Teknologiiest blog

Someone was just asking me about the big trends in learning and the implications of those trends on corporate learning and development.  I initially said - "Look at my blog," but when I looked, I realized it might be a bit harder than I thought to pull out the central themes.  So, here's a bit of a compilation of some of the things I've been talking about in my blog which points to some of the major trends in learning. Environmental Changes Some of the common trends I discuss in presentations are: Decreased L&D budgets Faster pace Increased workforce mobility Shorter job tenure Increased job fragmentation - fewer numbers in any one role Constant increase in complexity Greater concept work Need for faster proficiency Changing expectations for learning The bottom line is that Learning and Development needs to do more with less these days or they will be marginalized .  And the risk is pretty severe as described in ...

Question from a reader, hoping you can provide your thoughts: I am in the process of selecting an elearning tool that is easy to use, quick to create the demos and does not bloat the file size much. I want to create some online videos that will be a total of about 6-7 hours and upload them on my site. These videos would have software demos, screencasts and PowerPoints embedded inside them. Also every screen would have audio (voiceover with my voice) accompanying it. I will want to have a simple menu system to break up the content into chunks. And I may eventually, but not initially, want to be able to track them under an LMS, i.e., have SCORM tracking. I have been looking into various tools. Here are some pros and cons I found about them. Qarbon Pros: Less File size. Qarbon seems very easy to use. Cons: I'm finding it a bit difficult to integrate my voice with my demos and pull everything together. Creates as screenshot. To present a moving demo I need...

We wrapped up our free elearning webinar on Models for Learning in a New World.  My portion was a fast paced look at several important environmental trends such as: Decreased L&D budgets (see Business of Learning ) Faster pace Increased workforce mobility Shorter job tenure Increased job fragmentation - fewer numbers in any one role Constant increase in complexity Greater concept work Need for faster proficiency Changing expectations for learning The bottom line is that Learning and Development needs to do more with less these days or they will be marginalized .  We also have so many more kinds of solutions we can offer.  I described some common eLearning 2.0 patterns that are emerging much along the lines of my previous post Examples of eLearning 2.0. Questions There were some great questions during the session.  Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to discuss.  1) Two issues that come up,  at least...

Great post from Charles Jennings – Down But Not Quite Out: what can we learn from the plights of Learning Tree International and Readers Digest? Learning Tree reported a decline of 31.2% in earnings compared to 2008. Operating expenses were down from $22 million to $14.6 million ($1.5 million of that contributed by producing less of those damn catalogues). And overall operating profit was down by 40.7% compared to the same period in 2008. Net income was down 44.7%. This is similar to what I've been discussing in the Business of Learning and we are both citing Learning Tree's woes.  This whole topic has got me thinking about all of the implications and I've been regularly posting on it: Update on Future of Business of Learning New Learning Solutions Marginalized Getting Started Charles discusses what Learning Tree (and all training providers are up against).  There's free content and the assumption that con...

I just saw a post by Amit Garg Top 47 eLearning & Workplace Learning Blogs .  His list was very similar to the list of sources that eLearning Learning includes.  It made me wonder how many sources does eLearning Learning include?  Turns out it's exactly 99. Please let me know if I'm missing any blogs that produce good content on eLearning and more particularly Workplace eLearning that would make sense to include.  eLearning Learning is looking for a bit deeper posts that focus on applied issues. If you don't want to subscribe to all 99 sources individually, then you can subscribe to either the Full Feed or Best Of feed from eLearning Learning.  The full feed provides snippets from each source.  And the Best Of feed provides a weekly summary with the top content from all of these sources.  The Best Of also includes upcoming free elearning webinars .  Personally I find that this is high value even though I try to stay up on all the latest a...

A great comment from Ken Allan on my post Free : My family listen to NZ Radio a lot. Current affairs progs are now all available, free, as podcasts (bits) on their site. When someone misses a broadcast they wanted to hear, their dismay is ameliorated with, "I can always access the podcast". Of course, this event rarely actually happens. So not only has bits reduced the value of some things, it also shelves the possibility of their use. I'd already realised this was happening last century when people would stock up on videoed TV programs that they would never have the time to watch because they were watching the broadcasts - a time debt that was not able to be paid. The same (actually) applies to reading blogs. As Sue Waters pointed out to me about indexing blogs, "people don't use blogs that way". I completely agree with Ken that content seems to stream by and if you miss the stream, it somewhat gets lost later as there's the continuo...

Great video similar to Did You Know? Here are some of the stats from the video: By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….96% of them have joined a social network Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media Always love to see this. And I like to add that the marriages that came from eHarmony (roughly 1% in US) will be better than those that came through other means. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences? Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated ...

I've been slowly going through Chris Anderson's book Free: The Future of a Radical Price . There's a lot he gives you to think about and definitely a lot that relates to the Business of Learning . There's quite a bit in the book that really resonates with me: We can't help it: We value atoms more than bits. Bits want to be free. A common theme throughout the book is that people naturally understand the differences between bits and atoms. We somewhat intuitively understand that near-zero marginal cost is true for bits. Thus, they treat content delivered as bits as having less value than the equivalent atoms version. Chris tells us: It's time to stop treating bits like atoms and assuming the same limitations hold. There's definitely a lot of questions raised by the book that will undoubtedly add to my thoughts around New Learning Solutions : What are the versions of offerings that can have different prices? Because of downw...

You can find all sorts of interesting resources via eLearning Learning around Adoption .  Not surprising, the terms most closely associated with Adoption are Adoption of Social Software and Adoption of Enterprise 2.0 .  There are some great resources on this such as: Ten tips for choosing & using social software Adoption of Web 2.0 and eLearning 2.0 Revisited Social Media - The Challenge of Adoption - Rob’s Dummies Guide The secret sauce to successful Enterprise 2.0 adoption Facilitating Adoption of Web 2.0 Tools Adoption Ideas Webinar Software - Adoption Advice Enterprise 2.0 - What's the PU? Web 2.0 Adoption in the Enterprise - It's Personal Adoption Pendulum As I do presentations where I discuss Tools and Methods for Knowledge Work , I find myself wondering about adoption levels of these tools, and the following pendulum definitely describes how my feeli...

I'm looking to find lots of examples of where informal or social learning has been used successfully in the workplace and where it was led by the L&D organization. This can either be already written up, or it can be the name of a person and organization where it was done. Can you provide me pointers? If you would be more comfortable, feel free to send me information via an email: akarrer@techempower.com.

In the T+D article Learning Gets Social , Tony Bingham paraphrases something I said: In the May issue of T+D, Tony Karrer, an e-learning technologist and CEO of TechEmpower, encouraged companies to start adapting to the current trend in informal learning because otherwise, they will find themselves marginalized in the business. I thought it would be good for me to put some context around what I meant by this.  Especially given that there's been some push-back on the term "marginalized." In the Business of Learning , I pointed out that there were some pretty significant questions facing the training industry.  Budgets have been hammered this year, and there's a question as to what spending levels will look like going forward.  During the Free Online Conference – Future of Learning we heard different perspectives.  Skill Building Still in Demand.  There was definitely the belief that there are continued need for skills development.  ...

During a recent presentation and workshop to eLearning leaders from across a large organization, it dawned on me that we were making Getting Started with eLearning 2.0 a lot harder than it really needed to be. This organization was not unlike many other large organizations.  It was clear that there was significant opportunity in this organization for getting started with a broader mix of learning solutions.  Their situation sounded incredibly similar to what I have heard in many different organizations.  Some of the specifics that made me think they could make progress: Significant IT support for SharePoint Innovators in Knowledge Management and IT who would be great allies Support of senior L&D leaders Some early adopters of social learning solutions within particular regional learning and development departments Because I was talking to people with widely varying levels of experience, interest and comfort around web 2.0 tools, it was clear tha...