Author: Clive Shepherd

Why doing-it-yourself is sometimes a false economy

I’ve been looking at a few examples of in-house e-learning content in the past week ot two, in each case developed by relatively novice designers. What struck me was that, although they had some good content and reasonably challenging interactions, they really didn’t look very nice at all!

Now I know that in previous postings I’ve gone on about the fact that Hollywood production values are neither necessary nor obtainable, but there are some minimum standards of layout and design which certainly are desirable and achievable:
  • Good practice in terms of colour schemes, layout, navigational devices, typography, etc.
  • A consistency in the application of the above.
There are two ways that in-house designers can improve the graphical design of their programmes:
  1. Buy a good book on the subject (say Connie Malamed’s Visual Language for Designers or Timothy Samara’s Design elements – a graphic style manual) and then try to put into practice what you read.
  2. Employ a graphic designer to establish a look and feel that can be applied to all future programmes, and then encapsulate this in a style guide which includes templates for all common screen types.
The former is certainly cheaper and could work, although there’s always a danger that you will struggle to convert theory into practice. The latter takes a little more time and money but, assuming you can find a suitable designer who has experience of e-learning graphics (or at least web design), is a one-off investment that could pay off for years to come. Graphic designers are not that expensive and work quickly – this is unlikely to be a significant sum of money.
 
Unless you’ve got an eye for graphic design, in which case you’ve probably already lost interest in this post, I’d go for bringingn in the graphic designer. Sometimes doing-it-yourself is a false economy.

When only face-to-face will do

Back in May, Donald Clark told us Why I’m bored with F2F apologists! In principle, I’m in agreement with Donald. If you were to stop every car on the motorway (I don’t suggest you do this, because it would make you very unpopular) or interview every passenger on a typical train or plane, then you’d quickly appreciate how much energy is wasted on people travelling to training sessions, conferences and meetings that could easily have been accomplished online. On the other hand, I differ from Donald in that I believe there is still a strong case for people to meet together face-to-face upon occasion. This can be quite hard to pin down, so I set about creating my own list:

  1. The first and most obvious reason is that you live or work in close proximity and so there is very little reason not to meet face-to-face. If you work or live in the same building, campus or street and there is a meeting space available then, fair enough, take advantage of the situation. Most meetings don’t fall into this category.
  2. The internet may have multimedia capability, but it doesn’t meet all our sensory needs. Some activities require physical touch, smell or taste. Apart from the obvious examples, which shall remain unsaid, think of sports, meals, social drinking and so on.
  3. Some activities require us to interact with a physical object or place which cannot be adequately or economically simulated, e.g. equipment, musical instruments, buildings, vehicles.
  4. Sometimes a group of people need to interact together with full body language cues. An obvious example in l&d would be role play of interpersonal situations.
  5. It pays to be face-to-face when there is an extended amount of sustained and complex problem-solving to be done. I’m talking half day or more, when headsets become tiring and screen space is too limited to easily see all the necessary information, such as. maps, plans and lists of issues.
  6. In my experience, there is no substitute to being face-to-face when you need to win over a reluctant audience in real-time. Online it would be just too easy for them to pay little attention and disengage. In these situations you need constant eye contact and to be able to read every body language cue.
  7. Lastly, there is the obvious problem for those who work in busy offices; when you’re online, you can still be easily distracted by emails, telephone calls and visitors. Locked away in a meeting room, it is usually possible to get some peace.
So, what have I missed?

Social networking is fast becoming ubiquitous

Further evidence of the near universal appeal of social media comes in the form of a new report from Neilsen, which shows Internet usage in April of this year. According to the report:

  • Worldwide, 22% of all online time is spent social networking.
  • Three quarters of all Internet users visit a social networking site when they log on (that’s 24% more than just last year).
  • The average user is spending 66% more time on these sites than a year ago, which amounts to some six hours a month.
  • Australians spend the most time networking, followed by Americans and Italians. Don’t ask me why.
With social media practically ubiquitous, the pressure will inevitably mount for similar functionality to be present in enterprise systems. Surely connecting with people to share information and solve problems is even more vital at work than it is when we get back home.

Web conferencing is the scalable option

At the INGO E-Learning Conference today at Oxfam I had a chance to chat with Martin Baker of the Charity Learning Consortium. He told me about a new business book abstracting service called getAbstract, which is distributed in the UK by LMMatters. What I found interesting was the story he told me about one of the early clients for this service, a major multinational (to remain unnamed). The CEO decided to push the occasional 5-page abstract to lower levels of management within the organisation, as a stimulus for a subsequent discussion to be held online. The first abstract covered ther topic of innovation and they prepared the follow-up webinar on the assumption that 30 or 40 would attend. Tne result? An audience of 800.
This brought home two thoughts to me. Firstly, that the old 1-2 of an asynchronous piece of content followed by a synchronous debrief worked so well. Secondly that it would have been impossible to handle such an unpredictably large response in a face-to-face setting. Web conferencing really is the scalable option.

WebEx Meet – a bit of a bargain

An introduction to WebEx Meet beta.


If, like us at Onlignment, you run regular live online meetings with just a few participants, then I can’t see why you would pay for a service if you can use the new Cisco WebEx Meet beta – no good for webinars or virtual classrooms but just perfect for 5 or less people who want to desktop share, appshare, file share, use VOIP and record their meetings. It’s free, so I’m not sure where the snag is. Personally I find WebEx software reliable and straightforward to use, so I’m definitely going to be giving it a try.

Four strategies for online content

Demonstrates that online learning content varies dramatically in its role and shape depending on the learning strategy.


Online learning content can perform many different functions, depending on the learning strategy which you are employing. To make this point, I’ve adapted the descriptions of different approaches to learning as described by Ruth Clark and Merlin Wittrock in Psychological Principles of Training, published in Training and Retraining, Macmillan Reference USA (2001):

1. Exposition
By exposition we mean the delivery of learning content to the learner with little or nothing in the way of interaction. The learner is not choosing the content; it is delivered according to an established curriculum. Any passive content can be used in this way – web pages, podcasts, e-books, videos, slide shows and so on. The absence of built-in interaction may seem a restriction, but independent andvmore experienced learners are quite likely to cope well with this format – they can create their own interaction by taking notes, testing out the ideas in their own work or by discussing aspects of the content with their peers. Exposition may also work well as an element in a blended programme incorporating other strategies.
 
2. Structured instruction
Structured instruction is also a teacher-centred approach, but because it is likely to include a great deal of questioning and other practical activities, can be much more responsive to the progress being made by learners. Structured instruction is ideal for novices and more dependent learners, especially where the aim is to develop new skills. The most obvious example of structured instruction in online content is the typical e-learning module, an evolution from the computer-based training (CBT) formerly delivered offline using videodisc or CD-ROM.
 
3. Guided discovery
Guided discovery is a structured process, but one in which the learner is given considerable freedom to make mistakes and explore different options. The process is inductive, moving from the specific to the general. The hope is that upon reflection, the learner will be able to generalise from their experiences of a specific case, scenario or situation. Content can function as a catalyst for the discovery process, perhaps through a case study. In the case of a simulation or scenario, the content becomes the activity itself.
 
4. Exploration
This is the most learner-centred of the approaches. The ‘teacher’ here takes on the role of facilitator, helping learners to explore the available resources and to mould their own learning strategies. This approach is going to make most sense for independent learners who have ‘learned how to learn’. Online content can vary from public websites to online book sites to performance support materials to user-generated content to material originally intended for formal exposition. Thus we come full circle.
 
So what are the implications for the online content designer?
  • If you are creating new content, consider the strategy which this is primarily intended to support and what impact this might have on your design.
  • Consider whether the content will need to be combined with some other element in order to fulfil the strategy, e.g. opportunities for Q&A or assessments to accompany expository materials; opportunities for ongoing practice and feedback to support structured instruction; practical activities to provide additional opportunities for discovery; social media tools to support exploration.
  • Consider whether the content can be useful to support secondary strategies, perhaps even all four. You will be more successful in this respect if you keep the content modular and as free as possible from instructional context.

When do you speak for free?

Looks at when you should agree to speak for free and when you should demand a fee.

As a consultant who spends a great deal of time delivering presentations, both online and face-to-face, I am faced with the tricky decision of knowing whether or not to accept invitations to speak for free. If you are an academic, or an employee of an organisation that’s happy to sponsor you speaking externally, then the issue doesn’t arise; but for someone who is self-employed, the time required to prepare for, travel to and then deliver a presentation for free is all unpaid – you may not even get your expenses paid.
In time, I have developed my own personal guidelines:

  • If the event is run by a vendor or is in-company, then I expect a fee. If there is a requirement for me to develop a customised presentation, then I expect an even bigger fee.
  • If the event is open to the public but there is likely to be only a small audience or an audience to whom I am unlikely to be able to offer consulting services, then I expect a fee. If not, then the event must be in an exotic location (so no good for webinars) and all expenses must be paid!
  • If the event is public and there will be a good-sized audience of reasonable prospects, then I will speak for nothing in order to obtain the exposure. However, I will decide what I present and generally this will be a presentation I’ve delivered several times before.

So those are my rules, but everyone has to think this through for themselves. If you need some help in this, you could do no better than to get hold of Lee Salz’s book Stop Speaking for Free. He’s got a short video introducing his ideas on YouTube.

WebEx on your new iPad

News of the new Webex iPad app.

Cisco has announced a version of Webex that runs on the new iPad. I know Apple’s new toy hasn’t reached all parts of the world yet (including here in the UK), but if you were looking for a further excuse to shell out your hard-earned cash (because I doubt you’ll get your employer to pay) on the gadget which everyone covets yet no-one can really justify, then Webex has provided one. Yes, you can now participate in Webex meetings without your laptop. For audio you’ll need to use your mobile or a VOIP headset, but you’d need those with your laptop too.
Information from Webex can be found in Using Webex on your iPad.

The elements of online communications: a history

An addendum to the series of postings which looked at the applications and characteristics of the principle online media elements.

As an addendum to my series of postings looking at online media elements, I thought you might be interested in this potted history of online media:
1987
Compuserve announce the GIF graphics format, with lossless compression, transparency and animation capability. Nowhere much to use it yet, however, as no World Wide Web.
1988
The Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) is established. They develop the MPEG video compression formats used primarily on CDs / DVDs but also, to a limited extent, and much later, online.
1989
Tim Berners-Lee, working at CERN, releases the first proposal for the World Wide Web. The proposal includes HTML (HyperText Markup Language), the primary basis for formatting web pages to this day.
1991
The World Wide Web is launched.
One of the first webcams was set up at Cambridge University.
The first graphical MMPORG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) appears on AOL.
1992
The first SMS messages were sent from mobile phones.
1994
The first Netscape browser was launched. Support was provided for the JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format for displaying photographs online.
The first digital cameras were released.
1995
Sun Microsystems released the Java programming language, which was designed to support more sophisticated online applications than HTML could manage.
The very first VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) services made it possible to communication online using voice.
The Netscape browser adds support for JavaScript, a scripting language that provides additional functionality to HTML.
1996
Microsoft acknowledge that the Internet will be a reality in the long-term and launch Internet Explorer, a free browser.
The first instant messaging systems are launched.
The PNG graphics format is launched.
RealMedia launch their audio streaming service.
Macromedia (since acquired by Adobe) launch Flash as a tool for online animation.
Microsoft launch NetMeeting, an early web conference service.
1997
RealMedia extend their streaming to include video.
The PlaceWare Auditorium web conferencing service is launched (PlaceWare has sinced been purchased by Microsoft).
The term ‘weblog’ is coined. Two years later, it is first shortened to ‘blog’.
1998
The term ‘webinar’ is first coined.
1999
Google appears.
WebEx launches its web conferencing service.
CBT Systems coins the term ‘e-learning’.
2001
Launch of the Wikipedia.
Apple sells the first iPods.
The first 3G networks provide broadband capability for mobile phone users.
2002
SecondLife introduces its online, 3D virtual world.
2003
Skype introduces internet telephony.
Apple launch iTunes as a way to download music tracks.
More camera phones are sold worldwide than stand alone digital cameras.
2004
Facebook launches.
And Flickr, as a way to share photos online.
And Firefox, a new browser, based on Netscape Navigator.
Podcasting becomes popular.
2005
YouTube allows video content to be shared online.
2006
Twitter heralds the age of micro-blogging.
2007
Apple launch the iPhone.
At this point, it would be tempting to conclude that we have all of what we need in terms of tools and technologies for delivering online media. But of course we know better than that.