Category Archives: Learning Technologies

Insoluble opportunities

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We’re all encouraged to see problems and challenges as opportunities. The only thing is, though, that sometimes there are insoluble opportunities.

 

After more than 20 years, the HRD conference and exhibition – held, this year, at Olympia in London at the end of April – appears to be presenting its organisers, CIPD Enterprises, a division of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), with some of these insoluble opportunities.

 

Next year’s event is rumoured to be being re-named – a sure sign of the need for a ‘re-launch’ and ‘re-branding’. Judging by the lack of visitor numbers and the accompanying lack of ‘buzz’ at this year’s exhibition, combined with an exhibitor presence that was much smaller than in previous years, all is not as it used to be in the HRD world.


Compare this with the constant hustle and bustle in the incessant rugby scrum taking place, simultaneously with HRD, in the capacious halls of nearby Earl’s Court that signified InfoSecurity Europe. There was even a sister exhibition on the upper floor which was attracting far more attention than was HRD. There were even TV camera crews on the steps of Earl’s Court!

 

On this evidence, the HR world and its increasingly poor relation, the learning & development (L&D) sector, have lost out big time – yet again – to the IT world. Information security – notably protecting your organisation’s data from electronic attack and the sophisticated misuse of computer systems – is attracting a lot more interest and investment than is the development of the people who use these systems.

 

This trend is nothing new. For years, HR and L&D professionals have complained that they were second class citizens in terms of Board level interest and engagement. Accountancy and IT issues have always had a higher priority than HR with ‘C’ level executives. However, the growth of online learning and its bottom line benefits for user organisations appeared to have been going some way to redress the balance – until, that is, the current economic downturn.

 

Rising unemployment, along with other changing economic conditions, is prompting employers to retreat to their position before the Industrial Training Boards (ITBs) began operating in the late 1960s. Employers disliked the ITBs because they had statutory powers to make them train their staff or pay for not training but poaching skilled staff as required.

 

Without any moral or statutory need to develop their staff, employers can – in the current labour market conditions – recruit staff with the skills they want. They can then spend their money investing not in people skills through L&D but in the latest exciting technology, which promises to give their business an edge or at least safeguard the competitive edge they feel they already have.

 

Yet, as we keep being told, ‘people buy people, not products’. If employers – ‘UK plc’ – want to compete effectively, especially in the increasingly competitive world markets, they’ll need employees with world class skills. That’ll mean having to help them develop those world class skills – via L&D – because world class skills don’t just ‘mysterious appear’. They must be developed. Technology is both attractive and doesn’t answer back but not investing in UK plc workforce skills may be more of an insoluble opportunity than merely having to re-think and re-market HRD.  

Evolving interactivity

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It’s now some six months since Harbinger Knowledge Products – makers of Raptivity, the award-winning, rapid e-learning development software tool that comes with a library of pre-built customisable interactions, most of which are interactive – launched ‘Raptivity Evolve’ for its Raptivity premium customers. In that time, it’s produced five new interaction modules collaborating with Raptivity users, in response to these users’ suggestions.

 

Evolve is not just about creating and releasing new interactions. It also contains examples showcasing the many uses of interactions in online learning materials – applying various interaction features to learning materials for organisations in different sectors of the economy. For example, the ‘Drag-Drop-Sort’ interaction allows up to 25 options – of text, images or both – to be dragged and dropped onto targets to address different learning objectives. This feature can be used as a test, giving immediate feedback, or as an exercise by giving the feedback at the end, along with tracking the results.

 

According to Vikas Joshi, founder, Chairman and Managing Director at the Harbinger Group, the Raptivity Evolve initiative is a partnership between the Raptivity tool’s users and Raptivity Valued Professionals (RVPs) – that is, experts in the tool’s application who volunteer their help to the Raptivity using community.

 

The results of this collaboration are in evidence in the InteractivityHub, an online community where users exchange thoughts and ideas, ask questions and provide answers.

 

“When it comes to software tools, there’s no one better placed to know what users want than the users themselves,” said Vikas.

 

When a member of the Raptivity community, InteractivityHub, suggested building a learning interaction that involves characters and speech bubbles – to allow the course designer to input a dialog, and then for the software to render it in speech bubbles in a sequence – the Raptivity team liked the idea and this resulted in the ‘Character Dialog’ interaction. Another InteractivityHub member gave the Raptivity team the idea to produce the Raptivity Asset Library.

 

“This is the spirit of customer co-creation at its best,” Vikas added. “With Raptivity Evolve, we continue to build new interactions – and premium users get them for free. We say to users, ‘Tell Raptivity what you want us to build in the next interaction’ – and we’ll build it.”

 

So far, the Raptivity Evolve interaction modules are:

           

  • Drag-Drop-Sort (see above)
  • Character Dialog is a combination of characters and callouts (in the form of text and audio) for conversations. Some 17 types of characters in various poses are included as part of the ‘Raptivity asset library’. Character dialog allows users to convert images that are static into interactive ones.
  • Mine the Gold is an assessment-based game to boost learners’ strategic thinking.
  • Rapid Check assesses and reinforces learners’ understanding of a concept, as well as giving instant feedback to the learner.
  • Mind Map helps developers to organise content heavy information into simple sets and minimise complexity.

 

“The idea of innovative software that actively supports an on-going relationship has found good traction among e-learning developers,” said Vikas. “Products that you use are not just software. They come with professional relationships that you build with the vendor, other users and experts in the ecosystem. When you become a user of a product, you belong to a world of professionals that are linked to the product. Every tool you have in your bag is like a relationship. At the end of the day, it is all about relationships.”

 

In these social media dominated days, there’s a great deal of lip service paid to producers working with their customers to give those customers the products and services that they want – and letting their products and services evolve in the process. It seems that, in the case of Raptivity Evolve, Harbinger Knowledge Products is doing much more than paying lip service to this evolutionary idea. In this initiative it’s responding to the rapid change that’s taking place in the online learning software tools sector.

 

Importantly, as that champion of evolution, Charles Darwin once said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

Charles Darwin.

Ten tips to build interactivity

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Interactivity is a key component in the learning process. While it’s relatively easy for a teacher in a classroom to interact with the learners and, by ‘reading’ the situation, involve them in the learning process in the most effective ways, it’s much harder for those producing online learning materials. For one thing, they can only make educated guesses at their learners’ needs, state of mind, attitude to and preferences for learning and so on.

 

So, when developing online learning materials, it’s important to define the content that needs to be learned; determine what the learner must do as a result of completing these learning materials, and so decide on the most appropriate ‘treatment’ for the content. Users must interact with online learning materials to navigate through the materials; amass information and make decisions.

 

Considering what the learner needs to know or do – rather than what the teacher wants to teach – involves you in ‘interactivity’. So here are ten things to bear in mind about interactivity when you’re developing online learning materials:

  1. Allow the learners to control their learning – so they’re more likely to engage with the whole learning activity. You should always let them see where they’re going on their learning journey and what options they have at each stage of that journey.
  2. You should cater for different preferred learning styles. Not everyone wants to engage with the same type of interaction. Offer learners choices of interaction to go some way to ‘personalising’ the materials and so generate maximum engagement and motivation.
  3. Give the learners a reason to explore the materials and gather the information they need. Don’t ‘push’ information at them. Rather, let the learners ‘pull’ that information from the learning materials.
  4. Challenge the learners’ understanding – not just to find out how much they already know and, so, how much they need to learn but also to make them receptive to new ideas and ways of doing things.
  5. Give the learners choice over how they’ll learn – building in opportunities for those who need more information to get it as well as for those who need less information to learn by experiment and experience.
  6. Emphasise – in the learning materials - that these choices produce consequences. This can be done via establishing a scenario with various results depending on the learners’ decisions.
  7. Generate ‘tension’ throughout the materials. If you make learners care about the decisions they take, they’ll become more engaged with the learning materials and motivated to not only ‘succeed’ within the parameters of the learning materials but also to apply, in the real world, the lessons they’ve learned.
  8. Look for other ways – that is, things not specifically related to the materials’ learning objectives – to reward the learner for persevering with the learning materials. This could include permission to play a game (contained within the learning materials) for a while once certain key points are reached.
  9. Give helpful feedback following any assessments the learners take. That’s easier said than done!
  10. Make the materials look attractive to the user. Visually attractive materials aren’t necessarily the most effective – but if they’re not visually attractive, they won’t attract learners’ attention and, so, they’ll be ineffective anyway.

 

Instituted tastefully, interaction can help to make learning materials more intuitive for the user – making their message more memorable.

 

Of course, Harbinger Group’s Raptivity is a rapid interaction development software tool that comes with a library of pre-built customisable learning interactions. Users have access to over 180 pre-programmed Flash and over 110 HTML5 interactions including games, simulations, brainteasers, interactive diagrams and virtual worlds. Moreover, each type of interaction includes a number of standard templates – one of which is likely to be appropriate for any ‘learning situation’. The user merely has to add content to the chosen interaction. For more information, see Raptivity®

It ain’t what you say, it’s the way that you say it

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A recent study, published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication in the USA, has studied the impact of insulting comments about an article on readers’ capacity to understand the article’s content accurately. It has concluded that an abusive or offensive comment not only changes a reader’s response to what s/he’s read, it also changes her/his recollection and perception of it.

 

In the study, researchers asked people to read a blog post that explained a new technology product’s advantages and risks – and then read comments on that post (purportedly from other readers). Half of the participants were given reader comments that included verbal abuse. The other half of the sample read comments to the article that were similar in content, length, and intensity, but were civil in tone.

 

The researchers found that merely reading the abusive comments could distort the reader’s understanding of the original article. They reported: “Uncivil comments not only polarized (sic) readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the new story itself…. Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the purported technology was much greater than they’d previously thought.”

 

The study’s authors concluded: “It’s not the content of the comments that matters. It’s the tone” – echoing the sentiments of a calypso, first recorded in 1939 by Jimmy Lunceford, Harry James and Ella Fitzgerald, which was called, ‘It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it’.

 

Comment: This suggests that, with increasing emphasis being placed on social media – especially via blogs and tweets which encourage a reader response – our collective capacity to understand accurately what we are reading and viewing may be not as objective as we would like to think it is.

 

In any case, we need to accept that the choice of medium through which we receive our information is not value-neutral. Regardless of whether we agree with Marshall McLuhan’s famous assertion that “the medium is the message,” different media frame, translate, distort and constrain the content of their message in different ways.

 

Reading a news article in a paper is different from reading it online, seeing it on television, listening to it on radio, scanning the headline via Twitter, or hearing of it from a friend. In each case, we understand, process, analyse, remember and integrate such information differently. So, if we are to read intelligently and understand correctly, we need to also take account of the context and the medium.

How to buy the best, safely

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Typically, buyers of learning materials want the best products at the least cost, in the shortest time cycles, with the minimum risk and from the best vendors. They also want ‘continuity’ from those from whom they buy.

 

Online learning is characterised by being produced by multi-disciplinary teams, to demanding project management requirements and – in software terms – in relatively small order sizes. This makes it difficult for online learning producers to grow or, indeed, to stay in business over the longer term.

 

As budgets get tighter, buyers look more closely at their key criteria for buying and that puts pressure on suppliers. It also suggests suppliers need to look and think ‘global’. There are a number of benefits to be gained from ‘going global’, or internationalising your online learning materials development requirements.

 

Internationalisation brings shorter time cycles and faster development for online learning materials. Using a global producer reduces the risk to the buyer – that the producer will not have the skills or resources to produce the required materials and may not have a robust enough business to provide continuity of after-sales service and maintenance.

 

Global producers – with a global reputation to keep – should produce e-learning materials of a higher quality with fewer defects that smaller producers. And, they should be able to keep costs to a minimum.

 

There are 12 steps in learning design:

  • Client brief/study
  • Analysis
  • Concept definition
  • Interface and usability design
  • Software decisions
  • Content and interactivity design
  • Multimedia requirements definition
  • Template design
  • Documenting
  • Storyboarding
  • Prototyping
  • Micro storyboarding

 

When suppliers go ‘global’ they have to decide how to do all of these steps in a way that is related to each particular product and which incorporates clients’ wishes. One way to do this is to have task lists, then have templates and checklists for each stage and also have an additional level of review to take account of cultural and geographical differences between the producers and users of the e-learning materials.

 

As a global producer of e-learning materials, you need to ensure that the end user has access to the technology to use the materials you have developed. There needs to be an on-site co-ordinator for the users, along with local subject matter experts, local editors and end-user workshops. There also needs to be strong project management, not just taking account of but also exploiting the time differences between geographies – for example, using different time zones to reduce the time taken to develop the e-learning materials.

The people aspects of learning

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It’s all very well to promote the benefits of any or all forms of online learning – especially its flexibility – but people will only embrace this learning if they want to learn and are actively encouraged to do so by both their line and senior managers.

 

In addition to this managerial encouragement, there are other sources of potential motivation. One of these is that the learning must be done for regulatory or compliance purposes (basically, ‘do this learning or you lose your job’) but a further motivational source is the quality of the instructional design embedded in the learning materials.

 

In these days of rapid authoring tools and the idea that any subject matter expert can produce high quality e-learning at the touch of a template-wielding button, old fashioned instructional design has tended to take a back seat. Yet, to improve the chances of any piece of online learning being effective – in the sense of people actually wanting to do it and, maybe, even enjoying the experience – you should probably:

  • Set technical standards for the whole project – including lists of the software required and how it is to be set up.
  • Make sure that the instructional designer is fully briefed on the subject material by a subject matter expert (SME) – or that the SME is competent in instructional design skills in order to produce the learning materials.
  • Keep the format of the material simple.
  • Ensure that part of the production process is to test the programme rigorously with groups of users with similar skills to your target audience. Note their responses and the way they use the programme. Was it relevant to their jobs? Could its content be easily assimilated into working practices? Did they find navigating through the programme easy? How long did it take them to complete the programme? Did the user control the programme or go through it linearly (from start to finish)? And, of course, did the users enjoy the learning experience?

 

One common factor affecting the success of any learning project is the need for it to be supported wholeheartedly by all strata of management, led by senior executives. Nothing will succeed if you forget all of the people aspects of learning.

E-learning’s unlucky 13

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A while ago, over 100 learning professionals were asked what one thing most annoys them about online learning materials. Their responses were both varied and – significantly – many. Of these, the 13 most annoying traits of online learning materials were:

 

Patronising the learner

  • Having a section called ‘how to use this e-learning module’
  • Spelling out the materials’ objective – such as ‘By the end of this module you will have learned…’
  • Text-heavy sections labelled ‘Background’ or ‘History’- and the related issue of getting learners to read a company policy in the guise of it being ‘e-learning’.

 

Poor screen design

  • Pages cluttered – confusingly – with text and clipart graphics
  • Using text to explain what each button does, rather than letting the users explore and find out for themselves.
  • The use of fading text and pictures – in and out, in and out…- which just frustrates the user.
  • Inane, irrelevant and ineffective interactions – including fatuous multiple-choice questions.

 

Poor program design

  • The lack of a ‘page-turning’ running theme to keep user interest.
  • Having a robotic voice read all of the text as it appears on the screen – with no option to move on until the voice finishes (it’s a timeline the user can’t control).
  • Seeing the messages: Error 404. ‘Not Found’ and ‘Unable to open http://www…..’
  • Step locking – that is, making the user click everything that’s possible to click on before the page will advance (to ‘ensure understanding’ by the learner).

 

Performance issues

  • Images, such as an animated clock, along with the message ‘loading’ which takes several minutes to disappear, or the message, ‘Hang on, we’re having technical difficulties’ – followed by a frozen screen.
  • As the user submits something, the message appears on screen, ‘Sorry, your session has timed out’ – resulting in everything the user had produced disappearing into the ether.

 

If these traits seem worryingly familiar or, worse still, they’re recognisable in some of your own e-learning output, then there’s some useful guidance on how to make learning outcomes ‘work’, from Phil Race, at http://phil-race.co.uk/most-popular-downloads

 

On a different level, though, is the e-learning material – however it’s delivered – really what the learning is all about? Isn’t the real learning encapsulated and demonstrated in the activities that learners undertake, applying the knowledge they’ve gained having worked through the e-learning materials? After all, you can learn the Highway Code until by rote and you can use all the driving simulators there are but you can never say you’ve learnt to drive until you do it in a vehicle on a real road in the real world.

 

It’s well-known that we learn by doing. Yet e-learning materials still ask learners to read something, watch a video and/or listen to audio and then answer some questions. How does anyone – including the user – know they’ve really understood what they’re supposed to have understood unless their understanding is demonstrated in reality?

 

After all, despite what those in the learning technologies world might prefer to believe, e-learning is not, nor can it be, the real world.

Doing the right things at the right time

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There’s a tendency to do ‘just-in-case’ training rather than ‘just-in-time’ training. In other words, people are given access to learning materials in case they ever need to know what they’re being taught.

 

Key issues in today’s workplace are the pace of change; the appearance of broader and more complex job tasks, and the question of whether learning should be just-in-case or just-in time. If you opt for ‘just-in-time’ learning, you’re opting for performance support.

 

This can be applied to:

  1. Organisations: their structure, products and knowledge
  2. Office technology
  3. Business: applications and processes
  4. ‘Dynamic issues’: competitors, marketing and technical

 

Where required knowledge levels are low – typically from zero to 20 per cent – the most effective way to create this knowledge level is via training, using online materials, workshops, coaching, drill and practice. Where the required knowledge level is between 20 and 70 per cent, the most effective way to create this is via performance support, encompassing online and offline reference materials, drill and practice. And where the required knowledge levels exceed 70 per cent, the most effective ways to achieve this are via learning: reference materials, direct support, virtual campus and learning communities.

 

To check you’re doing the right thing at the right time where a learning programme is concerned, use the acronym ‘PRIDE’:

  1. Promoted – not just how is the learning programme marketed and advertised, but is the programme a part of the culture of the organisation?
  2. Relevant
  3. Instructionally sound – not just is it well designed, but is the content always sound in the light of current developments. In addition, you need to check on the way that the trainers and tutors are putting over and/or supporting the programme.
  4. Demonstrate value – does this piece of learning demonstrate value (however that can be defined) within the organisation?
  5. Effective – is it doing what you want?

 

This approach can’t overcome the ‘politics’ that exists in organisations but, all other things considered, it can help to arrest the decline phase of the programme lifecycle.

 

Pieces of learning have a natural lifespan. For example, you know when a job aid has worked – because the people throw it away. However, to keep learning going, you need flexibility – or change – within the delivery media.

 

All learning delivery media are flexible, although some are more flexible than others. Generally speaking, the more inflexible the media, the higher the cost involved in changing it. Costs associated with changing delivery media include changing the content, testing the programme and deploying the programme – all of which have their own issues.

 

Often, when people produce a learning programme, they think of what’s expensive to do in the first place. They don’t think of what’s expensive to change.

 

The key points here are to remember the ‘PRIDE’ acronym; use transition media where appropriate; draw together disparate elements of information within the organisation to make new learning materials – and keep focused on results.

 

This article has been adapted from the contents of chapter 10 of Bob Little’s e-book, ‘Perspectives on Learning Technologies’ (e-book; ASIN: B00A9K1VVS). This e-book is available from The Endless Bookcase and from Amazon. It contains over 200 pages of observations on issues in learning technologies, principally for learning & development professionals.

Key issues in mobile learning

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The drivers for adopting new technologies in learning include not only the suppliers and customers (buyers) but also the consumers (users) – in other words, everyone. Decide, design, develop and deploy is the standard four-step process relating to technology. Increasingly – since about 2006 – consumers want to use mobile devices for learning and for the less formal ‘performance support’. Initially, there can a high cost of ownership (of the latest mobile devices). So the key issue for HR and learning & development (L&D) professionals is how to get the maximum value from, and use of, this technology.

 

Mobile devices are now readily available – and we all have them. Communications, games and entertainment, business services, L&D, commerce and other business transactions, as well as business opportunities are inter-connected with mobile applications in the sense that they both influence and are influenced by these mobile applications.

 

These days, it’s not about getting content to people but, rather, using mobile devices to answer specific learning, development and/or performance needs. The learning materials’ content and its treatment are influenced by what people want and need.

 

Add to that the benefits for learners from personalised and contextualised learning – from mobile-delivered programs that can discover where the learners are; what they already know; what they need to know, and then provide the relevant learning materials – and you can see how mobile learning (m-learning) can become an ideal medium to get the right information to the right person at the right time.

 

‘M-learning’ is an area of learning technology which is developing rapidly. Today’s key issues include how can:

  • Users and their employers get maximum value from, and use of, this technology?
  • Learning materials be personalised and contextualised to make them appropriate for the user, whatever her/his need, location and delivery device?
  • The increasingly wide range of mobile devices be best used to deliver both (formal) learning and (informal) performance support materials?

This article has been adapted from the contents of chapter 11 of Bob Little’s e-book, ‘Perspectives on Learning Technologies’ (e-book; ASIN: B00A9K1VVS). This e-book is available from The Endless Bookcase and from Amazon. It contains over 200 pages of observations on issues in learning technologies, principally for learning & development professionals.

 

 

The challenges of change

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There’s always change but the corporate learning sector has been experiencing more than its usual share recently.

 

On a strategic level, there’s a growing trend towards learning technology suppliers moving away from control by learning technologists. A recent 101-page IBIS Capital report on the e-learning sector, with market information and analysis from Learning Light, highlights 42 significant mergers and acquisitions in this sector since the beginning of 2011. Since those figures were compiled, the UK-based Kineo has been acquired by City & Guilds and Italy’s global player in the learning content management system market, eXact learning solutions, has been acquired by the international management consultants, Lattanzio Group, Neither of these buyers had previously owned a learning technology company.

On a tactical, technological level, the sector is experiencing change in terms of new sources of learning delivery. These tend to be social media dominated, such as Pinterest, Pearltrees, Storify and ShortForm. As Seth Godin, the blogger and best-selling author, has observed, ““We don’t have an information shortage; we have an attention shortage.”

 

These new technologies build on and encourage the easy spread of information and conversation. They are encouraging those in the field of corporate online learning to widen their understanding of learning and development (L&D). There are now many acknowledged routes to ‘learning’, along with a growing range of learning delivery channels. Results, in terms of improved job performance, having ‘learned’ – rather than following a prescribed method by which to learn – are becoming the key criteria in corporate learning effectiveness.

 

This trend is unstoppable – given the continued growth both in vehicles for learning and in things to learn and apply – but it’s putting greater strain on L&D professionals. When ‘learning’ was a simpler business, it could be managed and administered. Outputs in terms of numbers (the number of people who took a ‘course’ or achieved a ‘pass score’ in a test, for example) could be determined and were unambiguous – even if they didn’t mean a great deal in terms of the learners’ transfer of skills and actual job performance.

 

L&D professionals are now facing some deep psychological issues which strike at the heart of their identity, self-image and self-worthiness. For example, is their role to continue creating and/or finding learning materials and then making them available to learners? Or should they be enablers, counsellors, mentors and then ‘learning accountants’ who assess the value of a learner’s learning experience in the light of that person’s resulting change in job performance?

 

The latter may be preferable in today’s business world but it will be hard to do.

 

How can L&D professionals establish an objective basic performance level for a learner, from which to benchmark that learner’s subsequent performance? How will a piece of ‘achieved learning’ be discovered and analysed by the L&D professional? Over what period will that piece of learning remain ‘valid’ to enable the L&D professional to take account of it to see if the learner applies it in her/his job?

 

Increasingly, learning activities are informal and, thus, will probably be unmonitored since modern learning technologies make it easy for people to learn from others – especially their peers. Many ‘amateur’ learners won’t necessarily know they’ve undergone a learning experience and yet they will have learned something which will help them do their job more effectively or efficiently.

 

Developing technology offers humanity a great many advantages. Yet for the L&D professional, this will pose problems. It merely multiplies to opportunities for informal learning. This should have enormous benefits in terms of performance and productivity but it makes it even harder to quantify and justify the L&D professional’s job.

 

So there could be even greater changes ahead where corporate learning and corporate learning technologies are concerned.