This video, produced by BrandGames, is a must view for those in corporate education. Some of the bad e-learning I have been exposed to (and early in my career created – argh!) is described in the first part of this video. The second half provides some good, common sense advice for anyone desiging and developing e-learning.

I’m a pretty typical suburban U.S. mother – a soccer Mom a/k/a “hockey Mom” of the minivan variety (read: boring vs. the sexy/gas-guzzly SUV variety). I limit my three kids to no more than two activities a ‘season.’ So right now we’re into the seven-month (ice) hockey season, short indoor lacrosse and indoor soccer seasons which carry over into the outdoor season, year-round ballet, and school year-long music lessons (what seasons?). Many are critical of this, even my own parents who become ‘exhausted’ when reading the schedule.Â

I’ve written about hockey before because it’s one of my favorite sports. Our youth hockey organization has a great group of parents I enjoy being around. Not so in many other organizations. Last year at a neighboring rink, some fans got into a fight and one ended up with a head injury in the hospital. This is youth hockey. Not the NY Rangers.

This is probably why hockey is the only sport where I have to watch a mandatory training video on how not to be a jerk.

I got thinking about why hockey is different – why it requires anti-jerk training. I think it’s probably due to violence-driven litigation at the youth level and the draw associated with the (condoned/’enforcer’-type) player fighting associated with the sport at the professional level. You know, the “I was at a fight and a hockey game broke out…”

It reminds me of mandatory compliance-type training that speaks to our common sense. We might just as well align our ‘common-sense’ compliance training with the adult education program (“relax, it’s just a game) in hockey.

“Relax, it’s just a password video or “Oops don’t get us sued” e-learning. Training for the masses based on the actions of a few. Ugh.

Meanwhile, I only screamed once or twice during the four games I attended this tournament weekend. Mostly just “skate Drew skate!” as he chased after a breakaway (he’s a defenseman). Better take the mandatory training again. Ugh

Photos: Mom from this Mom t-shirt shopand harassment from this law firm. Gotta love the irony.

This was me, last Wednesday…well, almost. The student needs to be a 40-something woman running up 44 stairs (yes, I count them, got a problem with that?) with a book bag after wolfing down a Wendy’s chicken sandwich in the car. Talk about a heart attack waiting to happen. Good God, what’s happening here? If I sit in class one more time and think…’why aren’t we doing this online?’ I am going to scream. Or, die of a heart attack.

Preparation and organization. How much of your day do you think you spend on those two tasks? It’s all I’ve been doing lately and I’m a bit weary of both because they involve doing something now for something in the future. I’m weary I guess because I don’t feel like I’m doing anything. I feel like an animal gathering and storing food for the winter.

For many years, I hired outside instructors to teach advanced technical job-specific skills. Trainer A was a man in his 50s who did all his training face-to-face. He used flipcharts and occasionally offered his students videotaped vignettes to watch as part of an activity. He was meticulous in his preparation and organization. All binders were lined up perfectly. Everyone was given the same number and type of pencils. The name tents were set up perfectly. Everything was prepared and organized to perfection. His reputation was outstanding and his evaluations were always top-notch. He did not use a PC, didn’t have a Website, and communicated by phone instead of email. He had an interest in e-learning that might resemble the interest a polar bear, in the comfort of his recliner, would have about a report on global warming. He was not ready for change.

Trainer B was a woman about my age who also did all of her training face-to-face. Her expertise was in interpersonal skill training. She was as meticulous, actually more so, in her preparation and organization as Trainer A was. She would arrive 1 or 1 ½ hours early and rearrange the room, prepare flipcharts, ask questions about the group very, very detailed questions. She also used binders, flipcharts, and video. Her reputation was outstanding, her evaluations were exceptional, and she worked for many Fortune 100 companies. Her company had a Website and some post-workshop activities were available online and via email. Her interest in e-learning might resemble the stress a polar bear would experience when faced with shrinking ice. (What the ??? is this about?). She was starting to get ready for change.

Trainer C was a man about my age who also did all of his training face-to-face. Like Trainer A, his training served a niche market  hard to find technical content that was very job-specific. He traveled the continental U.S. and trained nearly 200 days per year. His preparation and organization was an art form. He experienced virtually no stress when faced with things I would’ve  freaked out about. He used a PC, projector, and online games in his classroom along with binders, and tent cards. His interest was keen on e-learning. I guess he’d be the Al Gore of polar bears alerting the other polar bears of changes looming by doing something about it. About the time I was working with him, I was rolling out a synchronous learning platform. He asked if he could work with me on it to deliver some of his training at a distance. He didn’t charge my organization for this and delivered a couple of pilots. He asked endless questions about online teaching and read everything I sent his way. His preparation was outstanding and he commented on the amount of time spent with this new channel for delivering his training. He was ready for change and doing something about it.

These three trainers, with different levels of readiness for advancing learning by incorporating technology, could easily have been some managers or learners at the organization. Or, any of us.

So, as I prepare and organize for workshops I’ll deliver, I’m reminded of these two videos that can remind everyone why we need to take seriously how we prepare and organize our learning activities.

http://www.youtube.com/v/P7J_ereCiTo

http://www.youtube.com/v/aEFKfXiCbLw

Photo: http://climateprogress.org/2006/12/27/polar-bears-endangered-by-global-warming/

This is too long (8 minutes!) but even if you just watch a minute or so you’ll get the gist. Well, maybe you won’t get it if you’re not familiar with MTV cribs. Via Mashable!

Good stuff.
How Common Craft Makes Their Videos

Probably only funny to those who know (and especially those new to) Second Life. Via Christopher Sessums. The only thing missing is the continuing altering of one’s appearance. Guilty.

I enjoy reading Dave Pollard’s how to save the world blog. His post Getting People to Give a Damn struck a cord after reading my colleague Gary Woodill’s comments about training professionals coasting to retirement. Lynn Marentette made several interesting comments in response to that post including people don’t know that they don’t know, or what they need to know. In effect, they haven’t found a reason to give a damn. What don’t you know? What don’t I know that I need to know? What don’t I give a damn about because I haven’t been shown why I should give a damn?

Michael Moore is an expert in getting people to give a damn. See the clips from his new movie, Sicko. What if the training industry made a documentary of outrageously bad training, bad decisions, and failed initiatives?

Now, I know there’s a lot of good classroom trainers and phenomenal teachers and am grateful to have had many show me the way to giving a damn. My point is not to minimize the need for instructor-led training.

So what to do? Dave Pollard’s action plan includes informing by showing so that people would care if they knew, they will and personalization. One cause Dave suggests attacking from a rather long, important list, is the need for a self-directed education system, with facilitators and coaches instead of bums-on-chairs lecturers. He suggests answering two questions:

This is about activism and passion isn’t it? We talk a lot about it – I’m doing it now -  informing (in a way, maybe) but not by showing and certainly not making it personal. So, my short-term action is leading an e-learning 101 session in Toronto next week where I’ll step out from behind the comfort of a keyboard and in front of a group, put on my favorite damn strappy sandals and get freakin’ personal. Maybe somebody will be ready to give a damn and it’ll be a catalyst for change.

Hey, I like your ring! 3D mouse you wear like a ring. Development cost- US $700 and 21 weeks. 5 students.
INVENTION AWARDS A New Breed of Mouse – Popular Science

No more eating Cheetos while I work : (
Microsoft Surface

I’ve written before about various industries floundering due to their lack of adoption of new technologies and their inflexibility. Today it was a Jake Ludington’s post How to Save Newspapers that caught my eye.

I think I take a special interest in the reports on the state of the mass media industry because my undergrad degree was in communications/journalism/broadcasting. I wonder what my curriculum might look like if I started my undergrad degree today. Blogging? RSS? Quick, inexpensive video? Search engine ranking tactics? Nope, just checked…running my fingers through my hair in aggravation!

Jake said newspapers are no longer printed paper businesses but news gathering and distribution companies. I say that training/learning departments are no longer traditional training providers but knowledge gathering and distribution departments. To thrive, Jake says newspapers need to reach the widest possible audience engaging all viable means of delivery. The same is true for learning departments.

Is it inevitable that learning professionals will lose their jobs just as some journalists, photographers, copy editors, and their managers are? What can we learn from Jake’s observations about the newspaper industry?

Learners need to be able to find you. The learning department needs traffic and search capabilities. There should be no silos “everyone, everywhere should know what “knowledge” you have available and should be able to access it whenever they want. If your LMS can’t do this or if you need an LCMS to manage the content or if you need to mash together a bunch of tools,  figure out how to do it. This is pull time not push time!

Learners need engaging content. The learning department needs to gather and distribute content in new (non-traditional) formats based on what their learners expect. Open the channels of distribution! One orientation program I can think of was revamped from straight face-to-face to a traditional blended format (f2f + e-learning). Blended in this case meant taking the stuff you’ve got to know like security procedures, compliance, etc. and putting it online in text form. Then  get this- learners took the online portion together in a classroom with no interaction. The ‘instructor’ checked email while waiting for them to finish the e-learning course reading. This is like taking the newspaper and putting it online to be read at a designated place and time. This type of program had new employees looking at one another with WTF expressions. It was not engaging and offered nothing new and something worse than before.

Think Global About Your Locale Become an expert on your organizational communities. Communities in this context are departments, work groups, locations, etc. Promote those communities across the entire organization. Quite often, the learning department is the best kept secret within the organization. I didn’t know you had that! I didn’t know you could do that! Other times, the learning department is their own worst enemy- competing internally (my stuff is better than yours), hoarding information, controlling – its development, creation, distribution). As if the content created by others will be anymore right or wrong. Get everybody involved and be the hub.

Think Local about Your Locale Become an expert on the learners within your organizational communities. What’s the nitty gritty day-to-day stuff that’s having an effect on their performance? Get the little picture. Get learners talking about their work. Blogs with RSS feeds, Wikis, networks, text chat, etc. come into play here.

Keep Your Best Assets Perhaps is we stopped evaluating our performance with old-fashioned measurement tools (Kirkpatrick, etc.) we could focus more on building communities, nurturing communities, creating new channels of distribution, and opening up those channels. Do you have active and engaged learners? Are you doing your fair share of grunt work in making that happen? Taking the time to figure out how to blog, podcast, create quick videos, or utilize virtual communities is time well spent. This is the new job! Become an asset or don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Walter Mossberg has been a reporter and editor at the Wall Street Journal since 1970. He is based in the Journal’s Washington, D.C., office, where he spent 18 years covering national and international affairs before turning his attention to technology. He holds degrees from Brandeis University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was and still is a heck of a reporter.
From his blog: Everyone can now be a video producer. YouTube and other Web sites are filled with short amateur videos created on typical home computers. Even print journalists like me have joined the trend. For the past couple of months, I’ve been recording brief video commentaries to post along with my columns on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site, WSJ.com.

Walt saved himself. I’m a researcher saving myself. Are you a learning professional saving yourself?