Sharing with you a list of HR, Training, Learning conferences in India. Most of these are annual conferences.
Drop me a note in comments section in case I missed out a conference that you feel should be added to the list.
Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Learning. Show all posts
Sharing with you a list of HR, Training, Learning conferences in India. Most of these are annual conferences.
Drop me a note in comments section in case I missed out a conference that you feel should be added to the list.
What's Your Tag Line?
Labels:
HR,
job search,
Learning,
management tip,
people management,
Recruitment,
tag line,
Training
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The conversation got me thinking. Before that time I had never thought what was my tag line. After some thought, I chose "Enabling People" as my tag line. I like to enable people deliver better, by creating an environment that enables them to succeed, by sharing knowledge, by learning from them, by encouraging free ideas and thoughts, This could be my team, my clients, or my friends and family.
What's your tag line?
Inspired by a recent post by Anand (who btw has just turned
to become an independent Learning Consultant, give him a shout out in
case you are looking for someone) where he categorizes variety of stakeholders
who want to get on the LMS bandwagon as Yell, Yum and Yes.
In my view there are three kinds a CLOs implementing or
having implemented a Learning Management System (LMS). They are the Learning
CLO, Management CLO and the Systems CLO.
The Learning CLOs
are all about learning and not so much about training. In fact they might not
even care about LMS or other systems as long as learning is taking place. They
look for social features in the LMS, they look for extending the LMS beyond managing
and measuring training days. They also might have a hard time explaining to the
CEO how they are measuring all the learning taking place in the organization.
The Management CLOs
are all about trying to be in control of learning and training in the
organization. They want roles competencies with defined learning plans for each
individual. All training must be ‘approved’ and costs down to the last penny/cent/paisa
must be booked to the right department.
Finally the Systems
CLOs want to track everything, right from the training request to smiley
sheets. They want everything automated, they want alerts for training launches,
approvals, reminders, etc. They want reports that are automated and LMS with linkages
with other enterprise systems.
No points for guessing which CLO might be the best. You need
a good blend of all, Learning, Management and Systems.
Stay Young, Keep Learning
Labels:
Advice,
Job,
Job Advice,
Learning,
Professional,
Professional Advice,
Resume,
Youth
2
comments
Tim Sanders recommends expanding your resume every year to avoid getting lapped up in the sport of business by those who do.
He writes in his post:
He goes on to say:
Read his full post here: If You Don't Expand This Annually, You Are Getting Lapped
About Tim Sanders:
Tim Sanders is a rare hybrid of business expert and keynote speaker. Coupled with his passion, insight and research ability, Tim is able to move audiences to action when he speaks, give clients innovative solutions when he consults, and share knowledge when he writes. Through Tim's significant business expertise and people skills, his work is frequently featured in the media where he has earned the reputation as a people-centric business expert.
He writes in his post:
Youth is a state of mind, not a counting of years. In my experience, the secret to eternal youth is lifelong learning...the constant expansion of one's resume of experiences and insights. Henry Ford once quipped, "Anyone who stops learning becomes old, whether at twenty or at eighty. Anyone that keeps learning stays young."
He goes on to say:
If you aren't expanding your resume every year, you are likely being getting lapped in the sport of business by those that do. You can improve a resume without changing jobs. You can add areas of expertise or new areas of project work. You can add volunteer work, hobbies or interests. You can add professional associations you've joined and contributed to. All of these additions give your career a sense of momentum, which gives you the confidence to embrace change.
Read his full post here: If You Don't Expand This Annually, You Are Getting Lapped
About Tim Sanders:
Tim Sanders is a rare hybrid of business expert and keynote speaker. Coupled with his passion, insight and research ability, Tim is able to move audiences to action when he speaks, give clients innovative solutions when he consults, and share knowledge when he writes. Through Tim's significant business expertise and people skills, his work is frequently featured in the media where he has earned the reputation as a people-centric business expert.
Donald H Taylor, chairman of LPI, LSG & the Learning Technologies conference explains how Learning and Development Departments need to change their attitude to risk in order to keep pace with the rest of the business in today's modern world. He describes 4 quadrants in which L&D departments fit: Learning Leadership, Unacknowledged Prophet, Comfortable Extinction and The Training Ghetto and explains how and why all L&D departments should join the quadrant of Learning Leadership.
I feel there are many life management lessons to be learned from the series. What do you do when a peer becomes your boss? What do you do when a junior becomes your boss? How do you handle situations where you don’t get what you are aspiring for? How to build self-realization of own capabilities or the lack of them, for certain roles? How to fuel the hunger to continue to become better at what you are doing without worrying about the position within the organization structure? How to keep your ego aside in these situations and continue to focus on becoming better at your job?
It is hard to be in these professional situations. And painful too. It hurts our pride, our ego, when we are in these situations. It is interesting to see in the series how leaders provide clear feedback about capabilities and skills without getting personal. And the ability of the professionals in the series to take the feedback and deal with it on face value without making it personal.
I have seen some of these situations closely in my professional career. Some of these have been extremely painful and messy. As a leader I have messed up giving feedback for the fear of losing the person. As a professional, my ego has been hurt at my position in the organization. And so I strive to be the leader and professional like the characters in the series.
This year I completed 20 years in the learning and development industry. As I reflect back, some things just remain the same, especially in elearning. Even today when I tell someone that I develop elearning, I get the “Oh that’s an upcoming industry”. Even after 20 years, elearning is still an upcoming industry!!!
Elearning development continues to be riddled with the same questions over the years with no right answers. Many years ago, when I was learning Instructional Design (ID), one of the mentors said the full form of ID is actually “It Depends”. Seems like the same for elearning. “It Depends” on so many factors and even after so many years, it is still the same.
What is one hour of elearning? I explored this question a few years back on eCube blog. I don’t think there’s still any right answer for this. Even when elearning was simplistic frame-based, it was hard to agree on what is one hour of elearning. Now with a host of interactivities, social learning, gamification of elearning, it is even harder to define what is one hour of elearning. And even if we take the simple calculation of frames per hour, there are ranges based on “levels” of elearning. Hopefully we will have new questions with the advent of social learning. Can it even be measured in hours?
What are different levels of elearning? While the amount of interactivity and media treatment in elearning is used to define “levels” of elearning, you also need to keep in mind what instructional objective the elearning is trying to achieve, and the complexity of content being delivered. Still no right answers here.
How long does it take to create one hour of elearning? This question that is asked all the time but still really has no simple answer. “It Depends” on various factors. An interesting resource is a year 2009 ASTD article by Karl Kapp. Even this is not a good enough guideline and no two elearning experts will agree with these numbers.
How much does it cost? “It Depends”. But even after defining the cost affecting parameters, there are still no standard costs in the industry. In one competition analysis, we realized that for the same opportunity the customer got bids from 50K to 500K (INR) for the requirements they floated. Obviously it’s going to confuse the customers completely, especially the ones who are new at embarking on the elearning journey.
How many elearning hours will my existing ILT translate to? First, how many hours is one day of ILT? Is it 8 hours, 7 hours, 6 hours? And what’s the conversion to ILT to elearning? Is it 2:1, 1:1, 1.5:1? No consensus in the industry on that. And there continue to be wild expectations from elearning. One potential customer recently was expecting their 5 day ILT class to be converted into a couple of hours of elearning. Wouldn’t that be nice!
I have all the content. Why does it cost so much? All you are doing is putting it all together. I find this very similar to the question that photographers are asked. Why does it cost so much. All you are doing is pressing the shutter on the camera to take pictures.
Why does it take so long? Of course it can be done faster. But are the customers ready to respond with the speed at which they demand it to be done, and especially if they are attempting to do it the first time? This also will help understand why it costs so much. So are the management structures in place to approve the various stages during development? Even with rapid elearning development models, there’re always too many levels of management having views on what’s being developed and whether it works for the company or not. So while the pure elearning development can be quick, the deployment can take a long time.
How do I measure the effectiveness? The question continues to be asked over the years. While we have evolve from the simple ROI calculation (save travel costs through elearning), there are no right answers for measuring effectiveness of specific programs. Perhaps that’s not right for me to say. There are specific ways to measure effectiveness. However to implement these requires time, effort and more money. So while the customers are looking for effectiveness and ROI measures, they are unwilling to spend on actual implementation of practices to measure the effectiveness.
I need something different in elearning. Err, to be honest I still get away by impressing potential customers with elearning developed 7 to 10 years ago. The elearning content that I see is still the same as it was 15-20 years ago. So we moved from DOS and Video based learning to GUI based to Web based. But it’s pretty much the same stuff. There’re still the same learning paths or table of contents, learning objects that need to be tracked, still the same old next-previous button, still the same show-me/try-it simulations, still the same glossary button. And it’s not that these designs don’t work, they still do. And we continue our quest for finding the next best thing in elearning.
So even though a lot has changed in elearning in the last 20 years, the questions we ask pretty much remain the same.
I am not learning anything new.
I am still doing what I did years ago.
There is no “growth” for me.
I have heard this a few times lately. It seems there’s a
quest for continuous learning. And there’s the quest for learning something “new”
all the time. Unfortunately there’s no quest to hone and improve what we know.
There’s a quest to spread ourselves thin without learning in depth about
anything. If I have done something once, it seems I know everything there is to
know about it. And “growth” is only a rung in the corporate ladder, a
designation change.
Huh!!!
Pandit Jasraj is still singing after years and years of
singing. I wonder if he says I am not learning anything new and that I have singing
for all these years. I am still a singer, what I was 20 years ago, there’s no “growth”
for me.
If the quest is for continuous learning something new each
time, what are we doing about it? Are we reading new things? Are we spending
time networking with other knowledgeable people and engaging in a conversation
with them? Are we writing and speaking about what we are learning?
And are we actually willing to learn? How can we be willing
to learn anything new if we believe that we know it all? Where is the space for
new learning in this situation?
Clients From Hell... and Heaven!
Labels:
Clients,
Guest Post,
Learning,
Partners,
Results,
The Big Picture,
Types of Clients,
Value
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This is a guest post By Puja Anand
Recently, I saw a website titled Clients from Hell that had funny anecdotes from web designers about unreasonable or uninformed clients with strange requirements. It got me thinking about the clients I have interacted with in the last 10-12 years. Who among them would qualify as clients from hell?
Are they the clients who ask us to reduce our prices, even as the expenses go up? Are they the ones who expect work to be delivered two weeks earlier than our proposed tight schedules? Are they the ones who ask us to change features that they approved in earlier deliverables?
It may sound hard to believe but the answer to all three questions is No. Of course, we all wish for customers who would pay us more, or do their part in the development process on time, or have sanctity for prior approvals, but we recognize that these are reflections of the environment our clients are in and of the nature of the beast called e-learning development. More importantly, these demands for lower prices, faster timelines and flexible processes have a hidden potential for creating value in the long run.
Value is the real differentiator. So, it makes sense to look for client engagements where no or little value was created for anyone involved. When I looked at all clients from this lens of value, three types of clients stood out.
The Window Dresser
This type of client gets into e-learning to impress someone else or to appear to be someone they aren’t. It sounds hard to believe that such clients would exist, especially since a significant cost is involved in developing e-learning solutions. But I have come across such clients in some government departments or large traditional firms.
The problem with such clients is that there is no real commitment to the e-learning initiative and therefore, there is no champion for it in the organization. As a result, the carefully crafted content, a product of myriads of reviews and rework, sits on the specially chosen highly-secure servers for years without being used by anyone. So much effort and value lost! Another consequence is more long lasting and damaging: A failed attempt at e-learning results in negative perceptions about the effectiveness of e-learning that persist for very long.
The Pedant
These clients are sticklers for all kinds of rules and take great pride in their attention to detail. All deliverables are scrutinized for minute issues (e.g. line alignment down to a pixel) and a lot of energy and goodwill is used up in fixing them. Sometimes, this takes a different turn- a lot of time and energy is used up in adding bells and whistles to every page (e.g. this button should blink twice and stop, these bullet points should be accompanied by sound effects, this page should have an animated transition etc).
So what is wrong with such clients, you may ask. After all, don’t they help improve the quality of the output and therefore create value? Not really. The increased focus on small and insignificant details often means that deeper issues are overlooked, such as completeness of the content and its relevance to the audience. Once the training is launched, it falls short and doesn’t provide any real benefit to the users. Once again, so much wasted effort and so little value!
The Commitment Phobe
This type of client delays making decisions on every step in the development process. Often, the person in charge is either not empowered to make decisions and/or the company’s culture is very hierarchical. The decision makers want to limit their role to seeing the final product and pronouncing it passed or failed, and junior staff is too inexperienced to deal with any design- or content-related issues confidently. Sometimes, the situation is compounded by lack of support for the e-learning initiative by the SMEs.
The problem with such clients is that projects can take inordinately long time to be completed. E-learning launch, typically tied to an impending training cycle, is delayed and loses its momentum and support of several stakeholders. Sometimes, content is outdated by the time the course is developed. Colossal loss of effort and value for everyone involved.
As I pondered over the above three types of clients, I couldn’t help thinking of the clients who are at the other end of the spectrum, clients we love to work with. What attributes of these clients propels us to create great content that adds tremendous value to the end users of the training? This is what I think makes these clients special.
Total Commitment to Results
These clients have a single focus- the results that the training will help achieve. This means that they have a clear idea of both the learner and business needs and understand what will meet these needs most effectively.
Focus on the Big Picture
Another attribute that these customers demonstrate is a hold on the big picture. When the big picture is to change the mindset of employees, or to equip them with certain skills, it becomes easier to make decisions about where to expend most effort and energies.
Work as Partners
Finally, this set of clients always works with the development team as partners with common goals and approach the relationship from a position of trust and respect. E-learning development is a two-way street. When the development team and the client work as partners, magic can and does happen.
About the Author:
Puja Anand is a seasoned e-learning designer, manager and business leader. She has over 15 years of experience in the industry. Currently on a sabbatical, her last role was as the CEO of Learning Solutions at Knowledge Platform. Find her on LinkedIn at: http://sg.linkedin.com/pub/puja-anand/1/957/834
Illustrations by Irene Wan; Cartoon from http://sinkorschwim.wordpress.
Recently, I saw a website titled Clients from Hell that had funny anecdotes from web designers about unreasonable or uninformed clients with strange requirements. It got me thinking about the clients I have interacted with in the last 10-12 years. Who among them would qualify as clients from hell?
Are they the clients who ask us to reduce our prices, even as the expenses go up? Are they the ones who expect work to be delivered two weeks earlier than our proposed tight schedules? Are they the ones who ask us to change features that they approved in earlier deliverables?
It may sound hard to believe but the answer to all three questions is No. Of course, we all wish for customers who would pay us more, or do their part in the development process on time, or have sanctity for prior approvals, but we recognize that these are reflections of the environment our clients are in and of the nature of the beast called e-learning development. More importantly, these demands for lower prices, faster timelines and flexible processes have a hidden potential for creating value in the long run.
Value is the real differentiator. So, it makes sense to look for client engagements where no or little value was created for anyone involved. When I looked at all clients from this lens of value, three types of clients stood out.
The Window Dresser
The problem with such clients is that there is no real commitment to the e-learning initiative and therefore, there is no champion for it in the organization. As a result, the carefully crafted content, a product of myriads of reviews and rework, sits on the specially chosen highly-secure servers for years without being used by anyone. So much effort and value lost! Another consequence is more long lasting and damaging: A failed attempt at e-learning results in negative perceptions about the effectiveness of e-learning that persist for very long.
The Pedant
So what is wrong with such clients, you may ask. After all, don’t they help improve the quality of the output and therefore create value? Not really. The increased focus on small and insignificant details often means that deeper issues are overlooked, such as completeness of the content and its relevance to the audience. Once the training is launched, it falls short and doesn’t provide any real benefit to the users. Once again, so much wasted effort and so little value!
The Commitment Phobe
The problem with such clients is that projects can take inordinately long time to be completed. E-learning launch, typically tied to an impending training cycle, is delayed and loses its momentum and support of several stakeholders. Sometimes, content is outdated by the time the course is developed. Colossal loss of effort and value for everyone involved.
As I pondered over the above three types of clients, I couldn’t help thinking of the clients who are at the other end of the spectrum, clients we love to work with. What attributes of these clients propels us to create great content that adds tremendous value to the end users of the training? This is what I think makes these clients special.
Total Commitment to Results
These clients have a single focus- the results that the training will help achieve. This means that they have a clear idea of both the learner and business needs and understand what will meet these needs most effectively.
Focus on the Big Picture
Another attribute that these customers demonstrate is a hold on the big picture. When the big picture is to change the mindset of employees, or to equip them with certain skills, it becomes easier to make decisions about where to expend most effort and energies.
Work as Partners
Finally, this set of clients always works with the development team as partners with common goals and approach the relationship from a position of trust and respect. E-learning development is a two-way street. When the development team and the client work as partners, magic can and does happen.
About the Author:
Illustrations by Irene Wan; Cartoon from http://sinkorschwim.wordpress.
Career Paths for Trainers
Labels:
Career,
career paths,
Jobs,
Learning,
Management,
people management,
trainers,
Training,
Work,
Workplace
2
comments
Someone asked a question on the career growth paths for trainers on one of our internal forums. And about the same time I came across this interesting blog post which talks about not worrying about career path and living your career story, written by Jason Seiden. It is from Dan McCarthy’s list of 20 Best Leadership Blog Posts of 2010. Just loved the way Jason explains the need to dump career paths and focus on building your career stories.
So, what could be a Trainer's career stories? While it is really for each one to decide for themselves, I can imagine some of them going like these:
- A trainer could become a better trainer. This seems to be least favorite path of trainers but is the most crucial and can take trainers to the peak. It is also the hardest in my view. By becoming better trainers I mean really be known in the industry. Build your social network and stay in touch with your students. Continue providing them assistance post training. Be less of 'sage on stage' and more of a 'coach by the side'. Start a blog and write a book on your subject or on how to become a better trainer. Understand how people learn and create training practices that help people learn faster. Do research on the subject of training and learning. If you are in the training business, there is a great scope for better trainers who go beyond training in a class and help build learning solutions, who can do research and appropriately adapt their training strategies, or even create new ones, who can create new standards in the training industry.
- Depending on the acumen towards operations, people management and business, trainers could move to roles like managing training, handling projects and other ops roles. Trainers could even take on sales/business roles. They could move to manage training centers, area, territory, region, zone, country. Many senior people in our organizations have been trainers at some point of their careers. All training businesses need people with good ops, sales and business management skills and acumen.
- Trainers could become Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for content development projects. Trainers could even start writing content, depending on the skill and interest. Trainers could become full-fledged content developers. And from there ID specialists, or take the other path of project management. From either path, trainers could move to taking on business or sales roles.
There's no dearth of career growth paths and I am sure there are many more than what I have listed above. What's really important is to figure out what's the career story we want to create for ourselves.
I am going through a leadership workshop and as part of that, we took the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) questionnaire. I have taken this questionnaire a few times before and have sat through sessions explaining the concept of physiological types. This time however our facilitator Santosh Babu provided some interesting perspectives and insights into the test.
There’s a difference between type and trait. Type is who you really are. However trait is something that you demonstrate. I think when I filled the questionnaire, I answered questions according to the traits I demonstrate, or perhaps even the traits I want to/need to demonstrate. When our facilitator explained the different types, I felt I was quite different from type that the questionnaire identified for me.
The E-I Dichotomy
The Extraversion-Introversion dichotomy is primarily about how you use your energy. Extraversion people are people who can easily communicate with various people, communicating with others is energy generator for them. Introversion people are people who prefer to think deeply and prefer to have their own space. It is not that the Introversion people can’t communicate or generally display more “introvert” characteristics. It is just that they need to make the extra effort to communicate and then need some time alone to recuperate. Extroversion people typically have more breadth (multiple interests but not deeply into any) while Introversion people are people with more depth (fewer interest but with more focus). Introversion people act as extroversion people when they are with their close friends or if the topic of discussion is about their interest.
The S-N Dichotomy
The Sensing-Intuitive dichotomy is about how you communicate. The Sensing people tend to first identify the elements and then build a picture around those elements. The Intuitive people tend to create a big picture. Sensing people will first spot the small mistakes in documents/reports, while the Intuitive people will focus on what the document/report. The Intuitive people are more imaginative and verbally creative.
The T-F Dichotomy
The Thinking-Feeling dichotomy is about decision making style. Thinking people will collect data. They will create systems, processes and rules. They want to be fair using the data and rules around these. Thinking people want to be objective and fair. They are analytical and want to identify what’s wrong with something so they can solve the problem. They may appear to be tough minded. The Feeling people are more focused on being fair to the situation and the people involved. They use personal value to make decisions. They assess the impact of decisions on people and strive for harmony and positive interactions. They may appear soft hearted.
The J-P Dichotomy
The Judging-Perceiving dichotomy is about orientation to external world. The Judging people are more structure, organized and like to live in a planned and orderly way. Perceiving people tend to be more flexible and spontaneous in their ways. They prefer to stay open to last minute options and can adapt to change.
By the questionnaire, I am ENTJ personality type. However by explanations above, I am closer to ISFP or even ISFJ at times. The facilitator also suggested that you could take three inputs – the test, your own feel and what others might perceive you as to identify your personality type and traits you demonstrate.
2009 was a continuation of my journey of online self-learning. I share with you the top learning resources from my PLE (personal learning environment) for the year 2009. I have found these valuable in my learning during the year. This is definitely not a comprehensive list.
Here are my top learning resources for the year 2009 (in no particular order):
- Twitter has been one of the most valuable learning tool for me this year. You can find the learning professionals I follow here and here.
- Stephen Downes OLDaily newsletter – The best of online learning daily updates, the one email subscription you should have
- Workplace Learning Today, Brandon Hall – A great aggregator blog of happenings around workplace learning
- Tom Kuhlmann’s Rapid E-Learning Blog. If you thought PowerPoint was boring, you’d be dead wrong. A great resource to learn to transform your elearning using PowerPoint and Articulate.
- HarvardBusiness.org Voices – various authors, very insightful management and leadership posts
- Great Leadership by Dan McCarthy has been a find this year. Great writing on leadership.
- Sumeet Moghe’s Free as in Freedom
- Zaid Ali Alsagoff’s ZaidLearn – The best lists, you can find almost everything here.
- Harold Jarche’s blog
- Ken Allen’s Blogger in Middle-Earth
- Clive Shepherd’s Clive on Learning
- Tony Karrer’s eLearning Technology
- Upside Learning blog started their weekly finds that have been very useful.
- Learning Practice by Vasan has had some interesting posts that got me thinking.
- Sahana Chattopadhyay’s ID and Other Reflections
- Tom Stone at Element K blog provides useful summaries of learning and development events and news. (Disclosure, I work for Element K)
- Gina Minks shares her Adventures in Corporate Education in her blog
- Ellen Behrens’ alearning or Association eLearning to be exact.
- Jane Bozarth's Bozarthzone has thoughts about the training and development field.
- Clark Aldrich On Simulations and Serious Games as the name says it all.
- e-Clippings (Learning As Art) by Mark Oehlert
- Informal Learning Blog by Jay Cross
- Karl Kapp’s Kapp Notes is another great resource for learning in 3D.
- Cammy Bean shares her Learning Visions.
- Clark Quinn shares useful Learnlets.
- Cathy Moore’s Making Change is a must for practical instructional design and elearning tips.
- Patrick Dunn’s Occasional Rants are not mere rants.
- George Siemens writes about learning, networks, knowledge, technology, community in elearnspace.
- Serious Games Market, another find this year.
For updates about technology, I rely on my Twitter network. If there’s something interesting, it gets retweeted around anyway.
I also developed interest in photography this year. Two photography blogs I follow are Beyond Megapixels and Digital Photography School.
I also share specific posts that I find useful. You can view them here.
Hope you find these resources as useful as I have found them.
Amit Garg asks whether we learn more from successes than failure. He mentions an article on Science Daily that suggests brain cells learn more from successes than failures. Well, at least that’s how monkeys learn based on a research by scientists at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory according to the article. Do read the interesting conversation ongoing on his blog post.
Do organizations learn from successes? Do they even attempt at learning from successes? I don’t think organizations and managers do a good job at learning from successes. And I am as guilty as anyone else of this. The whole management review governance structures are built around learning from mistakes and ignoring successes. We have goals and measure progress against these. If our goals are consistently being met, there’s hardly any time spent on reviews. However if the goals aren’t met, or a perhaps a project has gone bad, we spend inordinate amount of time doing root cause analysis and identifying corrective actions. Of course root cause analysis and identify corrective actions are absolutely required and we really can’t afford not to do these. We do need to prevent problems from recurring and look for ways to continuously improve the process. However we hardly spend any time in learning what we might be doing right when goals are met, or from projects that went well.
We celebrate successes but don’t necessarily attempt to learn from them formally as much as we attempt to learn from mistakes. Our former Creative Director would go sore screaming at managers including me, (not literally, don’t get me wrong now) on why we weren’t looking at the 9 projects that went well instead of trying to find out why 1 project went bad.
Why don’t we learn from successes? Could it because it is harder to learn from successes? Or perhaps successes are expected from each of us and we are just doing our job when we succeed. And if we are already doing our job well, what’s to learn?
It would be interesting to know if there are any formal methods of learning from successes, like there are for learning from failures. Any best practices from organizations out there?
Photo by:
After trying out Twitter for some time, I started experimenting with Yammer sometime early this year. I would say we are still in the experimentation phase with micro-learning. I started with sending some invites and broadcasted some messages. It was a slow start with me invite some colleagues and then the pace picking up quickly as the joining went viral. People invited other colleagues and the membership soon grew (we now have more than 90 people on our Yammer network). Messages started to flow. The Yammer platform was used to generate ideas and brainstorm their implementation. The micro-learning environment opened communication between departments that traditionally had little or no interaction. People exchanged tips about frequently used software tools. Links to interesting posts were shared on the network.
And then things began to settle down. The pace at which new members grew has slowed down. The messages are now just about trickling in, only a few each week, mostly sharing external links. In the micro-learning usage hype cycle, I think we are somewhere in the shaded area in the Yammer usage hype cycle below.
Some of the challenges to micro-learning adoption:
- Culture: Actually it is the culture of broadcasting yourself. Not everyone is used to broadcasting what they are doing. This takes some time to develop. We have a few champions and power users who are trying to push the usage and keep the networking going. It is important to identify as many champions as possible to get conversations going on the environment.
- Training: Ok, let’s face it, not everyone knows how to get the most of a micro-learning environment. We haven’t done any training for the people using Yammer. In a survey of Yammer users, we found that most people use the Yammer web page and very few actually used the desktop application. Using the web page is cumbersome and can make participation daunting. Desktop application is ‘always on’ and provides alerts on new messages. And, more importantly, training required is also required on how to benefit from micro-learning environments, what people can expect and what is expected from them.
- Competition: Micro-learning environment is new and faces competition from other more used services like email and instant messages. Yes, there are clear distinctions between the services, but people are more comfortable with email and IM. People need to see distinctive advantages of using a micro-learning environment.
The benefits of micro-learning environment are many and we will continue to push for its usage.
- Opens communication across various departments of the organizations.
- A great way to generate and build on ideas, not limited by the people in a room.
- Easy to share links and useful info with everyone.
- It’s a great tool to engage everyone in the organization.
In spite of the benefits, I am still not sure how to make convincing case for actually spending money on Yammer or another micro learning environment. I haven’t figured a compelling business case for me to go to my CEO and ask him to spend thousands of dollars on this, especially in times like these. Till then our experiment continues with the free service provided by Yammer.
Would love to hear about other experiences about micro learning in the corporate environment.
Staying Up to Date with Instructional Design Skills
Labels:
Career,
coaching,
eCube,
eLearning,
Instructional Design,
Jobs,
Learning,
Learning professionals,
skills
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I recently came across a question posted on the eCube LinkedIn forum that I responded to. While the question was how a person in between jobs could keep their instructional design skills up to date, I think it is important even for those with the jobs to keep their skills up to date.
How can an experienced Instructional Designer with very limited experience in current instructional design software tools update their skills in order to be recognized and considered as a candidate for e-Learning positions? How does a person in transition keep their instructional design skills up to date in order to effectively compete for instructional design jobs in today's job market?
Start reading a lot of blogs by other experts and connect with other learning professionals through your comments. It is always hard to know which blogs to follow. Here are the blogs that I follow, or you could also browse through the blogroll on this site.
Twitter is another great tool for connecting with others. This will give you an insight into what's happening in the industry and help you stay up to date.
If you are up to it (and I strongly recommend that you do make an effort), my advice would be to start writing a blog to articulate your learning. Your blog will be a useful showcase in your job interviews (I am of course assuming that you will write about learning/instructional design).
I would also recommend that you learn various tools used in elearning. These tools are usually easy enough to get started and learn on your own. You could easily work with the demo versions of the latest tools and to get your hands dirty.
Creating your elearning portfolio will also be useful to showcase your capabilities. Tom Kuhlmann makes a compelling case for creating your elearning portfolio.
And if you are indeed in between jobs and want to stay up to date, I would advice you to start picking up small freelance assignments. No better way to stay in touch with what's happening in the industry by actually being hands on.
It’s time to update my top 10 learning tools and techniques list. This time I’ll try to focus more on tools and services. You can view my previous lists of Aug 08 and Jan 08.
My top 10 learning tools in April 2009:
- Google Reader – I read blogs via RSS feeds. I have tried Google Reader, NetVibes, Bloglines and Feedly, and I have stuck to Google Reader. It also allows me to share interesting articles from my feeds. In case you are interested, you can view my shared items here. I still find many people who don’t really know or use feeds. I don’t lose any opportunity to educate them to the merits of feeds and using a feed reader.
- Twitter – I will complete one year of Twittering next month. It’s been a great learning tool. I read somewhere that Twitter lowers the barriers of communication. Completely agree with this. Have made more connections on Twitter than on any other network. Connect with me on Twitter @manishmo.
- TweetDeck - can’t just complete this list without talking about some of the Twitter tools I use. TweetDesk desktop app helps me organize twitter contacts in groups and helps me manage tweets easily.
- Google Chrome – IE feels extremely slow and archaic after I started using Google Chrome. I love the simplicity of the interface. And the best feature is ability to type anything in the address bar to search for it. No need to actually go to the search engine website.
- Google search engine – Googling is now a verb. This is my most used search engine.
- Compfight, a flickr search engine – Love this as it allows me to quickly search Creative Commons images that I can use on my blog.
- LinkedIn – Okay, perhaps it is not a tool but definitely a network that I have found invaluable. I have made some great connections through the eCube forum.
- Blogging – Blogging continues to help me reflect on my thoughts and crystallize my learning. I prefer self hosted Wordpress platform more. I still use Blogger for my personal blog and have moved to hosted Wordpress for my team blog.
- Bubbl.us – Love this collaborative mind mapping service. Simple interface and great collaborative features. I have been using this to collaborate with my connections.
- Mr. Tweet – this Twitter service has helped me identify new folks to follow based on my network’s network. I have found it quite useful in identifying new folks to connect with.
Image: Imagination by tjtrewin
Dave Ferguson hosts the seventh session of the Working/Learning Blog Carnival. The carnival provides some great posts of experiences of working at learning and learning at work. Here are some of the posts participating in the seventh session of the carnival.
- Karyn Romeis starts with “a bit of a rambling romp” (her words): Learning? Work? Her own passion for learning is such that she doesn’t think it should be separate from her job, and even prompted her to form her own consultancy.
- Manish Mohan has taken up a new instrument and shows what he knows in Twitter, Twitter Everywhere…
- The anthem of Ireland is Amhrán na bhFiann (The Soldier’s Song)—martial, but less thoughful than Richard Nantel’s post, Dinner Conversation Turns to War. In part he’s examining a dilemma: preparing people thoroughly to build skills they may never have to use.
- Clark Quinn’s post fits right into the spirit of a session: Do What You Love, Love What You Do. One thing he examines is the question of what makes learning fun, and therefore someone you want to do. He’s not talking about rubber chickens or noisemakers.
- Jane Bozarth builds on a 24-year tradition: a group of people who are determined to “stamp out bad training.” In asking Wherefore Passion?, she’s looking at what makes people passionate about their profession.
- Shanta Rohse is aware that you don’t read sheet music during a session. Digital Literacy: Reading Signs along the Way is her exploration of what skills learners need if they want to join in successfully. Workplaces should take note: if you don’t encourage engagement, people may go elsewhere to engage.
- Sessions aren’t supposed to be complicated, but they benefit from skill (which can include the mastery of complexity — like Davy Spillane on the uilleann pipes. My own post, Analyzing Tasks with Paradigming, gives examples of techniques I’ve used to make complexity…well, if not less complex, then easier to grasp.
You can get more info about the blog carnival at Dave's blog carnival page.
When I first started this blog I wasn’t sure specifically what I would write about but I knew it would be about my area of work. And so I named the blog to cover almost everything: ‘Life, the Universe and Everything about eLearning and Content Development’.
About year into blogging, I realized that I was writing about more than just eLearning. And so I dropped the ‘e’ and renamed my blog to ‘Life, the Universe and Everything about Learning and Content Development’.
A few months ago I created a Wordle of titles of the posts on this blog. I wrote mostly about Learning. However I didn’t write often about content development. I do write about blogging, design, networking, innovation, workplace, leadership, change, corporate, salary, web, trust, performance and tools amongst other things. This coupled with the fact that the blog name was just too long, not really lending itself to a meaningful acronym, I am rechristening my blog once more. My blog will now be “Learn and Lead”. For one, the name is shorter and hopefully easier to remember. I believe it also lends itself better to the topics I write about. So wish the new name good luck.
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Twitter Twitter Everywhere...
Labels:
Facebook,
Learning,
Social Networking,
Technology,
Tools,
Twitter,
Web 2.0,
Workplace Learning
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Everyone’s talking about Twitter. So here's my addition to the conversation based on my experiences with Twitter as @manishmo.
What is Twitter?
To me it is various forms of IM, asynchronous chat, chat room, email, SMS on the Internet, blog (micro-blog) depending on how you use it.
I also like this explanation by Chris Brogan:
Twitter is a stream. Facebook is both a stream and a stopping point (but mostly a stream). Your blog is a stopping point pretending to be a stream. It’s important to think about where you want information to live, and how you want it to impact the world. For everything you toss into a stream rolls past, and if I’m not at the stream when you throw your leaf onto the waters, I’ll miss the leaf entirely, or perhaps catch only the ripples.
How do you get started with Twitter?
Rohit Bhargava explains 5 stages of Twitter acceptance:
I think I am somewhere in stage 2, 4 and 5!!! I have had some 1x1 conversations, published some useful information. I have made met new people on Twitter, just like I did when I started to blog or using Facebook. But I still don’t really get why people love it SO much.
Tools I used for Twitter?
I started with using Twitter in the browser. I tried Twhirl client. However I have now settled on using TweetDeck. TweetDeck is an AIR desktop application. It provides up to five multiple column display (if you set it that you can set to to Narrow columns in Settings). I usually have one column for replies, one for friends, one for search results. Remaining two column can be used for Direct messages (don’t have many so don’t use it for this), another search result or seeing info about Twitterers (!). Update: Now that I have used TweetDeck for a while, I have figured that it allows you to organize people you are following into groups. You can add columns for your groups. This really makes it easy to manage the large volumes of tweets.
Other interesting tools/utilities about Twitter?
I found some useful and some completely useless but fun stuff services/utilities that give you information about Twitter accounts.
follow cost provides you with useful information about average number of tweets by a user. Useful to know what you can expect when you start following someone.
TweetWheel in an interesting application that shows how your friends are connected to each other. This may take a long time if you have many friends.
TwitterFriends provides some stats about your conversations. Not useful if you are just starting out.
Bottom line:
If you are feeling bogged down with email, don’t even think of trying Twitter.
Would I recommend or encourage Twitter’s usage in corporate environment? Well, I am not really sure but I am tending towards a ‘No’ at this time. If there was a Twitter behind the firewall with only employees of the company as users forming a reasonably homogenous user base, then maybe. But in its current state, Twitter can be a real distracter. It needs quite a discipline to manage your follow list. So if you typically work with 10 tabs open in your browser and multiple windows open on your screen, then yeah sure. But Twitter is not for everyone.
Update:
Based on inputs from Tom, I have started Yammer in my workplace. It was slow start initially but seems to be picking pace now. I started with introducing a few people to Yammer and the tribe has now grown to 55 of us on the Yammer network for our organization. The message are now starting to come in from more users.
This post is part of the Work at Learning/Learning at Work blog carnival hosted by Dave Ferguson on his blog Dave's Whiteboard.
Geetha Krishnan asks "what kind of learning formats will be in vogue in the year 2020, specifically with respect to corporate training?" My short response that I left as comments on his post is given below. Don’t miss out on other comments on his post from experts in the industry.Man (as in generic human, not intended to be sexist), has forever learned from teachers, gurus. Knowledge has been passed down through ages by the teachers/gurus. The medium changed over the years. The common thread that I see is that the changing media has continued to facilitate increased access to teachers, and communication between teachers and learners. The changing media has also improved the ability to visualize content and explain things in more graphical way.So in the next 20 years, learning formats that continue to increase the accessibility of teachers will be in order. Telepresence comes to mind. Perhaps it will develop into 3D/hologram type telepresence that will allow teachers to be more accessible to learners.Social learning, learning 2.0, social networks, user generated content etc. to me are additional means of connecting teachers and learners. All these make more teachers accessible to more learners and these modes will continue to thrive.3D worlds also make it easier for content to be visualized better and make learning more effective. Usage of 3D Worlds for learning should increase in the coming years.
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