No time for design - Cathy Moore

Another brilliant post by Cathy Moore on Instructional design.

Do we still care about instructional design? This graph from Google Trends compares searches for “elearning” with searches for “instructional design.”

At first, “elearning” followed “instructional design” in a sad slope downward. But in the last couple of years, “elearning” has perked up again, while its friend “instructional design” continues its descent into obscurity.

Maybe fewer people are searching for “instructional design” because it’s no longer a new concept (”usability” suffered a similar decline). Or, possibly, fewer people are searching for “instructional design” because fewer people care about it.

Did “rapid” kill ADDIE?

Here’s what can happen to the ADDIE approach when we care more about speed than anything else.

1. Analysis: “The client wants a course, therefore the client needs a course.”

2. Design: “Let’s use the template we used for the widget course, but with a blue background.”

3. Development: “Clean up the client’s PowerPoint slides and add a Jeopardy quiz.”

4. Implementation: “Put it on the LMS.”

5. Evaluation: “Did everyone look at every screen?”

I’m not saying rapid tools are evil. You can use them to create powerful elearning. It’s rapid design that’s the culprit, because it’s not really instructional design. It’s just content presentation. We end up putting lipstick on a pig.

But ADDIE takes too long!

When we treat ADDIE as a step-by-step process, it’s inefficient. By the time we’ve created our 39-page cross-referenced design document, we could have delivered a prototype of the course and gotten feedback from the client and learners, as Sumeet Moghe points out in his description of an agile approach to elearning design.

It would also help if we let go of our obsession with looks. Unfortunately, a text-only branching scenario that profoundly changes your employees’ approach to complex sales won’t get an award—it won’t even be submitted. The award submission will be a glitzy “course”/slideshow with redundant narration, flying pie charts, and a game-show quiz that has little effect on people’s performance.

But what about the lemurs?

I’m not saying that the Google Trends chart proves that instructional design is getting short shrift in elearning. I posted the chart because it happens to be a visual expression of my concern. There could be just as much correlation between the two searches as there is between “elearning design” and “lemurs” (which, happily, shows no worrying trends):

Check out the original post here and make sure to read the interesting comments.

Tools to help creativity flow - Training Zone article

According to research, a five year-old child asks 65 questions a day - a 44 year-old manages six. Could this be the reason that as adults, we find it so hard to be creative? Mike Levy investigates what tools can help encourage greater creativity.

Dr Allègre Hadida, who teaches business creativity to MBA students at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, thinks that all are born creative but many have it drummed out by formal education: we stop asking questions.

“Creativity is all about making connections between seemingly disparate things,” saysHadida. “Most of what we call business creativity is in fact about adaptation rather than complete blue sky thinking.”

It is, she believes, feasible for all of us to rediscover our innate creativity, to break what author Adam Morgan calls ‘the normalies’ (‘normally, we don’t do things that way’). One of the toughest barriers to break in any organisation, she says, is the sense of proprietorial ownership jealously guarded by those with 'creative' in their job spec. Creativity in any organisation needs to be democratised and, she says, it also needs to be de-mystified: creativity is learnable – just follow the tools.

"Most of what we call business creativity is in fact about adaptation rather than complete blue sky thinking." Dr Allègre Hadida, University of Cambridge Judge Business School

Hadida categorises creativity tools into four types.

Energisers & brain exercisers

First, the energisers and brain exercisers. They are often fun and do require getting out of the seat and perhaps putting you into an unfamiliar but exciting world where the mind starts making those elusive connections which lead to ‘aha’ moments.

Reframing the issue

A second category of tool is 'reframing the issue'. This entails tools which help you look at an issue or challenge in a very different way and thus open up some new approaches. One way Saatchi and Saatchi do this is to choose 'an inspirational panel', says Hadida. Here you choose five people - alive, dead or mythical - and ask ‘what would they do in our situation?’ Hadida says that this simple tool is extremely effective – not least at stimulating discussion. She also points to the dramatic new business model created by Cirque de Soleil. This multi-million pound circus business drew up a completely new (and very successful) form of entertainment, and exemplifies Kim and Mauborgne’s‘Blue Ocean Strategy’ approach. Hadida says that the ‘Four Actions Framework’, which forms part of this approach , is an amazingly powerful tool that should be much more widely known and used. The four elements are: Raise, Reduce, Eliminate, Create. A business asks itself what it would do in each category. “The biggest mistake here is to split the action into two groups: Eliminate/Reduce, Raise/Create - make sure each of the four has equal time devoted to it,” advises Hadida. Which is the hardest one for any business to face? The answer she says is ‘what can we eliminate?’ It is difficult to throw off old ways.

Problem solving

Problem solving tools mark the third category in Hadida's list. These include the classicBuzan Mind Maps and de Bono’s thinking skill tools such as Six Hats and Lateral Thinking (more on problem solvers below).

Swiss Army Knife tools

The fourth category is what Hadida calls ‘Swiss Army Knife’ tools – multi-purpose tools which awaken fresh creative reflexes; different ways to see the world. She cites music, art or theatre as one approach. Her MBA students, for example, work with professional musicians who encourage the business leaders on the course to learn a new instrument and start composing music. Even the most ‘I am not a creative type’ of person suddenly finds the creative streak they left behind at primary school. The essential ingredient here is the opening up of creative processes but, warns Hadida, it must be more than a bit of fun. Creativity tools must be allied to solid business metrics – they must also be firmly embedded within an organisation, otherwise the training given is just seen as a fun day out. More fundamentally, the organisation also needs to view them as what they are: tools aimed at increasing its long term performance through the fostering of creativity. “Creativity is a process which must permeate the whole organisation,” says Hadida.

"The most significant creative breakthroughs tend to be associated with deep knowledge of a field, and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom." Tudor Rickards, professor of creativity, Manchester Business School

Creativity in business has been given a new lease of life thanks to the credit crunch says Tudor Rickards, professor of creativity and organisational change atManchester Business School (MBS). He and Susan Moger have recently asked over 50 world experts in creativity where we are today. The results can be found here. According to Rickards, “The idea that creativity is just about a set of useful tools is giving way to a more strategic view. The traditional approach is that creativity occurs at the ‘fuzzy front end’ of projects after which the process can be split up or chunked into discrete stages. There is now a newer perspective: creativity drives design and innovation…. the most significant creative breakthroughs tend to be associated with deep knowledge of a field, and a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom.”

For Rickards, the emphasis is not so much on tools but allowing a creative environment to flourish – it is about leadership. “The so-called creative industries have sprung up, thriving on uncertainties. Paul Jeffcutt suggests that one vital change for the future has to be a rethinking of the nature of knowledge, which will avoid the sealed-off ‘silos’ of professionals and encourage that much desired policy goal of joined-up change initiatives. The implications for the new web-based networking systems in collaborative actions are clear,” report Rickard and Moger.

The four rules of brainstorming

Rickards is still a strong believer in tried and tested creativity tools. He cites the original work on brainstorming carried out by Alex Osborn. Osborn’s four rules of brainstorming are: postpone judgement, freewheel, hitchhike and quantity breeds quality. He also supports the work of WJ Gordon and his formulation of Synectics – a problem-solving tool that has gone somewhat out of fashion.

Stripping & dressing

Another problem-solving tool is cited bySchmitt and Brown who looked at the way Starbucks used ‘Stripping and Dressing’. This allows companies to get to the essence of an issue and differentiated that essence from the non-essential. First – the stripping; look at a successful brand (it may in your industry or not) and highlight all the essential features that contribute to its success – eliminate non-essential features and get down to the core essence of the business. A test that you have reached the core is that if the feature identified is removed, the brand fails. The goal is to strip down to the very core sensory experiences that make the brand what it is. The next stage – dressing – is to build up again from the core essence to reach some strategic objectives. The very process of doing this will, they contend, open up all manner of creative insights into building a brand.

"Creativity is a process which must permeate the whole organisation." Dr Allègre Hadida, University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

Schmitt and Brown suggest another useful tool is ‘exploring new context’. This removes a business issue from its usual context and applies a new one in a metaphorical way. The way to do this, they suggest, is to imagine the organisation going shopping, to a party or on an adventurous trip. What would it buy? What would it wear? Where would it go? They suggest that these open questions provide a rich contextual metaphor which encourages many new creative ideas.

In his recent survey of creativity techniques, Kanes Rajah highlights several well-tested tools which use creative problem solving to resolve business challenges. He urges people to become more curious and ask questions. We should, he says, explore the inexperienced and imagine we are great explorers going somewhere never before reached. Ask ‘why’ five times. Questions it seems, lead to some very creative answers – try more than six today.

Article courtesy:Training zone -http://tinyurl.com/lh853k

Here’s Why You Need an E-Learning Portfolio - Tom Kuhlmann

A post by Tom Kuhlmann which sheds light on a very important subject. I, personally have always wondered abut it. It's high time I get cracking on my E-learning portfolio

A few weeks ago I announced a job opening. I got about 1000 inquiries and ended up looking at over 200 portfolios. I could have looked at more but I got a lot of emails from people who didn’t have portfolios. They tended to fall into one of two camps. They either didn’t have a portfolio or the projects they worked on were proprietary so they couldn’t share them.

I know that many of you are in the same boat. And based on the tons of emails I get about finding work in this industry, I’d like to share some thoughts about why you need a portfolio and how it can help you get better at elearning.

Be at the Crossroads When Opportunity and Preparation Meet.

Opportunities exist. However, when you’re not prepared, you don’t bother looking; and if you do look, you don’t always know what to look for. If you have a portfolio ready to go, when you do hear of a potential job (or other opportunity) you can quickly jump on it. However, not having a portfolio might dissuade you from even attempting to apply for the job. In addition, because you maintain a portfolio of your skills, you’re more apt to think about the skills you need for the portfolio. It then becomes a motivator to learn more.

About 50 people told me that they didn’t have portfolios and it would take them a week or so to pull them together. Most opportunities have a limited shelf-life and a week (or sometimes a few days) might be too long. As an opportunity presents itself you need to be able to take advantage of it.

Control Your Own Destiny

Many elearning developers face two common problems. All the work you do is proprietary so you can’t share it with outsiders. Or the organization’s expectations are lower than your skills.

Too many people told me that they couldn’t share what they were working on. This makes sense for the organization, but not for you. Don’t allow their content to make your skills proprietary, as well. In the same sense, don’t let their lower expectations define your skills.

Years ago I worked for a small community hospital. It was a great place to work. However they had no money and I was forced to be creative with my projects. This was a double-edged sword. On one hand, a lot of the tips and tricks I share today come from having to work with no money or resources. On the other hand, while I got points for creativity, the projects I was producing weren’t the types of projects I could use to get a job elsewhere. So I had to build and maintain a separate portfolio of skills.

Here’s another consideration in this economy. If you lose your job, you could be flushing a lot of your work down the drain. One day you’re happy at work and the next you’re out on the street with no access to your projects or the tools used to build them. For these reasons, it’s important to maintain a portfolio.

What Should Be in Your Portfolio?

Elearning is a very diverse industry. Some people work in one-person shops where they need to know a little of everything and others can focus on one thing like writing.

Personally, I think your skills should be like a liberal arts educations where you touch on a little of everything. So here is a list of skills I think you should be able to highlight in your portfolio and be able to speak to them in an interview.

• Instructional design: Do you have examples of different approaches to learning and course design. I look at a lot of courses and most of them are usually linear. Have some examples of how to engage your learners and how they can interact with the content.
• Graphic design: While everyone talks about instructional design, I think an equal consideration is the visual design. In fact, what separated many of the candidates that I considered were their visual design skills. If all things are equal, I’ll take someone with a strong sense of visual design because it crosses into other areas like engagement, communication, and usability.
• Present diverse projects: Don’t show me 400 courses that all look the same. If that’s all you get to work on, then spend some time on your own and build out other examples. They don’t need to be complete courses. Build out an interaction or a scenario. Take one topic and try it three different ways.
• Project management: You don’t need to be a project manager, but you should understand how to manage a project from start to finish. What is the production process for an elearning course? How many hours does it take you to build a course? What resources do you need? What does it cost to produce a course?
• Writing: I like to keep things simple. So for me there’s two types of writing: technical and conversational. How well can you write to document procedures and provide the right level of guidance? On the other hand, some projects are not technical and require a more conversational tone. As Cathy Moore would ask, “Can you dump the drone?”
• Technology: You don’t need to be a software engineer, but you should know the essence of the technologies and how they work. In addition, the more tools you’re familiar with the better. The reality is that the more proficient you are with software, the more likely you’ll be a top candidate versus someone in the middle.

Getting Started

Here a few tips to help you get started:

1. Build a case study for each project. It doesn’t need to be overly fancy. Describe the project objectives, what you did, and the results. If you have examples add them. If not, at least try to add some screenshots.
2. Create a blog to document your learning. Use it to capture what you’re doing and thoughts you have during the production process. If you need ideas to get started, look at some of the demos in this blog. Take one of the ideas and play around with it.
3. Network with others. A portfolio’s no good if you have no place to show it(your blog) or share it (your network). The good thing with blogging and other social tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter is that you connect with others in the industry. You’ll learn a lot and others will get to know you and your skills. It’s a great way to prepare for opportunities. Just ask Cammy.

If you want to stay in this industry and keep up with your skills, then having a portfolio is critical. You can’t always control your circumstances, but you can control how you prepare for them.

Article courtesy: http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/heres-why-you-need-an-e-learning-portfolio/