is it prototyping. It’s more like information architecture with a splash of film treatment, like the elearning coach says.

I don’t have the design chops that Kevin has or the development skills that Judy has, so can’t really subscribe to one camp or the other. What I find that I need is a design concept to not only organize the content, but contextualize the instructional activities, envision the navigation, filter and organize the content and narrow down visual/graphic design ideas and usability and finally to anchor the project. And, I can’t do it all sequentially or in a linear mode. I sort of flesh it out organically.

In fact, I have a tendency to show different approaches/design concepts with clients to test their reaction and elicit feedback (“hate that idea”, “too hokey”, “we’ve already used metaphor X”, “I like this, but toned down a little”…). Usually I do those as categories: process-driven, scenario-heavy, realistic, etc. The things that the client reacts to, gives me insight and somewhere to discuss.  For example, I recently reviewed some options with a client and he loved one element, but did not want to use it for the whole course, but for certain activities. We talked some more about things and he said “well this program is like a classic hero’s journey” which gave me tons of new ideas, inspiration…they all seemed a bit too contrived, but it’s all an iterative process isn’t it?  I probably should follow Tom Kuhlmann’s advice though…pare it down a little.

Once I have the concept, then I can decide storyboard or prototype or something else. But, without the pitch (think The Player, as in the movie), then I find it hard for the client or SME to get it and agree that this the kind of experience you are going to build together.

I’m curious to know: how do you approach elearning design?

Learning to read a recipe or learning to cook?

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Yesterday I made the most abysmal soup. I had some asparagus in the fridge that was just on the wrong side of fresh, so I thought I’d whip up some soup. I like to cook (I like to eat more!), but can’t say I’m a soup-whiz. I have a few standards that I go to (chick-pea and leek, a la Jamie Oliver), but otherwise it’s not really my strong suit. Did I let that stop me? Nope. I figured I could wing it. I figured wrong.

Mistake #1 I didn’t taste the soup at various stages.

Mistake #2 I put in too much salt.

Mistake #3 I panicked and tried too many different ways to cut the salt factor

In the end it looked and smelled disgusting, was inedible and I had to have grilled cheese for lunch.

Why am I writing about soup and cooking in a learning blog? Well…lessons are to be drawn! And, I’m designing a course and thinking about metaphors (journey metaphors to be specific), but when you are in idea generation mode, sometimes you just let the creative wave go where it wants to go. This time, it was soup.

The Lessons:

• Don’t teach people to read recipes, if the goal is for them to learn how to cook.
• Feedback (as in tasting) is a useful way to adapt your next step.
• Building blocks, layers…lots of things we learn are incremental, so scaffold learning for that.
• Don’t teach the way it’s supposed to work, teach people how to recover from mistakes. If I had known strategies for dealing with oversalting, then I wouldn’t have panicked and tried to fix it.
• Spaced repetition would help too. Since soup is seasonal (say that 10 times fast), I was rusty. And I’d like to hope that my January soups will be better than my sad October soup was.

So, as I put together concepts for my course, in the back of my mind, I’ll be thinking of soup.

Grab bag of new (to me) tools

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I’ve discovered a smattering of new tools, which isn’t surprising since the internet is awash with them!

Podio – OK, I am very enamoured with this one.  It is a project collaboration, lead management, intranet (plus more!) service. As a small shop, I love the integration of these things and although it takes some time to set it all up, I really like the base tools that it comes with. Time tracking, invoice generating, sales pipeline calculating…oh, and an app store!

Twine – this reco is from Cathy Moore, who uses it to build branching scenarios in e-learning and other things, which you could read in her post. So, I think I will too! My kids thought it sounded fun for them to build their own adventure stories too, so maybe this is a “two-fer” tool?

iDoneThis – I have just signed up, so can’t really give much input on it. But there is real appeal to me in the simplicity of this service. You type in what you’ve done in a day and it emails it back to you at a set time.  As I’m looking for some ways of tracking activity and performance/goal attainment, I thought I’d try it out. Thanks to @Tracy_Parish for the tip on this.

But of course, @courosa already has the “mother of all lists” <for teachers/educators > on this GoogleDoc

Me and my sad list of 3 items…such an amateur!

A quest for an LMS alternative (that’s not a franken-solution)

I’m working on a project that included a question from the client -do we need an LMS?

My response? No.

Rationale

This is a non-profit that offers a type of bootcamp to a very focused audience of CEO’s.  Less than 100 people per year will participate in the program. And we are talking one program for now.  They want to correlate with business results – did taking this bootcamp help them grow their business faster.  I think it’s a brilliant program and want to ensure that we are considering assessment and tracking as part of the design process, not as an afterthought.

Further reflection hasn’t really changed my original opinion, but I am wondering what the alternatives are.

• Spreadsheet – I’m so not an excel ninja, so the options are a bit fuzzy for me, how are others using spreadsheets for this?
• Database – ditto
• Surveys – I did see a nifty little screenr somewhere about linking an articulate quizmaker score to a free survey tool that I’m going to pursue, as I think it has some interesting merit. The challenge is that the true value comes in that “level 3″ type of evaluation – did behaviour change and the elusive “level 4″ is there a business result. So, we’ll have to hope that an email to a survey that we can somehow tie to the original survey to compare.
• Web analytics – do people use this with flash courses? – I need to investigate this a bit more.
• Web services – something like an online goal tracker might be used here.
• Forms – I have also considered that we host the course using WordPress and then could add a form to it.

Obviously I have more work to do to figure out options and identify the best one for this project.

Is there something out there packaged that fills this gap? Or, are there other things I’m not aware of?

Learning in Action – Cold Cases

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While flying back from my fabulous French holiday, I read something that piqued my interest. (My entertainment system was broken. I had 7 hours to fill and I’m kind of a nervous flyer, so need to keep busy, hence this blog post).

A university professor is using actual cold cases as practical training activities for students in his class The Serial Killer in Media and Popular Culture. How cool is that? It’s like taking a case study approach and instead of keeping it in the theoretical sphere, they apply their learning to a real world need. I imagine that cold cases (despite being rich fodder for tv series) are resource-intensive for police forces, and this seems like a win-win to me.

Plus, the potential for “reverse mentoring” also exists, as the students can put a fresh perspective/technique into a case, that maybe a seasoned detective hasn’t been exposed to yet. This review includes an interesting reference to using Google Maps to aid in their investigation and ends with this fabulous quote:

“I’ve never been in a course where something we are doing is potentially going to be beneficial in the end,”

This instructor also had a mix of students in the class and seemed to find ways to cross-pollinate their specialties/skills in a realistic way, which sounds so very practical.

I really wanted to find more of these (see previous example), but haven’t come across many. Know of other great examples you can share?

C-L-A-S-S-I-C

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In just under a week, I’m heading on a trip to France for nearly a month, and I feel very privileged to be able to do so.

Being a new-world girl, I am a bit of a Europhile and think castles are very cool (our accommodations will be in a converted castle), the history is interesting, but what I’ll most be savoring is the food (and the wine). Aged cheese, wine and fresh bread baked in centuries old tradition are definitely on the top of my list.

These things are classic, timeless and also crafted not processed.  Things I aspire to in my work. Since I produce custom solutions, I consider much of my work a craft.

I will be wondering about how to infuse more “classic” thinking with my work philosophy.  What is classic or timeless and how do we adapt to the new and embrace innovation without completely ditching things that are old.

Here’s my first attempt at a checklist way of assessing if something is worth keeping around.  Let me know if you have some improvements (I may be stretching on a couple of these!):

• C – Culturally relevant – does this provide a cultural touchstone that conveys much more that what’s in the face value of it?
• L – Lasting functionality – does it still do what it’s supposed to do (if it ain’t broke…)
• A – Attractive – is it still pleasing to look at or interact with
• S – Status – is there something about this that conveys status?
• S – Solidly built – is there still use left in it?
• I – Interesting – is it interesting for people to use? Are people still intrigued by it?
• C – Cost effective – is it cheaper to use it than “tear it down” and create anew (sometimes it is/sometimes it isn’t!)

Thanks for reading and I’ll be back in September.

Salut!