Learn and Lead

Now that I am using Twitter more frequently, I am bookmarking links on Twitter as favorites. I don’t save all the links on del.icio.us. Here are some of my Twitter favorites.

 

cammybean RT @eduify The Top 100 Education Blogs http://tinyurl.com/36ou27 (via @GarinKilpatrick)

hjarche Gloria Gery: Why don't we weigh them? - a classic for the learning profession  http://www.gloriagery.com/articles/whydont

jtcobb Free online course: Instructional Design for the Subject Matter Expert (SME):  http://www.kineolearning.com/60minutemasters/

jtcobb Whether for e-learning or content marketing - How to create your own online course: 100 tools, guides, and resources:http://bit.ly/12T2by

thoughts  RT @KathySierra: In Defense of Eye Candy -http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy

jagoinvestor Be careful when you pick a domain name... Top 10 Most Painfully Funny Company URLs http://is.gd/sigE

rnarchana Ruth Clark's Give your training a Visual Boosthttp://bit.ly/43rOGJ very precise, to the point, and effective... must read

Quinnovator RT: @eduinnovation: 3 Brainstorming Problems Faced By Professional Learning Communities... http://is.gd/qJC5

JaneBozarth How to bypass most firewall restrictions http://www.buzzsurf.com/surfatwork

arnoldbala How to form a company? - http://tinyurl.com/c9eggb

cammybean Tough love for instructional design:http://tinyurl.com/bxx64l

hgetson 10 ways to measure social media success.: Is your social media strategy helping your business? How do you know? ..http://snipurl.com/d9pd4

narayananh Awesome Facebook profile photo hack - http://tinyurl.com/bbafhs

I came across the following tweet from someone who I am following:

Is twitter a social networking or a professional networking tool? I really dont want to know ur progress through the day unless ur a starlet

 

The choice is really yours, the users. What you absolutely can’t control is what others tweet. You decide who you want to follow. And even the people who tweet ‘professionally’ are also humans (unless you are following a bot or a company/publication, in which case this conversation doesn’t hold good). And humans are rarely uni-dimensional. Even professionals have families and friends and have other interests besides work. There will be tweets related to family and friends, movies they recommend, walks they walk, runs they run and hikes they take. Spouses will say funny things to be shared, children will fall ill and best wishes will follow. The beauty of the open architecture of twitter is that you can decide not to follow someone. However asking others to tweet to your tastes is expecting too much.

 

Following up on my post on blogs by learning professionals in India, here’s a list of Indian Learning professionals who tweet a little more frequently on Twitter. My criteria for selecting: minimum 50 tweets and must have bio text. Mind you, not all tweets are about learning/elearning. You can catch me on twitter at @manishmo.

Here’s the list of Indian learning professionals on Twitter, sorted on most tweets:

1. Ruchi Bhatia @rucsb: Web 2.0 buff,IBMer,Learning professional, Indian, geek,net addicted, thought leader, luvable !
   
2. *Abhinava @Abhinava: biker... dreamer... sapiosexual
   
3. Geetha Krishnan @thoughts: Learning professional
   
4. Archana Narayanan @rnarchana: Constantly evolving as an instructional designer at Kern Learning Solutions (www.kern-comm.com) to ensure richer learner experience
   
5. Sahana @sahana2802: Instructional designer and social learning enthusiast. Believe collaborative, participative learning will be the future of e-learning and workplace learning.
   
6. *R. Jaideep @rjaideep: elearning professional,tech lover,future entrepreneur
   
7. Sreya Dutta @sreyadutta: Instructional Designer by profession, working at Oracle.
   
8. Kapil Bhatia @kapil1312: Enjoy discussing Education, web 2.0 , edupunk, elearning. Hate people who block youtube and twitter in schools.
   
9. Geeta Bose @geetabose: Run Kern Communications -a learning solutions & usability consulting company
   
10. Rupa Rajagopalan @ruparajgo: Instructional Designing - My Passion
    
11. Amit Garg @gargamit100: Co-founder - Upside Learning India. Interests - Outsourcing, Instructional Design, Sales, Marketing, Social Media.
    
12. Taruna Goel @write2tg: “A learning professional” – an instructional designer, trainer, recruiter, supervisor, mentor, coach, change initiator, training manager…and more.
    
13. Gerald Jaideep @gJaideep: Innovation Initiator or Hunter/Gatherer for FireStarters
    
    New additions to the list:
    
    
14. *Swaminathan Moorthy @mrmwrites: Technical Writer, Blogger, Web Admin, Secretary - ITC SIG of STC, Employment Manager - STC India Chapter
15. *Kavi @kavismusings: Anything that hits the fan is not evenly distributed
    
16. Sathish Narayanan @elearningtyro: Instructional Designer and E-Learning Specialist
    
17. Kaushik Chakraborty @togetherinlife: Love.Life.Great Parents.Training,Blogger.Speaker.Travelling.See India.Trekking.Himalayas.Reading.Long Drives.Yoga.Beer.Making Mistakes.Explore Life Everyday!
18. Sundar @sundararajit: An ardent fan of social media..learning consultant in the enteprise space..venturing into management consulting, and life skills training...
19. Abhijit Kadke @abhijitkadle: interests range from genetics, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, engineering, technology, computing to electronic games, media, communication, and design
20. Vijeesh Shankar @vijeesh: learning - mobile, classroom, web, social, informal..(a-z of learning :-)
21. Vasan @followVasan: e-Learning professional committed to making difference through learning solutions
22. Gautam Ghosh @gautamghosh: HR and Social Media geek. Perpetual Learner. Student of Life.

* less frequent tweets about learning/elearning

Feel free to add to the list. I will update the list every now and then.

I had an interesting chat conversation over the weekend with a budding instructional designer.

ID: I wanted to discuss about Instructional approaches

ID: Suppose there's a client who says " they have been using ILT that has not been successful, their mentors are not motivating enough& nw wants to change it to a WBT.......and target audience are senior &middle level managers well versed with sales, dealing with retailers etc.....

And I've to give them 2 approaches.....do u hv any ideas?

Me: why is their ILT not successful?

ID: their mentors are not motivating enough

Me: why do you believe wbt will be motivating?

ID: hmm.....It would give them the space of doing the training at their own pace and on their own

  after all they are senior managers..who might not like to be trained

  I mean not support trainings

Me: basically your instructional strategies need to remove the problems they are having with ILT

  so if the mentors/trainers are boring, the WBT has to far far more interesting and interactive

ID: Yep.....

Me: so you have the answer...

  unless i understood the question wrong

ID: and with just this information and the fact that I’ve to develop 2 approached based on level 2 interactivity.....

  I needed some ideas

  See.......ok, can you list down types of approaches......

  one can be scenario based, case study based.....

  dialogue based

Me: you should know more about the users, job profile is one, what about their other characteristics -- gender, age, race etc.

Me: also what kind of industry are they in?

ID: they are in sales industry

  all senior and middle level managers

  pharmaceuticals

Me: basically sales guys travel a lot, they don't like to attend training

  do they have PDAs etc.?

  which country are we talking about?

ID: India

Me: what access do they have to computers and Internet?

ID: broadband

Me: from home?

ID: yes

  everywhere

Me: so the company is expecting the sales guys to take training from home?

ID: anytime they are free.......

Me: they are never going to be free

ID: they are senior level and middle level managers!

Me: are you expected to solve the business problem or just create a WBT?

  my response will be different in each case

ID: just create a WBT

Me: :-)

Now I know this person is a budding, relatively junior instructional designer and probably is just doing what she has been asked to do. There was a sense of déjà vu for me. I know many a times, the client appears to be very clear about what they want and wants the vendor to “just create a WBT”. Not all clients want to have a business problem discussion with the vendor. And not all instructional designers want to solve business problems. They are happy with creating a WBT and getting on with their jobs. Unfortunately that’s a lose-lose situation for both clients and instructional designers.

My advice to instructional designers is to stay focussed on solving the business problems. Sometimes creating a WBT might not be the solution, even though that’s what your company may have been contracted to do. Focusing on solving the business problem will help you add value in your interaction with the client and that will in almost all cases eventually lead to more business.

And if you are a client outsourcing a learning content creation project, my suggestion would be that you work with the vendor and collaborate on solving the business problem. There is no harm in having raking up more brains to solve your business problem. And if you are sure that WBT is indeed the answer to your business problem, then provide that information to the vendor so they can do justice to your project.